Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 723–744

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Three Themes in Pope Benedict XVI’s
Caritas in Veritate
J. B RIAN B ENESTAD
University of Scranton
Scranton, PA

Introduction
I N A FEW paragraphs of Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI directs
attention to three points in Catholic social doctrine that are extremely
important at this moment in time for the salvific mission of the Church
and for the common good of society.Theses points are: the link between
life ethics and social ethics (§15), the priority of duties over rights (§43),
and the dependence of environmental ecology on human ecology (§51).
It goes without saying that these three teachings are widely rejected in
secular society; less well known, however, is that they are rejected or
unknown within the Catholic Church itself because many Catholics take
their cues on matters of justice from the reigning opinions in society.1
The Link between Life Ethics and Social Ethics
The Contemporary Meaning of Social Justice
Pope Benedict XVI is acutely aware that many proponents of what has
come to be known as social justice (the most influential subset of social
ethics) pay little or no attention to life ethics, especially pertaining to
contraception, same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and embryodestructive research. Hence, he tries to rouse these people from their
dogmatic slumber by a few thought-provoking sentences:
1 In much of what follows I have drawn from my forthcoming book, Church, State

and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine, to be published by The Catholic
University of America Press.

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J. Brian Benestad
Humanae vitae indicates the strong links between life ethics and social ethics. . . .
The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social
ethics, fully aware that “a society lacks solid foundations when, on the
one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and
peace, but then on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by
allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.” (§15)2

While many Catholic proponents of social justice also defend life ethics,
other Catholics speak passionately about the dignity of the human person
and about social justice but are silent on the question of abortion or loudly
proclaim “the right to choice.”Without any embarrassment, these Catholics
don’t include abortion under the rubric of social justice and don’t express
their opposition to Roe v.Wade, the Supreme Court opinion which allows
the killing of unborn children for the whole nine months of pregnancy.They
even get indignant at the U.S. Catholic bishops for placing an emphasis on
the defense of life, and on marriage between a man and woman. Because
these Catholics identify their progressive political opinions with the teachings of the Gospel, they genuinely wonder why all right-thinking Catholics
don’t publicly endorse their whole social-justice agenda, which is essentially
the program of the Democratic Party. How many times have we heard the
recently deceased Senator Edward Kennedy, a staunch supporter of the right
to abortion, defended with the argument that he agreed with the U.S. bishops on all issues of social justice, while the right-to-lifers care only about
abortion at the expense of social justice.The conclusion then drawn is that
pro-choice Catholic politicians who are dedicated to social justice should be
tolerated without criticism, or even honored for their good work.
A moment’s reflection should reveal to Catholics that the protection of
unborn babies from abortion is a matter of justice, which above all requires
that we give each person his or her due. But in social-justice circles and in
university peace and justice programs, you will rarely hear a mention of any
linkage between abortion and social justice or between the latter and the
virtues. In fact, social justice as presently understood has nothing to do with
personal virtue.This is because social justice is not understood as a virtue
at all, unlike the justice that is one of the cardinal virtues.
Social justice is most often understood to mean a more equitable
distribution of wealth through government intervention and, especially, a
reconstruction of the social and political order through the reform of
institutions. According to this description, social justice means a state of
affairs brought about by some kind of concerted activity, especially by the
activity of the state. Neither faith, nor charity, nor the practice of the
2 Quotation from Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, §101.

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other Christian virtues is necessary for the attainment of social justice.
Still other meanings may include progressive opinions on political and
social issues, volunteer work for the needy, and the recognition of a wide
variety of rights, especially for the disadvantaged.
The contemporary concern for social justice leads primarily to a stress
on public-policy initiatives, to a reorganization of “the system,” and to
social reform. In addition, there is a tendency to regard social justice as a
principle of rights against society rather than as a virtue inclining a
person to fulfill duties toward society. Social justice is the title in whose
name individuals and groups demand things as their rights or make
demands on behalf of others.
Hearing the above description of social justice, one might reasonably
infer that Catholic social-justice advocates might think of reorganizing
the political system so that the unborn would be protected from abortion. This would be the case if social justice were understood as the
modern form of Thomistic legal justice, but this is usually not the case.
As Ernest Fortin explained, the contemporary understanding of social
justice is influenced not by Aquinas but by Enlightenment liberalism:
[That contemporary understanding] shares with early modern liberalism
the view that society exists for the protection of certain basic prepolitical rights, and it radicalizes that view by combining it with an emphasis,
stemming ultimately from Rousseau, on the need for a greater equalization of social conditions as a means of guaranteeing the exercise of those
rights. . . . Accordingly, it calls for either a radical redistribution of material resources, or, short of that, the establishment of a system that reduces
as much as possible the distance separating the social classes. Its immediate goal, in short, is to produce happy rather than good human beings.3

So, besides advocating a redistribution of resources, proponents of social
justice look to society for the protection of rights, or as we are more likely
to say today, autonomous choice. In this perspective, women must enjoy
the right to choose the termination of their pregnancies in order to satisfy
the demands of social justice. Given their perspective, progressive Catholics
quite logically reason that the mark of the moral person today, both within
and outside the Catholic Church, has become dedication to human rights
and especially social justice—understood, of course, in a restrictive sense.
The contemporary vision of social justice is very attractive to people
because it directs attention to some important needs of the poor and the
3 Ernest Fortin, Human Rights,Virtue, and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations

on Religion and Politics, ed. J. Brian Benestad (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 273, 274.

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J. Brian Benestad

marginalized (the truth grasped by contemporary social-justice advocates), while allowing its adherents to embrace the political opinions of
secular liberals. No need to be countercultural on the so-called social
issues! That would be a lack of respect for pluralism. Many adherents of
social justice believe that they bring justice to the land by working for
the rights and material well-being of all, even though observance of life
ethics is not part of their agenda.
Social Justice Should Be Understood as Thomistic Legal Justice
There is little hope of reestablishing the link between life ethics and
social justice on a wide scale, because so many people subscribe to the
narrow understanding of social justice just described. For attitudes to
change in the Catholic Church, two things have to be done in the
coming decade. A great educational effort will be necessary both to
persuade Catholics that the term “social justice” should be understood as
an updating of Thomistic legal justice, and to show them that it is unreasonable to hold that belief in the Gospel requires the embrace of progressive political opinions. (Of course, reason may determine that progressive
policy may be our best option in some circumstances.)
The concept of social justice is relatively new in the history of theology and political philosophy. No theologian or philosopher prior to the
nineteenth century ever spoke of social justice: not Plato, not Aristotle,
not even Augustine or Aquinas.A Jesuit philosopher by the name of Luigi
Taparelli D’Azeglio was the first to use the concept of social justice, in
his major work Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto.4 It was
not until 1931, with the publication of Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, that
the concept of social justice officially and formally entered into the patrimony of papal social thought, although as early as 1923 Pius XI had
already equated Thomistic legal justice with social justice.5 During the
approximately ninety years between Taparelli’s work and Pius XI’s
encyclical, scholars explained the concept of social justice in different
ways. Crucial to an adequate appraisal of the concept is some appreciation of what happened to Aquinas’s notion of legal justice in the works
of his commentators, but that is a story for another day.
Thomas Aquinas originally wrote that legal justice is the virtue which
“directs the acts of all the virtues to the common good.”6 Legal justice
inclines a person to perform actions useful to another, to the community,
4 Two volumes (Palermo: 1840–1843).
5 Jean Y. Calvez, “Social Justice,” New Catholic Encyclopedia,Volume 13 (Washing-

ton, DC:The Catholic University of America, 1967), 319.
6 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 58, a. 6.

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or to the ruler of the community. It consists in the exercise of every virtue
having to do with another. Every moral virtue directed to the common
good is called legal justice. Prudence, of course, is essential for the practice
of legal justice, since all moral virtue is incomplete without prudence. By
his examination of the virtue of legal justice, Thomas Aquinas makes clear
the essential link between personal virtue and justice, as well as the obligation of all citizens to find a way to contribute to the common good by
fighting injustices and/or by promoting an ever more just society.
Whether social justice should be understood as a modern update of
Thomistic legal justice was a subject of debate among scholars.
The publication of Quadragesimo Anno had the potential of ending the
debate about the meaning of social justice, but it did not. The scholarly
commentary on the so-called social-justice encyclical is unevenly divided
as to the meaning of sound social justice. The larger group of scholars,
including Brucculeri, Calvez, Nell-Breuning, and Newman, among
others, argue, correctly in my opinion, that Pius XI understood by social
justice what Thomas Aquinas meant by legal justice.7 For example Jeremiah Newman writes,“As a virtue it is best described as that disposition
of the will which inclines individuals and social groups in general to
work for the common good of the community of which they are parts.”8
That means that individuals and groups can work for the common good
of the family, the professions, any voluntary association, and the country
as a whole. Hence everyone “can contribute directly to the common
good at some level or another.”9
After studying Quadragesimo Anno over a period of years, I can well
understand why scholars could disagree about the proper interpretation
of social justice. The full meaning of the concept can be discerned only
by connecting various parts of the encyclical and by drawing out the
implications of the connections.The most helpful interpretive aid for that
work of discernment is the precise definition of social justice given by
Pius XI in his 1937 encyclical, Divini Redemptoris.
It is of the very essence of social justice to demand from each individual all that is necessary for the common good. But just as in the living
organism it is impossible to provide for the good of the whole unless
each part and each individual member is given what it needs for the
exercise of its proper functions, so it is impossible to care for the social
organism and the good of society as a unit unless each single part and
7 Ibid., a. 3.
8 Jeremiah Newman, Foundation of Justice (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press,

1954), 108.
9 Ibid., 109.

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J. Brian Benestad
each individual member . . . is supplied with all that is necessary for the
exercise of his social functions.10

This means, as Newman suggested, that social justice is a virtue inclining
persons and groups to work for the common good of the family, the
professions, voluntary associations, schools, neighborhoods, the political
community on the local, national or international level, etc. In this
understanding of social justice,“the duty of making oneself a neighbor to
others and actively serving them becomes even more urgent, the more
needy people are, in whatever area this may be.”11 This Catholic perspective opens up vistas of service for individuals of widely differing talents,
but implicitly suggests that various levels of knowledge and suitable
dispositions are required for effective service. Consider all that is necessary to make sure that college students, for example, graduate with the
ability to read well, to write correctly, and to ponder questions pertaining to the best way to live and to the meaning of the common good. Or
imagine all that individuals and groups would have to know and do in
order to address successfully problems of poverty at home and abroad.
Social justice, then, requires not only that the common good be served
by everyone but also, as Pius XI implies in the above selection from Divini
Redemptoris, that all have the requisite material goods and receive the kind
of education and formation needed to make a contribution to the
common good. (These requirements are not specifically mentioned by
Aquinas in his brief treatment of legal justice.) If individuals are not
adequately prepared to work for social justice, there is no reasonable
ground to expect very much.
Social Justice and the Consistent Ethic of Life
Not only is education on the meaning of social justice necessary to overcome the split between life ethics and social ethics, but also the harm
done by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin’s consistent ethic of life theory must
be overcome.What does this “consistent ethic of life” entail? Generally, it
is a term used in social-justice circles to describe the position that those
who object to the taking of life at one stage or in one form must object
to the taking of life at all stages and in all forms. Practically speaking, this
means that those who oppose abortion should in practice oppose capital
punishment and most wars. It is also generally understood to mean that
Catholics should promote a respect-life attitude by supporting government spending on what are called the “social-justice” issues and should
10 Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, §51.
11 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1932.

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embrace a host of progressive priorities. This is a position articulated by
the late Cardinal Bernardin, the former Archbishop of Chicago, who
argued in his much-discussed Fordham address of 6 December 1983 that
a consistent ethic of life not only opposes abortion but also endorses policies designed to increase a people’s well-being, that is, their quality of life.
Cardinal Bernardin argued, “A quality of life posture translates into
specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment
generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs and health
care.”12 This could be sound advice if people understood that reasonable
Catholics could legitimately disagree on which “specific political and
economic positions” will be the most effective.
Anyone who is consistently pro-life and on the side of justice should
favor the kind of governmental policy that will help everyone, especially
the poor. So, Cardinal Bernardin interpreted “the consistent ethic of life”
to mean both opposition to clear evils about which there is no dispute
and also the endorsement of specific positions on such matters as tax
policy, about which there will inevitably and legitimately be disagreement. According to Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, reasonable Catholics
might disagree as to which policies will do the most good:
Often enough the Christian view of things will itself suggest some
specific solutions in certain circumstances. Yet it happens rather
frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the
faithful will disagree with others on a given matter. Even against the
intentions of their proponents, however, solutions proposed on one side
or another may be easily confused by many people with the gospel
message. Hence it is necessary for people to remember that no one is
allowed in the aforementioned circumstances to appropriate the
Church’s authority for his own opinion. (§43)

Many Catholics now interpret the “consistent ethic of life” to mean
that a candidate who is against abortion, euthanasia, the destruction of
embryos in research, cloning, same-sex marriage, et cetera, does not
deserve their vote if he or she supported the recent war in Iraq, believes
in the death penalty and/or doesn’t support the Democratic Party line on
poverty and health-care programs. Put another way, Catholics interpret
Cardinal Bernardin’s consistent ethic of life theory to mean that a candidate who is adamantly “pro-choice” and a supporter of same-sex
marriage might be worthy of their vote if he also favors policies that
promote social justice.
12 Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, “Call for a Consistent Ethic of Life,” Origins 13, no.

29 (1983): 493.

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730

My point will perhaps become clearer if we take a brief look at
Michael Pakaluk’s critique of Cardinal Bernardin’s “seamless garment” or
“consistent ethic theory.” Pakaluk says it would make no sense to argue
that the South before 1865 was unjust because of the institution of slavery and because the roads were not properly maintained in poorer
regions. While the latter would be a problem, it would simply pale in
relation to the evil of slavery. To think about the relation of abortion to
other evils, Pakaluk suggests that there are two ways of conceiving the
evil of abortion:
The first is that abortion is a calamity, a moral catastrophe of the first
order, like the Ukranian famine or the Holocaust. On this view, legalized abortion constitutes a direct attack on the foundation of our society: it involves the destruction of the most fundamental human bonds
and requires, perilously, the continued corruption of our legal and
medical professions. Our immediate task as citizens is to work with an
almost militant commitment . . . to remove this evil.13

According to this view, the primary duty of all citizens, especially
Catholics, is do everything morally possible to oppose the evil of abortion.
The second way of looking at abortion, argues Pakaluk, is to look at it as
one of many evils threatening the polity. “These evils come and go over
time; and . . . we simply have to do our best to bring about the best society that we can achieve.”14 According to this way of looking at things,
faithful citizens may vote for pro-abortion candidates who seem to oppose
more evils than pro-life candidates.“The seamless garment theory,” argues
Pakaluk, “gives no support to the first view, which follows logically from
the very nature of abortion conceded by Bernardin, and encourages the
second view, which is a formula for lukewarmness and apathy.”15
In sum, the consistent ethic of life theory now gives pro-choice, social
justice Catholics a justification for not taking Catholic teaching on life
ethics seriously. Since these Catholics believe that their positions on
social-justice issues reflect Gospel imperatives, their defense of the right
to choose abortion should, they imply, be regarded by pro-life Catholics
as only a small lapse amidst so much good. In fact, pro-choice Catholics
themselves don’t see their defense of “the right to choice” as a lapse, small
or large, but the only reasonable position to take in a pluralist society,
since “imposing” the Catholic view of abortion on other citizens would
13 Michael Pakaluk,“A Cardinal Error: Does the Seamless Garment Make Sense?”

Crisis 6, no. 10 (1988): 14.
14 Ibid., 4.
15 Ibid., 14.

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be tantamount to intolerance. Not a few pro-choice Catholics even claim
fidelity to Catholic teaching on life ethics on the grounds that they are
personally opposed to abortion.
The Priority of Duties over Rights
Introduction
Chapter four of Caritas in Veritate begins with the countercultural affirmation that unless duties take precedence over rights, the latter can get
out of control and become “mere license” (§43).That is to say, some people
in affluent countries, not guided by duties, now feel justified in defending a “ ‘right to excess,’ and even to transgression and vice” (§43).When
duties are the primary moral counter, they set limits to rights and ensure
more respect for the genuine rights of individuals and peoples. If enough
people are guided by their duties, they will be moved to do something
about “the lack of food, drinkable water, basic instruction and elementary health care in areas of the underdeveloped world and on the
outskirts of large metropolitan centers” (§43).The priority of duties over
rights is not widely accepted in liberal democracies and has not even
been a prominent theme in Catholic social doctrine, though it is emphatically mentioned several times, as we will see.
Catholic Social Doctrine on Rights
Catholics formed by the narrow social-justice model just explained
would have another chance to be liberated from this straitjacket if they
understood Catholic teaching on the priority of duties over rights.That
priority doesn’t allow a kind of standoff between the “right to choose”
and the right to life. Rights, properly understood, depend on duties,
which have their foundation in natural law. For example, Vatican II’s
Declaration on Religious Liberty bases the right to religious liberty on the
duty to worship God. Catholics have a duty not to kill the innocent and
a duty to work for laws that protect the innocent from being killed. So,
there should be no Catholic support for a right to choose abortion.
Between 1891 and the present, the Catholic Church has developed an
impressive body of teachings on human rights in the light of its teaching on
natural law and duties. In addition to Vatican Council II, Popes Leo XIII, Pius
XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have all
addressed the subject of human rights. Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum introduced
the language of rights into Catholic social doctrine; John XXIII’s Pacem in
Terris has been called a human rights encyclical; and, as Cardinal Avery Dulles
pointed out, John Paul II placed more emphasis on human rights than any

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of his predecessors.16 On several occasions John Paul II lavished fulsome
praise on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For
example, at the very beginning of his address to the United Nations on 5
October 1995, the late pope said that the 1948 Declaration is “one of the
highest expressions of the human conscience of our time.”17
The Catholic emphasis on rights is readily understandable.The language
of rights gives the Church a way to communicate with people in the present age.The language of virtue and duty is not always clear to people and
sometimes raises fears of impending impingements on their freedoms.
Respect for rights honors the dignity of the human person and promotes
justice in society.When human rights are respected, people’s lives are safe
and secure and they enjoy a whole panoply of religious, economic, cultural,
and political freedoms. The right to religious freedom is crucial for the
mission of the Church and the well-being of the state.The Church needs
freedom to bring its message of salvation, and individuals need freedom to
practice their faith, from which flow justice and peace.
The language of rights, in addition, gives people a common idiom to
discuss and recognize justice and injustice, and it accords with the
emphasis in modernity on freedom. Where people enjoy the protection
of rights, especially the right to religious liberty, governments cannot act
in a tyrannical fashion. Rights can even be invoked when there is no
agreement on their philosophical and theological foundation.
What problems, then, can the protection of rights actually pose? The
simple answer is that, unlike virtue, rights can be misused.They have been
increasingly invoked to justify abortion, euthanasia, suicide, physicianassisted suicide, and marriage between people of the same sex. People can
appeal to their rights as a justification for not making any contributions
to the communities in which they live. For example, people could say
they have a right to their wealth and have no obligation to share it with
others. Resolving conflicting rights claims can be very difficult or impossible if there is no shared understanding of human dignity. In the United
States, there is no commonly accepted moral standard to resolve the
dispute between those who advocate a right to life and those who insist
on a right to choose abortion.
The study of political philosophy reveals that natural rights (now
called human rights) had an unsavory origin. Hobbes put forth his rights
16 Avery Cardinal Dulles, “Human Rights: The United Nations and Papal Teach-

ing,” in Church and Society: The Lawrence J. McGinley Lectures 1988–2007 (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 278.
17 Pope John Paul II,“Address to the United Nations,” 5 October 1995, §2. Cf. Vatican website under the travels of Pope John Paul II.

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teachings as an alternative to the natural right and natural law of the
premodern period. Hobbes famously said there is no summum bonum
(highest good) to which people can look for guidance in the exercise of
their rights. While Locke may have softened Hobbes’s formulation, he
still ratified the break with the classical philosophers and left people without a summum bonum as the moral standard for their rights. Many scholars recognize that Locke’s writings on rights had a deep influence on the
American founding, but it wasn’t exclusive, since the Christian convictions of the early Americans influenced the way they exercised their
rights. It is only in recent times that rights have become more and more
detached from Christianity and natural law standards, especially under the
influence of historicism, relativism, and Nietzschean autonomy. These
philosophical approaches actually call into question the foundation of
rights and lead people to create their own values by an act of the will.
How Catholic social doctrine maintains a standard for the exercise of
rights can be clearly seen by looking at selected parts of Leo XIII’s Rerum
Novarum, John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris, and Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes.
Catholic Social Doctrine on the Priority
of the Divine Law and Duties
Leo XIII’s grounding of the right to private property in natural law is a
new development in the Catholic tradition.There simply is no statement
about the right to property in the natural law teaching of Thomas Aquinas.
Thomas Aquinas never argued that anyone had a natural right to property,
much less “a sacred right.” He did say that “the division of possessions is not
according to natural right but rather arose from human agreement. . . .
Hence, the ownership of possessions is not contrary to natural right but an
addition thereto devised by human reason.”18 Aquinas defended private
ownership not as a right but simply as an efficient means of promoting
industry, order, and peace. (It is important to note that Aquinas’s reference
to natural right is not at all a synonym for natural rights or human rights.
The latter concepts refer to the subjective claims of the individual against
other individuals and governmental power, while “natural right” refers to
moral principles that have validity apart from the claims and opinions of
individuals. Aquinas, in fact, never spoke of natural or human rights. The
concepts of universal natural rights, as we have mentioned, only emerged
in the seventeenth century in the writings of Thomas Hobbes.)
Pope Leo XIII cites Deuteronomy 5:21 to prove that divine law
undergirds the right to property. That text reads: “Thou shall not covet
18 ST II–II, q. 66, a. 2, ad 1.

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thy neighbor’s wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his maidservant, nor
his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.”The text affirms the duty of
all not to desire the property or wife of another, and thus implies that
people have a right to their lawful possessions. If the duty is observed, the
people will enjoy the right to their property without disturbance.
After defending the right to property, Leo XIII puts forth the traditional
Catholic teaching on property as expressed by Thomas Aquinas. Citing St.
Thomas, he writes “[M]an ought not regard external goods as his own but
as common so that, in fact, a person should readily share them when he
sees others in need. Wherefore, the apostle says: ‘Charge the rich of this
world . . . to give readily to others.’ ”19 According to Leo, then, there really
is no absolute right to dispose of wages, land, and personal property as one
wishes (uti velit). Rather, Christians have an obligation to use their property and talents for their own good and the good of others:
[W]hoever has received from the bounty of God a greater share of goods,
whether corporeal and external, or of the soul, has received them for this
purpose, namely, that he employ them for his own perfection, and likewise, as a servant of Divine Providence, for the benefit of others.20

In the section on the role of the state, Leo XIII clearly says that duties
owed to God take precedence over rights belonging to human beings. In
this Leonine perspective, it makes no sense to speak of individual rights
to property apart from obligations to love God, self, and neighbor. Rerum
Novarum teaches that nothing in life is more important than virtue.Those
examining the example given by Jesus, says Leo, cannot fail to understand
these truths:
The true dignity and excellence of human beings consist in moral
living, that is in virtue; virtue is the common inheritance of man, attainable equally by the humblest and the mightiest, by the rich and the
poor; and the reward of eternal happiness will follow upon virtue and
merit alone, regardless of the person in whom they may be found.”21

Rerum Novarum also teaches that the attainment of the common good—
including the material relief of the working class—can be attained only if
people practice virtue at home, in the marketplace, and in positions of political and civic leadership.“Wherefore, if human society is to be healed, only
19 Rerum Novarum, §36.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., §37.

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735

a return to Christian life and practices will heal it” (revocatio vitae institutorumque Christianorum; il ritorno alla vita e ai costumi Christiani) (RN §41):22
[S]ince religion alone, as we said in the beginning, can remove the evil
root and branch, let all reflect upon this. First and foremost, Christian
morals must be reestablished, without which even the weapons of
prudence, which are considered especially effective, will be of no avail
to secure well being.23

Pope Leo XIII’s attempt to use and tame the modern teaching on rights
was a grand effort. Leo really tried to integrate the premodern virtue tradition with the modern rights tradition stemming from Thomas Hobbes and
John Locke. This is an immense task, since the originator of rights
doctrines,Thomas Hobbes, as previously mentioned, completely divorced
rights from any notion of a summum bonum. In other words, for Hobbes,
the exercise of rights was not guided by the highest good. In this most illuminating paragraph, Ernest Fortin discusses the difference between the
premodern tradition of virtue and the modern tradition of rights:
The passage from natural law to natural rights and later (once “nature”
had fallen into disrepute) to “human” rights represents a major shift,
indeed the paradigm shift in our understanding of justice and moral
phenomena generally. Prior to that time, the emphasis was on virtue and
duty, that is to say, on what human beings owe to other human beings
or to society at large rather than on what they can claim from them.24

According to a prevalent understanding of rights, individuals are free
to create their own values. In one of their abortion cases, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) the U.S. Supreme Court said,“At the heart of liberty
is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the
universe and of the mystery of human life.” Fortin rightly notes that this
much-cited sentence has striking implications:
The only just society is the one that grants to each individual as much
freedom as is compatible with the freedom of every other individual. It
has nothing to say about the good life and is not concerned with the
promotion of virtue. Its sole function is to insure the safety of its
members and provide for their comfort.25
22 Ibid., §41. Latin and Italian texts are included here to justify my modification of

the English translation. The Italian costumi correctly translates institutorum,
whereas the English should be “practices” or “customs” instead of “institutions.”
23 Ibid., §82.
24 Fortin, Human Rights, 20.
25 Ibid., 23.

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736

These theoretical observations as well as the experience of living in
America show that rights are not so easily integrated into the premodern virtue tradition. Rights tend to be understood and lived as though
they are divorced from the highest good. Not that everyone understands
them that way!
For many years I have been asking my students—who are mostly
Catholic—why they respect the rights of others.They invariably respond,
“So that other people will respect mine.”They hardly ever say because it
is the right or virtuous thing to do.Yet, I believe that many of them do
respect rights because it is the right or virtuous thing to do, but they
cannot speak in the language of virtue.
Vatican Council II did place rights in a context where they could be
integrated into the premodern virtue tradition. Gaudium et Spes says:
[T]herefore, by virtue of the gospel committed to her, the Church
proclaims the rights of man. She acknowledges and greatly esteems the
dynamic movements of today by which these rights are everywhere
fostered.Yet these movements must be penetrated by the spirit of the gospel
and protected against any kind of false autonomy. For we are tempted to
think that our personal rights are fully insured only when we are exempt
from every requirement of divine law. But in this way the dignity of the
human person is by no means saved; on the contrary, it is lost.26

This approach would put rights in the kind of framework—teleological, to
be exact—that would enable Catholics to integrate rights doctrines with
traditional teachings on virtue. This passage clearly reveals the Church’s
awareness that people are tempted to invoke rights as a way to justify an
autonomy independent of objective moral norms. This false autonomy
would include the kind promoted by relativism and historicism.
In Pacem in Terris Pope John XXIII insists on grounding human rights
in the natural law and keeping them linked to duties:
For every fundamental human right draws its indestructible moral force
from the natural law, which in granting it imposes a corresponding
obligation.Those, therefore, who claim their own rights, yet altogether
forget or neglect to carry out their respective duties, are people who
build with one hand and destroy with the other.27

By teaching that the foundation of human rights is natural law and that a
person’s duties remain in the age of rights, John XXIII advances an under26 Gaudium et Spes, §41.
27 Pacem in Terris, §30.

Three Themes in Caritas in Veritate

737

standing of rights different from that of Hobbes and Locke. Until these
teachings of Vatican Council II and of Pope John XXIII find their way
into local catechisms, Sunday homilies, and subsequent Church document, most Catholics will most likely not understand their full import.
People with a secular perspective on rights would have a great deal of
difficulty accepting that rights are subordinate to the divine law, or otherwise stated, the highest good.The Church could perhaps persuade some
non-Catholics and non-religious people that rights must be exercised in
the light of some shared understanding of the good, however minimal.
The understanding and observance of the natural law is an excellent way
of coming to an agreement on common standards.
In order to see what happens when duties don’t have priority over
rights, it is instructive to look at the exercise of rights in the United States
through the eyes of Mary Ann Glendon, one of the great defenders of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.28 Her book, Rights Talk: The
Impoverishment of Political Discourse, is an excellent introduction to thinking about the understanding and exercise of rights in America and the
problems caused by the neglect of duties.
The Priority of Rights over Duties in the United States
Mary Ann Glendon’s Rights Talk should help American citizens understand why the preoccupation with creating and asserting rights undermines the fulfillment of duties. Glendon explains that the pervasive
presence of rights talk in political, social, and cultural life causes difficulty
in defining critical questions, finding common ground for discussion, and
arriving at compromises in the face of intractable differences. Rights talk
is silent “with respect to personal, civic, and collective responsibilities.”29
Furthermore, “simplistic rights talk,” says Glendon, “simultaneously
reflects and distorts American culture. It captures our devotion to individualism and liberty, but omits our traditions of hospitality and care for
the community.”30 Glendon, of course, doesn’t argue for abandoning the
American rights tradition. Rather, she is in favor of supplementing the
language of rights with that of duty and responsibility in the law, public
life, culture, and everyday life. This is not a utopian task, according to
Glendon, because Americans already use the language of responsibility,
such as duty and character, at home, in school, and at the workplace.
28 Cf. Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001).
29 Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New

York:The Free Press, 1991), x.
30 Ibid., xi–xii.

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J. Brian Benestad

Glendon notes that legal concepts, especially rights talk, have permeated popular culture and political speech. She explains,“There is no more
telling indicator of the extent to which legal notions have penetrated
both popular and political discourse than our increasing tendency to
speak of what is important to us in terms of rights, and to frame nearly
every social controversy as a clash of ‘rights.’ ”31 These two tendencies
lead Americans to misperceive the social dimension of the human
person. Under the influence of the rights paradigm, people fail to recognize personal and collective duties.
Our experience with abortion and property rights illustrates to me what
Glendon is getting at. Focusing on the “absolute” right to property and to
abortion, Americans may neglect their duty both to put their talents and
material goods at the service of others and to avoid killing unborn children.
Otherwise stated, rights talk can impair self-knowledge. The assertion of
rights often takes the place of giving reasons for attitudes, actions, or omissions. Describing social issues as a clash of rights, such as a woman’s “right
to choose abortion versus the fetus’s right to life,” exacerbates conflict and
inhibits perception of the alternatives to abortion as well as the gravity of
the option for abortion.The duty to avoid killing is hardly discussed.
“Public rhetoric,” says Glendon, “regularly gloss[es] over the essential
interplay between rights and responsibilities, independence and self-discipline, freedom and order.”32 American public officials and citizens often
talk about rights as if they had no intrinsic relation to duties. Glendon
astutely notes that even our Founding documents, such as the Declaration
of Independence and the Bill of Rights, have nothing comparable to the
statements on duties in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.The
United Nations’ Declaration says that “Everyone has duties to the
community,” and that it is appropriate to place limitations on everyone’s
rights “for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the
rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of
morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society.”33
Glendon contends that the pervasiveness of rights talk and the virtual
absence of appeals to duty are weakening people’s sense of responsibility.
She goes so far as to say that simplistic rights talk “corrodes the fabric of
beliefs, attitudes and habits upon which life, liberty, and all other individual and social goods ultimately depend.”34 A liberal regime dedicated to
31 Ibid., 3–4.
32 Ibid., 10.
33 Ibid., 13, quoting United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,Art. 29.
34 Rights Talk, 15.

Three Themes in Caritas in Veritate

739

the protection of rights depends on the presence of certain virtues in
parents, workers, volunteers, citizens, public officials, et cetera.
Glendon next seeks to explain “the persistence of absoluteness in our
property rhetoric, and in our rights rhetoric in general.”35 In addressing
this question she shows how the American way of life has been
profoundly affected by the fascination with property and privacy or the
right to be left alone. Glendon traces our love affair with property ultimately to John Locke and more proximately to Blackstone’s influence on
those who drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the
Federalist Papers and the seminal decisions of the Marshall Court. Locke
taught that people own their bodies as “a God-given right” and that
governments are instituted to protect life, liberty, and property (actually,
under the term “property” Locke included life and liberty). Locke saw the
natural right to property as a way of delegitimating the monarchy and of
limiting government. For Blackstone, whose Commentaries educated
countless American lawyers, property was an end unto itself, an absolute.
The American fascination with property caused two important legal
issues to be mishandled by the Supreme Court in the second half of the
nineteenth century—one dealt with slavery, the other with the attempt
to shape an American welfare state:
In 1856, Dred Scott, who had entered federal court in Missouri, left it as
a piece of property, when the Missouri Compromise (prohibiting slavery
in the territories) was held unconstitutional. From the latter years of the
century up to the 1930s, the Supreme Court repeatedly invoked property
rights (in an expansive form) to strike down a series of laws that, taken
together, might have served to ease the transition here, as similar legislation did in Europe, to a modern mixed economy and welfare state.36

The Supreme Court invoked the right of employers and employees freely
to make contracts and to control their property as a reason “for invalidating statutes that attempted to promote health and safety in the workplace,
to protect female and child laborers and to encourage the nascent labor
movement.”37 As is well known to students of constitutional law, the
Supreme Court began a retreat from its exaggerated constitutional protection of property rights in the 1930s by upholding New Deal legislation.
After the Court abandoned the notion of absolute property rights, it
eventually began to find absoluteness in the realm of personal rights.
35 Ibid., 20.
36 Ibid., 26.
37 Ibid.

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J. Brian Benestad

Glendon explains: “Much of the attention the Supreme Court once
lavished on a broad concept of property, including the freedom of
contract to acquire it, it now devotes to certain personal liberties that it
has designated as ‘fundamental.’ ”38 The rhetoric of absolute property
rights is now used in the area of personal liberties with the all-too-familiar result: lack of common sense in working out principled limitations on
the exercise of personal liberties. As an example, Glendon mentions the
extreme interpretations of the First and Second Amendments. One group
of people does not want any restrictions on free speech and other forms
of expression; another group favors “an absolute or nearly absolute, individual right” to bear and keep arms. Glendon notes, however, an intriguing irony: “[M]any of the same people who claim that the right of free
expression trumps a community’s interest in regulating pornography,
[argue] that the right to keep and bear arms has to be regulated for the
sake of the general welfare.”39 On the other hand, I would note that
many people defending the absolute right to bear arms, such as semiautomatic weapons, are likely to defend the duty of the community to
regulate pornography. Understanding the First and Second Amendment
rights as absolutes causes substantial harm to the general welfare.
Finally, I want to mention Glendon’s explanation for the American
tendency to absolutize rights. First, she suggests that the stark formulation of rights in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights
has strongly influenced the American mind. Second, the Lockean story
about property and Blackstone’s “flights of fancy about property as
absolute dominion stuck in American legal imaginations.”40 Third, Glendon mentions Tocqueville’s observation that we are a lawyer-ridden society, greatly affected by the omnipresent legal culture. The “strategic
exaggeration” and “overstatement” characteristic of lawyers in their
adversarial roles have had an effect on most citizens. Citizens came to
think about rights the way lawyers talk about them.
In conclusion, Glendon’s Rights Talk makes abundantly clear how timely
is Catholic teaching on the priority of duties over rights. If this were ever
understood and accepted, genuine rights would be better respected.

38 Ibid., 40.
39 Ibid., 43.
40 Ibid.

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741

The Dependence of Environmental Ecology
on Human Ecology
Introduction
In a remarkable essay on Christianity and the environment, Ernest Fortin
draws attention to “the Bible’s profound admiration for the splendor and
orderliness of nature:”
Psalm 8 speaks of the heavens not simply as the work of God’s hands
but as the work of his “fingers,” thereby stressing its surpassing delicacy.
Psalm 100 dwells on the solicitude of a loving God who looks after all
his creatures, both human and subhuman, providing for each its shelter
and its food in due season; trees for birds to nest in, high mountains for
wild goats, rocks as a refuge for badgers, bread to strengthen our hearts
and wine to gladden them.41

The Bible encourages people to admire God’s handiwork and to be good
stewards of what has been entrusted to them. While vacationing in the
mountains of the Aosta Valley, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Driven by the
heartfelt need for meaning that urges them onwards, people perceive the
mark of goodness, of beauty and of divine Providence in the world that
surrounds them and open themselves almost spontaneously to praise and
prayer.”42 The reference to Providence refers to the way God makes the
earth provide for the needs of his creatures.The perception of goodness,
beauty, and Providence should engender a profound attitude of respect
toward the environment.
We show our gratitude to God for the gift of the earth by admiring his
creation and by exercising a prudent stewardship. That means that the
Bible surely supports the reasonable demands of the environmental movement. Fortin even discerns a profound reason why human beings must
take care of the earth. Because the Bible urges respect for life and forbids
the unjust taking of anyone’s life “it follows that they are not to destroy or
inflict unnecessary damage on the physical environment needed to sustain
life.”43 Love of life should translate into respect and care for the environment. Pope John Paul II stresses the obligation of all to observe the moral
laws governing our relation with the environment. In Evangelium Vitae he
quotes what he said in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis on the subject: “[W]hen it
comes to the natural world, we are subject not only to biological laws but
also to moral ones, which cannot be violated with impunity.”44
41 Fortin, Human Rights, 114.
42 Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, 17 July 2005.
43 Fortin, Human Rights, 114.
44 Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §34.

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J. Brian Benestad

Despite the obvious links between personal immorality and damage to
the environment, questions about the disorder in people’s souls are not
raised very often.There is a great reluctance to say that a person’s use of his
freedom is simply wrong.While a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger addressed this
problem in his second book-length interview, Salt of the Earth. He said:
[T]he pollution of the outward environment that we are witnessing is
only the mirror and the consequence of the pollution of the inward environment, to which we pay too little heed. I think this is also the defect of
the ecological movements.They crusade with an understandable passion
against the pollution of the environment, whereas man’s self pollution of
his soul continues to be treated as one of the rights of his freedom.45

Cardinal Ratzinger implies that society’s defense of the continuous
misuse of freedom is a serious obstacle to addressing the very real environmental problems.
Caritas in Veritate and the World Day of Peace Message
Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical and his 2010 World Day of Peace
Message take up the relation between the environment and human ecology, which he discussed with such insight in his 1997 interview, Salt of the
Earth. In the encyclical, the Pope begins his reflection with the following
observation: “The way humanity treats the environment influences the
way it treats itself, and vice versa” (§51). For human beings to treat themselves well or, otherwise stated, respect “human ecology,” they must act in
accordance with their own dignity by avoiding evil and practicing all the
virtues.The environment will not be respected if “the overall moral tenor
of society” is allowed to deteriorate. “If there is a lack of respect for the
right to life and to natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth
are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the
conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and,
along with it, that of environmental ecology” (§51). If human beings are
not moved by their education and the laws to show respect for themselves
in their way of life, they will not be motivated to show respect for the
environment. For example, if people are unrestrained in their pursuit of
pleasure and money, or willing to kill their unborn children, they certainly
will not be motivated to restrain themselves from polluting the environment, especially if they stand to gain by their actions.
Pope Benedict adopted the term “human ecology” from Pope John
Paul II’s Centesimus annus (§38).The previous Pope noted that we are all
45 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millen-

nium.An Interview with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 230–31.

Three Themes in Caritas in Veritate

743

called to respect God’s gift of the environment and his gift of human life.
To do the latter, a person “must respect the natural and moral structure
with which he has been endowed” (§38). This is another way of saying
that human beings must achieve order in their souls by living virtuous
lives. While there is a growing consensus that we should exercise stewardship over the environment, and much exhortation to do so, there is
not similar appeal to persons “to achieve order in their souls.”That would
be regarded as an infringement on autonomy.
The 2010 World Day of Peace Message is devoted entirely to the
protection of the environment by responsible stewardship. Once again
Pope Benedict exhorts his readers to take “human ecology” very seriously. More specifically, he urges the various groups in civil society to
anchor their call for ecological responsibility “in respect for ‘human ecology’ ” (§11). Then, he calls for moral reform on every level of society:
“Relationships between individuals, social groups and states, like those
between human beings and the environment, must be marked by respect
and ‘charity in truth’ ” (§11). As one example of what he means, Benedict suggest that the international community should work toward
“progressive disarmament and a world free of nuclear weapons” (§11).
In the next paragraph of his Message, Pope Benedict reiterates points
made on human ecology in Caritas in Veritate. Several of these points
merit quotation. “Young people cannot be asked to respect the environment if they are not helped, within families and society as a whole, to
respect themselves” (§12). Then, the Pope argues that the embrace of
human ecology, properly understood, would assure the inviolability of
human life at every stage of existence, promote respect for “the dignity
of the human person and the unique mission of the family, where one is
trained in love of neighbor and respect for nature” (§12). Only by doing
these things will human ecology be safeguarded.
Finally, the Pope alerts his readers to the danger of ecocentrism and
biocentrism. These movements denigrate the dignity of the human
person by placing human beings and other living things on the same
level. “They also open the way to a new pantheism tinged with a new
paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone,
understood in purely naturalistic terms” (§13).
The solution to environmental problems is not to make ecology a kind
of religion, but to inculcate the kind of attitude toward the natural world
recommended in the Bible and to link the concepts of freedom and
truth. If the freedom of individuals, businesses, associations, and government is not guided by a public morality, grounded in truth, there will be
no real solution either to the pollution of the environment or to the

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exhaustion of limited natural resources. If the freedom to pursue
comfort, health, and safety is without significant moral limits, then people
will not have any scruples about damaging the environment in the
pursuit of their desires.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to note that, by linking social ethics to life
ethics, giving priority to duties over rights, and basing environmental
ecology on human ecology, Pope Benedict has directed his readers’ attention to the indispensability of individual virtue in working for integral
development and a just society, and to the crucial importance of giving
up the practice of abortion in every country of the world. In Caritas in
Veritate, Pope Benedict reminds us of Paul VI’s teaching that “life in
Christ is the first and principal factor in development.”46 This means that
integral development should aim at the “greatest possible perfection” for
every single person, in addition to overcoming poverty, disease, unemployment, ignorance, et cetera. Individual perfection, among other things,
requires the linkage of social ethics with life ethics, the fulfillment of
duties and the embrace of human ecology as the foundation for enviN&V
ronmental ecology.

46 Populorum Progressio, §16.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 745–762

745

Baking Bricks for Babel?*
D OUGLAS FARROW
McGill University
Montreal, Canada

W HEN Caritas in Veritate appeared last year, some readers wondered
whether they had mistakenly picked up a copy of the latest white paper
from UNESCO.Was it really the pope who was calling for “a worldwide
redistribution of energy resources” (§49) and other such monumental
exercises in central planning? Was it indeed Benedict XVI—he who once
invoked Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World to dampen enthusiasm for a new
world order—who was now speaking of the “urgent need of a true world
political authority” to give “concrete reality” to the idea of the family of
nations (§67)? Could he have become a proponent of world government
after all? Must he be numbered among those whom his namesake, Benedict XV, had frowned upon (in Bonum sane ) for seeking l’avvento di una
certa repubblica universale ? And did he actually suppose that such an authority as he envisioned could arise, in any satisfactory form, from a retooling of the United Nations?
While this encyclical contains several controversial proposals, it should
be no surprise that the proposal in §67 captured much attention, especially
in North America.Talk of a world economic and political authority—one
“vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for
justice, and respect for rights”—makes freedom-loving people uneasy,
however laudable the ends in view. International problems no doubt
require international solutions, as John XXIII asserts in Pacem in Terris; but
unhappy experience with global organizations—especially those operating under the aegis of the United Nations to promote “solutions” that
* The present article is a more expansive version of “Charity and Unity,” published

in First Things 196 (October 2009), 37–43.

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Douglas Farrow

fundamentally contradict Catholic teaching—has made the faithful wary,
both on this continent and around the world. Many doubt that a new
global authority “with real teeth” (as the English translators have it) would
prove a just and beneficent suzerain, wielding its power with modesty and
restraint. Most likely it would do what nation-states have already begun to
do: defy natural law, undercut genuine liberty, overwhelm citizens and
peoples by re-engineering their social, civic, and religious life. Besides, is
not the Church itself, as Benson tried to depict in his novel, the réalité
concrète that God has given to the concept of the family of nations? Is it
not, as Ambrose claimed, the form that justice takes? What would a world
political authority be but a secularist—or perhaps some day an Islamist—
competitor to the Church, intent on imposing on her its own very different concepts of security, justice, and rights? What would its supreme leader
be (for it must surely have one) but a kind of anti-pope?
Questions such as these deserve to be asked, and we must not be shy of
asking them. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to read Caritas in
Veritate as an ill-considered venture into the realm of international problems that offers naïve and dangerous solutions. At work in this encyclical,
as elsewhere in Benedict’s writings, is a profound theological vision of the
human vocation and destiny. If we do not take the trouble to grasp that,
we cannot hope to grasp the meaning of the proposals he makes, in the
matter of governance or any other matter.These proposals arise, as I hope
to show, from a vision that is bound to respect and encourage the impulse
towards human unity that international organizations may represent; but
they are also tempered by a keen awareness of the difference between true
and false unity. They comprise a warning as well as an invitation. The
biggest challenge that faces the reader of Caritas, and the Christian in the
age of globalization, is to get this dialectic right.
The Call for Global Governance
The term “world government,” we should note immediately, does not
appear in the new encyclical; nor for that matter in Populorum Progressio,
whose larger theme—development—Benedict is expounding. Neither
did it appear in Pacem in Terris (1963), the first encyclical to call for a form
of global governance. Oliver O’Donovan observes that John XXIII’s
model of global authority was, mutatis mutandis, “more papal than imperial,” which is also to say that it preserved the notion of a free association
of nations: “What was needed was not world government, but a seat of
judgment that could declare international right with sufficient authority
to strengthen the aspirations for peace among independent political
communities.‘This public authority,’ as John XXIII put it,‘having world-

Baking Bricks for Babel?

747

wide power and endowed with the proper means for the effective pursuit
of its objective, which is the universal common good in concrete form,
must be set up by common accord and not imposed by force.’ ”1
O’Donovan himself offers a theoretical basis for such a seat in The
Ways of Judgment, but warns against any breach of eschatological reserve
that would lead beyond formal international cooperation to actual world
government. The very idea of world government, short of the kingdom
of God, rests on a false abstraction; that is, on an international “community” that is not in fact a community in the true political sense, and
cannot legitimately be governed as if it were.2 “The role of international
authority,” he insists, must therefore remain “an ancillary one, though not
for that reason of less importance,” or less real, than the independent
authority of the peoples or nations who combine to exercise it.3
Even in circles where theology does not feature in the discussion, the
term “global governance” is generally preferred to “world government.”4
That is because it has not proved easy to overcome the practical objections
already raised by Kant. Though he famously desired a universal civitas
gentium, he recognized that it would be difficult to get much beyond “an
enduring and gradually expanding federation likely to prevent war.”5 For
his part, John speaks of “a public authority which is in a position to operate in an effective manner on a world-wide basis” (§137). “The moral
order itself,” he tells us,“demands that such a form of public authority be
1 The Ways of Judgment (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 217, quoting Pacem

in Terris §138.
2 “World government is an abstract idea: the government of a people with no inter-

nal relations of mutual recognition.A people with no relations has no identity, and
the government of those with no identity has no legitimacy” (ibid., 214).
3 Ibid., 218.
4 World government is taken to entail, at a minimum,“compulsory peaceful settlement of all disputes by third-party decision in accordance with law; general and
complete disarmament at the state and regional levels; a global legislative capacity backed up by enforcement capabilities; and some form of centralized leadership” (Richard Falk, On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics
[University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995], 7). But at this
minimum—give or take state disarmament—world government and global
governance may be difficult to distinguish.
5 Perpetual Peace, Section II, Second Definitive Article. Cf. John Rawls, who in The
Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 36, claims to “follow
Kant’s lead . . . in thinking that a world government—by which I mean a unified
political regime with the legal powers normally exercised by central governments—would either be a global despotism or else would rule over a fragile
empire torn by frequent civil strife as various regions and peoples tried to gain
their political freedom and autonomy.”

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Douglas Farrow

established.”6 Yet this demand is indeed a qualified one. Not only are
nations right “in their reluctance to submit to an authority imposed by
force, established without their co-operation, or not accepted of their own
accord” (§138), but “the same principle of subsidiarity which governs the
relations between public authorities and individuals, families and intermediate societies in a single State, must also apply to the relations between the
public authority of the world community and the public authorities of
each political community. It is no part of the duty of universal authority to
limit the sphere of action of the public authority of individual States, or to
arrogate any of their functions to itself. On the contrary, its essential
purpose is to create world conditions in which the public authorities of
each nation, its citizens and intermediate groups, can carry out their tasks,
fulfill their duties and claim their rights with greater security” (§140f.).
In Populorum Progressio (1967), however, these qualifications move into
the background as issues of economic justice and international development move into the foreground.War on war requires war on misery.“The
world is sick,” and its sickness consists in large part of a failure to take seriously the solidarity of the race and the progress of all its peoples.That will
require, inter alia, the kind of international collaboration that will issue
finally in a universally recognized order of justice.“Who can fail to see the
need and importance of thus gradually coming to the establishment of a
world authority capable of taking effective action on the juridical and
political planes?” asks Paul VI.7 Some, he allows,“would regard these hopes
as vain flights of fancy,” but he chides them with the following rejoinder:
“It may be that these people are not realistic enough, and that they have
not noticed that the world is moving rapidly in a certain direction. Men
are growing more anxious to establish closer ties of brotherhood; despite
their ignorance, their mistakes, their offenses, and even their lapses into
barbarism and their wanderings from the path of salvation, they are slowly
making their way to the Creator, even without adverting to it” (§79).
Whatever this world authority might look like, there is an important
shift here in the terms of the debate. Establishment of such an authority is
6 The Catechism explains at §1911 (quoting Gaudium et Spes, §84):“Human inter-

dependence is increasing and gradually spreading throughout the whole world.
The unity of the human family, embracing people who enjoy natural dignity,
implies a universal common good. This good calls for an organization of the
community of nations able to ‘provide for the different needs of men; this will
involve the sphere of social life to which belong questions of food, hygiene,
education . . . and certain situations arising here and there, as for example . . . alleviating the miseries of refugees dispersed throughout the world, and assisting
migrants and their families.”
7 §78 (quoting remarks made earlier in New York to the United Nations).

Baking Bricks for Babel?

749

not merely a practical necessity, backed by moral reason, but something
related to the maturation of the race, backed by theological reason. Paul,
building on Gaudium et Spes, leans even more heavily than John on the
notion of universal brotherhood, stressing the ontic dimensions of global
community as well as its moral necessity.Which begs the question:What
in principle is to prevent such an authority, if founded on the idea of
universal brotherhood and on a theory of providence or progress, from
passing over—as supranationalist utopians desire—into world government? It is one thing to say, as O’Donovan does, that “Christians, if they
are wise, will understand upholding international authority as a duty of
practical political reason in obedience to the hope of the Gospel”;8 it is
quite another to lend credence to what he calls “secular millennial hopes,”
as Paul VI appears to do. Peace, he says, “is not simply the absence of
warfare, based on a precarious balance of power; it is fashioned by efforts
directed day after day toward the establishment of the ordered universe
willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men (§76).”
The call for global governance in these encyclicals is prescriptive not
descriptive, leaving doubts on many points. Of John we might want to ask:
Are today’s problems really so different from yesterday’s? Might there be
other ways to address them than to create a global authority? From what
or from whom is this authority to be derived? How will it be constituted
and maintained? By what will it be restrained? Could it create greater
problems than it solves? But of Paul we must ask: Is this reading of history
(which seems to owe more than a little to the optimism of Lessing and
Kant) a sound reading? What are we to make of the propensity of man,
especially modern technological man, to “wander from the path of salvation” and to lapse into barbarism? New killing fields in Europe,Africa, and
Asia; acts of terrorism on every continent; the rise of atheism and the
return of militant Islam; despair and demographic suicide in the West; fifty
million abortions annually, both voluntary and coerced, not to mention
other egregious signs of a broken moral compass—does all this not suggest
a more sober assessment of modern man? And if of modern man, then also
of his readiness to shoulder the burden of global governance?
Paul VI, of course, was sober enough. The progress for which he
hoped, he hoped against hope. Certainly he understood “the weaknesses
of the ideologies” and the siren songs of the utopias, the danger of building new idols and of succumbing to totalitarianism.9 Perhaps he would
not have been much surprised to find John Paul II speaking pointedly in
Evangelium Vitae about “an objective ‘conspiracy against life’ involving
8 Ways of Judgment, 227.
9 See e.g. Octogesima Adviens §28 and §36f.; cf. Caritas §14.

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even international institutions” (§17). Significantly, though, John Paul II
did not pursue his predecessors’ line of thought in the matter of global
governance when he penned his own treatment of Populorum in 1987,
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, in which he distinguished sharply between “development” and the cult of progress (§27); or in Centesimus Annus, where he
cautioned against politics based on “the illusion of creating paradise in this
world.”10 John Paul II acknowledged the role of international organizations and the need for “a greater degree of international ordering at the
service of societies, economies and cultures of the whole world”—indeed,
for “a real international system”11—but he stopped short of calling for a
world political authority or global governance. Moreover, he emphasized
that the Church is the only true model of unity, because it is capable of a
communion of which the world is incapable and because it alone has an
antidote for sin and the structures of sin which form the greatest obstacle
to human unity.12 Why then, we may wonder, has Benedict taken up that
idea again? And what has he done with the Pacem/Populorum heritage?
Globalization and the Ambiguity of Progress
The first thing to say is that Benedict has done something bold. He has
not merely applied the hermeneutics of continuity to the works of his
predecessors.13 He has responded to the unforeseen rapidity of globalization and to its destabilizing effects—making of the economic crisis in
particular a teaching moment—by raising the stakes in the entire discussion of development. The second thing to say is that he has done so by
deepening and extending the logic of Pacem in Terris and Populorum
Progressio, rather than abandoning it, while also directing it to a different
end.We need to attend to this if we mean to take stock of his own contribution to the problem of global authority.
The deepening and extending begins with Benedict’s argument that
globalization is something more than the inevitable consequence of technology. Globalization tells us something about the way humanity is made.
10 Centesimus Annus §25 asserts that “no political society . . . can ever be confused

with the Kingdom of God,” while nonetheless insisting that “what Sacred Scripture teaches us about the prospects of the Kingdom of God is not without consequences for the life of temporal societies. . . .The Kingdom of God, being in the
world without being of the world, throws light on the order of human society,
while the power of grace penetrates that order and gives it life. In this way the
requirements of a society worthy of man are better perceived, deviations are
corrected, the courage to work for what is good is reinforced.”
11 Sollicitudo, §§26, 39, 43, 56f.
12 Ibid., §40.
13 Thus already Sollicitudo, §3ff.

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It reflects the fact that humans are made for God, that they are by nature
open to God and hence also to one another. Globalization, in other
words, is a consequence of divine design. It is no mere accident of history
affording “unusual opportunities for greater prosperity” (Centesimus
Annus §58) but belongs rather to the very essence of history. For history,
as Paul VI suggests, is the site of development, and development is the
function of a vocation, at once personal and corporate, to an end that lies
beyond history.14 On the way to that end, globalization, in one form or
another, is bound to happen. Humanity has been called together by God
in Christ, and will come together.
The rapidity mentioned, however, raises urgently the question as to
whether globalization, which still lacks definition and value, will happen
in this way or in that. Will humanity indeed seek God, and so move
toward the fulfillment of its divinely given potential so far as life in this
world allows? Or will it opt instead for some lesser end, and so for some
perversion of its potential?15 That is the most pressing question, and it
joins the concerns of John XXIII and Paul VI to those of John Paul II
and of Benedict himself. It is the very same question already raised in Spe
Salvi, and to put that question forcefully is the different end towards
which the discussion is directed.
It is important to read Caritas in Veritate in sequence with Benedict’s own
encyclicals and not merely in the sequence that runs its winding course
from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus. Having pointed, in his first
encyclical, to the Church as the community of love that mirrors God’s own
being and, in his second, to the hope of salvation that the Church announces
to the world, Benedict now speaks out of his conviction that, what the
Church is, human society is meant to become. Like his predecessors, he
14 Cf. Sollicitudo, §30f.: “Today’s ‘development’ is to be seen as a moment in the

story of creation, a story which is constantly endangered by reason of infidelity
to the Creator’s will, and especially by the temptation to idolatry.” It nevertheless corresponds to the nature and vocation of man, such that we may not rightly
renounce “the difficult yet noble task of improving the lot of man in his totality,
and of all people.”This task and this meaning are given to our own history—not
withdrawn from it—by that truly unlimited progress which belongs to man,
through the resurrection of Jesus, in the eschaton.
15 “If globalization is viewed from a deterministic standpoint, the criteria with
which to evaluate and direct it are lost. As a human reality, it is the product of
diverse cultural tendencies, which need to be subjected to a process of discernment. The truth of globalization as a process and its fundamental ethical criterion are given by the unity of the human family and its development towards
what is good. Hence a sustained commitment is needed so as to promote a
person-based and community-oriented cultural process of world-wide integration that is open to transcendence” (§42).

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seeks in ecclesial principles a vision of society that can be offered to the
world for the sake of its development. For, as Populorum says, “the Church
has never failed to foster the human progress of the nations to which she
brings faith in Christ” (§2) and to bring to bear on that progress a global
perspective (§13). Benedict thus takes the catholicity of the Church as a sign
of promise for the wholeness of humanity.16 He speaks, in charity and hope,
of what we may look forward to under globalization. At the same time,
however, he is quite frank about the fundamental alternatives facing the
world. He speaks truthfully about its options, much as Paul did in Humanae
Vitae or John Paul in Evangelium Vitae. He offers, along with his encouragement, an admonishment and a warning: This way forward, not that.
There is no hint here of a naïve optimism about progress. Quite the
contrary. In Spe Salvi Benedict has already rehearsed, without the policyoriented interruptions that complicate the present encyclical, how
modern western history has, as it were, thrown up a new tower of Babel,
or rather several provisional attempts at such a tower—attempts that
profess in the name of “reason” and of “freedom” to offer a redemptive
unity that is based, not on the recovery in Christ of man’s vocation for
God, but on something strictly immanent in man himself and in history
as such. Beginning with Francis Bacon and working through to the atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he has shown how the
hope of redemption that is vouchsafed to the Church, and that rests ultimately on the return of Christ, was transformed into a vision that rests
on human effort alone and on a false faith in progress. Progress, Spe Salvi
points out, is ambiguous: “Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for
good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil—possibilities that
formerly did not exist.We have all witnessed the way in which progress,
in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying
progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding
progress in man’s ethical formation, in man’s inner growth, then it is not
progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world” (§22).
In the new encyclical Benedict speaks about globalization in much the
same terms: “ ‘Globalization, a priori, is neither good nor bad. It will be what
people make of it.’We should not be its victims, but rather its protagonists,
16 Cf. J. Ratzinger, God and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 350:

“The Church belongs to the whole world, to all cultures and every age. . . . She
is always there to ensure that boundaries are transcended. She is to prevent the
occurrence of Babel.The Church is there to prevent the confusion of opposition
and contradictions from dominating mankind. She should, instead of this, bring
the whole wealth of human existence, in all its languages, to God—and should
be thereby herself a power for reconciliation among mankind.”

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acting in the light of reason, guided by charity and truth. Blind opposition
would be a mistaken and prejudiced attitude, incapable of recognizing the
positive aspects of the process, with the consequent risk of missing the
chance to take advantage of its many opportunities for development” (§42,
quoting John Paul II). But authentic globalization requires God and must
fail if we do not turn to God; for if man cannot make his own justice, he
cannot makes his own unity either. “As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbours but does not make us brothers. Reason, by
itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first,
teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is” (§19). Paul VI, to be
sure, asked the United Nations “to bring not just some peoples but all
peoples together as brothers.”17 But Benedict—leaning on Paul—reminds
us that “the human community that we build by ourselves can never,
purely by its own strength, be a fully fraternal community, nor can it overcome every division and become a truly universal community. The unity
of the human race, a fraternal communion transcending every barrier, is
called into being by the word of God-who-is-Love” (§35).18 “Christians
long for the entire human family to call upon God as ‘Our Father!’ ” (§79).
Viewed in this light, Caritas in Veritate—whatever its shortcomings from
a literary or even a practical point of view—is no mere hotchpotch of
high-minded theology and questionable prudential judgments, as some
seem to think. Rather it is one long call to conversion. If that call was
already present in Pacem in Terris and Populorum Progressio, it is much more
pressing and urgent here. A “civilization of love” requires willing participation in the divine economy opened up to man through the Incarnation,
and that willing participation can come only by way of a profound change
in individuals, peoples, and nations.“It requires new eyes and a new heart,
capable of rising above a materialistic vision of human events” (§78). It
requires a spirit of receptiveness, an openness to the idea of “gift” as a
fundamental principle of human existence, operative in all the diverse
spheres of human life, including bioethics, economics, and governance.
Bioethics is particularly important, and receives special emphasis, just
because “in this most delicate and critical area, the fundamental question
asserts itself forcefully: is man the product of his own labours or does he
17 See again Populorum §78.
18 Cf. Spe Salvi, §14. I say “leaning on Paul” because at §18 he summarizes Paul

thus: “If it [development] does not involve the whole man and every man, it is
not true development. This is the central message of Populorum Progressio, valid
for today and for all time.”

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depend on God?” In bioethics “we are presented with a clear either/or”
(§74): either we operate with a reason that is open to transcendence, that
respects the principle of gift and dependence, or we choose a self-enclosed
and self-assertive reason that is incapable of producing a civilization of love.
The same either/or, it is safe to say, presents itself in the political sphere.
Either we will have a form of global governance fit for a civilization of love,
or we will have a form that serves a civilization of death.There is, on Benedict’s view, no third alternative. Which of the two will eventually emerge
remains an open question. But he points the way to the former, lest the
latter prevail. For “a ‘Kingdom of God’ accomplished without God . . .
inevitably ends up as the ‘perverse end’ of all things as described by Kant:
we have seen it, and we see it over and over again” (Spe Salvi, §23).
On the one hand, then, Benedict warns us against the alienation that
results “when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies and false utopias” (Caritas in Veritate, §53). 19 He is well aware of “the
‘types of messianism which give promises but create illusions’ ” by denying “the transcendent dimension of development” (§17). He knows that
“a humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism” (§78) and
he is conscious of the risk that globalization will produce “a dangerous
universal power of a tyrannical nature” (§57). That is why he calls for a
“polyarchic” form of governance based on the principle of subsidiarity.20
On the other hand, he refuses to draw back from the notion of global
community and global governance. That would involve a denial of the
vocation to development and to unity, which would itself be faithless and
19 Benedict needs no reminder—though the same cannot be said, perhaps, of his

co-laborers on this encyclical in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace—
that the world will not come to its perfection “through rational planning”! The
very idea, he once insisted, is “an abuse of rationality” ( Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein [Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1988], 210).
20 Just what “polyarchic” governance would look like is not made clear, but see the
Catechism at §1885: “The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of
collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true
international order.” Russell Hittinger remarks that “Catholic social doctrine is
unique in proposing that authentic social order requires a multiplication of
authorities” (Claude Ryan Lecture in Catholic Social Thought, McGill University, 8 October 2004). That proposal, however, and the subsidiarity principle
itself, have made an impact on public debate; cf. Kok-Chor Tan, e.g., who indicates in Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2002) that most liberals now “propose that sovereignty be
dispersed vertically, upwards towards supranational bodies, and also downwards
toward particular communities within states” (101).

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godless. “The idea of a world without development indicates a lack of
trust in man and in God” (§14).“Precisely because God gives a resounding ‘yes’ to man, man cannot fail to open himself to the divine vocation
to pursue his own development” (§18). The Christian especially must
take this to heart, reckoning with the power of charity in truth to convert
and transform the city of man, fitting it for God’s own salvific purposes:
“Man’s earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity,
contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal
of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society,
the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the
dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of
peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity
and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God” (§7).21
Such is Benedict’s dialectic, and we must not try to dissolve it by reading too much into the words “cannot fail.” Benedict makes no attempt to
say how or when history will reach its goal. He does not tell us whether
he believes that global governance of the kind he is calling for will actually materialize in the present age. He tells us only that we cannot rightly
refuse to aim at it.
Confusing the Two Cities?
If we must not dissolve his dialectic, however, we must certainly probe it
with another very important question: What has happened here to the
doctrine of the two cities? Benedict appeals to the distinction between the
earthly city and the heavenly city, meaning the temporal form of human
community that we ourselves generate with God’s help, and the eternal
form that only God can generate. Fair enough. But in doing so he seems
to obscure the equally fundamental distinction between the city of man
and the city of God—meaning, respectively, the form that human
community takes when directed by self-love and the libido dominandi, and
the form it takes when directed by the love of God and of neighbor. Or
rather, he seems at times to treat these as hypothetical alternatives between
which we must choose in deciding our collective future, rather than as
presently co-existing communities between which individuals must
decide:“The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition
that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side” (§53).
Now this observation might lead to a much more serious charge against
Benedict than the charge of naïveté. It is one thing to say that he has
21 Cf. Sollicitudo, §48.

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misjudged the moment—that he has issued an invitation to a life of
communion that the world and its leaders are not yet ready to hear and are
likely to get all wrong. It is quite another thing to say that he has misjudged
history itself; that he has confused the Church and the world, in some more
or less Hegelian way, by supposing that history must sooner or later produce
their synthesis. Benedict is quickly cleared of either charge, however, if only
we allow that Caritas is indeed a call to conversion.To the greater charge it
may be replied that Benedict is undertaking no such triumphalist revision
of Augustine as late-Protestantism was wont to produce. He does not make
the mistake (a mistake Augustine himself had to correct) of thinking that
history must move the world ever closer into the heart of the Church.
Rather he thinks that the Church, like Christ, must move ever closer into
the heart of the world; that it must extend to the city of man, as Christ
extended to Israel, an urgent and audacious invitation to embrace both the
means and the ends of the city of God.To the lesser charge it may be replied
that he has spoken just when he had to speak—as mankind enters the rapids
of globalization and its destiny draws near.
Benedict, in other words, has by no means abandoned the doctrine of
the two cities.Yet there is still a difficulty here that must not be glossed over.
The doctrine of the two cities—in so far as it identifies two incompatible
projects, not one project with a provisional and a final form—is a legitimate source of theological resistance to globalization and especially to the
idea of world government. That resistance need not deny what recent
popes have affirmed about global problems requiring global solutions. It
can even admit the relative antiquity of the idea of global governance, and
its naturalness to Christianity, which after all inherited the whole GraecoRoman world as the vast site on which to develop its Jewish patrimony of
monotheism and messianism. But it will also insist that the idea is fraught
with peril and that it has been tainted from the outset by utopianism.
Perhaps there was a place for contemplating it under the conditions of
Christendom, where an attempt was made to avoid utopianism by public
recognition of the strictly provisional nature of the saeculum and by the
doctrine of the two swords.22 Those conditions, however, are long gone—
witness Benedict’s own pleading against “exclusion of religion from the
public square” (§56). One may happily agree that there can be no substantial family of nations, universal in scope, that is bound together by anything
less profound than the love of God and by kinship with Christ.23 But is
that not something that even Christendom failed to produce? How then
22 Even in Dante’s dream of a universal monarchy, this would have prevented an

inordinate concentration of political power.
23 Cf. Augustine, City of God 4.15.

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are Christians to aim at global governance with any assurance that they are
not merely baking bricks for some still more calamitous Babel?
What might Benedict say in response to this? He would not waste
much time, I suspect, on the question of assurance. The only assurance
afforded us in history is that God is sovereign over it, and gracious in his
sovereignty, and that Christ will triumph in the end. That we could
meanwhile witness a perverse end to the project of global governance has
already been granted, by Benedict as well as by Kant. Nevertheless, it is
Christianly necessary to aim with Kant at global governance, both
because God in Christ wills the unity of mankind and because conversion to Christ must be held out as a real possibility for man. And this can
only mean proceeding as if Christendom—a wider and more authentic
Christendom capable of a nation-transcending form of governance—lies
before us rather than behind us.
Benedict’s “as if ” is not like Kant’s, however. Kant knew that the kingdom of promise would never come, but that the cult of progress would lose
its appeal if we did not pretend that it would come.The city of perpetual
peace is an ideal after which we must strive, though its realization can only
be perpetually postponed. Benedict, on the other hand, knows that Christendom can and will come, for Christ himself can and will come. He therefore has grounds for a confidence, on the very deepest level, that Kant
cannot share. His approach is like Kant’s only in this sense, that it reposes
no trust in structures as such:“The right state of human affairs . . . can never
be guaranteed simply through structures alone, however good they are. . . .
Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is
making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must
constantly be won over for the cause of good.”24
On the other hand, precisely because Benedict’s confidence is in
Christ, and because the kingdom of freedom in which he believes is a gift
that may be accepted or rejected, he can and does take more seriously than
Kant the possibility of a perverse end in our own history. It is not therefore an unqualified call that he issues in support of new and more concrete
forms of global governance, but rather a call in principle, hedged round
with conditions. Urgent need of a true world political authority there may
be. Yet that authority, he says, “would need to be regulated by law, to
observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to
establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing
authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in
truth.” Indeed, “the integral development of peoples and international
24 Spe Salvi, §24; cf. Caritas §11.

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cooperation” implied in the creation of such an authority would “require
the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order”
(§67).That is a very tall order—though no taller, perhaps, than the creation
of a just and stable economy, which on Benedict’s view requires that the
whole world adopt “the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift”
that the Church has learned from the Savior (§36).
We are not only entitled to take all of this into account when weighing Benedict’s support for international institutions and global governance; we must take it into account in order to act charitably in the truth.
Which is to say: the work of evangelization must surely precede any
attempt to establish an operative world authority, for the construction of
a social and political order that conforms to the moral order—of a political union that is also a form of communion—has the conversion of the
peoples of the world as its condition of possibility.
Just here we may need reminding that “the Church offers her social
teaching as an indispensable and ideal orientation” (Centesimus §43). It is
indispensable because Jesus Christ is the one “to whom every authentic
vocation to integral human development must be directed” (Caritas §18).
It nonetheless remains ideal because we await Christ, while hastening the
day of his appearing. This applies also to the call for global governance.
Benedict has given such governance an evangelical mandate—the highest possible mandate—but in doing so he has called into question every
other mandate that one might try to give it. In that way, and to that
extent, he has already accommodated the theological resistance that is
demanded by the doctrine of the two cities.
Benedict’s Balancing Act and the Future
of the Pacem in Terris Tradition
The Benedict who wrote Caritas in Veritate is the same Benedict who
observed in his 2008 Epiphany homily that “ ‘thick darkness covers the
peoples’, and our history.” Perhaps that was only his way of saying what
Paul VI said—namely, that “men are making their way to the Creator
without adverting to it”—but the change in tone and mood is noteworthy. People can and do get lost in the darkness. That is why they
require the light of Christ, in politics and economics as elsewhere. And
of course they can go only so far towards their Creator without adverting to it, for the Creator is none other than the God of charity, of truth,
of communion. On my reading, Benedict is trying to make that clear. If
he emphasizes our responsibility not to reject the human impulse to
unity even where it lacks the knowledge of Christ, he also labors with his
predecessors to infuse that knowledge into it.

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Building on Populorum Progressio has enabled Benedict to redress the
balance sought, but not fully achieved, by the Second Vatican Council.
Gaudium’s own appeal to the two-cities doctrine was primarily for the
purpose of overcoming any dichotomy between religious and social life,
a dichotomy to be “counted among the more serious errors of our age.”
Christians, it pointed out, “are free to give proper exercise to all their
earthly activities and to their humane, domestic, professional, social and
technical enterprises by gathering them into one vital synthesis with religious values, under whose supreme direction all things are harmonized
unto God’s glory” (§43). That was the task Paul took up in Populorum.
There was always the danger, however, in political theory especially, that
the pendulum would swing too far towards the notion of “one vital
synthesis,” leaving out of account the contrariety of the two cities.Against
that danger Gaudium reminds us that “earthly progress must be carefully
distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom” (§39). Moreover, it
notices that the relation between the two is most problematic just where
it is most evident.“Nations try harder every day to bring about a kind of
universal community,” it says, yet “the modern world shows itself at once
powerful and weak, capable of the noblest deeds or the foulest”; before it
“lies the path to freedom or to slavery, to progress or retreat, to brotherhood or hatred” (§9). John Paul II took up, in his turn, the task of making
that plain. Benedict has undertaken both tasks simultaneously.
This schema oversimplifies, of course. Already in Humanae Vitae Paul
looked ahead and saw what few wanted to see. He saw that men might
after all refuse to advert to their Creator, with disastrous consequences.
He saw that the path to freedom is not always the path we imagine it to
be, that not all progress is progress, that there is development that is not
true development.And he discovered, to his great distress, that this might
be so even within the Church. Benedict has delivered a reading of Populorum Progressio that takes Humanae Vitae and Octogesima Adviens into
account, along with the subsequent course of history and the pontificate
of John Paul II.25 His message in brief is this: Insofar as humanity is
guided morally by the gospel, earthly reality can indeed prefigure,
however modestly, the heavenly reality that is to come. Insofar as it is not
guided by the gospel, earthly reality can only become a mockery of the
heavenly reality, through a false progress and a false unity. But he is careful to point out that, either way, history will reach its divinely ordained
goal. For that goal is the building of the Church—that is, the city of charity and truth, the city that will inherit the kingdom of God.
25 See Caritas §13ff.

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Benedict’s balancing act, however, if I may venture an opinion, would
benefit from a more direct restatement of the doctrine of the two cities,
and from a refinement in that context of his claim that the kingdom of
God is not a political concept.26 Among other things, this would require
a recovery of the Jewish origins of the concept, which hardly permit such
a claim.27 It is noteworthy that no reference to Jews or to the great international stumbling block of Israel can be found in Pacem in Terris, Populorum Progressio, or Caritas in Veritate. That is a sure sign of the abstraction
against which O’Donovan warns, and a serious flaw.
It would benefit, too, from a recognition of the gentle charity that
underlies the strong curse of Babel, the charity with which God has thus
far preserved the human race from its ultimate peril—a global union
without communion. Perhaps that is too much to expect from an encyclical that is already, by most accounts, far too ambitious. But any subsequent analysis of what Benedict calls the institutional or political path of
charity will have to take more fully into account what St. Paul describes
as the “strong delusion” that threatens to transform humanity’s vocation
to communion into what Kierkegaard called a “conspiratorial” unity: a
unity that, rejecting charity and truth, binds humanity together for the
purpose of seizing the kingdom by force.28
Why do I say that? As Vladimir Solovyov insisted in the preface to his
final work, Three Conversations, “a willful blindness to the existing and
coming state of things is too readily indulged in by many people today.”29
He had in view first of all the looming challenge of militant Islam—a
26 While it is right, in a certain sense, to say that the kingdom of God is not a polit-

ical concept and that its realization “is not itself a political process” (Ratzinger,
Eschatology, 58; cf. Populorum §13)—meaning that it will not fit our own conceptual schemes and that it does not come by way of our own historical machinations—it must also be asserted, at a still more fundamental level, that it is indeed
a political concept and process.The doctrine of the two cities allows us to do that,
and so also to articulate the fact that the kingdom of God is significant for political life “by way of eschatology” and not merely by way of ethics ( pace Ratzinger,
Eschatology, 59; cf. Jesus of Nazareth [New York: Doubleday, 2007], 338f.).
27 Benedict touches on this in Jesus of Nazareth, but in addressing the error of
“regnocentrism” passes too quickly from the notion that Jesus, in proclaiming
and living the kingdom or rule of God, was a “true Israelite,” to the notion that
what he proclaimed and lived “transcended Judaism” (57).
28 I have tried to speak to this in the penultimate chapter of Ascension Theology
(New York: T&T Clark, 2011), “The Politics of the Eucharist.” On the contrast
between true and false unity—between the Babel vector, as we might say, and
the Pentecost vector—see also Ratzinger, God and the World, 348f.
29 V. Soloviev, War, Progress, and the End of History (London: University of London,
1915), xxxii.

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quite remarkable prediction in A.D. 1900—but more generally our failure to grasp the duplicitous nature of the cult of progress. In this work,
which culminates in the Short Tale of the Antichrist, Solovyov recognized that the drive to unite the race would take not one form, but two,
and that the contest between them would be settled not by the immanent processes of history but only by the parousia.30 That was also
Benson’s point, eight years later, in Lord of the World.31 To put it in Augustinian terms: if two cities do indeed mean two loves, then there are and
will be two competing forms of unity; the decision between them is
man’s, but the vindication of the one over the other is God’s.
The city of God, then, must issue to the city of man its clarion call to
unite under the banner of Christ. But it knows that the mystery of
lawlessness, which is already at work, will (when the time is right) unfurl
another and different banner “in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy
from the truth.” It will generate “a pseudo-messianism by which man
glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh”
(Catechism §675), and its “lying promises,” to borrow Leo’s words, “will
only . . . bring forth evils worse than the present” (Rerum Novarum §18).
Meanwhile the Four Horsemen will continue to ride, and it does no
service to the common good to suppose that their steeds can be taken
from them.32 The city of God must assist the city of man in compelling
them, wherever possible, to dismount, as the Pacem in Terris tradition
affirms; but it must stoutly resist every attempt to build temporal peace
and prosperity on a false deification of man.33
Long ago, Dante was already arguing that “the human race is most like
God when it is most nearly one . . . and most nearly one when all of it is
united in one unit.”34 Dante, of course, believed that the achievement of
30 For Solovyov this was a somewhat belated recognition, obscured at first by the gnos-

tic elements of his sophiology, from which at the end of his life he seems to have
been partly emancipated; cf. the Translator’s Preface, by Alexander Bakshy, xiv f.
31 It is one flaw in Benson’s vision, however, that the Jewish people as such have
almost wholly dropped from view.
32 We may recall here that Solovyov’s “Short Tale of the Antichrist” draws to a close
with the General remarking: “Note at what moment the curtain drops over this
historical drama: it is war, a conflict between two armies. So the end of our discussion comes back to its beginning” (227).That beginning (cf. 7) was a query about
the newfound determination to suppress war without actually solving the problem
of the Fall that underlies it—an impossibility, as also with poverty, disease, and death.
33 “The main thing that leaps out,” says Benedict, in much of today’s talk about
building the kingdom,“is that God has disappeared; man is the only actor left on
stage” ( Jesus of Nazareth, 54).
34 “which cannot be unless it is all subject to one ruler” (Monarchia 1.8.3f.).

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this divine resemblance required the advent of a universal monarchy,
freely cooperating with the See of Peter—two swords, one spiritual and
one temporal, each with global reach and each under a single command.
This would indeed be a new and grander Christendom! Both Solovyov
and Benson, however, understood that a new and grander Christendom,
in which peace on earth is the rule rather than the exception, will appear
only when the two swords are united in the hand of one ruler. They
believed, on the basis of the biblical testimony, that history is pressing
towards exactly that. But they also knew that this ruler must be either
Christ or Antichrist.35
Benedict, unless I am badly mistaken, is of the same persuasion. He has
already provided ample warning of the perverse end towards which we
are moving if we are not moving towards Jesus Christ himself.Yet there
is plenty of willful blindness to contend with, even in the Church. If the
tradition to which Caritas belongs is to confront that blindness, it will
have to become still more critical of the conspiratorial character of secular millennialism and its “regnocentric” counterpart.36 It will also have to
take stock of the opportunities for an aggrandized world authority that
the processes of globalization, and the threat of real or imagined global
crises, are likely to generate; for the whole of the Catholic social encyclical tradition (not to speak of its eschatology) weighs against any abandonment of the human person, or of peoples and cultures, to the
powerful riptides of the State. Otherwise put: the spiritual prerequisites
of authentic human solidarity, on which this tradition has eloquently
insisted from the days of Leo, will need to be articulated in ways that bear
more directly on the prospects, limitations, and dangers of global governance this side of the parousia.
N&V

35 That is why history has led, and will yet lead, to the suffering of the Church. It

is a mistake to think that “the final tribulation is a unique event, a miracle of evil”
(www.johnreilly.info/wgrcc.htm), if by that we mean that it attaches to history
only accidentally.
36 Cf. Jesus of Nazareth, 53. See also Rerum Novarum §18 and §21.

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To Be a Thomist*
S ERGE -T HOMAS B ONINO, O.P.
Dominican Studium
Toulouse, France

T HE WORK of St. Thomas Aquinas is in the public domain. To be
interested in it, then, one does not have to belong to an approved association or pass through a specific rite of initiation. Any Tom, Dick, and
Harry can read St.Thomas, in Latin, French, or English—and even enjoy
doing so—without, however, professing himself a Thomist. To be a
Thomist, then, means more than reading St. Thomas, even devotedly. It
means taking St.Thomas as one’s teacher.
A Master
Toward the outset of the Discourse on Method, Descartes explains how,
disoriented by the multiplicity of philosophical traditions, he decided
that,“as for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought
that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly
away” in order later to “be in a position to admit . . . others more correct,”
building on foundations entirely his own rather than “upon old foundations.” He was in fact naively convinced that “the sciences contained in
books . . . are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences
which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment
draws respecting the matters of his experience.”1
Nothing is more opposed to St.Thomas’s traditionalist humanism (and
indeed, to the authentic spirit of Christian thought) than this disarming
rationalist naiveté. For St.Thomas, one can engage in the work of thinking
* Originally: “Être thomiste,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint Thomas d’Aquin

(Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 15–26. Translation by Thérèse Scarpelli
Cory.
1 Discourse on Method, 2.1, trans. John Veitch (London:Walter Dunne, 1901).

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Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P.

only from within a tradition which provides a context steeped in meaning.
This is eminently true for theology, as the intellectus fidei and rational
pondering of the Word of God, but it is also true for philosophy:
Thought is [first of all] exegesis and reading. The philosophical act is
indeed primarily a relation to the thing itself, but only from within the
heart of a precomprehension which is culturally and theologically
determined in the shape of a tradition, through which reason enters
into a relation with that thing.2

Unlike Descartes, who begins by isolating himself (physically, by shutting himself into his “heated room,” and culturally, by branding all tradition as suspect), St.Thomas deliberately immerses himself in Tradition. He
was reportedly eager to gain access to texts that could place him in contact
with the thought of the ancients; the very structure of his own works
(beginning with his numerous commentaries) shows that he thinks in
connection with his predecessors; he gleans from everyone, even from his
adversaries, the smallest trace of that truth which is the work of the Spirit
regardless of who articulates it, according to the famous formula in the
Ambrosiaster. In short, St.Thomas is a Scholastic; and Scholasticism, as indicated by its name, develops in the laboratories of tradition—the schools.
Like Descartes, of course, St.Thomas knows that the ultimate goal of
all thought is the truth of things, that is, the intellect’s conformity to reality, not to books.“The study of philosophy does not have for its goal the
knowledge of what others have thought, but the truth of things.”3 But
individual reason can apprehend the truth of things only with difficulty:
hence its interest in the “science of books,” its assiduous study of “what
others have thought”! However personal the search for truth, especially
fundamental truths, may be, it is never an isolated undertaking, a private
encounter between the individual reason and the real. It is a communal
and social undertaking. Furthermore, for St. Thomas, the only definitive
goal of political life, life in the City, is to permit each member to pursue
the knowledge of truth which defines a person’s happiness “here below.”
Natural contemplation is inseparable from the overall structure of society, which must seek to create favorable conditions for studium, an essential element in the common political good. Not only socio-economic
conditions such as peace and a certain degree of prosperity are necessary,
but also and above all, properly human conditions such as the possibility
of teaching and engaging in intellectual exchange.
2 G. Prouvost, Étienne Gilson—Jacques Maritain: deux approches de l’être (Paris: Librairie

Philosophique J. Vrin, 1991), 295.
3 St.Thomas, In de caelo I, lect. 22, no. 8.

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765

The social dimension of the intellectual life is not only synchronic but
also diachronic and historical. Each generation contributes in its own way
to the progress of human knowledge (although regression can happen). St.
Thomas likes to compare the general and increasingly “specific” progress
of human knowledge to the development that takes place in each person.
Thus in the Summa theologiae, he explains that the ancient philosophers
entered “little by little and as though step by step ( paulatim et quasi pedentatim)”4 into knowledge of the fundamental truth about the origin of
things, by proceeding from sensible causes to the highest and most illuminating intelligible causes. Wisdom is therefore a collective effort toward
the truth, which each generation must re-actualize, beginning with a
respectful examination of the inheritance left by preceding generations.
“When each of our predecessors has discovered something about the
truth and has gathered it together into one whole, he leads his followers
to a more extensive knowledge of truth.”5 St. Thomas holds that we
should even be grateful in some way to those who fell into error, because
their errors indirectly benefited the general process of searching for truth.6
Thus, for better or for worse, I can encounter the truth of things only
through the mediation of a tradition, that is, a history. This relationship
with history as a path toward truth is constitutive of the Scholastic
approach that St. Thomas employs. In other words, the structure of
human thought is fundamentally traditionalist, in the sense that the human
person is humanized and reaches personal knowledge of the truth from
within a tradition of wisdom conveyed by a determinate community.
The opposition between Scholastic traditionalism and individualism
rests on a deep anthropological conflict, and Maritain was probably right
to denounce Cartesianism in its various manifestations as an acute form
of angelism. A dualist anthropology like Descartes’, which juxtaposes
consciousness and corporeality, spontaneously tends toward abstract
universalism, that is, toward disconnecting reason from the corporeality
and concrete historical roots that reason implies. Moreover, such an
anthropology can conceive of the work of reason only as an emanicipation from a supposedly contingent, and thus rationally impure, tradition.
Likewise, it is angelism to believe that our supposedly clear and distinct
ideas, like the divine ideas, directly grasp the real. Indeed, our concepts,
laboriously distilled from a historically situated experience, reach an
account of the real only through a strenuous program of recomposition
and conversion.
4 ST I, q. 44, a. 2.
5 St.Thomas, In Metaph. II, lect. 1, no. 287.
6 Ibid., XII, lect. 9, no. 2655.

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In fact, for St.Thomas, the human mind is neither divine nor angelic. It
is the last in a hierarchy of intellects, and this position is the key to the ultimate explanation for the properties of the human being. As the last of the
intellects, the human intellect is neither a pure subsisting act of intellection,
like God Who is “thought from thought,” nor a power actualized from its
creation by co-created forms, like the angels. It is in pure potency to the
intelligible ideas or forms: it is a “clean slate (tabula rasa),” as Aristotle said,
just as prime matter is in pure potency to the “natural” or physical forms. It
must therefore receive determinations from outside itself. As pure potency
in the intellectual order, the human intellect can only pass progressively from
its initial potency to the full actuation of its intellectual capacity. It journeys
from an originally confused knowledge toward a more and more precise,
determinate, and perfect knowledge. In short, it has a “history.” Furthermore, insofar as it is the last of the intellects, the human intellect is the weakest as regards its operative power. Depending on whether an intellect is more
or less powerful, it extracts or assimilates the intelligible content of a universal form more or less completely, and it is more or less able to derive an
accurate knowledge therefrom.Thus if the human intellect had access only
to general intelligible forms, as the angels do, then, on account of its weakness, it could derive from them only a confused and very imperfect knowledge. It thus needs an object proportioned to its weak capacity: not the very
general intelligible forms, but those more particular forms which are the
essences of the sensible things surrounding us, and which spell out for us the
inaccessible perfections of the spiritual world. But since these essences are
immanent to the corporeal world and can actualize the possible intellect
only after a process of spiritualization, the mediation of sensible knowledge
is necessary.The union of the human intellect with the body, which enables
sensation and contact with the sensible, is thus neither an accident nor a
curse, but the natural condition of human knowledge. Moreover, a knowledge which originates in experience is necessarily partial: objective, realist—
but still partial. In fact, both the sensible object and my perception of that
object are particularized. The abstract concept itself, developed from the
starting point of sensible experience, retains something of its origins: it is not
a pure copy of the divine ideas, but a slow and arduous construct which
allows for only a very partial knowledge, even on the few occasions when it
does attain the essence of things. (St.Thomas says that, practically speaking,
one cannot know even the essence of a fly.) This partial and thus imperfect
character of our personal knowledge explains the necessity for a common
sharing, for a tradition.
The human modus intelligendi thus reveals man’s paradoxical position in
the created universe: he stands at the crossroads between the spiritual

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767

world and the corporeal world. He is an incarnate spirit, rooted in the
particular and open to the universal.The traditionalist structure of human
thought expresses this twofold membership.
Thus the first step the truth-seeking soul must take is, not to make
itself a tabula rasa, but instead to place its trust in the traditions of wisdom
from within which the soul is open to personal reflection. Each new
acquisition of knowledge presupposes at heart an act of trust in our
teachers. “He who learns must begin by believing,” Aristotle states.
Following in the footsteps of Fides et Ratio (§§31–33), one cannot
emphasize strongly enough the degree to which the disposition of
believing accords with human nature, with the result that the traditionalist way of thinking is much more humanizing than the individual search
for subjective evidence. The act of believing, which is at the heart of all
cultural life, is indeed paradoxical:
The knowledge acquired through belief can seem an imperfect form of
knowledge, to be perfected gradually through personal accumulation of
evidence; on the other hand, belief is often humanly richer than mere
evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings
into play not only a person’s capacity to know but also the deeper
capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with
them which is intimate and enduring.7

This is why truth
is attained not only by way of reason but also through trusting acquiescence to other persons who can guarantee the authenticity and
certainty of the truth itself. There is no doubt that the capacity to
entrust oneself and one’s life to another person and the decision to do
so are among the most significant and expressive human acts.8

To be a Thomist, then, is to trust Aquinas to lead us to an understanding of the real, toward wisdom. Faced with a plethora of possible teachers, the philosopher-apprentice must make a choice. Descartes could not
commit to this profoundly human act:
I could, however, select from the crowd no one whose opinions seemed
worthy of preference, and thus I found myself constrained, as it were,
to use my own reason in the conduct of my life.9
7 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §32.
8 Ibid., §33.
9 Discourse on Method, 2.4.

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768

The fact is, this initial choice is more a matter of skill than of mathematical proof. St.Thomas would have said that it flows from prudence, the
art of governing one’s life. Many factors, both objective and subjective, can
influence such a choice. In the best-case scenario, a dim insight into the
truth of a master’s teaching can inspire adherence, but the seduction of his
human personality or many other pre-doctrinal elements may have the
same effect. For a Catholic, the Church’s repeated recommendation of
Aquinas’s authority bears no little weight in this prudential decision. In
any case, the master is credited with an aptitude, already proven or
presumed, for leading another to a true intellectual understanding of reality, through his own understanding of the doctrinal inheritance.
The necessity of rooting oneself in a tradition obviously does not
exclude healthy criticism; neither does it involve any paralyzing servitude.
Aristotle is said to have declared that “Plato is my friend, but the truth is
even more so.” In fact, the human soul is characterized by a transcendental openness to being qua being, to the totality of being. It is permeated
by a natural desire to delve down to the source of being and intelligibility, which is none other than God Himself in His essence. Thence arises
the soul’s congenital dissatisfaction with all partial truth, and its perpetual
animation by a searching drive. It thus cannot cling exclusively to what it
receives from a specific and necessarily partial tradition.The absolutization
of a particular tradition is a temptation that conceals a dangerous negation
of the transcendence of the human person:
Care will need to be taken lest, contrary to the very nature of the
human spirit, the legitimate defense of the uniqueness and originality
of [a form of] thought be confused with the idea that a particular
cultural tradition should remain closed in its difference and affirm itself
by opposing other traditions.10

Nevertheless, in critically confronting received teaching with one’s
personal intellectual experience of the real, and above all, with other traditions of thought, one should avoid the dialectical temptation, the perpetual temptation toward the easy way out.This is not a case of denying one’s
own tradition, but primo, of appropriating its rationality in the most
personal way, and secundo, of enriching it with the truth of other traditions.
This said, one cannot exclude tradition’s being changed, not through pure
and simple rejection, but through purification and completion, when a
truth found in the original tradition is proved to be taken up and better
grounded in another doctrinal tradition. The truest tradition is therefore
10 Fides et Ratio, §72.

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the most universal, the one that can account for the portion of truth
contained in other traditions and integrate it into its own principles.
The Three Types of Thomism
A master is defined not only by his person, his spirit, but also by a specific
teaching. The different ways of approaching the connection between
spirit and doctrine in the teaching of St.Thomas have given rise to fairly
different “types of Thomism.” I will mention here the three archetypes.
Thomism-by-inspiration: The first is Thomism-by-inspiration. It should
be noted that this kind is currently on the path to extinction, since it can
really flourish only in a context where it is “obligatory” to refer to St.
Thomas, so that it has to seek out ways of simulating the Master’s teaching and honoring him without necessarily adhering to his doctrine.
In fact, the more broadly this version of Thomism relativizes Thomas’s
doctrine, the more attached it is to the supposed “spirit” of St. Thomas.
Its main tenet is to repeat today what St.Thomas is said to have done in
the thirteenth century, namely, expressing the Christian faith in contemporary cultural categories.Thomism today apparently needs to integrate
Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida just as St. Thomas sought to integrate
Aristotle! Strongly flavored with apologism, Thomism-by-inspiration is
less interested in promoting a specific (and outdated) doctrinal content
than in promoting a certain state of mind. It retains from St. Thomas’s
enterprise a Christian confidence in the value of the intellect, a somewhat pacified notion of the relations between reason and faith, an openmindedness to the real and to different systems of thought, and watchful
attention to “the signs of the times . . . ”
This is all well and good—but it remains insufficient. Thomism-byinspiration is a minimal Thomism which has two faults. First, it misinterprets
the nature and the very meaning of St.Thomas’s project (not to mention the
entirety of the theological enterprise). Theology does not primarily and
fundamentally seek to translate the faith into the language of an era, but it
sets itself the task of disengaging the intelligible content from within the
Word of God and expressing it in a scientific way, seeking as much as possible the organic and universal essence which allows a doctrinal system to transcend its own era. To this end, St. Thomas takes up philosophical elements
from Aristotle, as well as from Neoplatonism (after subjecting them to strict
critical interrogation in light of the Word of God), not primarily because
they are “modern,” but because he perceives them to be true.“Modernity”
is automatically bestowed on anyone who seeks truth above all else.
Second,Thomism-by-inspiration fails to examine the properly doctrinal
foundation of the very possibility of its open-minded attitude to any truth

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Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P.

regardless of origin, an attitude which is so strikingly evident in St.Thomas.
This attitude is founded not on eclecticism, nor on indifference to truth,
but on the quest that seeks out the most universal and widely encompassing principles from every discipline.This is what makes it possible to integrate into the Thomistic synthesis truths conceived elsewhere, or later.
In fact, Thomism-by-inspiration recoils in horror at the incongruity
implied in purely and simply tracing one’s ancestry, today, at the dawn of
the twenty-first century, back to a thirteenth-century doctrine. Are the
seven centuries of thought separating us from St. Thomas really merely
the history of a long and dramatic divergence? Fundamentalist Thomism,
at least, has no such scruples.
Fundamentalist Thomism: At the opposite end of the spectrum from the
previous position stands fundamentalist Thomism. This variety of
Thomism is easily recognizable on account of its visceral reaction against
the historical approach to the Thomistic corpus and is easily irritated by
what it considers to be the excessive attention given today to the historical and cultural conditionings of the intellectual life.True, in its aversion
to historicism it does have the benefit of defending the trans-historical
value of concept and truth, but it does so by forgetting that the absolute
of truth is given only in the contingency of history.
In fact, fundamentalist Thomism is little inclined to accept the
inescapable elements of groping and incertitude implied in every human
quest for truth; thus it is convinced not only that Christian revelation
endows humanity with a collection of certain and stable supernatural
truths (which is true), but also that, in one way or another, the supernatural certitude of revelation extends to human realities like philosophy,
politics, or even theology (which, although founded on faith, is no less
the work of human reason).
It is true that via a concrete union between the natural and supernatural orders, the Word of God also powerfully illuminates our human life
in its very humanity.This is why we can have Christian philosophy, Christian morality, a social and political Church doctrine.Yet this life-giving and
illuminating influx of grace cannot extend right down to each of the tiniest details, which is what fundamentalist Thomism longs for: a philosophy
and theology so perfectly specified “from above” that they will always be
safe from the vicissitudes of human history. This position holds up the
work of St.Thomas as some sort of timeless Koran, guaranteed by magisterial sanction and containing the definitive expression of theology and
philosophical wisdom, formulated once and for all as immutable theses.
Living Thomism: The third way of being a Thomist—which I consider
to be the best way, as should be evident by now—strives for a living

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fidelity to the teaching of St. Thomas. It accomplishes this goal in two
stages, which correspond to the two general complementary types of
work expected from an integral Thomistic school.
The first step is to take seriously the historical dimension, not of truth,
but of the exercise of thought.This principle is one of modernity’s major
and legitimate achievements. Even if a doctrinal system is ultimately
inspired by a quest for wisdom, it addresses specific problems situated
within history and its contingencies, so that a precise knowledge of a
doctrine’s context can be very helpful for understanding the doctrine.
Thanks to the historical-critical method, this is accomplished by examining the context of St. Thomas’s teaching, as well as its strengths and
significant developments, and reconstituting them in the most accurate
way. In fact, in the Thomistic corpus as in any doctrinal corpus, it is necessary to distinguish between roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. In other
words, St. Thomas’s teachings are not all on the same level. Even if
Thomism does not share the modern longing for a perfect hypotheticodeductive system, it is by no means eclectic. It is not an aggregate of
doctrines, but a doctrinal organism. Some of St. Thomas’s doctrines are
more fundamental, more connected to principles, and thus more
explanatory, while others are more circumstantial, more closely linked to
historical conditionings.The task of exposing the structure of this doctrinal organism belongs to internal criticism and historical study. This
hermeneutical work makes it possible to distinguish essentials from accessories, fundamental principles from certain contingent conclusions, the
enduring from the outdated. In other words, here we find no trace of the
historical relativism that haunted certain twentieth-century Thomists in
their nightmares. In fact, according to an ex-Thomist like Umberto Eco,
historical perspectivization—initially intended to promote a better
understanding of St. Thomas’s Thomism by disengaging it from its later
deformations—inevitably led to historicizing and relativizing St.
Thomas’s work, and consequently rendering any new appropriation of
St.Thomas’s work unthinkable. According to Eco, the historical turn was
the Trojan horse within the Thomistic citadel, since he deems it impossible to “recuperate integrally a system of thought which in reality only
appears worthwhile and coherent if it is evaluated according to the problems of its own time.”11 Since in the Marxist view a doctrine is only the
expression of a specific age, Eco insists that those Thomists who
11 “. . . récupération intégrale d’une pensée qui, en réalité, n’apparaît valable et

cohérente que si elle est estimée à l’aune des problèmes qui furent ceux de son
époque.” Le problème esthétique chez saint Thomas, “Conclusion (1970)” (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 216.

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welcomed the historical dimension signed on the dotted line without
realizing that they were signing an inescapable death-warrant. In this
respect, Eco is simply taking a circuitous route to agreeing with the most
conservative neo-Thomists, who are determined to cast history out of
the walled garden that belongs to the immutable Thomistic truth. It is
indeed necessary to maintain that the truth of a doctrine cannot be
reduced to the felicitous expression of a historical moment, and that it
transcends its empirical genealogy, i.e., the conditions of its development.
Doctrine seeks conformity to reality—a reality which is not completely
submerged in the transience of historical change, even if it is presented
within the context of this transience rather than in a static historical state.
In conjunction with the never-ending hermeneutics of St. Thomas’s
historical work, it thus becomes possible to take the second step by validating the integrative power of Thomism’s constitutive principles,
whether by applying them to contemporary questions that never crossed
St. Thomas’s mind (as the masters of the Thomistic school and their
imitators constantly strive to do, with varying degrees of success), or by
developing the hidden potentials in St.Thomas’s Thomism in response to
the needs of the broad cultural movement, or, finally, by integrating into
the principles of Thomism certain captive truths, i.e., good ideas that
were discovered and originally developed (poorly) in defective or even
largely erroneous traditions. In the words of M.-M. Labourdette, we must
“grasp by means of St. Thomas’s own principles an aspect of the real
which was only historically manifested as a result of different principles
and in conjunction with different categories. This constitutes neither
concordism nor eclectism, but an integration which presupposes critical
vigilance and constructive effort.”12
This work of actualizing Thomism is a risky business. In fact, two
intellectual temperaments are here in opposition. On the one hand, those
who are more daring and more concerned with immediate apologetics
do not hesitate to attempt rapid syntheses between certain elements of
modernity and the Thomistic tradition. They thereby risk creating
hybrids that are hardly viable. Even worse, one can be tempted to actualize Thomism by re-thinking it in terms of categories that are foreign to
its very “essence.”As a result, one ends up taking apart St.Thomas’s teaching, retaining nothing except what seems to have some pertinence in
light of principles that are foreign to Thomism. Not only does this often
involve exegetical contortions over Aquinas’s work which the historical
method hardly justifies, but above all it involves dismantling the coher12 Labourdette,“La théologie et ses sources: fermes propos,” Revue thomiste 47 (1947):

12–13.

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ence of a system of thought. Living Thomism, however, progresses only
by integrating homogenizable external elements, that is, those in harmony
with an organism already constituted by essential principles that are
revealed through rigorous historical exegesis. “From a Kantian chrysalis,
no Thomist butterfly will ever emerge,” as Maritain used to joke about
the utopia of Transcendental Thomism.
On the other hand, those of more spontaneously conservative
temperament are always somewhat hesitant to disburden the original
form of Thomism from certain apparently more archaic features. For
instance, behind Aristotle’s definitely outdated physics, they see a philosophy of nature that retains its relevance. Moreover, their lively awareness
of the hierarchy of knowledge convinces them that the great principles
of metaphysics or theology should not be subjected to the seasonal variations of secular scientific paradigms. Volvitur scientia, stat metaphysica.
In this work of bringing Thomism alive, today’s Thomists must justify
their existence, not only to a secular culture that sees Thomism as little
more than a sentimental archaism, but also to an inexhaustible Christian
anti-Thomism that has shadowed the developments of Thomism since
the end of the thirteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, this
internal anti-Thomism denounced Thomism as a dusty old Scholasticism, cut off from history and the cultural challenges of modernity, playing the lusterless role of an instrument of ideological normalization.
Today, anti-Thomism gladly takes up the charges the nouvelle théologie had
previously hurled against Thomism, especially that of not being sufficiently Christian, of having thoroughly contaminated the faith with
Greek metaphysics, of having instilled in Christian thought the seeds of
a destructive rationalism whose potentials have unfolded in contemporary atheism. Against the Scholastic parenthesis, they uphold a radical
return to the Fathers, to that which is “specifically Christian.” It is amusing to note that these charges are exactly analogous to those of John
Peckham, Peter John Olivi, or Henry of Ghent—all the “Augustinians”
from the end of the thirteenth century who viewed St.Thomas as having
secretly joined the camp of pagan “naturalism.”
To all these charges we can reply, primo, that St.Thomas is more deeply
rooted in Tradition than many realize today, in an age which stubbornly
places the Patristic era in opposition to the Scholastic era, and secundo,
that St.Thomas’s specific genius (and even, I believe, his ecclesial mission)
was precisely to gather up into Christian wisdom a philosophy that grants
access to the reality of nature. For St. Thomas, Christianity is called to
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Theology in the School of St. Thomas*
H ENRY D ONNEAUD, O.P.
Dominican Studium
Toulouse, France

S T. T HOMAS practiced and taught theology with unabated vigor. He
wrote a great deal of theology. Yet he spoke very little about theology.
This makes it all the more important for Thomas’s disciples to give an
account of this discipline as practiced in his school, in order to clarify its
nature, its characteristics, and the conditions under which it is practiced
in medio Ecclesiae.
Sacred Doctrine
For St.Thomas, the crucial reality is not theology in the modern, specialized sense of the word, i.e., a reasoned reflection on the content of the
faith. Rather, it is something that he, like his contemporaries, indiscriminately calls theologia,“sacred doctrine (sacra doctrina ),”“the doctrine of the
faith (doctrina fidei ),” “Sacred Scripture (sacra scriptura ),” “Catholic truth
(catholica veritas ),” “Word of God (Dei verbum ).” Sacred doctrine is none
other than the Word of God revealed in history, the teaching that God
transmits to men so that they may know and partake in the truth of salvation. This communication of divine truth culminated in Christ and his
doctrine as received by the apostles. So that it would perdure throughout
history concretely and without alteration, God first consigned it especially to the Bible, the book of canonical Scriptures. Then he entrusted
to the Church the task of explaining its content to all, so that every
human being in every time and place may hear Christ’s doctrine, believe
in Christ, and grow in faith informed by charity, until the fullness of truth
* Originally: “La théologie à l’école de saint Thomas,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actual-

ité de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 29–36.Translation by Thérèse Scarpelli Cory.

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is revealed to him in the beatific vision. Desiring to reach each of us
according to our own individual capacities, God himself willed that
sacred doctrine be communicated to us through a large and very
concrete hierarchy of mediators. In fact, his Word ceaselessly diffuses itself
through history, beginning from Christ, the Incarnate Word and “Doctor
of doctors,” through the ministry of all the other doctors: the Fathers and
Doctors of the Church, the pastors, preachers, catechists, parents, and
even the whole body of the faithful, to the extent that each one participates in his own way in the prophetic mission of the Church.
St.Thomas’s first concern is to demonstrate the absolute and universal
necessity of this sacred doctrine (not theology), since sacred doctrine
alone reveals to us a salvation that we could never conceive and attain on
our own, but that is obscurely inscribed in our nature as the true end for
which we long. He then proceeds to show that sacred doctrine is a true
science, since we can uncover the causal links uniting its disparate
elements, through a subordinate, yet real, foretaste of and participation in
the perfect divine science by which God knows himself as well as all
things in their ultimate cause of being. Next, Thomas shows that sacred
doctrine is perfectly unified by its revealed origin, and is founded not on
the light of human intelligence but on the light of grace divinely infused
into our hearts. Finally, he shows that sacred doctrine is the perfect
wisdom which rules and integrates into its own service all the other
human sciences, bringing all created realities back to the One who is
sacred doctrine’s own subject: God known in himself and in his own light.
As it unfolds concretely throughout the ages, sacred doctrine fulfils
several roles, employing a multiplicity of different methods. Its first and
most basic role is to transmit to us knowledge of the mysteries of the true
God and his salvation. To prepare us for eternal contemplation, it gives
birth to and strengthens faith in us. For the sake of the same contemplation, it transmits to us the articles of faith (conveniently assembled in the
Symbols), prayers (psalms and liturgical texts), and the historical narratives
attesting the authority of the prophets and apostles; to this same end, it
employs parables and metaphors suited to represent divine realities before
our still-blinded eyes. Moved by its closely connected practical objective,
and using precepts and interdictions, promises and warnings (such as the
law of Moses, Jesus’ new commandment, the proclamation of the last
Judgment), it teaches us to act well.
The doctors accomplish this first and most basic role of sacred
doctrine—giving birth to and strengthening faith in the hearts of men—
primarily by explicating the canonical Scriptures. In fact, the book of the
Bible is above all the place where God has consigned his Word in the

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most complete and certain manner.Whether they be pastors, theologians,
or catechists, the principal task of all ministers of sacred doctrine is that
of commenting on the Bible, just as Jesus did with the disciples of
Emmaus (Lk 24:27) or Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:35).
Their task is to disengage its multiplicity of meanings, from the literal
sense to the different spiritual senses, so that the Word of God itself in its
fullness may penetrate into the souls of the faithful. In this work, their
first guide must always be the living Tradition of the Church, particularly
the Fathers and the Magisterium, for the Spirit of Christ supernaturally
assists his Body in the infallible interpretation of the Word. But all the
exegetical techniques, especially those acquired from the historical-critical
method, must also be used in order to disengage the literal sense, which
is the foundation of all the others, from all its conditionings.
Two other functions, secondary but still indispensable to the Church,
have always belonged to the ministers of sacred doctrine; to refute the
errors of those who alter or destroy its truth; and to grow in contemplation of this truth. Here, only arguments prove to be effective, whether in
appealing to the authority of the canonical texts accepted by the opponents, or in presenting lines of reasoning whose logic bears witness to the
truth of the faith.These kinds of arguments were used by Jesus himself as
well as by St. Paul, to prove the resurrection of the dead (Mt 22:23–33;
1 Cor 15:12–20). In the same way, in imitation of St. Paul addressing the
Athenians before the Areopagus (Acts 17:28), it is permissible and even
useful for doctors and preachers of the faith to have recourse to the arguments of philosophers, as well as to rhetoric and the other profane
sciences. In its work of dispensing truth, sacred doctrine has nothing to
fear from the light of reason which is God’s gift to our nature, nor from
the various elements of truth which men have been able to discover on
their own; rather, it should gather them all into its service.
The Questions of Faith Seeking Understanding
If defending the truth directly pertains to the Magisterium of the pastors
of the Church, contemplating the truth is the role of the theologian, not
exclusively, but in a special way. In fact, Thomas earnestly identifies
contemplation as the raison-d’être of that which today we call speculative or
contemplative theology. Within sacred doctrine, speculative theology is
defined as the activity by which the Church grows in the contemplative
understanding of that which she believes.Thomas locates its origin specifically in the mystery of the obscure clarity of the theological virtue of faith.
The light of this grace makes us adhere with absolute certitude to the Word
of God proposed to us. But because the command of faith proceeds from

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the will rather than the intellect and the intellect has not yet reached fullness of vision, this adherence leaves the soul radically unsatisfied,“restless”
(inquietus), since it can find its rest only in the full understanding of truth.
Torn between the certitude of faith-adherence and the persistent obscurity
of our faith-knowledge, our intellect by nature perpetually strains toward
an ever greater perception of that which it believes.Thus, without waiting
for the beatific vision and already divinely impelled by the love of perfect
truth, it immediately begins to appropriate all the elements of the truth at
its disposal; it scrutinizes them and pursues them in order to draw from
them the maximum light possible. This is charity itself, unfolding in the
soul in search of understanding:“For when a man’s will is ready to believe,
he loves the truth he believes, he ponders and takes to heart whatever
reasons he can find in support thereof.”1
On the rare occasions when Thomas speaks of theology, his vocabulary is very limited. He uses certain specific phrases to refer to theology:
with respect to its origin, theology is “the questions of sacred Scripture
(quaestiones sacrae scripturae )”; with respect to its method, it is “the enquiry
of reason (inquisitio rationis )” or “investigation by reason (investigare
ratione )”; with respect to its end, it is “the contemplation of truth (contemplatio veritatis ),” “the explication of truth (explicatio veritatis ),” or “the
manifestation of the hidden realities of faith insofar as is possible to
wayfarers (occulta fidei manifestare quantum in via possibile est ).” The very
notion of theology as “questions” directly refers to the obscurity of faith:
as he welcomes and studies the Word of God, the believer encounters
difficulties, since the truths of faith provide only partial illumination. In
fact, the more they enlighten the soul, the more new problems they raise.
For instance, a firm belief in the hypostatic union of the human and
divine natures in Christ does not resolve, but rather raises, the question
of Jesus’ human knowledge: on the Cross, did he enjoy the beatific
vision? Theology’s first task is to provide answers to the multitude of new
questions that faith elicits in us. Grounded as much upon the certain
truths of the Word of God (Scripture, dogma, tradition of the Fathers and
Doctors of the Church) as on reasoned arguments, theology can thus
answer the questions, “What is the importance of this fact?” and, “Is this
really the case?” (an sit ).Thomas uses this procedure in the sed contra part
in the thousands of articles of his work.
Still, the soul is not satisfied with merely acquiring new truths included
in the faith; rather, it also seeks their raison-d’être, their “how” and “why”
(quomodo or quid sit). Armed with faith-enlightened reason and all the
1 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 2, a. 10 corpus.

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779

other instruments of Christian philosophy developed for this purpose—
especially analogy—the theologian plunges into a quest for intelligibility,
properly speaking. True demonstrations help him to understand these
newly disengaged truths from within, by connecting them to other prior,
more explicative, and more fundamental truths as to their proper causes.
Thomas takes this approach in each response of his article. Finally, with
respect to the “contemplation of truth,” the theologian discovers the
multitude of links interconnecting all the truths of the faith. He must
therefore reproduce in his soul something of God’s own perfect science of
himself and of all things, like a “seal (sigillum)” or an “imprint of the divine
science (impressio divinae scientiae).” Here we find the ultimate meaning of
any theological synthesis: not only to attempt to answer each of faith’s
questions, but to reproduce to the greatest extent possible the perfect
order of the divine wisdom we will contemplate as our eternal beatitude.
No theological synthesis—especially not Thomas’s, by his own admission—can claim perfection. On the contrary, every healthy theological
enterprise needs to be continually perfected.Theology’s essential progressivity primarily derives from the emergence of questions seen with a new
insight which calls for a new investigation, such as, for instance, today’s
question of inter-religious dialogue: can God save human beings by the
mediation of non-Christian religions (an sit )? If so, how, and by what
means (quomodo sit )? Theological progress is likewise mandated by the
development of new epistemological instruments, which enable us to
grasp certain aspects of sacred doctrine more accurately, as in the case of
the historical sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which
have made it possible to understand better the temporal conditionings of
Revelation and its expression in the Church. But the inherent perfectibility of theology derives above all from the infinite depth of the divine
mysteries, which our concepts and even our most precise demonstrations
can never fully explain.Theology—just like the faith which it can never
surpass, as long as we continue as wayfarers—will always be marked by
incompleteness, obscurity, and restlessness.
Nevertheless, since it is always progressing, theology proceeds by
assimilation, not by surpassing. Because it works on the interior of sacred
doctrine, under the divine light of faith and the infallible guidance of the
Church, it can rely on an ever-increasing ensemble of principles, rules,
instruments, and even definitively true and certain conclusions.The irreversible truth of sacred doctrine does not apply only to the text of the
Bible, its supreme norm, to dogmas, and to the infallible Magisterium. It
also extends, in a lesser but real way, to the ordinary Magisterium of the
Church, as well as to the philosophy that the latter has recognized as

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“Christian” because of its ability to give an adequate account of the real,
and thus, by extension, of the mysteries of the faith. Opposing relativist
ideology, the Church bears solemn witness to human reason’s ability to
attain, on its own, absolute and definitive truths, particularly in metaphysics. The exceptionally authoritative place that Thomas occupies in
the Church’s teaching results largely from his great gift of discernment,
which enabled him to organize the definitive contribution of Christian
philosophy at the heart of sacred doctrine, and in its service. Enrolling in
the school of Thomas does not mean introducing all the latest philosophical fads into sacred doctrine so as to distill new theologies from
them. Rather, it consists in perfecting the living organism of the school’s
doctrinal tradition by a more studied application of its philosophical and
theological principles to the endless questions raised by faith seeking
understanding. Like faith, theology fundamentally strives toward unity, in
the image of God’s own science in which both theology and faith—the
former in the latter—are already an inchoate participation. Even though
the Church recognizes theological pluralism as a legitimate consequence
of the diversity of philosophical tools employed within the unity of the
faith, this pluralism still remains a mark of provisional weakness, never to
be sought for its own sake and always to be overcome.
Theology’s Ecclesial Vocation
Since the end of the Middle Ages, one of the besetting sins of theologians
has been their tendency to elevate their knowledge to the status of an
autonomous and corporate-minded organism. But theology can exist only
as a pious, believing, and ecclesial discipline. Its specific function in the
Church is not to constitute a vanguard of professionals whose teaching
operates parallel to or in competition with that of the pastors. Rather,
theology should infuse the whole of sacred doctrine in every instantiation
and in every age with the call for intelligibility inherent in the baptismal
faith. Theology is not in itself a particular ministry but a task incumbent
on all those who teach in the Church, each according to his own charism.
Over and above the expertise they develop through their personal abilities, theologians have no magisterial authority other than that which the
pastors of the Church bestow on them, such as the right to teach in
canonical faculties. While this principle explains why theologians cannot
act in opposition to the living Magisterium of the Church, the only
authentic interpreter of sacred doctrine, it also leaves intact theology’s
specific function, which is exploratory rather than authoritative.
The sacred authors, particularly St. Paul, demonstrate by their foundational example how the teaching mission in the Church includes a

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number of elements that transmit and build up the faith, as well as defend
it against opponents and seek to understand it. As a result, this teaching
mission is an incessant synergy working in Church doctrine, the defense
of the faith, and theological research, helping the Magisterium of the
pastors to explain the truth of the faith authoritatively to all. The
inevitable specialization of tasks, as techniques, questions, and conclusions
progress through the ages, cannot change the organic and ecclesial unity
of the role of theology at the heart of sacred doctrine. An example will
further illuminate this point.
As an inspired theologian contemplating the truth of our redemption in
the Paschal mystery, St. Paul understood that Adam’s sin, from which Christ
liberated us, had until then plunged all of humanity into death and sin. Similarly, as a theologian, Augustine deduced the doctrine of original sin from
this tenet of the Church’s primitive faith. Many centuries later, the Council
of Trent formally stated that this doctrine belonged to the faith of the
universal Church and recognized it as a dogma. Since then, theology has no
longer had to question whether a sin was committed at the origin of human
history whose punishment falls on every man born into the world. The
response to this question (an sit ) is no longer to be sought, since sacred
doctrine proposes it as a certain and definitive fact, a received principle,
through the theological faith of the Church and the science of God himself.
Theological work on this subject, however, is not over. Building on the
best-grounded conclusions of the human sciences, the theologian seeks
the proper way to read the preliminary account in Genesis without
claiming that Adam sinned around 4000 B.C. somewhere in an eastern
garden. He uses philosophical anthropology in order to refute the opponents who do not recognize the authority of the Catholic dogma:
humanity, as a formally constituted state, necessarily began to exist on a
particular day in time, even though no historian was present to record the
fact, since the metaphysical leap from animal to person could only
happen concretely at one unique moment within history. Furthermore,
the theologian continues to question the why and the how of the original sin (quomodo sit ). In particular, he asks how we should understand the
way in which death, introduced for all creatures as a punishment for
Adam’s fault, can be reconciled with the fact of mortality which the
human sciences demonstrate as inherent in biological life.
The teaching of the Church can develop only if theology asks such
questions—but also only as long as the answer is articulated from within
sacred doctrine by a well-illuminated reason, drawing from and operating
according to the light of faith. For the Church, by its faith, is the sole
mother and mistress of sacred doctrine.Theology is one of its daughters,

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impatient and zealous, whose free maturity can fully bloom only when
the pedagogy of faith comes to an end in the beatific vision.
This brings us to the spirituality of theology. Because theology’s role
at the heart of sacred doctrine places it by definition at the crossroads of
questions, difficulties, and obscurities, the theologian can progress toward
greater light only to the extent that his charity grows ever more lively.
We have noted that the roots of theological research are entrenched in
the love of divine truth, a truth believed though not seen.Thomas further
specifies that the supernatural merit proper to theological labor unfolds
from the patient strength that prevents it from retreating before the trials
of contradiction. More than any other believer, the contemplative
theologian is familiar with the arguments that dissuade souls from adhering to a particular truth of the faith; he magnanimously welcomes in
spirit the most virulent objections from “philosophers and heretics
against the faith”;2 he has a deep insight into the semblances of reason
they present and he even recognizes the elements of truth they may
harbor. It is precisely from the theological love of the Word of God, loved
for its own sake in the specific way that the Church has historically transmitted it to him, despite a thousand paradoxes, that the theologian derives
the strength not to give up his faith, not to renounce his search for
understanding in the integrity of truth.Without the charity that configures him ever more to Jesus in the Pascal mystery, the theologian’s
science, like his faith, is dead. The superabundance of charity that flows
from such conquered trials, however, is transfigured into a new light for
the Church and its doctrine. Thus the theologian finds his most fruitful
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place in medio Ecclesiae.

2 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 10, ad 3.

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783

Thomistic Realism?
G ILBERT N ARCISSE , O.P.
Dominican Studium
Bordeaux, France

To Each His Own Realism?
T HE CLAIM to realism has existed from the first moment that human
beings began to think. Everyone seeks to express the real. As Plato
declared long ago, we must discover the “really real.” This holds true in
differing ways for mythologies, religions, and philosophies. For philosophy, from Parmenides to Heidegger, from the most ethereal idealism to
the most vulgar materialism: all denounce the shadows of the cave and
call for a discovery of the real. Even modernity’s “subjective principle”
with its hundred faces seeks to construct a more authentic reality. Nothing is more common, therefore, than being a realist. But the notion of
realism is liable to confusion, equivocation, perhaps banality, and at least
relativism. What relation is there between the “realism” of St. Augustine
and that of Karl Marx?
The starting-point for our present investigation can be outlined as
follows. In the history of human thought, “realism” is certainly a “relative” notion: why did St. Thomas choose this particular way of expressing “his” reality? But one must then bear witness to the universal value
that makes his conception of the world relevant. The friend of wisdom
cannot rest content with a historical slideshow of explanations, nor with
a mere personal sympathy for a particular author, any more than with an
argument from authority on behalf of a thought-system or a religious or
aesthetic sentiment.Then why Thomas’s realism?
* Originally: “Le réalisme thomiste,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint Thomas

d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 49–65. Translation by Thérèse
Scarpelli Cory.

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The Kairos of Thomas’s Realism
Kairos is a theological concept which can be translated as “favorable
time.” In the Bible, it indicates one of God’s important historical actions.
By extension, the kairos of a thought-system can be viewed within a
purely human context. For Thomas, the favorable time is one in which a
concept is conjoined with being, grace, and understanding, in a juncture
that directly results in Thomas’s realist style. On the institutional level,
thirteen centuries of intellectual and spiritual experience—longer if we
include Greek thought—had established a place for theology within a
real university of disciplines. Thomas’s realism therefore belongs to a
certain “theological science” which conceived of itself as a truly human
science, but one “subordinate” to the science of God.The time was favorable for an objective investigation of the best intellectual conditions for
expressing the real within Christian Revelation.Thomas’s early discovery
of Aristotle was decisive. But his genius lies in the way he employed this
system of thought by adjusting it to a revelation which surpassed it.This
realism must be verified by two lines of inquiry: Does it result in an
adequate expression of Christian Revelation? And are its expanded
concepts still philosophically relevant? For instance, when Thomas takes
up the Aristotelian themes of “substance” in metaphysics, or “friendship”
in morality, it is evident that he is nourishing his Aristotelian roots with
Revelation in order to develop a deeper meaning which benefits both
theology and philosophy. This is the kairos of Thomas: a philosophy that
passes through the crucible of a revelation and that tends to be at once a
theology and a philosophy. In a way that surpasses Aristotle, friendship
attains the other in relation, under the influence of Christian charity and
the Trinitarian relations; again, in a way that surpasses Aristotle, being is
grounded in its existence, which is both autonomous in relation to God
and dependent on him. Here we have a true theological reception of
rational truth.
Everything Begins with Being
St.Thomas’s realism is metaphysical. Being is the central core of his realism; being comes before any other consideration. Without being, there
can be no thought.The “really real” is that which is self-subsistent: God,
Infinite Being. The question of the “existence of God” manifests the
unique way in which God exists. Here we have Thomas’s famous philosophy of the “act of being.” Taking up Aristotle’s metaphysical pairs (actpotency, substance-accident, matter-form),Thomas re-grounds them in a
conception of being and then of causality which is ultimately grounded
in God. God is self-subsisting being, and He gives to every other being

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an act of being befitting its own essence.Thus Thomas goes beyond Aristotle’s substantialism, in which that which is real is substance. From the
starting-point of this same substance, we arrive at an explanation of the
fact of its existence, its ultimate “concreteness:” the act of being. In the
light shed by the treatise on God and creation, Thomas discovers at the
heart of reality a mysterious duality: esse and essentia. Every created being
subsists through this composition, which structures reality and which is
at once the source of its “existential” dependence on God (esse ) and of
its autonomy of being, as real possessor of an esse in a substantially realized essentia.The esse (to exist) is aliud (other) than the essentia, in a relation of act-potency. Since the ontological weight is on the side of act, the
esse received from God is the most real reality. In God alone existence
and essence are perfectly one. Substances find their ontological weight in
the divinely caused act of being, which, although given, is really received
by each being in the differentiation of essences.This kind of realism has
never been a realism of Ideas; neither is it merely a substance realism;
rather, this realism consists wholly in a balancing act in which the stability of the real truly exercises the act of being for itself, while continuously
receiving it from God.
Meaning, Understanding, and Analogy
This “objective” realism of being corresponds to an epistemological realism. For Thomas, being determines knowledge, and not vice versa: the
critical stance, so foundational to modern post-Kantian philosophy, does
exist in Thomas, but only secondarily. First, being and understanding are
perfectly identical in God alone.Thomas always describes knowledge in
terms of a hierarchy of intellects: divine, angelic, human, each with its
own mode of knowledge.The human being grasps being in a metaphysical judgment which unites being and essence, a “judgment of existence.”
This judgment is realist because human understanding has the capacity
for decoding the analogical riches of being. While the act of being is
perfectly accomplished only in God, it is also accomplished analogically
in created beings according to the variety of essences. I can state the real
judgment “Peter is good,” both because I have experience of human
goodness and because I know that goodness is perfectly realized in God.
My judgment thus has a twofold foundation in experience and in God,
a foundation which becomes even stronger if we consider the revealed
given. The realism of human knowledge results from this capacity for
knowing the ultimate reality of the real in its metaphysical structure. In
this respect, Thomas’s realism is a “moderate” realism, because being is
attained in knowledge of essentia that can be conceived, while remaining

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mysterious in the “act of being,” which cannot be conceptualized.
Thomistic realism, whether philosophical or theological, can be summed
up in its refusal to allow human understanding to reduce the existence—
essence pair to essence alone. At the heart of the real is the ineradicable
mystery of the act of being, where the deepest wealth of being is found,
because it is “act.” Thomistic realism is thus constituted by an accurate
grasp of the unity of esse, essentia, and intelligere. God Himself is pure “act
of being” and therefore absolute esse, unable to be conceptualized,
“known as unknown”: although He is perceived through His attributes,
His heart remains mysterious and will remain so even after the Trinitarian Revelation. Here we find the foundations of apophatism, the silence
about God—but a silence that knows why it is mute. Neither philosophy
nor theology can be transformed into a gnosis or absolute system of
knowledge. This limitation on human knowledge also serves as the
condition for the truth of knowledge, which derives from the twofold
status of the human intellect: its present, though contingent, earthly
condition, and its essential union with a body. The human intellect is
distinguished from the divine and angelic intellects by a realism anchored
in that which all human knowledge presupposes: sensible reality. The
human intellect, the weakest of intellects, can attain being only through
the arduous procedure philosophy calls “abstraction.” Beginning from
and in constant association with the sensible world, human understanding forms an idea. This idea can be accurate only within the balance of
essentia and existence, when it departs from and returns to sensible experience, employing the senses and the imagination. Thomas would make
this a major theme of his theology: knowledge of God’s existence is inaugurated by the recognition of sensible reality; the most fitting aspect of
the Incarnation is the way in which the invisible God adapts himself to
the hylomorphic structure, body and soul, of the human being, who
needs to move from the visible to the invisible. The economy of the
sacraments follows the same pattern of manifesting invisible grace by visible signs. The revelatory power of God thus confirms this realist epistemology. Human understanding is made fruitful with a sensible and
spiritual knowledge.
Transition to Theology
An accusation often brought against Thomism is that its metaphysics plays
too great a role in determining its theology.The accusation certainly applies
to a particular kind of Scholasticism (though it must be admitted, not the
most prominent kind). But Thomistic and non-Thomistic specialists alike
now agree that Thomas did not fall into the trap of “onto-theology.”

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Thomas’s conception of God is not reduced to a narrow philosophical
conception that makes God one being among many beings, for instance.
But does this accusation apply to Thomas’s Christian theology? Is his
theology not excessively encumbered by Aristotelian concepts or disconcertingly locked into medieval problems? Are Aristotle’s logic and causality still defensible? On a more radical level, can we trust metaphysics?
These criticisms against Thomas’s theology are often based on previous
decisions concerning the relationship between philosophy and theology.
For instance, some dream of a theology without philosophy. Others rush
to embrace philosophies deemed more practical for the modern world,
without always stopping to examine whether they are consistent with
Christian Revelation. The question of using other philosophies besides
Thomas’s in Christian theology must, of course, always remain open.Yet
we seek the philosophy most able to synergize with Christian Revelation.
In any case, for Thomas, the use of philosophy is not a “historical accident.” If Thomas uses philosophy, and even this kind of philosophy, it is
because it is the sine qua non of theological realism. In fact, the competence
of theological discourse needs to be validated. Is theology truly able to
attain a supernatural reality that largely surpasses the capacity of unaided
human reason? Are we certain of declaring something true when we
assert, for example, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity of divine Persons, the
reality of the Eucharistic Presence? It is thus necessary to examine the
“transition” from philosophical discourse to theological proposition.
For Thomas, theological discourse remains human. It is thus anchored
in the metaphysical realism of the act of being. First of all, his metaphysics
is intrinsically open to a deepening by Revelation. In fact, the act of
being cannot be reduced to a concept. It is thus totally open to the
mystery of existence, to the achievement of a possible perfection, to the
occurrence of an unforeseen historical event.
Second, the doctrine of analogy opens human understanding to a grasp
of the revealed mystery.When the theologian explains that “God is good,”
he proceeds from two considerations. On the one hand, he has experienced
a goodness that is proportioned to his understanding, that is, the goodness
of men. I know approximately what “God is good” signifies, because I also
know that “Peter is good.” On the other hand, the goodness of God and
the goodness of Peter are obviously not the same. Peter achieves goodness
only in an analogical way, on account of his human limitations and weaknesses. But in God, goodness is limitless, infinite. If all these specifications
were purely conceptual, there would be a real danger of reducing the
goodness of God to that of Peter. In fact, it is not enough to tack the adjective “infinite” onto goodness in order to attain God. For Thomas, the issue

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concerns, not concepts or essences, but the act of being, the act of existing.
Grasping Peter’s goodness through a concept refers me to the act of being
of Peter’s goodness. Through analogy, I attain, not the essence of God’s
goodness, but the act of being of God’s goodness (although I do so through
concepts and judgments).Yet this divine act of being is mysterious at heart.
I do grasp a little of the essence of God’s goodness, but what really counts
is the infinite depth of his act of being. Precisely at this point, supernatural
Revelation intervenes by the free initiative of God, Who encounters the
receptivity of an understanding formed in the mystery of the act of being.
The whole work of the philosopher and theologian is to maintain this
balance, in relation to God and Revelation, between concept and existential openness, between essentia and esse, so that the fullness of Revelation can
be received and attained, really attained. An immense advantage can be
gained from this position: through analogy, understood in terms of the
metaphysics of the act of being, I have connected my “worldly” language
with my theological language. Peter’s goodness is really my point of departure, my anchor in being, which allows me really to attain the goodness of
God, while keeping myself open to the revealed datum. The transition is
effected. In the judgment “Peter is good,” I express the goodness of Peter
while leaving an opening to the mystery of this goodness in its deepest reality. Similarly, in the judgment “God is good,” I express the goodness of God
while leaving an infinitely larger opening to the mystery of this goodness in
its deepest reality.Thomas’s realism is the go-between that travels between
the metaphysical grasp of the act of being and the revealed datum that is
received in faith, each of which stimulates the other to a great luminosity.
Here philosophy is safe from its greatest danger, that of folding in on itself,
and theology is kept from wandering “out of sight of the concept” into the
illuminism that lurks on the borders of Revelation.At the heart of Thomas’s
realism lies this profound truth: it is the same God who creates being and
who elevates by grace the spiritual part of the created being.The judgment
“God is good” says something about the very substance of God; it opens a
path for everything that the Revelation in Jesus Christ teaches about the
goodness of God. My theological judgments are therefore guaranteed by the
twofold support of my metaphysical judgments and the light of grace.
Consequently, to say that God is three Persons is a judgment that really
applies to the inmost being of God, as I will see it face to face one day.
The Other Theological Realisms
Naturally, however, we should investigate the “other” possible realisms in
order to compare them with that of Thomas. We will consider a few
examples.

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First, the most tempting Christian realism is Christ himself.This thesis
was proposed by the Protestant theologian Karl Barth. He rejected analogy and, influenced by Kant, the role accorded to causality. For him, there
is no real knowledge of God except in Jesus Christ, and so all natural
theology is effectively excluded. But Barth does not explain how this
knowledge in Jesus Christ takes place within the dynamism of human
knowledge. He merely says that the knowledge of the revealed God is of
“another order.” For him, it is enough to assert the experience of the
event of Revelation and the renewal of all discourse through grace. Barth
therefore constructs a theology limited to biblical concepts without really
justifying how they attain the truth of that which they proclaim. Realism
is safeguarded by the mere presence of the concept of “Christ,” who is
omnipresent in theological discourse. This position runs the serious risk
of implicitly referring to an ideology of which its adherents are barely
aware.Thus it is often apparent that even in the Christologies that reject
the assistance of philosophy, a philosophy is clandestinely in operation,
directing its theses.This position is therefore liable to Socrates’ old accusation: the rejection of the philosopher is a philosophical position itself,
and thus a contradiction. Moreover, if Christ deserves a central place, it
seems strange that one would celebrate the Incarnation, God made man,
while rejecting every reference to the cultural riches of the human being.
Second, the modern person tends to seek realism in the “scientific
methods.”Theology thus seeks its fortune within all the human sciences.
But can theology search for the ultimate meaning of things primarily
with the aid of a methodology borrowed from the empirical sciences?
The attempt results in the transformation of theology into a mainly critical argument. This critique is necessitated by the obligation to verify
constantly, as do the empirical sciences, the explicative “model” and its
application to reality.Theological realism is forced into the mold of a critical intelligibility rather than being an explicative intelligibility of the real.The
truth that expresses the being of things is displaced by verification, which
seeks merely an ideal accord with the “model.” While Thomas’s realism
does integrate criticism, it does so only secondarily. Criticism corrects
possible deviations and safeguards positions: it does not provide the deepest understanding. In no way does it play the demiurgic role of reconciling the supposedly fractured subject and object; for in the beginning,
understanding and being are already in communication.
Certain theologians, moreover, have shown how human reason in
scientific methodology has established itself as a direct rival to God’s
omnipotence. The source of this modern deviation is located in a
medieval dispute over the “omnipotence” of God.When omnipotence is

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understood in a voluntaristic way as something which is outside the logic
of a certain primacy of being, man can claim reason as his own and
employ it first in the abstract efficacy of the mathematical model, then in
the concreteness of technique. The moral consequences of this position
are immense. Heidegger denounced the transformation of human reason
into an “instrumental power.” Instead of considering the real in terms of
its deepest being, this “instrumental power” is interested in the real only
as an instrument for unfolding the power of man. Thus the destruction
of being follows a direct line of reasoning that leads from this old question on the omnipotence of God, passes through Descartes’ ideal mathematics, and moves straight to Nietzsche’s will to power.Theology should
remember this fact whenever it makes use of the human sciences.
This deviation is not fatal, however. In any case, it proclaims the limits
of the empirical sciences. As such, these sciences are not metaphysical.
Therefore they could never attain the inmost core of being, much less
that of grace.
Third, another source of realism could be “symbolic” language. Is not
the symbol richer than the concept, and therefore more apt to attain the
wholeness of Christian Revelation? It is arguably better-suited to fulfill
this task, since it refers not merely to the intellectual order but to the
affective dynamism of human existence. Man is drawn ever deeper into
the symbol by his understanding, his will, his imagination.
St.Thomas’s realism too goes beyond concepts to attain the act of being,
the esse. But, unlike certain usages of the symbol, he does not need to have
recourse to the notion that a voluntary order is at the very heart of knowledge as such.True, the wisdom of theological knowledge combines love and
knowledge. Yet knowledge suffices to ground the realism of theological
discourse. To attain God, it is not necessary to “symbolize” all human
discourse.The “judgment of existence” expresses precise things about God
without having to refer to human subjectivity and without having to relativize concepts by the symbolism deemed most effective. Moreover, in
aiming toward something beyond concepts, the symbol always risks becoming a blind development of an understanding which, despite its value, is no
longer really scientific because it has escaped the control of analogy.
These comparisons allow us to evaluate the solidity of Thomas’s realism. His theological knowledge is real, but it still falls into the category
of scientific knowledge. As such, it should not be allowed to arrogate to
itself the whole of spiritual experience.Theology generally promotes the
spiritual life, but it does not constitute in itself the supreme knowledge
of God.Why? First of all, because this supreme knowledge of God is the
beatific vision, an immediate, conceptless knowledge which takes place

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only in another world and with the aid of another light. But also, here
below, there exists a higher form of knowledge of God than scientific
theological knowledge: namely, mystical knowledge. Although mystical
knowledge is not exactly “more” real, it possesses an existentially more
integral reality. In mystical knowledge, the Holy Spirit infuses graces for
an intimate experience of God, always remaining within the domain of
faith, but leading the believer to a communion of light and experiential
love (according to very differing degrees of consciousness). Only here
does the order of the will—the order of love—rightfully intervene.The
mystics have attempted to express this essentially ineffable experience by
means of a more dynamic wordplay which has a more supremely existential character, and therefore they use a “symbolic” style. Each type of
experience must have its own language.
Finally, another example of realism could be that of “lived experience.”
Does not our lived experience engage us in full reality? While metaphysics requires a certain detour, life itself is the meeting-place par excellence between God and man. It would be useful to develop a careful
reflection on the realism of “lived experience.”
But in fact,“lived experience” is often an illusion, since it never appears
in raw form outside a system of interpretation.The illusion consists in giving
the impression that the realism of one’s own system of interpretation is
precisely the realism of existence. Consequently, to insist that the realism of
theological knowledge be rooted in lived experience is in fact to insist that
theological knowledge depend, either on some particular type of lived
experience (such as the mythical “man of today”), or on a more or less
explicit interpretation of lived experience. In other words, it is to refer theological realism to an “interpreted experience,” and therefore to an abstraction. No matter how much this abstraction refers to the concrete, it is no
less an abstraction—worse, an abstraction that it claims a universal value
with the strength of fact itself.To use Thomas’s vocabulary, this position can
be summarized as an immanentization of esse and essentia (and a reduced
esse, at that), as though lived experience were its own proof of meaning.
St. Thomas would agree that it is necessary to attain concrete reality,
but not without fully evaluating being. No creature has a lived experience that can be adequate to God.The sole lived experience adequate to
theological realism is that of God’s esse. Human lived experience, no
matter how rich it may be (such as that of the saints), is only the blossoming of a participation in the divine esse. In other words, to exist is
prior to lived experience.Thomas’s metaphysics refuses to reduce esse to
lived experience, not from a propensity for abstractions, but in order to
attain the deepest esse, which shares its realism with everything. In the

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judgment of existence (God is good), I attain a truly singular reality, but
it has a twofold significance: that of the legitimate universality of essentia,
scientifically recognized, a normal abstraction and identified as such; and
that of the esse, really attained as the ultimate depth of the concretely
existing thing. For instance, it is in connecting the lived existence of Jesus
to His deepest esse, His divine Person subsisting in two natures, that I
reach the fullness of the realism of its meaning, at once singular and
universal, full of riches for all and for me personally in my lived existence,
as the “existential communion” in the order of grace attests.
Why then does metaphysics so often give the impression of unreality?
Again we can repeat: everything hangs on the balance between esse and
essentia.This balance also explains the diversity among Thomists. But the
philosopher can easily stray into inhabiting the conceptual order, sipping
occasionally from reality in order to nourish the flow of his thoughts and
to give them the appearance of truth. Such a philosopher allows himself
to be dominated by a logic of essences: essentialism. Certain “existentialisms” react to this conceptualism. A surprising paradox can result: the
reader who gets the impression that Thomas is straying “far from the
concrete” may be reading his text through “essentialist” lenses and failing
to consider the reality that is Thomas’s primary goal throughout his most
rigorous arguments. Consequently, the accusation of abstractness really
refers to the reader’s own deficient realism. Moreover, it is true that the
metaphysical point of view is maintained only laboriously by the human
intellect. It demands intellectual labor and above all a keen sense of the
“depths of being.” This sense can be acquired through long experience,
which is often gained very far from Thomism.Thus Thomism is not the
only way of acquiring theological realism. Rather,Thomism is the precise
speculative formulation of theological realism and provides realism with
a foundation broad enough to support a restoration of the Christian
mystery in its fullness.
The following point is crucial: if we are truly to attain being, man,
Christ, and the Trinity, we must not reduce being to less than it is.
Neither symbolized esse, nor modeled esse, nor existentialized esse, nor
even Christologized esse are adequate means of expressing the depth of
the Christian mystery.This fact becomes more evident when we consider
the “fundamental judgments” in the lineage of the “act of being.”
Fundamental Judgments
A “fundamental judgment” is a metaphysical statement that makes possible major theological developments. It makes them possible, not in the
manner of a deductive science, but by opening human discourse to the

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reality manifested by Revelation. In the Thomistic tradition, referring to
the treatise on creation, we can find two and sometimes three such judgments.They combine the act of being with causality.
First Fundamental Judgment: “God is the source of all being.”
This first judgment expresses the foundational metaphysical position.
God is the self-subsisting Being. He gives to all created being its “existing (esse ).”The existence of God is thus unique and transcendent. God is
esse in an act of being which surpasses whatever may be most accurately
conceived about Him. One result of this plenitude is causation. God is
“efficient cause.” He causes being, esse, in creatures at the moment when
He diversifies them into essences. Each created being exercises its act of
existing according to its own nature. If all created beings are composed
of existence and essence, gifts from God, they are therefore intelligible.
Thomas’s realism holds that the human intellect is capable of decoding
the being of things (capax entis ). As a result, the “first judgment” grounds
the possibility of expressing the truth of things, and consequently all truth
within the range of the human intellect, either through its own light or
through the light of grace. This first judgment anchors human understanding in being, while opening it to the possibility of being deepened
by Revelation. Here we find the foundation for theological truth as a
whole and particularly its major division, dogmatic theology, which
includes the Trinity, Christ, the sacraments, the Church.
To repeat: in this way, we avoid debasing these realities of the faith to
the level of human conceptions. But we do connect theological discourse to
metaphysical realism. In other words, we connect our religious experience
to our “worldly” experience. Firmly grounded on this foundation, theological discourse can welcome and develop whatever is manifested in
Christian Revelation—all the truths that are inaccessible to unaided
reason or that it accesses only with difficulty.
Second Fundamental Judgment: “God is the Goodness of all being.”
As “Act of Being,” God is infinite Goodness. He bestows on all beings a
participation in His goodness. In receiving being, all beings participate in
the goodness of God, each according to its own nature. In particular, the
human act of being good presents man with a personal history which he
can realize according to his own free will.
While the first judgment grounded truth and dogma, the second
fundamental judgment (God is “final cause” of all being) grounds the
good and morality. Moral theology is possible because the communication of being is accompanied by a “dynamism,” the presence of goodness

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in all creatures, which strain toward God as their final end. Here again,
Christian morality discovers its realism by connecting its revealed ethical
discourse to the dynamism recognized in being. Just as in the case of
truth, the transition from being to grace is achieved through analogy.
Generally, the teaching of theology rests on these two main judgments,
which generate the major speculative disciplines, Dogma and Morality.
One might ask—without wandering from the path of being—whether it
might not be relevant to add a third fundamental judgment which is
more or less implicit in the two preceding ones.
Third Fundamental Judgment: “God is the Beauty of all beings.”
The theme of beauty is woven prominently through theology. It originates first of all in Scripture and is often found in the Fathers.The theme
of beauty is also validated in Thomas on at least two levels: first of all,
Thomas states that God is not only the principle and end of all creatures
(in technical language, their efficient and final cause), but also their
“exemplary cause,” a notion he develops throughout his whole theology.
Every created being receives being according to a certain “resemblance”
to its Creator.Theology has developed the theme of the “vestiges” of the
Trinity in every being, as well as the central anthropological theme of the
“image” with respect to the human being.
Second, the viewpoint of beauty can be associated with a principle
that appears frequently in Thomas’s theological argumentation: “fittingness.” Along with the rigorous reasoning of Aristotle’s logic, which syllogistically expresses the true and the good, Thomas uses arguments from
fittingness. Such arguments introduce a specifically theological mode of
reasoning. The argument from fittingness relates the mysteries of Revelation to each other according to explanations from “fittingness.” For
instance, was it fitting that God should become incarnate? These “reasons
of fittingness” enable us to deepen our understanding of the plan of God.
By means of fittingness, Thomas establishes a more supple relationship
between mysteries than can be achieved by the strictly logical necessity
of a syllogistic conclusion. In so doing, he therefore clearly opens up
another new path within realism. In fact, by examining that which is
most mysterious in Revelation (was it fitting that God should create, save,
glorify?), fittingness places theology at the heart of an esse that awaits
fulfillment in our existence, salvation, and destiny. Fittingness enables us
to ask about the experience of Revelation, since we know the answer and
seek its relevance. Therefore, in Thomas, the primacy of being has a
capacity for fittingness. Metaphysical realism is maintained when, beyond
essence, one maintains the multiplicity of that which befits the esse.This

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relationship is mysterious and is therefore open to all deepening of the
mystery, especially the theological mystery.A particular luminosity, that of
the beautiful, perhaps corresponds to this openness in the relationship of
fittingness. Fittingness is in some way analogous to the beautiful, in terms
of essence (the harmony of parts) as well as in terms of the act of being,
in the mystery of a depth that is externalized according to the reciprocity of exemplarity.Thomas does not develop a “theological aesthetic” to
exploit this possibility. But beauty, achieved through analogy, surely raises
the realism of the true and the good to a greater theological awareness of
the depth of the mystery.
Realism at the Heart of the Christian Mysteries
The metaphysics of the act of being is at the root of theological realism.
We will now cite a few examples of its flowering at the very heart of the
Christian mysteries.
The mystery of the Trinity gives Thomas the first opportunity to
put his realism to good use.The history of the Trinitarian dogma shows
how the expression of this mystery had to appeal to precise concepts such
as substance, person, and relation. To express both absolute monotheism
and the Trinity at the same time, the Tradition affirmed the formula,
“One substance, three Persons.”These notions, gradually introduced and
explained by the Fathers, would be decisively clarified by Thomas’s
refinement of the metaphysics of being and relation. His doctrine is
concerned as much with understanding the Trinitarian processions as
with the work of the Trinity ad extra, as when he explains how the Trinitarian processions are the raison d’être of creatures, their structure, and
their history, thus establishing an intimate link between Trinitarian life
and human life.
The mystery of Creation is involved with Thomas’s realism in the
highest degree. God, the Source, Goodness, and Beauty of every created
being, acknowledged in the framework of the metaphysics of the act of
being, grants a high stature to creation.This is manifested by at least three
main considerations:
1. The consistency of created being: each being, in receiving the act of
being “for his own,” possesses a real autonomy. This is true of the
most humble beings such as matter, right up to the autonomy of spiritual beings, which takes the form of freedom. Creatures are not
“appearances,” fallen spirits, or accidents of the supreme Being.They
truly exercise their act of existing, fully and completely. When God
speaks to man, He is truly conversing with someone.

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2. The contingency of created being: the created, autonomous being is
also revealed as not possessing in itself the absolute necessity of its
existence. It is radically “non-necessary,” contingent. This contingency is best expressed when we understand that the esse of finite
beings is dependent on the infinite Esse. Every created being hangs
suspended from this gift. The distinction between essence and toexist prevents us from transferring the ideal necessity of essences to
existence. Although I am “necessarily” man, I exist fundamentally, as
esse, only as suspended from the divine efficacy. My “lived existence,”
strong with its own autonomy, easily forgets this fact, thus establishing a contradiction at the deepest level of its being: my autonomy
cannot transform a received gift into the spoils of conquest. Conversely,
dependence does not cancel out autonomy: it is precisely in dependence on God that creatures find the place for their autonomy. Revelation demonstrates this principle concretely in the themes of the
Covenant, the Law, and grace.
3. The permanence of created being: finally, this received gift is not
given in one isolated primordial instant. It is constantly maintained
by the Creator according to his free will.The creaturely act of being
depends at every instant on the permanent gift of God. It is from the
starting-point of this fundamental gift of esse that God can consider
his spiritual creatures, both human beings and angels, as serious “partners” and can increase his presence in them already on earth by the
gift of grace, and by the gift of glory in Heaven hereafter.
The mystery of Revelation is primarily the concrete encounter
between words and events in human history.The realism of our theological knowledge yields the key to the realism of the Holy Scriptures. One’s
conception of being affects one’s comprehension on various levels of the
realism of the Bible and its message.This in no way prejudices any of the
elements that serious exegesis ought to study with respect to “literary
genres.” Whether a “parable” of Jesus should be read differently from a
“discourse” or a “narrative section,” it remains true that the ultimate
meaning of any genre is inseparable from the understanding of being
signified in the various forms. The metaphysics of the act of being thus
enables us to appreciate the depth of the truth which is implied in the
words and events of Salvation.
The mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption: The climax
of the covenant between God and his people is reached in the Incarnation of the Word.As in the case of the Trinity, the Christology of the first

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centuries had to appeal to specific concepts to preserve the proper
expression and transmission of the mystery. The result is a dogmatic
formula pregnant with metaphysics: “One Person subsisting in two
natures.”The metaphysician needs all his vigilance here in order to maintain the equilibrium between the transcendence and the immanence of
God. The identity of the one who presents a real human face demands
the point of view of being in order to arrive, in theology, at an accurate
idea of his divinity. Jesus Christ is true God and true man. The truth of
this God and the truth of this man demand either that we possess an
accurate conception of the God-being and the man-being, or that we
remain silent about both. We must know them in terms of this relation
of being. Jesus himself asks us to “understand” in the Spirit; and although
this does not mean simply engaging in theology, when we are theologizing we must do so with an awareness of the realism presupposed therein.
Thomas highlights the “realism of the Incarnation” against the background of the metaphysics expounded in the treatise on God and on
creation. This enables him to understand not only the mystery of the
person of Christ but also the efficacy of his action. For example, in treating the theme of the imitation of Christ, he says that Jesus is certainly a
moral example of compassion and courage, but he is also a deeply “ontological exemplar”: imitation is both exterior and interior, since every
grace we receive passes through the humanity of Christ and configures
us to him. Consequently, everything that Jesus did, said, underwent, or
suffered in his existence is a source of grace.A daring parallelism follows:
in the same way that God is cause of all being, Jesus, by His humanity, is
cause of all grace.Thomas uses the same principles in discussing the death
and Resurrection of the Lord.
The mystery of our sanctification: There is certainly a close
correspondence between the “realism” of the mystic and the “realism” of
the theologian who has recourse to metaphysics.The second fundamental judgment generates the realism of morality. It is significant that
Thomas’s morality is primarily oriented, not according to the inspiration
of the Spirit, but according to the constitution of virtues in the ethical
subject.This shows the degree of importance his morality accords to the
significance of man and his freedom: man has a real capacity for becoming good by his own acts, by developing in himself the effective capacities for right action. For man, the realism of being is expressed in the
realism of his nature, which eventually blossoms in the realism of grace.
For sanctification, the realism of being appears in the role God has
ordained for human mediations. No matter how imperfect and sinful man
may be, God never hesitates to make him His collaborator in the work

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of salvation. Because God really gives grace, and because grace is a reality in man, God also gives man the power to transmit it, as life and truth,
within an ecclesial community.There is a hierarchical structure and above
all a communion of love in which every being indwelt by grace becomes,
visibly or invisibly, the source of spiritual goods for others. So that these
exchanges may be possible on a supernatural level, grace must bring to
full completion a “nature,” a being with a true ontological weight. The
communication and mediation of grace find their clearest realism in sacramental efficacy. God transmits His invisible grace by visible signs, an interplay that is already present in the knowledge of being when knowledge
draws its realism from the sensible world and abstracts therefrom its spiritual meaning. It is not surprising that Thomas’s realism is best expressed
in the mystery of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. By means of the
concept of “transubstantiation,”Thomas explains, not the mystery, but its
possibility, and how to express it in its integrality.We cannot understand
this doctrine if we ignore the meaning of metaphysical principles such as
“substance,” “accidents,” and above all esse. This realism is established in
the final theological unfolding of the metaphysics of esse when Thomas,
with the Church, conceives of the end of all sanctified life: the vision of
God in glory. The realism of grace is continued in the life of Heaven.The
knowledge of God face to face is made possible by a new created gift,
which elevates the human faculties to the level of this intimacy with
God.This gift is the light of glory.As with the light of grace in faith, the light
of glory establishes a new capacity, freely given and really introduced into
the person who benefits from it.
One could meditate for a long time on the encounter in which the
Thomistic realism of esse meets the realism of the Eucharistic presence
and the grace that blossoms from faith into vision. At this summit, God
makes himself present in his incarnate Word to the world and to the
human heart.The metaphysics of esse facilitates the best expression of this
reality embracing the whole economy of salvation: does not this fact
supremely validate the theological relevance of Thomas’s realism? N&V

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Contemporary Questions about God*
G ILLES E MERY, O.P.
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

T HE DOCTRINE of the Trinitarian God is at the heart of Christian
theology. St.Thomas once explained to a Christian missionary who asked
him to provide some doctrinal assistance for his confrontation with Islam
in Syria that “the Christian faith principally consists in the confession of
the Holy Trinity, and it glories particularly in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus
Christ.”1 Today, confronted by questions old and new, the Christian who
seeks to render an account of his faith in God can find the best guide in
the immense body of teaching that Thomas devoted to the mystery of
the Triune God. An overview of features of his teaching that trace out a
path toward answering some contemporary questions will manifest the
advantages of this teaching.
A God Who Transcends and Acts in the World
One of the first questions, which is among the deepest questions theology
must address, is that of the formal object of theology’s reflection on God.
Under what aspect should God be considered in biblical and Christian
reflection? According to Thomas, theology is the science of the mystery of
the revealed God. But is this the mystery of God in Himself, or only the
mystery of God acting for the sake of His creatures? Early on, Thomists
became involved in a lively debate on this topic. In fact, certain theologians from the end of the thirteenth century onwards sought to restrict
theology to the study of God restoring and completing His work of
* Originally: “Questions d’aujourd’hui sur Dieu,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de

saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 87–98.Translation
by Thérèse Scarpelli Cory.
1 St.Thomas Aquinas, De rationibus fidei, chap. 1.

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creation, by defining theology as a reflection on “God the Savior.” The
Thomistic response was very clear: Christian doctrine cannot be restricted
to the work of salvation; rather, its object is “God qua God,” i.e., God in
the whole breadth of His mystery, insofar as man can attain it.2
This same question arose again in the Reformation, when Luther,
accusing Scholastic theology of having led Christian thought astray into
useless and imprudent research into the nature of God or the properties
of the divine Persons, emphasized the experience of personal faith, which
he claimed should condition the doctrine of God.The object of Christian reflection would therefore be God “for us,” or from a more individualistic standpoint, God “for me.” The same question is implicit in the
boundaries laid out by modernity’s anthropocentric shift, within the
currents of thought which assign to the doctrine of God the immediate
task of reflecting on human experience, whether ecclesial or social. Other
currents of thought restrict the doctrine of God to reflecting on the
“God of salvation.” Are we to conceive of God in terms of man, or,
conversely, should we illuminate human existence and the world in light
of God Himself? This question touches the very heart of theology’s
contemplative and sapiential status, and at a deeper level, the transcendence of the mystery of God.
St.Thomas guides us toward a reunion of Christian thought around the
central mystery of God considered either in Himself, or insofar as He is
the source and end of His creatures.3 Philosophically confirmed by the
distinction between being and acting, and then by the Aristotelian distinction between immanent acts (those which remain in the acting subject,
such as knowing and willing) and transitive acts (those which impact an
exterior thing, in the order of “doing”), this twofold aspect of the divine
mystery supplies the fundamental structure of the Summa theologiae.4 For
this reason, in the method outlined by Thomas, the doctrine of God does
not begin by examining the relationship between God and the world, but
by studying God in His divine being. This is the doctrine of the “divine
attributes,” i.e., the common characteristics pertaining to the being and
acting of the three Persons of the divine Trinity. The transcendence of the
mystery of a God Who remains unconfused with the world is clearly at
stake: Thomas presents a strict and unambiguous interpretation of God’s
simplicity (simplicity is the first divine attribute studied in the Summa
theologiae, on which the rest of the whole treatise depends).
2 See Gilles Emery, “Dieu, la foi et la théologie chez Durand de Saint-Pourçain,”

Revue thomiste 99 (1999): 659–99, here 682–87.
3 St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 7.
4 See Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 128–32.

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St. Thomas’s accurate insight into the transcendent unity of God,
however, does not sever reflection on God from reflection on the human
being and the world. Instead, it safeguards and manifests the gratuitous
nature of divine action in the world, as well as the deep roots of the
human being’s and world’s relations to God.Thus, for instance, identifying God as Wisdom, Thomas first explains that God knows Himself
perfectly: from this it follows that in knowing Himself God knows all
things, inasmuch as He is the cause and exemplar of all creatures by His
self-knowledge.5 In the same way, exploring the Love of God, Thomas
explains that this Love is the one with which God eternally loves Himself
in Himself: thus he makes it possible to recognize that it is in loving
Himself that God loves us.6
This approach offers considerable advantages. By respecting the transcendence and absolute primacy of God’s being, as well as the primacy of
the knowledge and love by which God knows and loves Himself,Thomas
provides a foundation for creaturely participation in God’s being and
safeguards the total freedom of the actions that God exercises in the
world for the sake of His creatures. Moreover, the acts of wisdom and
love exercised by God in the world are really identical, in God, with His
own essence. God’s “transitive acts” (creation, providence, salvation) find
their source and explanation in His “immanent acts:” God knows
Himself and us by one and the same wisdom; God loves Himself and
each one of His creatures with one and the same love.7 Here, where a
cursory glance might lead one to accuse Thomas of neglecting the economy of creation and salvation, we discover in reality a doctrine that seeks
to explain in the most profound way the divine foundations of this economy. In this way, for Thomas, creation and salvation are illuminated by the
doctrine of God in Himself. One cannot account for the inmost depths
of God’s action simply by defining God in terms of His relations to the
world, as an immense theological current flowing from Hegel does today.
Rather, the opposite is true: the source of the divine economy is found
through contemplation of the immanent and transcendent being of God.
5 ST I, q. 14, a. 5 and a. 8.
6 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. 1, chap. 75: “Because God wills

Himself to be, He likewise wills other things, which are ordered to Him as to
the end. . . . God, therefore, wills the multitude of things in willing and loving
His own essence and perfection. . . . God, in that He wills and loves Himself, wills
and loves other things.”
7 ST I, q. 37, a. 2:“The Father and the Son love each other and love us by the Holy
Spirit.” Ibid., ad 3: “The Father loves not only the Son, but also Himself and us,
by the Holy Spirit. . . . As the Father speaks Himself and every creature by His
begotten Word . . . , so He loves Himself and every creature by the Holy Spirit.”

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Today, theological reflection on the Trinity is often undertaken in
terms of the “immanent Trinity” and the “economic Trinity,” following
the “fundamental axiom” formulated by Karl Rahner: “The ‘economic’
Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the
‘economic’ Trinity.” Thomistic theology may welcome this fundamental
rule, as long as one does not confuse God with the world or view the
identity of “immanent Trinity” and “economic Trinity” as an a priori identity. But in fact, the contemporary approach to the economic Trinity and
the immanent Trinity tends to start with a formal distinction between the
two aspects, and then attempts to reunite them. Aquinas’s teaching on the
Trinity, by contrast, begins with the doctrine of the eternal processions of
the persons, and it understands the divine missions as including the eternal
processions : “The temporal procession [i.e., mission] is not essentially
different from the eternal procession, but it only adds a reference to a
temporal effect” (Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. 1, dist. 16, q.
1, a. 1).The missions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit bear within themselves the eternal mystery of the divine Persons. The divine Persons themselves
are given. At the same time, the doctrine of the missions maintains the
essential difference between God and his created effects, with no danger
of confusing the Trinity and his created gifts. In this way, St. Thomas’s
doctrine of the divine processions and missions offers a powerful alternative to the scheme of the “economic Trinity” and the “immanent Trinity.” Insofar as it integrates the teaching on processions, on relations, and
on Persons, the doctrine of the divine missions may be considered the
pivot, indeed a real key, of St.Thomas’s Trinitarian theology.
Rahner himself, as well as many of his successors, presented his “fundamental axiom” as a critique of a Thomistic theology that is suspected of
having isolated Trinitarian faith and obscured the links between the
Trinitarian mystery and other areas of Christian faith (Christology, grace,
our relationship to each divine Person, and so forth). Such a critique,
however, rests on a serious error in reading Thomas. It presupposes, in
fact, that Thomas separated the treatise “On the One God” from the treatise “On the Triune God,” which is not true, as will be shown later.
Further, theologians today often accuse Thomas of having constructed
his Trinitarian doctrine on the basis of a “psychological analogy,” the analogy of Word and Love. Drawn from an analysis of the human soul rather
than from God’s action in history, his doctrine supposedly obscures the
economic dimensions of the Trinitarian mystery. But in reality, a reading
of Thomas reveals exactly the opposite: by presenting the Trinitarian
mystery in terms of the property of the Word “spoken” by the Father from
all eternity and that of the Love “breathed” by the Father and His Word,

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Thomistic theology is able to illuminate the very foundations of the economy established by God Who acts, creates, and saves by His Word and His
Love. It is in His Word and through His Love, proceeding from Him from
all eternity, that the Father creates us and comes to meet us in salvation.
Here again we discover that, where a superficial approach claims to find a
way of thinking severed from the economy of salvation, in reality Thomas
presents a doctrine that, by explaining the properties of the eternal Trinity, can then provide the deepest insights into the divine economy.8
To summarize this advantage of the Thomistic approach: it is a speculative theology committed to probing the mystery of God in Himself (the
theologia of the Fathers) and which therefore is also able to manifest the
foundation for God’s actions in history (the economy) and the extent of
the relations that exist between us and God, in virtue of these actions.
Providence, Creatures, and God
St. Thomas explains God’s relations to the world within the general
framework of a threefold causality: God is the efficient, exemplar, and
final cause of creatures.9 This analogical network of causality allows St.
Thomas to illuminate the extent to which creatures are attached to God
and depend on Him: in their existence, in that which they are, and in
their actions.This structure of relations between God and the world rests
on an even more fundamental distinction between first cause and second
causes. Utterly rejecting all univocity in considering God and the world,
that is, all attempts to place God and the world on the same level and
organize them, so to speak, into one single category or into one single
possession of the same perfection, the theology that follows Thomas
firmly insists that “God is beyond every genus.”10 God does not belong
to the order of creatures: God and His creatures do not stand “face to
face” like two beings in the same series. Just as the being of God is not
identified with the being of creatures, so God (the first cause) does not
work on the same level as creatures (second causes).The action of God is
the source of the being and action of creatures; He is always their prevenient transcendent cause.
This fundamental principle, which seems very simple on the surface,
entails an extremely important consequence for the way in which the exercise of divine providence is perceived. In fact, since the acts of God are of
another order than those of creatures, they are not “added” to the acts of
creatures. God does not intervene in the world by limiting creaturely
8 See Emery, Trinity in Aquinas, 148–56.
9 ST I, q. 44.
10 ST I, q. 3, a. 5.

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action: rather, He establishes the foundation of creaturely action.When a
creature acts, under the motion of the provident Creator God, its act does
not derive half from the creature and half from God, as though God and
creatures have to split acts between them. Creaturely action—not only
the natural action of beings lacking reason, but also the free and intelligent action of human beings—is attributed entirely to God and entirely
to creatures, although according to different modes: God is wholly the
source of the act insofar as He is the first cause (efficient, exemplar, and
final), and the creature is wholly the source of its own act insofar as it is
the second cause.11
The collaboration or “co-operation” of creatures in God’s act constitutes a fundamental Thomistic doctrine, which is now more than ever
vital to Christian preaching, because the doctrine excludes from God and
the human being all competition, all destructive tension in which
anything attributed to one has to be subtracted from the other. This
doctrine is at the opposite pole from the forms of dialectical thought in
which the constitution of creatures can be protected only at the cost of
God’s withdrawal from the scene (affecting one’s conception of creation
and the Passion of Christ) and in which, conversely, God can be exalted
only at the cost of the creature vanishing.
In opposition to the theological and philosophical positions characterized by univocity and neglect of the doctrine of participation, the theology that originates in Thomas is thus able to present a profoundly religious
view of the world and human life as subject to God’s action, while
upholding a certain autonomy of the world as a “total cause” in all its
dignity, within its own order. In the creature, there are two orders, two
relations: first, an order toward God, and second, an internal ordering of
the created universe. Neither one suppresses the other, but the first
provides the foundation for the second.12 In this respect, Thomas’s
thought stands as an important source for the Vatican II constitution
Gaudium et Spes, since it unifies, at their highest peak and in their inmost
heart (that is, the participation of creatures in God’s being), the autonomy
11 ScG, Bk. 3, chap. 70: “The same effect is not attributed to a natural cause and to

divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural agent; rather, it is wholly done by both, according to a different way (sed totus
ab utroque secundum alium modum ).” On this central issue, see André de Muralt,
“La métaphysique thomiste de la causalité divine,” in idem, L’enjeu de la philosophie médiévale (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 331–51.
12 St.Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 9:“The order of the parts of the universe
to one another results from the order of the whole universe to God.” See also
Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. 2, dist. 1, q. 2, a. 3; ScG, Bk. 1, chap. 78; ST I, q.
103, a. 2.

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and dependence in relation to God which characterize the world, society,
and human freedom. It is not difficult to recognize the crucial function
that Thomistic metaphysics can have in the whole of theological reflection: moral doctrine, ecclesiology, ecumenism, spiritual life, and so forth.
An Immovable and Blissful God
In contemporary theology, special mention should be made of one of the
areas of thought in which the Thomistic way of understanding the relations between God and the world is expressed most clearly: the defense
of the immutability of God.13 The question usually arises in connection
with the place granted to history in the doctrine of God. A vast current
of twentieth-century theological reflection has promoted Trinitarian
faith through the theme of God’s manifestation or self-communication in
history: God communicates Himself as Father in His Son Jesus and in the
gift of the Spirit, so that history is understood as the “place” where God
the Trinity unfolds. In some theories, the relationship between God and
history is founded upon the “historicity of God” ( Jürgen Moltmann).
Such exploitation of history as an indispensable and constitutive element
in the doctrine of the Triune God necessarily excludes divine immutability. Thus in contemporary theology, the immutability of God is often
challenged on behalf of Trinitarian faith.
Many different modern solutions have been proposed for modifying
the traditional doctrine of God’s immutability. Some authors uphold the
notion of a self-determined God in the process of becoming (the theological appropriation of a Hegelian theme). Others distinguish a primordial, immovable nature of God from a consequent nature in which God
determines Himself by becoming (a distinction made by Whitehead). Still
others propound a distinction between the immovable, necessary being of
God in Himself, and the free love of the divine Persons,Who thus experience suffering in their mercy toward human beings (see for instance J.
Galot). Finally, other authors have recourse to the notion of “kenosis” to
explain the Trinity and its action in terms of “renunciation,” “surrender,”
or “separation of God from Himself.”The theme of God’s “suffering,” that
is, the suffering of the divine Persons in their divinity and in their mutual
relations, usually crystallizes within a theological interpretation of Christ’s
13 For a more extended treatment of this issue, see Gilles Emery, “The Immutabil-

ity of the God of Love and the Problem of Language Concerning the ‘Suffering
of ‘God,’ ” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F.
Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009),
27–76; Bruce D. Marshall, “The Dereliction of Christ and the Impassibility of
God,” ibid., 246–98.

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Passion and abandonment on the Cross.Various proposals introduce some
sort of bipolarity, or “drama,” into God. But in reality, even if they do not
confuse God with the world, they tend in various (and sometimes very
subtle) ways at least to introduce characteristics of our created world into
God, thereby jeopardizing his transcendent simplicity.
The way that Thomas proposes is, in my opinion, much more
profound. By solidly upholding the absolute simplicity of God (without
which God would not be God), Thomas defends His immovability and
impassibility. Divine immutability is the immutability of pure Act: God is
immovable, not by an absence of life, but “by excess,” so to speak, on
account of a superabundance of life. God exceeds and surpasses all mutability. The immutability of God is one aspect of His pure and luminous
simplicity. The doctrine of analogy reveals the immutability of God as
completely different from that of a rock. Because of His pure and full
actuality which nothing can perfect, God is subject neither to becoming
nor to anything that belongs to becoming. His perfection specifically
explains His creating and saving love and His mercy toward His creatures:
God loves His creatures with the same immovable love with which He
loves Himself eternally, freely granting them to receive, in the becoming
of time, a participation in His own goodness. Rather than introducing
history into God, thereby demolishing His unity and perfect actuality,
Thomas leads us to consider how God is at the source of history: He is
always prior to it, surpassing it as its transcendent source and end.
With Thomas, the Passion of Christ cannot be conceived of as a breach
in the relations of the Trinity, or as a suffering of the three divine Persons
(a theme that is unfortunately all too frequent in today’s theological and
spiritual literature).The Passion is an event with Trinitarian features: it is
not the story of one stage of development in the Trinity itself, but the
revelation of the supreme love which unites the Father and Son in their
distinction, even in the very flesh assumed by the Son of God.Thomas’s
theology warns us against introducing any contradiction into God. On
this subject, Charles Journet, a disciple of Thomas, wrote: “Mystery is
adorable; contradiction is hateful.”
A similar observation applies to the notion of “event.” Today, with the
goal of promoting a conception attentive to the concrete and historical
dimension of the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, it is not rare to find
theologians employing the notion of “event” for expressing the Trinitarian
being of God: “God is event.” Certainly, the notion of event suggests that
the Being of God is a veritable fullness of life. However, it is necessary to
recall that God is absolutely simple: He is Act, without composition, without movement, and without becoming. Illumined by the affirmation of

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God as “pure Act,” the notion of “event” can be considered a metaphor that
suggests the eternal newness of the divine Being. Even so, caution is necessary here, since the use of this metaphor can cause confusion.
Trinitarian Monotheism
As noted previously,Thomas and his disciples evince a very strong sense of
the unity of God.Trinitarian faith is not an alteration of monotheism; on
the contrary, it represents a strong monotheism. Our present-day situation,
with its frequent encounters with Islam and Judaism, increases the need for
a strict account of faith in the one and only God. Here again, the support
provided by Thomas (who paid special attention to the critical importance
of monotheism in encounters with Islam and, on another level, in philosophical reflection) reveals itself as particularly valuable and fruitful.
It should first be highlighted that Thomas never divided the study of
God into a treatise “On the One God,” followed by a treatise “On the
Triune God.” In the study of God, he distinguishes between that which
concerns the divinity common to the three Persons (the three Persons
are one single God), and that which concerns the property of each
Person (the Persons are truly Three).This distinction carries forward the
heritage of the Cappadocian Fathers, who, in order to respond to the
most radical Arian challenges, had recognized that our knowledge of and
language about the Triune God involve a sort of redoubling, that is, the
“combination” of that which is common to the whole Trinity (essence
and the “essential attributes”) and that which is proper to each Person in
particular (the personal properties).14
The distinction between the aspects of unity and personal plurality
should not, however, be understood as a juxtaposition. Rather, Thomas
guides us toward a recognition of the integration between the aspect of
divine unity and the aspect of distinction within the concept “divine
Person.” In the Summa theologiae, the study of the essential attributes
precedes the study of the properties of the Persons, because the theological understanding of a divine Person presupposes an understanding of
the divine essence: by definition, a person is a subsisting reality, that is, a
substance (first substance: hypostasis). Therefore, the notion of “divine
Person” presupposes and integrates an understanding of the divine
substance common to the Three. It is in the personalism of his doctrine
of God that Thomas fully manifests his theology’s profound monotheism.
Progressing one step further, Thomas identifies relation as the key to
the doctrine of God. In God, the Person must be grasped as a “subsisting
14 See Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca

A. Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 44–48.

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relation,” that is, a personal relation (the Father’s paternity, the Son’s filiation, the Spirit’s procession) that integrates within itself the divine
substance and the distinction of the Persons from one another. Indeed,
Thomas’s analysis of relation leads him to recognize two aspects or
elements in a real relation: (1) its aspect of existence (a real relation is not
a shadow; it has real consistence within the being which is its subject); (2)
its formal aspect of rapport with another.Applied to God, with the adaptations necessitated by the simplicity of God, this analysis leads to the
recognition that the relation distinguishing the Persons possesses God’s
very being, with which it is identified. This is what is meant by the
Thomistic notion of “subsisting relation.” In this way, reflection on God
hinges on the study of relation which, at the pinnacle of theology, integrates all aspects of the mystery of God: the one essence and personal
plurality of the Father, Son, and Spirit.15
For one who is willing to accept the conclusions of patient reflection,
this doctrine has the invaluable advantage of presenting a rigorous Trinitarian monotheism. Thomas demonstrates to the Christian who reflects
on the content of the credo that although his faith surpasses mere human
thought, it harbors nothing of the irrational or absurd and is the foretaste
of that which believers hope to contemplate some day in the splendor of
the vision of the Triune God.
With the same stroke,Thomas also equips us to perceive the extent of
the divine economy of creation and salvation, in which each divine
Person intervenes in virtue of the divine essence, yet according to the
mode of His personal property (the Father acts as Father, the Son as Son
and Word, the Holy Spirit as Love and Gift).This Trinitarian monotheism
specifically expresses the doctrine, often poorly grasped and misunderstood, namely, that of the Trinitarian “appropriations”: each divine Person
operating as one God, yet in conformity with the mode of His constitutive and characteristic property.16 For instance, the adoptive filiation
bestowed on us by God is appropriated to the Father as its Author (the
Father acts as the “Author” or source of the Son and Spirit through
Whom and in Whom He comes to meet us), to the Son as its Model (as
Son, He is the Model of all filiation: He gives us a share in His sonship),
and to the Holy Spirit as to the one Who imprints filiation in us (the
Spirit acts as the Spirit of the Son Who communicates to us filial life).To
recognize the unity of the divine act does not obscure the proper characteristics of each Person, but rather uncovers the presence of three indivisible Persons in the work they undertake on our behalf.
15 See Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 114–27.
16 See ibid., 312–37 and 347–55.

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As an additional benefit, this teaching enables us to connect consistently with the support offered by philosophy—which is no small advantage. For one thing, while reflecting on the essential unity of God, the
theologian can integrate the best of metaphysical thought and equips
himself for a true encounter with other forms of monotheism. Again,
while considering the properties of the Persons in their distinction,
theology can point out the true value of the analogies drawn from our
knowledge of the world (relation, word, love, etc.), in accordance with
the teaching of Holy Scripture. In short, the theologian who reflects with
Thomas on the mystery of the Triune God can demonstrate the intelligibility of his faith, persevering in dialogue with other monotheistic religions and philosophy, and using the resources of human thought placed
at the service of the faith.
The Unity of Salvation by the Gift
of the Word and His Spirit
St. Thomas’s Trinitarian doctrine likewise enables us to conceive of the
universal act of the divine Persons in a broad and varied way.This feature
is extremely important for today’s ecclesiology (and for Christian theology of religions). For one thing, since God creates through His Word and
His Love, Thomas shows that in the order of natural goods, all human
beings participate in the gifts of the Son and the Holy Spirit offered
through creation. Moreover, when God bestows His grace on a human
being by an act of mercy, He makes Himself present by His Word (the
Son) and His Love (the Holy Spirit),Who impress their seal (wisdom, a
participation in the personal property of the Son, and charity, a participation in the personal property of the Holy Spirit as Love) upon this
human being, enabling him, now graced, to return to the Triune God
through supernatural acts of knowledge and charity.This is the very heart
of the doctrine of “divine missions” with which Thomas concludes his
study of the Trinity in the Summa theologiae.17 The doctrine of the sending of the Son and Holy Spirit, by which the Triune God becomes present in the souls of the just, is the crown of Thomistic teaching on God.
At these heights, speculative theology and spiritual doctrine are one.
The gracious sending of the Persons is co-extensive through all of
history (an invisible mission is also directed to the blessed at the very beginning of their beatitude in heaven).18 For Thomas, however, this does not
mean that there are two parallel or complementary economies, one with a
greater extent than the other: an economy of the Incarnate Word and the
17 See ibid., 360–412.
18 ST I, q. 43, a. 6, ad 3.

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810

gift of the Spirit to the Church on one hand, and an economy of the invisible mission of the Word and His Spirit on the other, going beyond the
work of Christ and the life of the Church. In no way can the theory of the
twofold path or twofold economy, which sometimes poses a temptation to
Christian theology of religions, claim to have support in Thomas.
The theology of Thomas clearly professes the unity of the Trinitarian
work. The reason for this is simple and profound: Thomas explains that
the work of the Spirit consists in “leading the faithful to the Son,” while
the work of the Son consists in “leading us to the Father.”19 And “the
vision of the Father is the end of all our desires and actions.”20 The “invisible mission” of the Spirit in the souls of the just does not establish an
economy parallel to that of the Son: the Spirit’s mission has no other goal
than to manifest the Son and lead us toward Him. Before the Incarnation, the Spirit prepared believers for the Son Who was to come in the
flesh; now, after the Incarnation, the Spirit manifests the Word united to
the flesh from which He is now inseparable, that is, the Christ Who is the
Head of His Church.The Holy Spirit configures human beings to Christ.
Thus the mission of the Spirit in the hearts of the just is inseparable from
the mission of the Son:Thomas explains that one cannot take place without the other.21 As a result, in the age of the Church, the gift of the Trinity is inseparable from the special stamp that the humanity of the
Incarnate Son has imparted to every grace. Whoever receives the Spirit
receives the Son, and whoever receives the Son receives Him in the grace
that springs forth from the plenitude of His holy humanity. Thus the
sending of the Spirit does not constitute a different salvific economy
from that which builds up the Church of Christ. According to the principles clearly explained by Thomas, the gift of the Spirit incorporates its
beneficiaries, whoever they may be, into Christ, that is, into the Church
which is the Body of Christ. This very profound, coherent, and unified
understanding of the Trinitarian economy provides the best source of
inspiration for ecclesiological reflection and the theology of religions.22
In all the areas we have briefly explored, the thought of Thomas emerges
as a particularly fruitful way of confronting today’s questions about God.
19 St.Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John 14:26 (no. 1958).
20 Ibid., 14:8 (no. 1883).
21 St.Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. 1, dist. 15, q. 4, a. 2.
22 For more on this, see Gilles Emery, “Le Christ médiateur: l’unicité et l’univer-

salité de la médiation salvifique du Christ Jésus suivant Thomas d’Aquin,” in
Christus—Gottes schöpferisches Wort, Festschrift für Christoph Kardinal Schönborn
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. George Augustin et alii (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
2010), 337–55.

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This fecundity helps Thomas’s disciples to stay close to the Patristic heritage
which inspires him, in all the rigor of a way of thought that respects the
incomprehensibility of the mystery without straying into contradictions. In
following the way outlined by Thomas, today’s Thomistic theologian
pursues the goal that Aquinas assigned to Trinitarian theology: to give an
account of faith in God the Trinity, that is, to manifest the truth and intelligibility of the faith while avoiding error, in a foretaste of that which the
N&V
believer hopes to contemplate in the beatific vision.23

23 St.Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 5.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 813–826

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Christ according to Saint Thomas*
G ILBERT N ARCISSE , O.P.
Dominican Studium
Bordeaux, France

Is Saint Thomas a Christian Theologian?
S UCH A provoking question signals a possible suspicion. There is no
doubt that Saint Thomas was a Christian in his faith and in his sanctity.
But does Christ hold the first place in his theology? The opinions differ.
One recent manual of theology skips Thomas’s Christology altogether in
its historical survey. Another characterizes the medieval period as a
rationalization of the mystery. Elsewhere,Thomas is principally studied as
a philosopher, as a disciple of Aristotle. He is thought to have generated
an abstract Scholasticism entirely removed from the historical context. A
survey of his works, especially his great Summas, reveals that Christ
appears rather late, almost at the end of his famous Summa theologiae.The
summaries of Thomas’s Christology often focus exclusively on the
obscure expression “hypostatic union.” Even the treatment of Christ’s
humanity appears to be a conceptual game far removed from the Jesus of
the Gospels, from the Christ of faith, the savior of the world. These are
some current interpretations.
We need, therefore, to rediscover the Christology of St.Thomas.
The Place of Christ in the Summa Theologiae
It is true that the Summa theologiae begins with God and not with Christ.
Nevertheless, we should note that Christ is the first Person mentioned.
In the general Prologue, a citation of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 3:1–2) specifies that the Apostle, and thus the theologian, addresses his interlocutors
* Originally: “Le Christ selon saint Thomas,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint

Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 115–29. Translation by
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

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as “little children in Christ.”This in Christo placed at the beginning of the
work defines its deepest identity. But why does Christology not appear
until the last part of the Summa, after the long expositions on God,
creation, and ethics? Thomas has produced a work of wisdom. He thus
applies a certain order to his work. This order has a pedagogical end, to
facilitate the students’ interest and assimilation. It also has a properly theological end, which is to allow us to comprehend better the place of Christ
in God’s design.
The placement of Christology within the Summa theologiae is best
understood with the help of two distinctions. The first is rather traditional, as it deals with “theology” and “economy.”The second has a philosophical origin: the return of a being to its principle.
Numerous Fathers of the Church reserve the term “theology” to their
discourse that deals exclusively with God and the mystery of the Trinity.
For the rest of Revelation, they employ the term “economy.” Economy
is everything that God has done for the salvation of humankind, notably,
the Incarnation and Redemption. Thomas structures his Summa by
combining these two dimensions. Certainly, whatever the theologian
knows of the mystery of God begins in the economy. For example, Christ
reveals a privileged relationship with the Father as well as the sending of
the Spirit. This is the Trinitarian mystery. Then, the theologian deepens
his investigation of this mystery by searching for the possibility of one
God subsisting in three Persons.The theologian thus passes from “economy” to “theology.” It is normal for the theologian to begin his most
mature exposition with the end of his reflection, since the end is its most
intelligible aspect. For example, Christ reveals the truth of God and of the
Trinity. By his investigation of this gift of Revelation, the theologian also
arrives at a better systematic expression of these mysteries.This is why the
Summa begins with God and the Trinity. Far from relegating Christ to an
insignificant place, it embraces the essential end of his mission and appropriates a better means of apprehending it.
Christ’s place in the Summa is also understood with the help of a
second ordering principle. In the thirteenth century, the following metaphysical truth was generally acknowledged: every being returns to its principle. It was undoubtedly influenced by neo-Platonic philosophy. The
plentitude of a being is in the “before” and the “beyond” of this earthly
existence.Thus, this principle can involve a return to this lost plentitude.
But one can also understand it in the Christian context of the theology of
creation. All being comes from God and receives its plentitude from him.
It is therefore normal that every being would tend toward its plentitude
by a return to its Creator God. Metaphysical analysis of finality also

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confirms this proposal. The human being is a privileged creature with
regards to this return. Having come forth from God, the human being
returns to God. But theology, notably that of St.Thomas, also avoids two
pitfalls of the Platonic tradition.We do not come from God as from a state
of existence that we had before our earthly life, nor as a part or emanation of God. Because we are created “from nothing,” as beings we are
absolutely original, for our lives begin with our earthly existence. We
come from God by the act of creation. We carry within ourselves the
dynamism of our return. But we do not return to God in just any manner.
Union with God is not the result of an ascetic effort or of speculative ability. Union with God requires the aid of another order, of the supernatural. Our path of return to God must pass through Christ. It is precisely this
“return through Christ” that justifies the place of Christology in the third
part of the Summa. One already knows God’s existence, the mystery of
the Trinity, source of all of creation, the mystery of the human being in his
moral complexity and the failure of sin. One can then show that our
return to God is possible only through Christ and the sacraments, so that
we may attain our ultimate end, eternal beatitude (eschatology).
Far from relegating Christ to the realm of secondary developments,
Thomas situates his Christology at the key moment of his work. Christ
is the one who makes all else possible and intelligible.The human being
proceeds from the hands of God by creation (exitus ), and should return
to God through Christ (reditus ).Thomas explains that this circular movement of creatures, and especially of the human being in the grace of
Christ, finds its principle of being in the very mystery of the Trinity, in
the Trinitarian processions. It is hard to be a more Christian theologian,
to be situated simultaneously at the heart of the mystery of Christ, of the
Trinity, and of the human being called to participate in this mystery.
Why Christ?
Before demonstrating how Thomas deepened his reflection on the
mystery of Christ, one ought to ask him a radical question: why Christ?
Thomas has left us numerous reflections in his two Summas, the Summa
contra Gentiles and the Summa theologiae, where he speaks of the “fittingness” of the Incarnation. By Revelation and by faith, the theologian
knows that the Word was made flesh. He or she then tries to understand
the meaning of the divine choice. Far from multiplying superfluous
hypotheses, he or she engages in theological research that is within the
frame of the harmonies of creation and the salvific economy.
Thomas gives us a number of fitting reasons for the Incarnation. We
will highlight his two principal reasons.The first considers the immense

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difference between God and humanity. God is invisible because he is
completely spiritual, while the human being is at once spiritual and physical. We make use of the visible world in order to gain knowledge. The
Incarnation thus appears as a divine adaptation to the mode of knowledge that is proper to the human being, that is, knowledge through sensible things. In Christ, God makes himself visible to the senses, so that faith
in the invisible may be born in our hearts.This “visibility to the senses”
has a vast meaning, namely, the Incarnate Word’s real participation in
human existence in a specifically earthly condition. Henceforth, the
human being can decipher the mystery of God in this concrete humanity that is Christ.
A second fitting reason for the Incarnation is the historical state of sinful
humanity. For Thomas, the principal motive for the Incarnation is redemption, that is, salvation. This question of “the motive for the Incarnation”
divides theologians to this day. It determines two approaches to Christianity. The first approach emphasizes the Incarnation as the perfection of
creation, and of the human being in particular. Its defenders include
numerous Franciscans. In this view, Redemption is considered secondary,
an accident of history. The second approach, maintained by Thomas and
the Thomistic tradition, prefers to stay close to the motive indicated in
Sacred Scripture.The latter presents the real human being as a sinner who
can be saved only by God. Thus, the principal motive of the Incarnation
becomes salvation; Redemption has a central place in Christianity.
Through his exposition of our access to the invisible mystery of God
and the salvation of the human being for a new communion with God,
Thomas summarizes the essential fittingness of the Incarnation by teaching us that everything is explained by the goodness of God. The good
tends to communicate itself. The love of God is so good that he freely
wills to cause our participation in his own goodness. Why Christ? So
that, in spite of sin, the human being can attain this communion of love.
Who Is Jesus Christ?
In order to respond to this question, Thomas uses the usual theological
sources, which are Sacred Scripture and Tradition. Scripture is cited very
often in his Christology. This is not just for the sake of simple illustrations, nor is it a theatrical background. He keeps his most elaborate theological proposals in close proximity to the Word of God.Thomas taught
and wrote numerous commentaries on Scripture, including almost the
whole of the New Testament.These commentaries are themselves treasures of Christological doctrine.

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817

The Catholic theologian also thinks within the Tradition. It is inconceivable that one might write a Christology without integrating the
developments of the ancient Tradition. Thomas knew well the Christological teachings of the great ecumenical councils. He always applied
himself to the task of making them more intelligible, especially the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon, which defined the dogma of Christ as
“one divine Person subsisting in two natures, the human nature and the
divine nature.”Thomas attained a deeper understanding of the mystery of
Christ with the help of many citations from the Fathers of the Church.
He crafted a “golden chain” of patristic citations that comment on the
four Gospels. His growing knowledge of the Fathers, both Latin and
Greek, led to several well-known evolutions in his Christology—in
particular, on the role of Christ’s humanity. Finally, one ought not to
ignore the heresies. Thomas explains that the theologian should know
not only the truth of his discipline but also the contrary errors.
In the Summa theologiae,Thomas divides his Christology according to
three major themes: ontology, Christ’s “psychology,” and the mysteries of
the life of Christ.“Ontology” asks about the being of Christ:Who is Jesus
Christ? He is the Word of God, a divine Person whose being subsists in
two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.Thomas offers numerous illuminating explanations of this dogma. He also often mentions that
the mystery of the “hypostatic union” (the union of two natures in one
person) largely exceeds anything that the theologian can say. By the
method privileged in Thomism, that of analogy, one can show the possibility and intelligibility of this mystery.
Having analyzed the metaphysical truth of Christ,Thomas proceeds to
study the consequences of these two natures. The metaphysics of Christ
thus gradually leads to the second major theme, the “psychology” of
Christ. Here, St.Thomas explicates a unique case, that is, the special way
in which humanity is connected to the Word. In the past, the Fathers of
the Church sometimes allowed their philosophical conception to determine their theology of Christ’s humanity.The most famous of these cases
involved the influence of Stoic philosophy, which kept some of the
Fathers from conceiving of the “passions” in Christ. Certainly, Thomas
also used various philosophies in his Christology, notably the anthropology of Aristotle. But the latter made him more conscious of his method,
particularly of the connection between theology and philosophy.Thomas
was always careful to give a certain primacy to the revealed data. This is
why he did not hesitate to reintroduce the totality of human emotions
into his Christology. His argument is simple. He invokes the witness of
the Gospel of John ( Jesus cries, is angry, etc.) and uses it to argue for two

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positions: (1) the realism of the Incarnation, which is to say, God did not
pretend to be human; and (2) the traditional principle of “the soteriological motive” (the Greek word soteria means “salvation”) so dear to the
Fathers of the Church, according to which anything that is not assumed
in the human nature of Christ is not saved. Therefore, Christ must have
a complete human nature: body, soul, affectivity, memory, intelligence,
and will.Thomas applies himself to a detailed description of this reality.
This humanity is that of the Word Incarnate.Thus, it has a special call
to the supernatural life. It needs grace, the theological virtue of charity,
and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.This integral humanity perfected by grace
has some exceptional characteristics. For example, the humanity of Christ
has the fullness of grace because Jesus Christ is the principle of all the
graces that are henceforth given to human beings. This is the “capital
grace,” the grace of Christ the Head (caput ) of the Mystical Body the
Church, according to St. Paul’s profound metaphor, on which Thomas
comments at length.
Another question taken up by Thomas and highly disputed to this day
is that of Christ’s knowledge.Today, the question is posed in a radical way:
how did Jesus know what he taught, and in what way was he conscious
of his personality? One might respond that he knew everything, since he
was God. But this answer is too simple, for it does not take the reality of
Christ’s humanity into consideration. How did Christ in his humanity
know the truths of the faith? Thomas does not take up the modern question of the consciousness of Christ. However, he treats the problem of
Christ’s knowledge with great nuance and offers an original solution:
Christ is exceptional in that he had a humanity which lived simultaneously in the two conditions that other human beings live successively, that
is, the earthly condition with its acquired knowledge, and the heavenly
condition with its vision of God. He also explains that the “infused ideas”
could directly inform the human intelligence of Jesus.This explanation is
disputed today, even by some of Thomas’s disciples. The quest for an
answer ought to continue. However, some fundamental positions ought
to be maintained. Christ was conscious of himself, of his profound identity, and of the meaning of his mission. These are immensely important
for our understanding of Jesus Christ. They also determine the connection between Christ and his Church (Did Jesus will the Church? Did he
will this Church?), and the continuity between the teaching of Jesus and
the dogmas of the Tradition (Do the dogmas express the substance of the
truths of which Jesus was conscious?).
Finally, the third major theme of Thomas’s Christology is his theology
of the mysteries of Christ. Having identified the Person of Christ in his

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819

profound being and his psychology, one desires to understand what Jesus
has done on earth for our salvation, or, as Thomas likes to say, all that
Christ did and suffered for us. Theologians often neglect this part of
Thomas’s doctrine. Fortunately, it has recently been demonstrated that
this is an essential part of is Christology. The whole of Jesus’ life is
surveyed, from the Annunciation to his Exaltation, in order to show the
manner in which he is the source of grace.
Who is Jesus Christ? Thomas again proceeds like a sage who begins
with the contemplated truth.This is the reason for the order of his exposition: being, psychology, the mysteries. Certainly, like all believers,
Thomas first discovered Jesus in the mysteries of the Gospel. But as a
theologian assured by faith and the developments of the Tradition, he
returns to these same mysteries of the Gospel with an ever-greater awareness of the reality of the Person of Christ. Jesus’ actions witness to the
identity of his Person, but this identity allows one to understand better
the meaning of his actions. For Jesus Christ, identity and actions are intimately connected.Thomas belongs to that rare breed of theologians who
do not fragment their Christology. Instead, he offers a vision of Christ
that penetrates simultaneously the metaphysical profundity of his being
and the salutary fruitfulness of his concrete existence.
Christ the Universal Savior in His Humanity
Thomas carefully presents the integral humanity of Jesus Christ. God wills
to save all human beings, and Christ saves all of humanity.The theology
of the mysteries of the life of Jesus manifests the essential place of Christ’s
humanity for the salvation and sanctification of human beings. A key
phrase keeps recurring in Thomas’s works:“All that Christ did or suffered
in his humanity is the source of salvation.”Today, one often speaks of the
“Paschal mystery” as the center of the Christian faith. The death and
Resurrection of the Lord also form the heart of the mysteries for
Thomas, but he considers the totality of the life of Jesus. Because the
humanity of Christ was sanctified so abundantly by his union with the
Word, his actions have an infinite spiritual fruitfulness.
In his explication of the efficacy of these mysteries, Thomas did not
restrict himself to edifying declarations or a collection of biblical citations.
Jesus is really human. One can therefore apply to him the philosophical tools
that allow us to know human nature. Thomas’s intellectual generosity was
not always well received. Is it permissible to introduce philosophy at the
very heart of the mystery? Thomas applied this method with a great deal of
theological prudence. He considers human actions in their different aspects:
their source, efficacy, finality, and expressions. In order to realize this delicate

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project, he combines the Aristotelian notion of “cause” with the Platonic
notion of “exemplarity.” First, he contemplates the mysteries of Jesus in the
Gospel.Then, instructed by what he has gleaned from his studies of Christ’s
being and psychology, he proceeds toward a deeper understanding of each
of the mysteries. Thus, the “life of Jesus,” or rather a typology of his existence drawn from the Gospel, is scrutinized with the diverse kinds of causes:
efficient, final, exemplar. Efficient causality is subdivided into “principal
causality,” that of God, of the Word, and “instrumental causality,” that of
Christ’s humanity.These (causal) explanations are interspersed with biblical
citations and a great number of patristic confirmations.Thomas consistently
shows how grace comes to human beings by this humanity living the
episodes of his earthly existence.
As an example, let us consider the subject of the miracles that Jesus
accomplished:
Christ came to save the world [final causality] not only by the Divine
power [ principal efficient causality] but also through the mystery of his
Incarnation [instrumental efficient causality]. Consequently, in healing the
sick he frequently not only made use of his Divine power, healing by
way of command, but also by applying something pertaining to his
human nature [efficient and exemplar causality]. Hence on Luke 4:40:“He,
laying his hands on everyone of them, healed them,” Cyril [of Alexandria] says: “Although, as God, he might, by one word, have driven out
all diseases, yet he touched them, showing that his own flesh was
endowed with a healing virtue.” [Having cited Scripture and a Father of
the Church,Thomas cites four other biblical passages and several Fathers
of the Church in this same passage.] (ST III, q. 44, a. 3, ad 2)

Thomas specifies the role of human liberty in the face of a miracle:
It was unfitting that the human being should be made righteous unless
he willed: for this would be both against the nature of righteousness,
which implies rectitude of the will, and contrary to the very nature of
the human being, which requires to be led to good by the free will, not
by force. Christ, therefore, justified the human being inwardly by the
Divine power, but not against the human being’s will. Nor did this [ justification] pertain to his miracles, but to the end of his miracles. (ST III,
q. 44, a. 3, ad 1)

A major conclusion is the universality of the mediation of Christ’s
humanity.This point is disputed today because of the inter-religious situation: is Christ the only Savior? Is the Church, his Mystical Body, necessary for salvation? The solutions that relativize the religions always end up

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821

doing harm to the role of Christ’s humanity. It is hard to accept that a
human life of thirty years in a corner of Palestine two thousand years ago
could claim a universal significance, especially with regards to the efficacy
of grace, one that is valid for all human beings in every time and place.
The basis for a solution can be found in the Thomistic theology of
Christ’s humanity.Thomas even makes a comparison with the universality of creation. In effect, to create is for God to communicate being.
Thomas says: in the same way that God communicates being to all things,
Christ, according to his humanity, communicates grace to all spiritual
beings, though certainly according to different modalities.
The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus
The term “mystery” is being used here in the Christian sense: it signifies
the efficacy of an action whose origin is God and whose meaning he
reveals. The life of Jesus is “mysterious,” not like an esoteric secret, but
because a humanity is connected to the Word in a unique manner. Jesus
was born, ate, and slept like every human being. But his actions carry
within them a treasure of the spiritual life, one that is “hidden” to the
profane, but enlightening for those who believe. Indeed, the authority of
his word, the profundity of his teachings, and the power of his miracles
point toward this mysterious meaning. But Jesus Christ cannot be
“deduced.”There must be a conversion of the heart and the light of faith.
In harmony with the exitus/reditus approach, Thomas presents these
mysteries according to three moments of the economy of salvation: (1)
the entry of the Son of God into the world; (2) Christ’s progress in the
world; and (3) the manner of Christ’s departure from the world.
Here, one can discover how, from the beginning, the Blessed Virgin
Mary was a mother sanctified by her infant son.This efficiency of grace
in Mary’s womb should suffice to establish the dignity of human embryonic existence, founded upon this tapestry of the human and the divine
in the maternal womb.
Thomas introduces the public life of Jesus through a general reflection
on his manner of life. The essential rule is formulated in this way: “the
manner of the life of Christ ought to agree with the end of the Incarnation, with the reason for which he came into the world.” Now Jesus came
into this world in order to manifest the truth, which implies that he
displayed it in public and preached openly. He also came into this world in
order to deliver human beings from their sins.Therefore, he led an itinerant life, one oriented toward the ultimate sacrifice. Finally, he came into the
world to open a path to relationship with God.This explains his convivial
and familial earthly life, whose purpose was to inspire confidence.

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Thomas comments at length on the temptations and miracles of Jesus,
both in the Summa theologiae and in his biblical commentaries. As a good
theologian, he gives particular attention to preaching. Christ is the doctor
of truth. Jesus’ preaching should be placed in the larger context of his
origin, the Father, in the context of its content, the object of study for all
of theology, and connected to the extensive Old Testament teaching on the
unique efficacy of the Word of God. Thomas also shows the manner in
which Christ carried out his ministry of the Word. This ministry is the
fulfillment of the ancient promises.This is why Jesus first preached to the
Jewish people, the first mediator of Revelation.Thomas then explains why
Jesus’ words provoke a certain scandal, why they needed to be proclaimed
publicly, and why they remain in an oral purity without being written
down by Jesus himself. The words of Jesus have salvific power: “only the
teaching of Christ procures salvation.”This efficacy is inseparable from the
action of the Holy Spirit: “If Christ had taught by writing down his
doctrine, one might think that nothing more profound can be discovered
here than that which is in the written formulation.” Instead, Jesus directly
“impressed” his doctrine into the hearts of his disciples by the Spirit who
gives faith.The task of writing will fall to his closest disciples.Thomas then
explains a key principle of the economy foreseen by God, that is, the cooperation of human beings: “to accomplish something through others
demonstrates a much greater power than to accomplish something by
oneself.” It is in this context that Thomas provides the Dominican tradition
with the most beautiful motto of the friar preacher: “to contemplate and
to give to others the fruits of contemplation,” because the preaching comes
from the abundance of contemplation, beginning with the mysteries of the
life of Christ.The teaching of Jesus is centered on the Passion. It becomes
efficacious, salutary, and universal only after the total gift of himself.
The Passion is Christ’s “departure” from this world. Christ’s ultimate
passage is rooted in prayer.Thomas speaks of an “ascension of prayer.”The
Christ, the Word Incarnate, ought to pray insofar as he is human, so that
his human will may be perfectly obedient to the Father’s plan. In Jesus’
prayer of petition, the Gospel demonstrates that all other forms of prayer
are included: praise, thanksgiving, and contemplation. Christ’s prayer
therefore has an exemplary value. In particular, by his agony Jesus shows
us how to orient our human affectivity toward God, despite the reality
of death, which is repugnant to him. This prayer shares in the economy
of salvation. For Thomas, the events of salvation history have come about
through Christ’s prayer.This remains true for the prayer of the Church.
Christ’s departure from this world is incomprehensible without recalling his priestly dimension. The priesthood of Christ includes a double

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823

mediation. Indeed, the gifts of God are transmitted to human beings
through Christ. This is his descending mediation, from God to human
beings through Christ. Christ also reconciles the human race with God.
This is his ascending mediation, of humankind to God through Christ.
The three powers—priesthood, royal wisdom, and prophecy—which
were dispersed in the Old Testament are united in Christ. Henceforth, the
baptized will receive grace according to this triple qualification. Christ is
the source of every priesthood, that of the baptized who offer their life
to God, and that of the ministerial priests, those men who enable the
union of the offering of the faithful with the sacrifice of Christ.
The plentitude of salvation is found in the death and Resurrection of
Jesus. The Passion, death, burial, and descent into hell are the great
mysteries of Jesus’ departure from this world. According to Thomas, two
kinds of plentitude characterize the Passion of Christ: suffering and salvation.The greatest suffering corresponds to an abundance of love.Thomas
explains that the Passion is a sacrifice, inasmuch as it is a most acceptable
offering to God in virtue of the liberty and charity that inspire it.Thus, the
plentitude of love is primary. Still, Christ really suffered in his human
nature. His heart bore our sins.Thomas speaks of the “charity of Christ’s
suffering” that is stronger than all sin. Christ’s abasement merits salvation
for us. In contrast to all who try to exalt themselves, Christ’s humility
merits him the exaltation of glory as well as the salvation of all human
beings. The Passion of Christ is the proper efficient cause of the remission of sins, always by the humanity of Jesus. His Cross is not some
esoteric symbol. Rather, it is the fulfillment of every Old Testament
prefiguration of universal sanctification. Christ liberates in an extensive
and in a profound way: extensive, in that all of humanity draws its salvation from him; profound, in that by his Passion, Christ liberates us from
original sin and from all other sins.This plentitude extends itself into the
past, because before his Passion, one could enter the kingdom by faith in
Christ’s future Passion, the Passion that was hidden in the Old Testament
figures, though no one could obtain eternal beatitude before Christ’s
Passion. Finally, this abundance extends itself to the realm of the
deceased. Christ’s descent into hell is the application of the Passion to the
just among the dead, but not to the damned.
The Resurrection is closely connected to the Passion.Together, these
two mysteries are the source of the remission of sins and of new life.The
plentitude of salvation is anthropological: the whole human being, body
and soul, is resurrected and justified. All bodies will be resurrected at the
end of time for the Last Judgment. All human beings are therefore called
to benefit from the grace of the Resurrection. In this mystery, the human

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being is oriented toward the fulfillment of his life, as the very movement
of the Ascension confirms:“our spirit is turned toward him.” His hidden
corporeal presence facilitates belief in Christ’s continual and universal
presence in his divinity:“[Christ ascended] in order to increase our faith,
which is of things unseen . . . to uplift our hope. . . . For by placing in
heaven the human nature which he assumed, Christ gave us the hope of
arriving there” (ST III, q. 57, a. 1, ad 3). Christ’s plentitude thus continues as the plentitude of the Holy Spirit.
The Imitation of Christ
The celebrated work The Imitation of Christ post-dates Thomas, but its
theme traverses the whole Christian tradition. Its source is Sacred Scripture. St. Paul traces some fundamental lines such as “Christ the Head” and
“the Body the Church,” the idea of conformity to Christ, and the entire
foundation of his ethics.Thomas retrieves these themes when he says, for
example, that Christ and the Church form “a single mystical Person,” and
that, if Christ is the Head of the Church, the Spirit is its Heart. With
Thomas, the imitation of Christ is also understood with the help of two
themes: communion in the mysteries of Christ and the exemplarity of
these same mysteries.
Communion in the mysteries of Christ requires “faith and the sacraments.” By faith and the sacraments, God’s salvific plan in Christ continues and is given to us by this blend of the visible and the invisible. Christ’s
Passion plays a determining role in this process: “The sacraments of the
Church derive their power especially from Christ’s Passion, the virtue
[i.e. power] of which is in a manner united to us by our receiving the
sacraments” (ST III, q. 62, a. 5c). Thomas recalls the Johannine symbolism of Christ on the Cross. The baptismal water and the Eucharistic
blood flowing from his pierced side manifest “the most important sacraments.”The connection is clear:“the sacraments of the Church . . . derive
their efficacy from the Word incarnate himself ” (ST III, q. 60, prologue).
Nevertheless,Thomas affirms that “all” the mysteries of Christ’s life cause
our salvation. He proposes an original thesis: there is an actuality or abiding
power of Christ’s mysteries beyond the sacraments. How can this be? On
Christ’s part, this comes about by the special unity of his humanity with the
Word that transcends time. The power of the mysteries can therefore be
applied everywhere and in the time to come. On the part of the beneficiary, faith is required, one that is at least implicit.Thus, a communion with
Christ’s past life is possible. Certainly, these episodes are buried in history,
but the power of grace remains.The mysteries of the life of Jesus conceal in
themselves the capacity for an extraordinary communion.

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825

Christ’s exemplarity deepens this communion even more.The Passion is
the exemplar of the remission of faults and of our death to sin.The Resurrection is the exemplar of new life. One must also consider “all” of the
mysteries. For Thomas, one can distinguish two types of Christological
exemplarity: a “moral” exemplarity and a “fontal” exemplarity (fons =
source).The first is commonly known.This is the imitation of the small child
in the presence of its parents.Thomas uses this example very often. Christ is
a moral example.Thus, in his temptations, he teaches us to fight against our
own temptations. In a general way, Christ is a model of the virtues.
But the “fontal” or ontological exemplarity goes further still. Indeed,
the humanity of Jesus is not only an exterior model, but also a source of
grace, because of Christ’s profound being. All that Christ lived is the
source of grace. Grace proceeds from each mystery of his concrete existence. I have a model and, at the same time, the grace to accomplish this
imitation. Not only do I see how Christ resists temptation, but he
communicates to me the appropriate grace to fight against my own
temptation.As in art, I see the work; but in addition, the spirit of the artist
dwells in me so that I can reproduce this work.The great difference here
is that there is neither a counterfeit nor a simple reproduction, because
the Spirit of the masterpiece is really present. Thus, the interior edification of human personalities is always an original work. Every saint
imitates the same charity of Christ, and yet no two are identical, while all
resemble their first exemplar. Christ’s mysteries can be imitated according to an infinite participation.
Grace comes from God. But is “passes through” the humanity of Jesus.
Jesus experienced all grace through the mysteries of his life. God’s gift,
divine in its source, is profoundly human in its modality. It is rare if not
impossible for the human being to receive from another a help that has been
so well adapted. In being human like Christ, I am led into God like Christ.
This theology of the mysteries, of their efficacy, merits, and exemplarity,
has numerous consequences. As the Prologue of the Summa theologiae
announced, the Christian life is indeed in Christo.At any moment, it is possible to commune in the mysteries of Christ with the efficacy of his “Christoforming grace.”The believer who meditates on the mysteries of Christ with
his simple rosary is directly applying this high theology. Lectio divina becomes
a “holy reading” because Christ really gives himself here. Each mystery that
is read and reread can be a source of grace in a similar situation.
Yet we must go still further. The imitation of Christ introduces us to
the greatest mystery, that of the Trinity. Christ is the perfect image. The
human being is only “to” the image. But in Christ, the human being is
freed from sin and rediscovers the Trinitarian mystery of his spiritual

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Gilbert Narcisse, O.P.

being. As the processions of wisdom and love accomplish themselves in
God between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so God’s image
accomplishes itself in us through the processions of wisdom and love by
our intellect and will, both in our nature and in our elevation through
grace. The human being is thus called to “imitate the Trinity.” I do not
lie, not only “because it is not good,” but because, from all eternity, the
Father begets the Word of truth, and my intellect was created in his
image, was made for the truth, to receive the light of faith and then the
light of glory. Similarly, I do not love in just any way, since the Spirit of
love proceeds in God from all eternity, and the natural as well as supernatural dynamism of my being was constituted to this very image and
called to resemble it freely. How can one concretely realize this Trinitarian imitation? By the imitation of Christ, through the mysteries of his
humanity.Why this imitation? In order to prepare oneself “to see God.”
These Christo-conforming graces structure our spirit and prepare it for
this future encounter. Thomas’s Christology gives its “earthly emphasis”
to Christ and his disciples while orienting human existence toward its
definitive dwelling place, to the vision of God and the definitive
communion of the saints.
The “actuality” of the mysteries of the incarnate Word explains why
Thomas was so attached to the most beautiful realization of the presence
of Christ here below: the Eucharist. He brought his head close to the
tabernacle in order to be confirmed in his theology. He offered the most
profound theological developments on the presence of Christ in this
sacrament. He also composed the Office of Corpus Christi. This was a
decisive moment in Thomas’s spiritual evolution. Christ, perfect God and
perfect man, is entirely contained in this sacrament.Thomas does not say,
“receive the body of Christ” but “receive Christ.” He explains that Christ
“joins us to himself ” by this sacrament because it is utterly proper to live
with one’s friends.
Clearly, the Christology of St.Thomas needs to be rediscovered. N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 827–837

827

The Mystery of the Church*
B ENOÎT-D OMINIQUE DE L A S OUJEOLE , O.P.
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

I T IS COMMON knowledge that St. Thomas did not compose a
treatise De ecclesia; his theological synthesis does not present any unified
ecclesiological development.The reason for this lacuna is likewise familiar: the mystery of the Church is the very mystery of the divine economy which created angels and human beings in order to lead them into
beatitude.This thoroughly Patristic view explains why Thomas does not
consider the Church as a particular mystery, but considers it in all aspects
of Revelation. The need for a distinct treatise became apparent only in
the fourteenth century, when the word “Church” came to signify the one
economy of Redemption at the stage of development achieved by
Christ. The real origin of the modern treatises lies in the controversy
with the Protestants, because of the ecclesiological dualism between the
visible and invisible Church exemplified in Luther and Calvin. By the
twentieth century, these new treatises on the Church were slowly evolving out of their apologetic approach to attain a truly theological level.
Major contributions to this field have been made by significant authors
in the Thomistic tradition (Yves Congar, Charles Journet). Today, the
ecclesiologist’s primary responsibility is to construct a synthesis based on
the insights of Vatican II which will help to recover the true depth of
Patristic theology. Some main features of the Thomistic contribution to
this present-day challenge will serve to illustrate the assistance that can be
expected from this school of thought today. I will highlight two speculative points: the question of the “definition” of the Church, which should
* Originally: “Le mystère de l’église,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint Thomas

d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 131–41.Translation by Thérèse
Scarpelli Cory.

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Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P.

articulate the constitutive unity of the ecclesial mystery, and the question
of the Church’s unicity.
The Definition of the Church
While the literal meaning of the word Church (ekklesia ) is “the convocated assembly,” we need to determine the real definition by refining our
understanding of the corresponding concept. The first clue Vatican II
provides in this regard is that this community is a complex reality: the
various elements that constitute the mystery of the Church (elements
that can be reduced to two, the divine and the human) “are not to be
thought of as two realities. On the contrary, they form one complex reality which comes together from a human and a divine reality.”1 In other
words, this particular being is profoundly one and undivided, even
though it is composed of multiple elements. Man himself is the type of
this complex being: “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity.”2
The various elements of a single but complex reality are inseparable,
“coextensive,” as Journet would say, in such a way that the one never
exists without the other, although the one is not the other, the subject
itself being the unity between the two, a unity that is in some way
substantial.The mystery of the Church consists primarily in this unity.
In the field of ecclesiology, the theological renewal of the twentieth
century focused intense study on the different aspects of the ecclesial
mystery, drawing up an inventory of the mystery’s fabulous wealth which
was progressively adopted by the Magisterium (see the encyclical Mystici
Corporis ).The Council summarizes the multiplicity of aspects under two
general headings: the Church is at once human and “divine.” How can
we account for this unity? Before Vatican II, most authors (with the
notable exception of Journet) upheld a simple juxtaposition: the Church
is a hierarchical society and a supernatural community. After the Council, one theory, using a dialectical method of analysis, explained the ecclesial mystery in terms of “tension” between the two elements, each of
which is defined by the negation of the other. The Church is at once
institution and communion in a state of constant tension: institution
being “exterior” and not-communion, and communion being “interior”
and not-institution.
Thomism, however, seeks to explain communion through and in institution, rather than alongside it or in spite of it, both aspects being
sustained in real unity at the deepest level. Its starting-point, as noted by
Journet back in 1926 and then by Congar, is taken from Thomas’s expo1 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium [LG], §8.
2 Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §14.

The Mystery of the Church

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sition of the New Law.3 Within the New Law, which is thoroughly one at
heart,Thomas distinguishes two dimensions.The primary one is the Holy
Spirit in Person (uncreated grace), together with the virtues and gifts
(created grace).The secondary dimensions are those which dispose toward
or precede the primary one (the written law, precepts, etc.), and those which
result from or are posterior to it, bringing God’s gift to fruition in man
(good works).To the modern bipartite structure, exterior (human) and interior (divine),Thomas prefers a tripartite one: created causes of grace (which
mediate grace), first effect (uncreated and created grace in man), and second
and final effect (the works accomplished in grace). In this view, all three are
essential, because grace is operative at each stage, whether communicating
itself, inhering in the subject, or working in and through the subject. In the
first stage, grace is as though contained in mediating things (literally so in
the sacraments); in the second, it is received into persons (grace heals and
raises up nature); finally, in the third, it operates in and through works.
Thomas sets forth these concepts in several places in his writings. In the
treatise on the sacraments in the Summa theologiae,4 Thomas establishes that
a sacrament “contains” the grace which it confers, a theme that was reiterated by the Council of Trent and became a doctrinal given thereafter. In the
treatise on grace,5 Thomas demonstrates that grace is a new quality in the
soul. Finally, according to his doctrine of merit,6 the acts man performs in
grace are truly his own acts, effected by his free will, even though since he
is a creature, his capacity to act comes from God in the first place.
These principles point out a fruitful path toward explaining the unity
that conjoins all the elements of this complex being, the Church: sacramentality.Vatican II states repeatedly that the Church is the sacrament of
salvation, that is, the sign and instrument of man’s unity with God and
other human beings.7 The early Fathers were well-acquainted with the
idea of the mystery of Christ as a sacrament.They also applied the name
of sacrament to the Church, since the Spouse is in a certain way one with
the Husband, and they called the acts of divine worship sacraments.
Thomas, however, reserved the name to the seven acts of divine worship,
and the clarifications he contributed are invaluable. We owe to Thomas
the now-classic definition of the sacrament as “sign of a holy thing insofar as it makes men holy”;8 the sign makes known a reality that is in the
3 ST I–II, qq. 106–8.
4 ST III, qq. 60–65.
5 ST I–II, q. 110.
6 ST I–II, q. 114.
7 LG, §1.
8 ST III, q. 60, a. 2.

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Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P.

act of sanctifying. That which is signified is first a cause (Christ acting)
and secondly an effect (sanctification—the gift of grace). These insights
will help us to gain a better understanding of sacramentality in all its
Patristic breadth.
First, sacramentality is revealed in its most perfect form in the mystery
of Christ Himself. He is the first and most fundamental sacrament.
Christ’s sacramentality expresses His ontology. Christ is true God and
true man; in Him, divine reality makes itself known (via sign) and gives
itself (via instrument) through and in the assumed human reality. The
constitutive relation of the mystery of the Savior is a humanity that is at
once sign and instrument of the divinity.This sacrament-being, which is
Christ Himself, is perfectly indivisible, on account of the union of the
two natures in the Person of the Word.
Second, Christ’s Spouse likewise manifests a sacramentality which
defines her very being. But there is one difference: the Church is not
divine in the same way that Christ is God.The Church is a graced human
reality, and that fact necessitates an ecclesiological monophysitism. With
this clarification in mind, we can say that the Church is the theological
community of men with God and each other, in the sign and instrument
of a human sociological religious community. The materially visible
community is a sign and instrument that only faith can recognize: the
supernatural community subsists in this community, because the Church
is inseparably the means and reality of grace. Moreover, this is the
dwelling-place of her mystery.
There is, however, a difficulty implicit within the entitative sacramentality of the Church which is absent from the entitative sacramentality of
Christ: by virtue of the hypostatic union, the sign and instrument that is
His humanity is so pure, so transparent, that it cannot conceivably be
separated from His divinity. In contrast, the ecclesial community on earth
is composed of sinners. Should we then say that in the Church the two
communities—sociological sign and theological reality—are “normally”
joined but can be dissevered by the transgressions of its members? If this
were the case, the Church’s entitative sacramentality would be destroyed,
since this sacramentality defines the Church as a being with constitutive
unity. The Church might or might not exist at any given moment,
depending on the ups and downs of its local or universal history.This idea
is often upheld by our Protestant brethren, who consequently cannot
escape the ecclesial dualism between visible Church and invisible
Church, Church of saints and Church of sinners. The potential dualism
of the ecclesial mystery is one of the modern difficulties in Catholic
dogmatic theology, and it can be found in Rahner and Kasper. These

The Mystery of the Church

831

authors consider sacramentality, not from the starting point of its perfect
fulfillment in the ontology of Christ, but from the other end, so to
speak—namely, from its fulfillment in the operative sacramentality of the
seven sacraments. In these sacraments, indeed, it is possible to conceive of
the sign without the accompanying effect of grace, if grace is hindered
by an obstacle in the person who is receiving a sacrament.
The solution to this serious problem, in my opinion, can be found by
applying to the Church the specific sacramentality of the Eucharist.
Unlike the other six sacraments, this sacrament does not consist in one
single sacramental act. It is first of all the presence of a being, of Christ
the Head, aiming toward bringing into existence the whole Christ, Head
and members: in other words, the Church. In the Eucharist, the “physical” Christ engenders the “mystical” Christ.”The Church is the ultimate
end of this sacrament. What happens if the sacrament is celebrated
unworthily (for instance, if the faithful are poorly disposed)? The Lord
becomes really present in the consecrated species, but the edification of
the Church does not follow. In this sacrament, then, there is one reality
existing under the sign of species, as well as an ultimate reality which
depends on the state of the participants. Consequently, the Eucharist has
three dimensions: the sign alone (the bread and wine, realities which are
profane in themselves, but which, once consecrated, are in the most literal
sense the Body and Blood of Christ), an intermediary reality (the real
presence in the sign), and a final reality which depends on the fervor of
the participants.
Applying these principles to ecclesiology, then, we can say that the
Church is a religious community in the sociological order, a sign
containing an intermediary community which indefectibly possesses the
sancta (preaching of the Gospel, celebration of the sacraments) for the
sake of bringing to birth the final community which is the Mystical Body
in act.The mystery of the Church’s constitutive unity lies in the fact that
the three communities are but one. The sancti belong to it by means of
the sancta, which are visibly manifested in the empirical community. In
answer to the formerly daunting question, “Who is a member of the
Church?” we can reword and repeat Joan of Arc’s answer to her judges:
“If I am a (holy) member, God keeps me one (by means of the sancta ); if
I am not, God makes me one (by means of the sancta ).” Just as no one
can know with certitude whether he is in the state of grace, the identity
of the members of the Church cannot be resolved except in terms of
“tendency.” Am I, or am I not, within the “logic” of incorporation, by
belonging to the empirical community that possesses the sancta ? Here an
answer does exist: the Church is perfectly formed in the saints who take

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advantage of all three aspects of the ecclesial mystery, and it is still in the
process of coming to be in the sinners who are tending toward the final
theological reality.
This way of viewing the ecclesial mystery illuminates several problems, including the thorny problem of the Church’s holiness. She is indefectibly holy with respect to the sancta, which she possesses and which are
infallibly fruitful. She is also really holy in those who live by grace, whose
presence in every age and place is made manifest through the tradition of
canonization. A Christian’s sins are precisely what puts him in a position
of diminished membership in this holy community. The statements of
repentance being issued today for the sins of Christians underline the fact
that, although such sins have obscured the ecclesial sign, they have not
affected the holiness of the mystery. It is in himself that the sinner impairs
ecclesiality, not in the community that is the Body of Christ.
Finally, it should be emphasized that the mystery of these three
communities in one is manifested in the charity that constitutes the
unifying link among all the aspects of the ecclesial sacrament.The sociological-sign community is united by the mutual love of its members, and
not only by exterior juridical bonds. The community that possesses the
sancta is also united by charity, since charity animates the preaching of the
Gospel and inspires adherence, just as it animates all the sacramental celebrations, of which it is the fruit.The community of the saints is the final
and definitive dwelling-place of the love between God and human
beings, a love shining through works. All this is aptly summarized by the
modern rediscovery of communion as a definition of the Church.
Communion is the name of the unity that charity effects.Thomas has left
us a profound theology of charity as friendship (ST II–II, q. 23, a. 1), that
is, reciprocal love founded on a common good. While he took the idea
directly from Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics VIII), he transposed it to the
level of the marvelous New Testament concept of koinonia : God shares
His beatitude with us so that we might share in it; thence is born
community between God and human beings.
In other words, the mystery of the Church is the mystery of divine
beatitude communicated to us so that we might share in it and therefore
share a divine common good with God and each other.This is the economy established in the era of Redemption, according to the foundational
law of sacramentality. Revealed in the mystery of the Savior’s very being,
this law expresses to us the means God has undertaken to rescue the
world. If the Church can be defined as the sacrament of the communion of
men with God and each other, it is because she is the Body and Spouse of
Him in Whom sacramentality is most perfectly found as in its source.

The Mystery of the Church

833

Therefore, the acts of divine worship that take the name of “sacrament”
can be understood as the joint acts of the two sacraments of salvation,
Christ and the Church: act is in accordance with being.
The Thomistic tradition provides invaluable resources for developing
this position. Such a concept of unity—one might even say substantial
unity—between various elements leaves no room for divisive dualisms.
Far from emptying the mystery, this concept of unity reveals the mystery’s
proper place: in the bond that joins the mystery of Christ to that of the
Spouse.This speculative proposal can be verified by examining its effects
in concrete personal life. Those who profess the Church’s substantial
unity will never separate visible membership from invisible membership;
they will live a concrete ecclesial life which honors sociological membership for the sake of a liturgical and doctrinal membership fulfilled in the
plenary theological membership which is the goal of their whole lives,
ever more fully reduced to act in good works. Conversely, those who
profess separations or “tensions” have a tendency to relativize more or less
the secondary dispositional dimensions of the Church: how many of our
contemporaries think—often in good faith—that the communion of
saints is not linked to doctrinal correctness and liturgical fidelity? Moreover, membership in an empirical community, liturgical fidelity, and
doctrinal correctness do not derive primarily from “exterior” or juridical considerations, but are already expressions of charity; charity animates
the means so that it may be the end.
The Unicity of the Church of Christ
These considerations bring us to another question, which Vatican II
sought to clarify but which still needs to be addressed comprehensively.
Lumen Gentium states: “[T]he sole Church of Christ . . . constituted and
organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic
Church. . . . Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth
are found outside its visible confines.”9 The issue at stake here is how to
understand the unicity of the ecclesial mystery: the Church is one, not
many. The deposit of faith teaches that the mystery of the Church has
been fully manifest ever since the day of Pentecost, and that it perdures
through the faithfulness of God. But if the Church is indissolubly visible
and invisible, as discussed above, where in the world is it? Pius XII taught
that the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is the Catholic Church (see
Mystici Corporis and Humani Generis ).Vatican II preferred to say that the
Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, “subsists in” the Catholic Church.
9 LG, §8.

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Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P.

The Magisterium thus moved from an identification which might be
called exclusive (the Mystical Body is the Catholic Church), to a nonexclusive identification (the Mystical Body subsists in the Catholic
Church).The Council Fathers’ explicit intention was to highlight in this
way the existence and value of the means of salvation preserved by
communities separated from the Catholic Church.
To understand this very recent dogmatic development, we must somehow account for two seemingly contradictory points. On the one hand, the
Church is one, not many; on the other hand, there are a plurality of ecclesial community situations. The Magisterium of Vatican II limited itself to
articulating this state of affairs through expressions like “perfect or full ecclesiastical communion” (referring to the Catholic community) and “incomplete or imperfect ecclesiastical communion” (referring to the other
separated communities).10 How can the conclusion that there are many and
various Churches be avoided? How can ecclesial unicity be upheld?
The easy way out would be to state that the one Church of Christ is
the sum of the Church and the ecclesial communities, none of which
could then claim that it alone is the Church of Christ. But such a solution would contradict the overall tenor of Vatican II’s magisterial statements: this one Church of Christ is present and dwells in the Catholic
Church. More complicated is the notion of the separated communities as
“in some way analogous” to the Catholic Church.This notion can also militate against unicity, since analogous realities can be really distinct from
each other, which is exactly how these communities consider themselves
in their rejection of Catholic communion. Instead, the Council prefers to
say that the one Church of Christ is imperfectly present in the separated
communities.What is the meaning of this statement?
I will propose the following solution, which is based on the teachings
of Vatican II.
It should first be noted that the multiplicity of ecclesial situations is
connected to the fact that the mystery of the Church is the mystery of
unity between the means of salvation and the reality of salvation, as
mentioned above. The Catholic Church is the one ecclesial community
which has preserved the integrality and integrity of the means of salvation: the other separated communities have only preserved some of the
means of salvation.This Catholic plenitude guarantees her identity with
the Church of Christ. Nevertheless, the means of salvation preserved
among our separated brethren can still effect the mystery of salvation in
their communities (see Diagram 1).
10 See LG §14;Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio §4.

The Mystery of the Church

835

Diagram 1
The mystery of the
one Church of Christ,
comprising the means
of salvation and the
reality of salvation:

Fully formed:

The Catholic Church

Imperfectly formed:

Separated Churches
and communities

Still, how can we avoid recognizing a plurality of Churches? It is at this
point that Thomism can contribute an original proposition which I think
respects the magisterial datum.This proposition is based on the notion of
the “potential whole.”
A whole is basically a reality composed of parts held together in a unity
which constitutes them into a complete being needing no further addition in order to be itself. It is this completeness which defines the value of
the whole. For instance, a complete collection of the works of Balzac is
worth more than the sum of the individual books: even if one work is
missing, its perfection is lost, it is no longer a “whole.”There is, however,
a kind of “whole” which has particular significance for our inquiry. Let us
take the royal power as an example and analyze it, for the sake of clarity,
in the form that was so familiar to France’s Old Regime, that is, the
absolute monarchy. Royal power resides wholly in one man—the
monarch—and he needs no power from the ministers to complete his
own. The king possesses all the arms of power: executive, legislative, and
judiciary.The ministers share part of the royal power (executive), a part that
is ordered toward certain affairs such as justice, finances, or the military,
but that does not count toward the power of the king: no more executive
power resides in the king’s whole council of ministers than in the king
alone. The power delegated to a minister is a limited participation in the
king’s executive power. To some degree, this principle is operative in the
sacrament of holy orders.The orders are profoundly one, but they exist in
their fullness only in the bishop: priests and deacons participate in them
only according to the functions proper to each. The bishop, priest, and
deacon together do not have any more power than the bishop alone.
This kind of “whole” is called the potential whole because the various
members each realize the perfection of the whole in essence (royal
power, holy orders) but not in power (the minister, the priest and
deacon). Only one being realizes both essence and full power (the king,
the bishop).
This insight illuminates our question about the one Church. The
ecclesial essence is the reality of the communion of theological life; ecclesial power is constituted by the means of salvation, which communicate

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Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P.

theological life (that is, the preaching of the Gospel, the sacraments
possessed by a sociological community). On this basis, it seems to me, one
can maintain that the one Church of Christ truly subsists in the Catholic
Church because it is in this community that the ecclesial essence is found
in connection with the fullness of its power.To use the Vatican II terminology, here is perfect or complete ecclesiality.The separated communities can realize the ecclesial essence, but only by participating in certain
means of salvation (diminished power).They are therefore potential parts
of the one Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church; they
subsist by participation in the one subsistence of the Catholic Church, to
varying degrees, based on the number and weight of the common means
of salvation which they have managed to preserve. This scenario is
expressed in Diagram 2.
Diagram 2
The one Church of
Christ, in this world:

is the community of
theologal life (essence)

This one Church
of Christ…

…subsists in the Catholic Church

This one Church of
Christ, the Catholic
Church, is also
present

exists through the means
of salvation instituted by
Christ (power)

in terms of essence…

in terms of power…

in the separated
communities: identity

in the separated communities
according to varying degrees:
participation

If there is no plurality of Churches, but unicity alone, it is because the
Catholic Church—the one Church of Christ—is present in its essence in
the separated communities.This insight also highlights the state of imperfection in which participated ecclesiality of the separated communities
exist.Their incompleteness results from a lack of integrality in the gifts of
Christ. This discovery outlines a path for ecumenism: to strive, through
doctrinal dialogue, for a unity in the means of salvation, which will then
fully manifest the unicity of the Church.
The ecclesial unity and unicity mentioned in Lumen Gentium §8 are
essential features of the mystery of the Church. From a speculative point
of view, they express the datum of Revelation, which is principally
embodied in the theme of the Church as Mystical Body of Christ (the
paragraph preceding Lumen Gentium §8 unfolds the theme of the Church
as Body of Christ). Here the tradition originating in Thomas converges
with a stream of theological research whose conditions are primarily
determined by the progress that was made by twentieth-century

The Mystery of the Church

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ecumenism. Here the Thomistic tradition has an opportunity to reveal its
true fruitfulness, striving above all to reveal the continuity within this real
dogmatic development: from Pius XII to Vatican II, theological insight
N&V
into the same truth grows ever deeper.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 839–851

839

Thomism and Ecumenism*
C HARLES M OREROD, O.P.
Pontifical University of St.Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

T HE OFFICIAL goal of ecumenism is to “[restore] unity among all
the followers of Christ”1 by overcoming the divisions which have arisen
in the past. In this essay, I will address three essential elements of
ecumenical dialogue:
1. What is the visible unity among the followers of Christ which
ecumenism seeks to reestablish?
2. In ecumenism, one must begin from commonly held truths in order
to understand divergences. For instance, what are the issues
surrounding the truth which all Christians accept, that is, the necessity of preaching the Word of God?
3. What criteria are used to select themes for dialogue, and how are
these themes addressed? I will propose the hierarchy of truths as a
criterion for choosing themes, highlighting by way of example how
one theme can be addressed with the help of St.Thomas: the philosophical presuppositions of the various confessional positions.
Visible Unity among Followers of Christ
Visible unity among the followers of Christ is the goal of ecumenical
dialogue, at least as understood by the Catholic Church. Moreover, the
* Originally: “Thomisme et Œcuménisme,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint

Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 143–51. Translation by
Thérèse Scarpelli Cory.
1 Vatican II, Unitatis redintegratio [UR], §1, in Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council
II, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (Northport, NY: Costello,
1998), 453.

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Charles Morerod, O.P.

ecumenical movement, like any other movement, cannot orient itself
without knowing its goal.
Acceding to certain understandable but deplorable dynamics of
conflict, the respective theological positions of the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation have long been expressed in polemical terms.
The classic example of the limitations of Counter-Reformation theology is St. Robert Bellarmine’s definition of the Church. Attempting to
respond to the Protestant insistence on the invisible aspects of the
Church, he unilaterally upholds the visible ones:“The Church is a human
society as visible and tangible as the society of the Roman people, or the
kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice.”2 This vision of the
Church has had a major cultural and theological impact: ever since
then—and still today, more often than might be thought—the word
“Church” has designated a visible structure, more or less stripped of spiritual significance.This idea thus embodies the very Reformation presuppositions which it was supposed to combat. Were dialogue to be
established between two different visions of the Church, neither of which
could quite connect the visible component with the spiritual reality, what
would happen? Ecumenism would be interpreted as an effort to reestablish unity in terms of structures which were obviously useful but without much effect on the relationship of believers with Christ, a relationship
which might very well be lived out (as it had been for centuries) within
different structures.The urgency of the need for visible unity would thus
not be really recognized.
Since he lived before the Reformation, St. Thomas Aquinas was not
tainted by its atmosphere, and his ecclesiology is much broader than that of
Bellarmine, as well as closer to that of Eastern Christianity. According to
Thomas, the Church is the gathering of Christ’s faithful; these faithful are
united by faith, hope, and charity; they are sanctified by the blood of Christ,
the Holy Spirit, and the indwelling of the Trinity; the Church is universal as
regards its “geographical” extension (on this earth and reaching up into
Heaven), the status of its members, and its extension through time; finally,
the Church, built on the foundation of the Apostles, is indestructible (all
these elements are summarized in his commentary on the Credo ). One
might get the impression that St.Thomas is merely listing an assortment of
features with no clear interconnection, to be studied individually in succession, as is usually done in ecumenical dialogue.
But in reality, for Thomas, all these characteristics of the Church are gathered into one single view unified by the concept of relationship to Christ.
2 Robert Bellarmine, De controversiis, II, Lib. 3.

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841

In fact, this relationship, recognized by all Christians, forms the foundation
for ecumenical dialogue. Moreover, St.Thomas addresses the Church’s relationship with Christ from the point of view of salvation, taking an approach
that is less different from Luther than one might think. All those whom
salvation concerns are related to the Church. But Christ came to save all,
and therefore everyone belongs to the Church in a certain way:
It is written: “Who is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful”
(1 Timothy 4:10), and: “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for
ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Now to
save men and to be a propitiation for their sins belongs to Christ as
Head. Therefore Christ is the Head of all men . . . the body of the
Church is made up of the men who have been from the beginning of
the world until its end.3

Thomas specifies that this membership may be more or less complete: for
some it never becomes membership-in-act, and others lose it entirely.
Thomas never strays into the type of Christocentrism that neglects the Holy
Spirit and that the Orthodox are concerned about finding in the West
(whenever Catholic theologians speak of the action of the Spirit outside the
Church). For Thomas, union with Christ in the Church is the work of the
Spirit:“ ‘[I]f anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong
to him’ [Rom 8:9]. For the unity of the Holy Spirit produces unity in the
Church.”4 In the same passage,Thomas specifies that the same Spirit is in
Christ and in us: the Spirit forges the unity between Head and members,
from which flows a more-than-human unity among the members.
Does the unity of the Church, flowing from her relationship to Christ
the Head and effected by the Spirit, imply a visible unity? Thomas
answers that when God enters into relationship with men, not only does
He act according to His own spiritual nature, but He also takes into
consideration the corporeal dimension of humankind. God chose the
path of the Incarnation in order to unite us to Himself, because human
beings understand other humans most easily; thus a God-man is a particularly appropriate way to make God known to the human being.This is
what Thomas says regarding the necessity of the sacraments, in a passage
that can be applied to the whole life of the Church:
Since the death of Christ is, so to say, the universal cause of human salvation, and since a universal cause must be applied singly to each of its
3 ST III, q. 8, a. 3, sed contra & corpus.
4 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, trans. James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R.

Larcher,Aquinas Scripture Series 4 (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1980), no. 202, p. 98.

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Charles Morerod, O.P.
effects, it was necessary to show men some remedies through which the
benefit of Christ’s death could somehow be conjoined to them. It is of
this sort, of course, that the sacraments of the Church are said to be. Now
remedies of this kind had to be handed on with some visible signs. First,
indeed, because just as He does for all other things, so also for man, God
provides according to his condition. Now man’s condition is such that he
is brought to grasp the spiritual and intelligible through the senses. . . .
Second, because instruments must be proportioned to their first cause.
But the first and universal cause of human salvation is the Incarnate
Word, as is clear from the foregoing.Therefore, harmoniously the remedies by which the power of the universal cause reaches men had a likeness to that cause; that is, the divine power operates in them under visible
signs.Third, because man fell into sin by clinging unduly to visible things.
Therefore, that one might not believe visible things evil of their nature,
and that for this reason those clinging to them had sinned, it was fitting
that through the visible things themselves the remedies of salvation be
applied to men. Consequently, it would appear that visible things are
good of their nature—as created by God—but they become damaging
to men so far as one clings to them in a disordered way.5

By choosing the Incarnation and, according to the same pattern,
instruments both visible and invisible for the transmission of salvation,
God shows His consideration for the human being.To underestimate the
Church’s visible dimension would be to postulate an angelic Church.
The principles for unity, then, are the following:
• Salvation is offered to all in Christ.
• All those who participate in this salvation are one in Christ,Who is
made present by the Spirit.
• One becomes a member of Christ’s Body by entering into relationship with Him, according to varying degrees of membership (linked
to participation in the sacraments, holiness, etc.).
• The Body of Christ is at once visible and invisible, like Christ
Himself, because in working with us God takes into account our
humanity, which is not pure spirit.
Unity in the Proclamation of the Word of God
A few years ago an Orthodox metropolitan, speaking of his extensive
ecumenical experience, made this observation: all Christians agree that
the Word of God must be proclaimed, but for us, the proclamation of the
5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Charles J. O’Neil (New York:

Hanover House, 1956), IV, c. 56.

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843

Word culminates in the constitution of the Church gathered around the
bishop and celebrating the Eucharist, and when Protestants speak to us
about proclaiming the Word, they do not understand it in the same way.
In fact, the Reformation tends to assume that the Word is addressed, not
to the Church for the sake of communion, but to each individual, who
also constitutes the ultimate interpretative norm.
What does Thomas say about this point, which should already be held
as a common object of faith for all Christians: namely, the proclamation
of the Word of God?
First of all, Thomas does not deny that Scripture provides theology
with its most decisive arguments:
Sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of
the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable.6

But what happens when interpretations of Scripture collide? The
answer to this question lies in the very mode of transmitting the faith, as
witnessed by Scripture.
What are the conditions for faith? In order for one to believe, he must
hear someone speak of the truth which he may or may not believe; and
he must acquiesce to it in faith:
Two things are requisite for faith. First, that the things which are of faith
should be proposed to man: this is necessary in order that man believe
anything explicitly.The second thing requisite for faith is the assent of
the believer to the things which are proposed to him.7

Grace is operative throughout the whole process, but there is a human
element in it as well; in the dispensation of the Gospel, faith is normally
proposed by the disciples of Christ, that is, by the Church, not by direct
contact with God or the Bible alone.
Commenting on Thomas on this point, his disciple Cajetan
(1469–1534) highlights the risk inherent in the human being’s participation in the proclamation of faith: someone can be mistaken in his preaching. Did God not foresee to provide for this risk? It would be strange if
He had not, since the very goodness that impels God to reveal Himself
makes Him watch over the transmission of this Revelation (as Vatican II
states in Dei Verbum 7). Faced with this question, which has accompanied
6 ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2.
7 ST II–II, q. 6, a. 1.

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Charles Morerod, O.P.

Christianity throughout its whole history, Cajetan provides the following
commentary on his master,Thomas:
Concerning the things proposed for belief, faith can depend on angels
and human beings, by whose mediation God proposes certain things
which ought to be believed. . . . And so that no error should emerge in
the proposition and explication of that which ought to be believed, the
Holy Spirit has provided an infallible rule, that is, the meaning of the
doctrine of the Church. Thus, the authority of the Church is the infallible rule of the proposition and explication of the things which ought
to be held by faith.8

He further specifies that the authority of the Church is a “minister,” that
is, servant, of Revelation.
Beginning thus from the New Testament evidence—Jesus sending His
disciples to preach—St. Thomas and Cajetan arrive at a question which
impacts all Christians: how can the faith be safeguarded against the errors
or uncertainties of preaching? History shows that the Bible itself cannot
prevent the rise of deviations from its true interpretation. Even if elements
of Tradition (such as the early councils) are added to the Bible, one cannot
avoid all deviations—this would require a currently-existing authority. An
authority which guarantees preaching in a positive way (by evangelization)
and a negative way (by correcting errors) is imperative, not only because
every human society tends to organize itself, but because of the very nature
of the Christian faith as Thomas describes it: Revelation comes from God,
but according to His will, it reaches us through human beings.
Here again, God acts in consideration of our human nature. He wants to
work through us, but He knows that if this is to happen, He must help us.
Selecting Themes for Dialogue
The Thomist in Dialogue
Ecumenical dialogue proceeds by comparing different formulations of
Christian faith, in order to end in a common formulation.
This exercise is not unknown to Thomas. Confrontation between different points of view was part and parcel of the Scholastic method, whether in
public dispute or in the very structure of Scholastic writings such as the
Summa theologiae. Reading Thomas prepares the mind to engage in theological dialogue, which is already a benefit in itself, especially if, like Thomas,
one uses dialectical tools, while seeking for truth and believing that it can
be found, in a way which corresponds to the nature of the object.
8 Cajetan, Commentary on the IIa–IIae, q. 1 a. 1, no. X.

Thomism and Ecumenism

845

In dialogue, the Thomist has nothing to fear, even if he cannot immediately resolve all the questions himself. Indeed, what is there to lose, in
dialogue on questions of faith? One could risk losing one’s faith. But the
arguments that could threaten it are not definitive:
Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth
can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against
faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.9

Having confidence in dialogue is one thing, but selecting its themes is
entirely another. If the goal of dialogue is full visible unity among Christians, it should examine all the themes of faith and of Christian life to
detect the seeds of division, beginning with the most sensitive points,
which are at the heart of divisions.The fate of dialogue depends to some
extent on the choice and ordering of its themes. One criterion for determining which themes to address is the hierarchy of truths.
The Criterion: The Hierarchy of Truths
Vatican Council II set forth a criterion that serves to rank the themes of
dialogue:
It is, of course, essential that the doctrine be clearly presented in its
entirety. . . . Furthermore, in ecumenical dialogue, Catholic theologians,
standing fast by the teaching of the Church, yet searching . . . into the
divine mysteries . . . should remember that in Catholic doctrine there
exists an order or ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their relation
to the foundation of the Christian faith.10

Thus although dialogue must discuss everything, it needs to keep in
mind the mutual relationship among themes and begin with the most
important ones, or at least those which are held in common. For example, Marian dogmas should be discussed with Protestants from the starting
point of Christ, and not the reverse.This order corresponds to the historical proclamation of these dogmas and the logical order which makes
them intelligible. It also corresponds to Thomas’s method of explaining
less significant points beginning with more fundamental principles.
Thomas was well acquainted with the hierarchy of truths. He notes that
the articles of faith, as their name indicates—relating them to the articulations, or members, of one body—all mutually fit together.11 In this body,
9 ST I, q. 1, a. 8.
10 UR, §11, in Flannery, p. 462.
11 Cf. ST II–II, q. 1, a. 6.

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846

certain articles belong to faith directly and others indirectly; examples of the
former are the articles relating to the beatitude which is the goal of human
life,12 or those relating to the central mysteries of faith like the Trinity or the
Incarnation.13 This hierarchy of truths does not release anyone from the
obligation of acquiescing to all the articles of faith shown by the Church:
he who picks and chooses among them is receiving his faith no longer from
Revelation but from his own judgment.14
Thomas here strikes a surprising balance: the articles of faith do not all
hold the same rank, but they must all be believed. If the first element can
be easily integrated into ecumenical dialogue, what about the second? In
fact, here Thomas articulates the goal of dialogue: real unity in faith. But
how can I dialogue with someone who confesses positions which my
Church has condemned (thus precisely proving the necessity for
dialogue)? Here we must keep in mind a distinction based on Thomas by
his disciple Cardinal Charles Journet, between an assertion and the state
of the one who professes it believing that he receives the true faith from
the Church:
Heresy and schism are personal sins, personal vices.These are not inherited. For them to become sins among succeeding generations, each
generation must consciously renew the sin of heresy or schism . . . ratifying in turn the mother heresy, the original sin, in a manner that
involves true culpability.15

Journet applies a fundamental principle of Thomistic moral theology:
a sin is necessarily an act for which one can be held responsible—that is,
a conscious and voluntary act. Whoever does not wish to deviate from
the faith is not, properly speaking, guilty of the sin of heresy.
Choosing Themes for Dialogue
The hierarchy of truths helps to rank themes in the right order.
Ecumenical dialogue begins by emphasizing the points of faith on which
Christians are already united.There is another aspect to the hierarchy of
truths: it provides a starting point from which to understand all other
articles, even the most difficult, because in this hierarchy even the last and
least remains a truth. The sluggishness with which certain areas in
dialogue progress is caused by the fact that difficult questions are not
12 See ibid., ad 1.
13 See ST I, q. 31, a. 4.
14 Cf. ST I–II, q. 5, a. 3.
15 Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné, vol. 3 (St. Maurice: Editions Saint-

Augustin, 2000), 1199.

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847

readily addressed and consequently cannot be surmounted. Moreover, the
doctrinal expression of Christian faith is like a body, in which each part
is linked to all the others. It can be fatal to underestimate a pain in the
toe just because the toe is not the heart.
A Theme for Dialogue: Philosophical Presuppositions
Among the questions that are often overshadowed yet are crucial in
determining the whole, I would like to highlight one which dialogue
never addresses as such: the philosophical presuppositions of the different
denominations. In dialogue between Catholics and various Eastern
Churches (Coptic, Syrian-Orthodox, etc.), it has been recognized that
non-theological factors, especially those related to vocabulary, have
provoked misunderstandings. Each word—even those agreed upon by
both sides—entails a multitude of non-theological ingredients: philosophical, historical, socio-political, psychological, and so forth. Although
in the past Thomists have not always developed the historical, political,
and psychological dimensions of theological doctrines as much as they
should have, they can do so, according to the principles of their own
system of thought, whose realism is open to all that is true. As for the
philosophical dimension, it has been paid abundant homage by Thomas
in his own theology.Thomism by nature is fully cognizant of philosophy.
In dialogue with the various Protestant confessions, the need for
addressing philosophical factors is not always evident. In fact, in order to
reserve true authority for Scripture alone, Luther rejected philosophy with
such vehemence that Catholic theologians likewise tend to stifle metaphysics in dialogue. The first document of the International LutheranCatholic Commission,“The Gospel and the Church,” published in 1972,
stated: “To avoid a unilateral metaphysical interpretation, many Catholic
theologians today highlight a more clearly functional conception, which
is thereby more acceptable to Lutherans.”16 It is understandable that in
dialogue no one wants to start with a point that the other side rejects. But
sooner or later these points must also be investigated, and it really should
not be such a problem to do so: today it is commonly enough accepted
that no one can gain absolutely immediate access to a text—even an
inspired one—in total detachment from all presuppositions. But to apply
this principle to the philosophical foundations of the Reformation
violates a taboo.
Here, Thomism may be able to help. In fact, Thomism proposes itself
as a synthesis of the Catholic faith integrating a metaphysical vision. But
16 International Lutheran-Catholic Commission, “The Gospel and the Church,”

no. 60.

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848

does this mean that it subordinates faith to pagan philosophical principles? St. Thomas recognized the danger, and on certain points (such as
creation), he corrected Aristotle.This integration of faith and metaphysics
can be seen in a positive light.We must seek out the meaning which the
Gospel has for all of reality and integrate the positive contribution of
philosophical thought, whatever its origin: all truth, discovered by natural reason or received from Revelation, comes from God.17 If we do not
put faith in touch with a global vision of the world, we risk creating an
inner dichotomy within the believer between religion and the rest of his
thought and life.
Let us examine an example that touches the very roots of the Catholic
and Protestant positions. In 1999, Catholics and Lutherans signed the
Joint Declaration on Justification, which highlights the consensus on
both sides that God saves by grace. But they did not address the philosophical issues underlying the way in which each side understood this
agreement. The crucial question, then, is this: why did Luther think it
necessary to place an opposition between the actions of God and those
of human beings? For him, anything attributed to us is necessarily
subtracted from God:
You recognize that all that is good in us must be attributed to God. But
if you recognize this, you should also realize that the mercy of God
does everything and that our will does nothing, but rather limits itself
to an act of submission. If you do not see this, then you are not attributing everything to God.18

Calvin takes the same approach:“man cannot claim a single particle of
righteousness to himself, without at the same time detracting from the
glory of the divine righteousness.”19 This way of thinking emerged again
in 1985 in the Message to the Churches of the Permanent LutheranReformed Council of France regarding the document Baptism, Eucharist,
and Ministry from the Commission on Faith and Order: “The Church
and its ministers are never dispensers or masters of grace. Every action of
the Church and its ministers must be transparent to the action of God
alone.” In fact, underlying these texts is an unconscious metaphysical
presupposition: the univocity of being (there is only one level of being).
If God and human beings are on the same level of being, so that God is
infinitely greater in the same order, the whole of an action cannot be
17 Cf. ScG I, c. 7.
18 De servo arbitrio,Weimar ed., p. 614.
19 The Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. III, 13.2.

Thomism and Ecumenism

849

attributed to each, just as when two children are squabbling over which
of the two is carrying more of the weight of a table. Forced to choose
between God and the human being, the Reformers denied the weight of
human action out of respect for God, whereas later—based on the same
premises—philosophers such as Feuerbach or Marx would abolish God
in order to make room for the human being.
For Thomas, such a dilemma is simply absurd:
It is also apparent that the same effect is not attributed to a natural cause
and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and
partly by the natural agent; rather, it is wholly done by both, according
to a different way, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to the
instrument and also wholly to the principal agent.20

Who would say that the hammer pounds in ten percent of the nail,
and the carpenter wielding the hammer, ninety percent? Both pound in
one hundred percent of the nail, but they are operating on different levels
of being, one in the service of the other. This elementary Thomistic
metaphysical distinction, which does not depend on any specific system
of physics, eliminates the need to conceive of the relationship between
God and the human being in terms of rivalry and could substantially help
to clear up the remaining misunderstandings between Catholics and
Protestants.Without these clarifications, the 1999 Declaration on Justification runs a serious risk of not bearing fruit, because it will be understood on the basis of different ideas which have stubbornly persisted
through almost five centuries.
Thomistic metaphysics stands in the service of the Gospel. For
instance, it helps us to understand how Jesus can send his disciples to
forgive sins. In fulfilling Jesus’ command, the disciples are not seizing for
themselves what belongs to God alone. Rather, Jesus acts in them without suppressing their own action: the disciples themselves are acting.The
whole life of the Church is at stake here: does she really act, or does she
only set the stage for a divine act in which she does not participate? It is
true that to cooperate with God on the level of salvation necessitates
grace. But the human being still truly acts, even on the level of salvation.
To cite Cajetan, speaking of Luther in 1532:“It belongs to the dignity of
the member of Christ to cooperate with his Head in attaining eternal
life. The most divine thing of all is to be made a cooperator of God, as
Dionysius says.”21 Once more, at the center of the question stands God’s
20 ScG III, c. 70.
21 Faith and Works: Against the Lutherans, c. 9.

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Charles Morerod, O.P.

respect for human dignity. Here, this dignity is furthered by a metaphysics
which affirms that God shows His greatness by founding the being of the
world, not by destroying it.
Conclusion
St.Thomas Aquinas can make many contributions to ecumenical dialogue.
This essay has examined a few features which I believe are essential.
First, ecumenical dialogue aims toward full and visible unity among the
followers of Christ. In his vision of the Church as a gathering together of
all human beings in Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit, Thomas
proposes an ecclesiology that makes full unity possible without becoming
enmeshed in the reductionist mentalities of the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation. By accomplishing a unity that is both visible and
spiritual, God takes into account what we are and thus shows us His love.
Second, ecumenism ought to reunite the disciples of Christ, who
proclaim the Word of God. What can be learned from this very proclamation, ordered as it is toward faith and the edification of the Church?
The proclamation of the faith, according to the dispensation of the
Gospel, implies human action. But every human action is liable to error,
even in reading the Bible. God, Who knows this better than we do, has
made provision to remedy our weakness, by assisting the Church so that
the faith can be proclaimed throughout the centuries. Again, by involving us in the transmission of the faith, God shows us his love.
Third, how should themes be selected for dialogue? Determining the
order of the questions is crucial. Thomas is thoroughly familiar with
dialogue as such, since it forms part of the Scholastic method. He also
knows that faith is an articulated body in which the articles are of differentiated importance, though none are insignificant: this is the true meaning of the hierarchy of truths. In dialogue, certain themes are in danger
of being cast aside, as in the case of the philosophical presuppositions of
various confessional groups. Dialogue—particularly between Catholics
and Lutherans or Presbyterians—can greatly benefit from the consideration of Thomistic metaphysics on the topic of the relationship between
divine and human action (even more, although the value of metaphysics
has not been recognized, it really should be included in all dialogue, out
of religious respect for the truth). Thomas shows how human action is
completely subordinate to divine action without ever opposing divine
action or losing its own value. Far from obscuring the Gospel, his metaphysics makes it possible to account for the mission which Jesus confides
to human beings, who have a real role to play in the transmission of salvation—a role that shapes the whole life of the Church. Moreover, the

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harmony between philosophy and Revelation avoids creating an inner
dichotomy within believers. Here again, by calling human beings to be
His collaborators by their whole lives, without an interior division, God
supremely demonstrates His love and the depth of communion to which
N&V
He calls everyone.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 853–868

853

To the Sources of Law*
E MMANUEL P ERRIER , O.P.
Dominican Studium
Toulouse, France

C AN WE recognize animals to have the rights of subjects? Do rights
have a certain relation to justice? Are rights susceptible to progress? Are
they necessarily connected to a governmental structure? Should a society
promote a particular vision of life among its members?
In our time, these questions are no longer considered shocking. The
fact that such questions are often raised today shows that their basis—the
modern foundations of law—is no longer evident, that it no longer
consists of widely accepted truths.The paradox is that modernity doubts
its objectives, its legitimacy, and its raisons d’être at the very moment that
it is more influential than ever before. It is as if the critical principle that
gives modernity its identity has come to devour itself after having
destroyed its natural prey. That which is generally labeled “postmodernity” proclaims the motto that all values and concepts can be called into
question. This incertitude about philosophical foundations entails
another, much more paralyzing one in practical matters. Ethics and law
long ago adapted themselves to the slumber of metaphysics and the
silence of nature. Particularly in the realm of law, the solution has
consisted of falling back on the sovereign power of the nation or the
state, the power that assures law its efficacy, and of falling back on the
societal power of common morals, the power that provides the law with
its justification. Such a solution imposed itself because it was obligatory,
and because it corresponded to a widely shared worldview.Yet these two
pillars, common morals and law, have themselves been relativized. On
* Originally: “Aux sources du droit,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint Thomas

d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 197–213. Translation by Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

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Emmanuel Perrier, O.P.

what common philosophical position can one depend henceforth to
develop the law? Certainly, there is universal agreement about the
“progress of modernity.” But this agreement ceases as soon as one seeks
the content of this progress and the way to maintain it. It is not surprising when the practitioners of law generally ignore these debates because
of indifference, lack of time, discouragement, or ideology. Instead, some
claim that, in the absence of philosophical insights, we should place our
trust in good common sense, or in the mysterious invisible hand that
supposedly presides over the destiny of the liberal system.
The crisis of the foundations of law nevertheless points to a formidable potential for renewal. For pluralism’s dissolving effect on philosophical systems clears up a space that had been filled with a fog of a priori
principles, impenetrable until now. The temptation to end these discussions with a skeptical, cynical smile is great, that is to say, the temptation
to turn pluralism into a new and dominant system.Yet an evasive answer
should not fool us. Skepticism is the ultimate refuge of the critical enterprise, an enterprise that is reluctant to apply its own principles to itself.
Modernity should see its own deconstruction through to its end, and in
every way. The crucial question is: “How?” Here a retrieval of Thomas
Aquinas promises to be fruitful. First, he offers a useful foundation for the
analysis of actual difficulties and their causes. Second, he is not part of the
model in crisis. Third, his teaching can take part in a rediscovery of the
natural axis of law, namely, a wisdom of justice.Today, common sense still
grasps that everything which frames social relations falls under the law,
beyond any nuance that someone might add: on the one hand, the juridic
phenomenon is limited (to social relations), and, on the other hand, this
phenomenon unifies itself in a common norm (which the law frames).
That said, this preliminary description lends itself to several ways of understanding the law, of which two are dominant: positivism and formalism.
Western Positivism or Administrative Law
The Triumph of Practical Positivism
The grave problems in contemporary Western law are well known: an
explosion of regulations (360,000 French and 20,000 European Union
texts were in force in 1990), laws that are specialized to an extreme—
obscure, incoherent, and of a technocratic nature; a growing suffocation in
the legal process (40,000 cases were pending in France’s Supreme Court
at the end of the year 2000), the laborious mastery of a crumbling yet
ever-growing law, a diminishing quality in juridic judgments and acts. All
of this explains the flight to technique for the sake of maximum juridic

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security. Modern law’s survival instinct expresses itself in two fundamental objectives: (1) the necessity to mimic society’s evolution, the condition
of law’s relevance, and (2) the preservation of its internal coherence, of its
organic unity and rationality, the condition of its efficiency.This technical
tendency is not without consequences for the content of the law. In the
standardization of procedures and acts, in the extreme specialization of
rules, and in the functionalization of concepts, one impoverishes the
general principles, automates reasoning, and calculates while losing
perspective. But in fact, such over-investment in the methods of law hides
the importance of its ends. That which is called positivist thought lives
from an understanding of law as juridic engineering, a game of constructing social relations. Positivism theorizes this understanding in order to
better justify it.At least one juridic recipe should correspond to each type
of case and be applicable without consideration of its timeliness, its moral
value, or its conformity with the highest human aspirations.
An Easy Theoretical Leap
The condition of relevance for the norm that underlies the positivist
atmosphere, and according to which “one must adapt the law to the facts,”
leads, often unconsciously, to the addition of a functional determination to
the definition that has been retained by common sense. Because its function is to manage a complex world, law ought to serve the framework of
social relations, that is to say, it ought to be content with pondering individual pre-existing interests. In other words, law ought to be dependent on
the facts. Such an objective implies a double condition of neutrality; first,
law should be only a framework, it should not judge the content of individual interests (negative neutrality); and second, it should be a coherent
framework (positive neutrality). The notion of law as framing social relations has a three-fold meaning: (1) it follows the evolution of these relations (condition of relevance); (2) the law only follows them, that is, it does
not direct social relations (condition of negative neutrality); and (3) in order
to follow these relations without guiding them, the law must essentially
consist of a technical task (condition of positive neutrality). Theoretical
positivism draws its strength from this, that its three fundamental components (relevance, negative neutrality, and positive neutrality or efficiency)
are partially true.Thus, it is evident that the law should always adapt itself
to the facts. But should it necessarily submit itself to them? Also, the law
necessarily appears as a framework when it imposes itself on individuals
from the outside. But should the law renounce the guidance of individuals? Finally, like all knowledge, the law develops its own technical instruments. But must the law be reduced to these instruments? Theoretical

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positivism gives an affirmative response to these three questions, and adds
that there is no other solution today. Practical positivism proclaims that
“since there is no agreement on the true and the good, the best strategic
option is to fall back on the minimum consensus.”Theoretical positivism
adds that “we should renounce in advance the whole search for a consensus at a higher level.”Thus, positivism acknowledges its kinship with liberalism, that voluntary blindness before the ends of the individual and of
society, that secularism of the second degree in which each actor ought to
keep his motivations to himself, and not only his religious motivations (first
degree), but also his ethical motivations. Such an attitude assigns ethics a
folding chair at the back of the theater. One does not ask it to play its role
in the performance itself, but only to applaud at the fitting time.Yet is this
relegation of ethics truly necessary? Furthermore, is it even reasonable?
Ethics on Demand
Positivism is always on the lookout for new social realities that it can
manage: whether it be an advance in biology, an evolution of the family,
a demand of minority groups, or, on the mundane side of things, a
vacuum left by new technologies, one quickly identifies a “juridic gap”
that must be filled, sometimes with justification. Perhaps biologists are in
need of more embryos left over after medically assisted procreation in
order to advance their research. One must therefore concoct a new
supervisory mechanism that is compatible with the existing juridic
system. In order to “give meaning” to this act, to demonstrate that one is
not a barbarian, one will search the smorgasbord of circulating ideas to
justify the new modus operandi: if the parents have no use for an embryo,
it is disposable.The lawmaker, reassured by this ethical fantasy conceived
on demand, can fulfill the duties of his office. He is now ready for the
next social request. For in a positivist atmosphere, the law always marches
behind the facts. It is modern to the extent that it is in proximity to the
facts. Furthermore, one will not say that a society refuses cloning, for
example, but that “it is not mature.”This means that, since the cloning of
human beings is within our reach, society still opposes something that is
inevitable, an opposition arising from strong moral inhibitions, from
which we will be liberated with the progress of time. It will suffice to relaunch regularly the debate on the promotion of euthanasia, the postnatal suppression of profoundly handicapped persons, or the legalization
of illegal drugs.This incessant return of debates has been with us for the
last twenty years.While affirming the primacy of the law’s function over
its content, positivism does not oppose itself to ethics. Rather, the law
pretends to dispense itself from ethics.

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When the Law Empties Itself of Its Content
The conceptual game that positivism engages in is not without consequences for its own notions.Thus, in the famous Perruche case in France,
it was asked whether a handicapped person could obtain compensation
from the doctor who did not detect the handicap during the pregnancy
and thereby impeded an abortion. On the one hand, a doctor covered by
his professional insurance proved to be an ideal target. On the other
hand, the doctor’s mistake played no causal role in the production of the
handicapped person, since this was only a diagnostic error. Nevertheless,
for some legal writers, by impeding an abortion, the doctor was indeed
the cause of the existence of a “diminished life.” The legal reasoning is
false. In order to hold someone responsible, one places the burden on a
causality that designates no more than a vague relation between an act
and the final state, and not the relation between an act and the effect that
it produces. In order to award the requested compensation, the Court of
Appeals expanded the notion of responsibility while detaching it from its
objective content (the obligation to make reparation for damage that was
caused), thus inaugurating a regime of responsibility without responsibility. Family law furnishes another good example of a juridic category’s
utter detachment from reality. Proceeding from the “traditional” type of
family, sociology has expanded the notion to all situations that it encounters (shattered, reconstituted, or single-parent families, and so on), and
reorganized all of them as equals in the category of “family.”This conceptual evolution established by decree, like an entry within an index of
terms, presents jurists with a formidable challenge, for a relation of
descent is the only common denominator in all the situations henceforth
included in the category of family.This kind of alignment of the law with
sociology leads to the assimilation of family law to the law of descent, so
that the term “family” becomes nothing more than a linguistic convention. Such a tendency explains at least a good part of the difficulty
involved in the construction of a coherent family politics. The hollow
meaning of juridic concepts also enables the return of a certain number
of archaic notions, ideas that were thought to belong exclusively to
ancient societies. For example, the recent reform of divorce in France has
revived the right of repudiation, though without explicitly saying so.This
regression to archaic notions can only have the appearance of progress
because elements constitutive for conjugal union recognized by the law
have gradually deteriorated since the nineteenth century. Finally, the
positivist ideal of the moral neutrality of law thanks to technique shows
itself to be illusory: by its very nature, the law creates a hierarchy, thereby
establishing a hierarchy of moral values. Therefore, the renunciation of

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explicit values as a matter of principle leads to the law’s submission to
moral fads. The positivist moralizes like a charlatan. When the Court of
Appeals in the Perruche case held the doctor responsible, it subordinated
human action to the logic of compensation. When the jurist characterizes the family only by the line of descent, he subordinates the communal to the individual. Finally, when the legislator reintroduced the law of
repudiation, he subordinated the assistance that is owed by the marital
promise to unending emotional fluctuations. By morally neutralizing
juridic concepts in order to render them technically malleable, positivism
blinds the law, turning it into a toy for any and all dominant forces.
Law vs. Humanism
The reduction of juridic goals to an optimal administration of moral
pluralism leads the humanist sources of law either to enslave themselves
to a communal utilitarianism or to retreat to the distant ether of the
“horizon of meanings.” The rights of the human being—which in fact
have a twofold nature, at once demanding and idealist, normative and
super-normative—are especially prone to instrumentalization: too
absolute to be applied without restriction, yet too general to furnish their
own criteria of application, one thus leaves to pragmatism the task of
making them concrete.That is to say, in the present situation, at the very
moment that they could exercise their normative role, the rights of
human beings de facto submit their substantial content to the grip of a
mechanistic neutralization.The pious invocation of these rights can thus
protect the better part of their substance while camouflaging those
aspects which are not so good. The most recent fruit of Western
conscience, the crime against humanity, risks the same fate. Unlike other
crimes, in which both the matter and the intention for a reprehensible
act are circumscribed, the crime against humanity combines a multitude
of acts under one roof: the denial of the human being’s humanity by his
like. If these words have any meaning, then the recognition of the existence of such a crime presupposes the spirituality of conscience and its
infallibility. There are acts of such a sort that the human being, because
he is human, cannot say that his conscience does not recognize their
criminal nature, regardless of the motives and circumstances.Yet by definition, all of this escapes positivism, for the latter cannot maintain the
specificity of the crime against humanity in the face of related notions
such as the crime of war, the crime of the nation-state, or the duty of
memory. Deprived of its metaphysical and spiritual roots, the crime
against humanity does not hesitate to appeal to the unjust “justice of the
conquerors,” which is also called vengeance. When good intentions no

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longer consist of anything but warm sentiments, justice is only one step
away from injustice.This is precisely what the recent French law against
discrimination in the business world demonstrates. The very notion of
discrimination implies a moral appreciation of the acceptance of persons.
The law claims that a difference in the treatment of one’s employees is
discrimination, is contrary to justice. But if the legislators agree on the
general principle of the fight against discrimination, then the diversity of
moral situations inevitably leads them to a blanket condemnation of all
differences in treatment, with the exception of motives such as the ability to work or professional competence. In other words, by sidelining the
fundamental question of justice, by evading the moral question, the warm
sentiments of the legislator have led him to reduce the human being to
his economic value.
The Crisis of Juridic Formalism
Judgment at the Heart of Law
Positivism has found a crucial pillar in the modern exaltation of technique. Positivism has also found a semblance of triumph in the landscape
of postmodernity’s philosophical ruins.As we have seen, this success owes
much to the idea that technique can attain a neutrality proper to the
foundation of law by developing without any reference to ethics. But the
choice of moral neutrality is already a moral choice by which one voluntarily suspends reflection at the very threshold of ethical judgment. Positivism does not transcend moral pluralism, but rather remains on the
sidelines in order to escape the human question par excellence :“In a particular situation, what is the good that I ought to do or the justice that I
should serve?” The French law against discrimination discussed above is
marked by this somewhat childish pre-morality that neither wishes nor
knows how to confront its spontaneous generosity with concrete reality,
which neither wishes nor knows how to judge. And yet, one cannot
make law without judging the facts, and one cannot judge without stepping back and appropriating ethical principles that are independent of
the facts. Whether or not an act ought to be categorized as discriminatory, or whether or not an injustice ought to be called discrimination,
implies a judgment. In both juridic qualifications and definitions, an ethical judgment on the nature of discrimination occurs. In the absence of
such a judgment, the law, having appropriated the judgment of facts,
contents itself with the classification, assembly, and deduction of hollow
concepts. Kant and Rawls perfectly understood this pre-moral regression
that is constitutive of positivism.

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Legality: The Foundation of a Pluralist Justice
The openness of law and politics to the necessity of ethics clashes with the
fundamental objection of positivism: how can we reconcile judgment or
justice with pluralism? How can we judge—perform a moral act—while
remaining morally neutral, without imposing on some persons certain
conception of the good and the just that they do not share? In short, how
can we save humanism without opening the way to totalitarianism? One
solution is to avoid the difficulty, or at least to reduce its significance, while
constructing a public ethics, a political justice, beyond any particular moral
convictions. Such a distinction intuitively justifies itself by the claim that
life in society requires of everyone, whatever their convictions, a minimum of obedience to the commonly recognized laws, or to the dominant
consensus. But this claim, one that positivism also accepts, is not sufficient
to realize the expected ethical openness, for by itself it does not preserve
the dominant consensus from anti-humanist errors. Therefore, an additional step must be taken, which is the determination of the objective
political conditions that make justice possible.These conditions intervene
at two levels, one juridic, the other political. If the law can judge the facts
in the first place, this happens not on the basis of particular ethical conceptions but simply in virtue of the general ethical conviction that the law
ought to assert its authority over the facts, that it must be obligatory: the
essence of law is legality and nothing but legality. In the name of ethical
demands, that which is called juridic formalism opposes the primacy of
the rule to the positivist priority of the social fact. Like positivism, juridic
formalism adds a functional determination to the definition it has received
from common sense: the law ought to frame social relations because it is
the nature of law to declare “what ought to be done.” Just as an individual humanizes himself by opening himself up to moral demands, so a society humanizes itself when it assents to the law, as it orders the public
sphere of individual action. Secondly, the legal framework is inseparable
from the political framework that assures its efficacy—thanks to the public
force of the state that administers the law—and its impartiality—thanks to
the democratic process.Through the principle of legality, the law does not
content itself simply with assuring the optimal administration of moral
pluralism, as positivism would prefer. Rather, the principle of legality
assigns to the law the task of guaranteeing the equality and integration of
individuals in the social body.Thus, the members of society are led to go
beyond the limited horizon of their individual interests. Rights and duties
structure the space of their autonomy while leaving everyone the freedom
to have their own personal opinions. In this way, the political structure that
integrates certain moral principles into the public domain through the

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democratic process establishes and guarantees the legality of the juridic
system (political justice) by which the facts can be judged (law). Finally,
the concept of legality allows the establishment of a formal justice, that is,
a justice that does not judge the content of the facts—thus safeguarding
private autonomy—but judges only their conformity with the juridic and
political forms that are the conditions of justice. Once this task is accomplished, juridic formalism assumes and makes official the dialectics that
positivism confidently proclaims to be self-evident.The table summarizes
our main points.
Table 1
Dialectic

Positivist Evidence

Principle of Formalism

Between the private and
public spheres

The primacy of individual
autonomy

The realm of individual
autonomy is distinct from
the realm of inter-subjective relations

Between fact and norm
(or nature and law; or the
is and the ought)

The primacy of fact as the
law seeks a harmony
among individual
aspirations

The primacy of the norm,
distinct from facts as
required by ethics

Between ethics and
the law

The law is a morally
neutral technical
framework

The law is distinct from
ethics, a consequence of
the preceding distinctions

Between technique, and
technique and justice

In the end, the law consists
of technical
arbitration

Justice is born of a just
political order, of the
universality of moral values
defended by the state, and
of the juridic order’s
rationality.

What Is in Store for Formalism?
Formal justice is concerned with offering a minimal moral framework
for the life of society.Against the deviations of moral pluralism and in the
face of totalitarian temptations, formal justice constructs the democratic
principles of a nation-state’s law, equality, and legality or normative
coherence. Nevertheless, formal justice reacts differently, depending on
whether it encounters the first or the second danger, the parasite or the
predator.The predator engages in a direct, frontal attack on the principles
of formal justice: totalitarianism denies the political structure upon which
formal justice rests. This is not the case with the pluralism that formal
justice is, by its very nature, called not to fight but to master.When a society attains a certain unity around some fundamental values, pluralism is
weak and encourages public debate. However, when society experiences

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Emmanuel Perrier, O.P.

a crisis of conscience that leads to the destruction of foundational
concepts, pluralism is strong and paralyzes public debate. The principles
acquired from formal justice slow down the process of destruction for a
time before collapsing on themselves, due to a lack of internal solidity.
Such is the development that the West has experienced in the last halfcentury, the breaking point having come at the end of the 1960s.
One can learn at least three lessons from this formalist misadventure.
First, because it does not accept the content of the principles that it
maintains—the essential condition for remaining above particular moral
opinions—formal justice knows only how to solidify humanist
accomplishments—its phase of progress—or how to restrain their erosion—
its phase of deconstruction. Formal justice is a certain politeness among
members of the same culture, and is acceptable to the extent that persons
essentially belong to the same cultural milieu. Paradoxically, its moral
neutrality is the cause of its impotence in the face of postmodern positivism.
Second, by the connection that it establishes between judgment and
legality, formalism opens the law to ethics at the same time that it separates the two. Henceforth, ethics remains a political or a private affair.
That is to say, formalism delivers the law, the juridic practice in its most
concrete form, over to positivist errors and technocratic reasoning.
Third, now that formalism has de facto lost its dominant position, one
can question the relevance of a strategy that consists in sacrificing the
quest for agreement on the true and the good in order to assure a minimal and thus universal consensus. Is it wise to exchange one’s access to
ethics—which access positivism refuses—for the voluntary and definitive
reduction of ethical pretensions to legality alone, that is, to an externalist
morality or the semblance of morality? More precisely, is it so evident
that justice ought to be separated from ethics and law, that justice is
something other than ethics, and is thus located somewhere else than in
the law? In other words, does contemporary pluralism offer the chance
to escape an artificial construction of relations among politics, law, and
ethics? For not only is this construction unable to respond to the
contemporary questions of jurists—of which we have given several
examples in the first part—but it also declares that the most ambitious
reflections from the moral point of view are idealistic, and that all
thought which does not take formalism as its point of departure is
unsuited to public debate.Yet to share the humanist concerns of formalist justice does not oblige one to subscribe to its method, nor to content
oneself with its objectives. For in reality, legality is only at the frontier of
ethics; it is not its path.

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The Wisdom of Justice
Christian Claims
Biblical Revelation is well aware of the two temptations at work in positivism and formalism.When the Lord reveals himself to Israel as the Just
One, as the one who loves and does all in justice, he invites his People to
find their way back to the path of the one God “and walk in his ways,”
that is, by practicing justice. This journey is difficult. Israel experiences
the depth of sin that hardens its heart: liberation from such slavery is
beyond strictly human knowledge and strength. The Torah, the Law
which once again gives the meaning of justice to human beings, is thus
necessary for conversion.The Law traces the path of mystical union with
God by adherence to the commandments, which denounce the slavery
of evil, so as to re-open the way to a lost relationship. The practice of
justice is at the heart of salvation.To practice justice is to live in the righteousness of the Law given by God, so as to be able to act in the image of
God.To practice justice is to participate in the divine work by works that
are conformed to it.Thence come the two fundamental characteristics of
biblical justice: objectivity and integrality.
First of all, there is an objective measure of justice—the law in the
proper sense—because creation is a divine work that bears the traces of
Goodness and forms a totality ordered to the manifestation of this Goodness. Consequently, the relations among creatures find their measure in
this order of creation. Justice has an objective moral constitution because
creation has a real ontological constitution.The failure to grasp the latter
hinders access to the former. To lose the objective rule of discernment
between the just and the unjust that a wise outlook on creation procures
means to lose the capacity to govern oneself in the midst of the flow of
events.Thus, one could criticize positivism, which, having reduced sapiential objectivity to a technical outlook, now submits to the demands of
the facts. It is a fatal fait accompli : its ethic consists in the attempt to justify
the lack of spiritual liberty that one has experienced, that is, to justify
one’s submission to social determinations.
The second trait of biblical justice is its integrality. Salvation should
descend into the heart of the human being as profoundly as sin has
entered into him. The prophets did not cease to recall that a work of
justice that does not involve the whole person has no value in the eyes of
God. For a work of justice involves a person’s relationship with God and
his neighbor. Integral justice places the human being face-to-face with his
neighbor and with God, while making the law a guide to open him to the
truth of relationship and its demands. By contrast, formal justice places the

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Emmanuel Perrier, O.P.

human being face-to-face with the law; it makes the law the end term of
justice, simply requiring that one be in conformity with the law and satisfy
its precepts. To restrict oneself to formal justice is thus the permanent
temptation of those who want justice without conversion, of those who
want to be acquitted without being engaged in relationships beyond those
they choose to accept. The New Covenant definitely considers such an
attitude to be imperfect. Christ has shown, to the point of shedding his
blood, that justice begins, progresses, and completes itself in charity,
because one finds justice only with the righteousness of the love of God
and neighbor.The consequences for the philosophy of law are important:
a determination of the just ought to consider what is spiritually at stake:
the primacy of the human being’s supernatural end, the fact that partial
goods are ordered to the Sovereign Good (the order of the temporal realm
is just only if it is at the service of the spiritual), the dignity of the human
person, the pre-eminence of the common good over the individual good,
etc. In summary, Christian claims come to regard justice as the first place
where the effects of charity ought to manifest themselves.
Christian Philosophies
The Jewish culture is not the only one open to the role of objectivity and
integrality in the realm of justice. Certainly, the light of Revelation gives
these conditions their full clarity and significance, by demonstrating their
origin in the doctrine of creation and in the newness of Redemption.
But this light is accessible to natural reason, provided that reason benefits
from sufficient intellectual honesty and courage as well as moral virtue.
Inversely, theology ought to appropriate philosophy in order to seek and
formulate the concrete implications of Christian claims. Through the
effort of a constantly renewed conversion to the fire of the Gospel,
human beings and societies accumulate an experience of justice whose
major elements are outlined by the sages and the saints. This work of
ordering for the sake of expressing the truth, one that is constitutive of
knowledge, may lead to syntheses that are quite diverse in their accents,
but that nevertheless respond to substantially identical claims. Among
such syntheses, that of Aquinas distinguishes itself by its capacity to
discern the truths that all thought or all practices worthy of the human
person bear within themselves, as well as by the capacity to give these
truths their proper place in light of the Christian claims concerning
justice.What Thomas can bring to the philosophy of law today is not an
alternative way of thought that is just one more system to be incorporated into pluralism. Rather,Thomas reminds pluralism that there is only
one possible way out of postmodernism.

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Beyond Postmodernity
As we have seen, a simple way to characterize positivism and formalism
is to ask how they understand the following formula: “The law is that
which frames social relations.” In effect, both approaches to the law
oppose one aspect of the juridic phenomenon against another—the fact
against legality, or the converse—for the sake of establishing the law by
assigning it a unique function. For positivism, the law ought to serve social
relations. For formalism, the law ought to frame the facts. Both approaches
are capable of justifying the law’s function. Positivism tells us that if the
law does not adapt itself to the social reality, then it cannot efficaciously
frame that reality—and indeed, this is the problem with formalism. The
latter asks the following question: If the law has nothing with which to
oppose certain social errors, how can one keep society from sinking into
totalitarianism? But since these two functions both affirm something true
about the law, is it necessary to choose one or the other, to consider them
to be mutually exclusive? Is there no possibility of combining the two?
Jürgen Habermas has recently proposed a solution. He claims that the
essence of the law is found not so much in that which ought to be done,
but rather in the procedure by which it ought to be done.This proposition unifies the two functions not by combining their true aspects, but
only by retaining that which they have in common, that is, the idea that
the law has a unique function, one that is then reduced to the demands
of a procedure.The sole foundation of the law would thus be the procedural function of democracy.
But as the latest evolutions of this philosophy show, this approach has
certain disadvantages and fails to reap any benefits. For in the end, the
solution that Habermas offers proclaims that the only thing about which
we can still be somewhat certain after more than two centuries of reflection is that, in order to build a society, we have to appropriate the means
of conversation. How much effort has been expended just to produce a
platitude! Without knowing it, Habermas has demonstrated how postmodernity is the natural fruit of modernity, how a formalism anxious
about its own survival has been definitively neutralized by positivism,
producing an empty shell, a system of procedures. Nevertheless, without
knowing it, Habermas leads us to the solution: the essence of the law does
not reside in that which formalism and positivism have in common, that
is, the idea that the law has a unique function. Rather, the essence of the
law consists in that which this exclusivity of function signifies, the truth
that there are essential dimensions of the law that one cannot compromise. From this perspective, positivism teaches us that the law comes to
exist out of the facts. Formalism responds to this insight by insisting that

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Emmanuel Perrier, O.P.

the law is not identical with the facts, that there must be an ethical judgment of the facts in order to determine them. Positivism retorts that, in
order to be objective, this judgment cannot add something that is not
already contained in the facts. Formalism responds that this added something, so as to constitute a moral requirement and duty, should be determined in relation to the facts but not by the facts alone. Since the fact in
question is a relation among individuals, this duty will be a debt, something owed to another and not to oneself. But the measure of a relation
is the task of justice, for it seeks to establish a balance of relations, a certain
equality, a certain equity.Thomas can thus conclude from this discussion
that the law is that which is objectively due to another according to an
equality that is in things, and that to determine the law is the proper
object of justice. In short, when one focuses on the content of the functions affirmed by positivism and formalism while leaving aside the affirmation of their exclusivity, which is the condition of avoiding the
platitude of a system of procedures, one arrives at the definition of law
that Thomas, inheritor of Aristotle, gives us.
The Law of the Human Being Who Remakes the World
Although positivism and formalism share a certain common content, with
each other and also with Thomism, a problem remains. For in the former
two, we find the very idea that is postmodernity’s great obstacle: the law
ought to have an exclusive function. Here, positivism and formalism find a
common ground, one that they defend vigorously against the reality of the
juridic phenomenon, despite the practical and theoretical impasses to which
it leads. All of this indicates that we have come to the heart of the debate.
The underlying presupposition of the principle of a necessary unique function
is this: that the human being does not receive meaning from the real, but
rather gives meaning to the real, which lacks it.This signifies that all thought
(necessity) begins in a foundational decision, and that it unfolds into a projection upon the world (function) that is exclusive of other possible projections
(unique). Thus, the human being cannot seek the truth, but rather, he constitutes his own truth (with more or less success) according to an ideal that,
having developed its rational consequences, forms a system of thought.
Two major implications follow. First, since nothing is given, the whole
discipline of law exists only insofar as there has been a particular law to
produce it. The former identifies itself with the latter. Law is essentially
legalism applied to a social ideal. Second, law determines itself in a theoretical way. The basic features of a society are thus determined in the
abstract, within the social ideal to be implemented.Thus, law is constantly
in tension with its practical realization, and it is always frustrated by the

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inevitable discrepancy between the initial ideal and the eventual result.
The presupposed point of departure involves another consequence, that
the quality of a system of thought or of an ideal depends not on its truth
but on its capacity for universality: its theoretical capacity to integrate
other systems while conserving rational coherence, and its practical
capacity to gain general adherence through an ideal that has a firm grasp
on reality. Ways of thought that seek the true and the good are thus
immediately disqualified as intolerant, for they judge the content of
systems. Meanwhile, demanding ethical doctrines are rejected as “angelism,” since such ways of thought do not accept the human being as he
is. In short, since themes such as truth and the good divide us, we should
content ourselves with finding a good, pragmatic, rational strategy, one
that is perfect because it is universal and allows us to manage pluralism.
In this framework, Christian justice, with its demands for objectivity and
integrality, appears as a typical example of a bad strategy.
Law and Conversion
The assurance and apparent sufficiency of postmodern discourse have
succeeded, in an inverse proportion to its content, in impressing more
than one Christian in our day. One might be consciously or unconsciously
tempted to espouse its theses, but only if one is willing to lead a schizophrenic life, torn between henceforth-private convictions and a public
life. Such an approach puts the Christian life at risk.The notion of strictly
private convictions contradicts the faith, for it threatens to dispense with
the Christian demand for justice.The exclusion of faith convictions from
public life shatters hope, for the Christian who does not proclaim Christ
no longer lives from the eternal goods. Charity withers away, for by this
approach, we abandon our neighbor in his weaknesses and needs.To work
no longer for the evangelization of human relations, those objects of the
law, is to take up Cain’s response to God:“Am I my brother’s keeper?”To
feel for another’s suffering is not the same as healing it.
Thomas Aquinas, a good doctor of the intellect, provides us with the
diagnosis and the remedy. The diagnosis begins with the realization that
pluralism has always existed. If it seems insurmountable today, that is
because the human being has the ambition of conquering and mastering
the world, not as a steward, but as a creator—even as his utopian projects
have collapsed, one after the other; as his pride prevents him from recognizing his fall; and as he prefers to doubt the truth rather than his own
whims. Contrary to postmodernity’s claim, the truth does not divide, but
rather it manifests our divisions and enables us to overcome them.Without
the truth, there is only room for strategies of intellectual domination, for

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conceptual systems that pretend to attain a universality that the Creator of
the universe alone can give.The truth is universal.To aim at anything less
is to condemn oneself to provincialism. Under the latter regime, it is useless
to embark on the quest for a concept that might furnish an ultimate foundation of law, to construct a utopia of universal justice, to launch the pursuit
of a social ideal, to try to come up with a strategy for the juridic management of moral pluralism. Wisdom begins with humility, by agreeing to
respond only to the questions that really present themselves, and not to
those for which we would like to see God seek our counsel. Thus, one
expects of the jurist, politician, and philosopher the wisdom and courage
necessary to articulate the law and defend justice in certain situations.The
law’s task is to make concrete determinations, not theoretical decisions.The
law does not produce something, but rather articulates it. The ability to
articulate the law is a practical wisdom, a wisdom of the just person, one
that is acquired with experience, and for which technical competencies are
indispensable yet secondary. It is easier to re-create the world in one’s head,
according to one’s own standards, than to control one’s passions, one’s partisan prejudices, one’s instinctive judgments, one’s pre-conceived reasoning,
one’s cowardice, one’s tendency to let a particular law judge in one’s place.
It is difficult to see the good of one’s neighbor and of society in every situation, to order everyone’s pretensions according to their true significance,
to qualify the facts according to their nature, to reason without error, to
judge or to legislate without being swayed by social pressures, and to
protect the weak against the strong. It is true that, as with everything that
concerns the moral life, objective and integral justice are hard to establish
and defend.Thomas is aware of this when he prescribes the wisdom of the
just person as a unique remedy.Yet he also knows that everything which
depends on the human being definitely depends on his conversion, not on
his structures, or techniques, or strategies, or even his norms. In our sinful
situation, this conversion is impossible without the illumination and grace
received from Christ. For this reason, the challenge of postmodern pluralism, a challenge so perilous for the societies affected by it, gives Thomas’s
doctrine immense relevance. As he becomes disillusioned with the dream
of an earthly paradise, the human being can again become conscious of the
importance of salvation.We need an abundant and balanced wisdom, one
that can reconnect our daily life with the mystery of Christ the Savior.To
study law, morals, or politics at the school of St. Thomas is to respond to
the pressing invitation of the Second Vatican Council: Christians have a
great responsibility for the societies in which they live, for they alone know
by faith that “only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery
of man take on light” (Gaudium et Spes, §22).
N&V

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869

The Thomist Tradition*
S ERGE -T HOMAS B ONINO, O.P.
Dominican Studium
Toulouse, France

T HE TWENTIETH CENTURY was a difficult one for the
Thomistic school. In effect, whereas the Thomists of the first half of the
twentieth century gladly referred to the works of their illustrious predecessors, the “commentators,” and drew generously from the well of their
ancestors’ thought—to the point that Jacques Maritain saw himself
unjustly reproached for being more of a “John of St. Thomist” than a
Thomist—the Thomism that has prevailed since has not been sparing in
its critique of the school. Perhaps because they suspected a causal link
between the massive reference to the school and the historical downfall
of the Thomistic renewal in the twentieth century, most Thomists have
adopted the hardly glorious strategy of condemning the disciples in the
hope of better saving the master. In order to preserve the future of
Thomism, St.Thomas has been unburdened of a Thomistic school judged
as compromising, obsolete, and even unfaithful. In the diligently pursued
trial of the school, many have taken an odd pleasure in emphasizing the
undeniable divergences between the commentators and their proclaimed
source, and in opposing the authentic doctrine of Thomas, finally restored
through historical studies, to the Thomistic perversions. Some lament
that the school misunderstood the most original and most fruitful of
Thomas’s theses, and instead has offered a thin, indigestible scholasticWolfian broth, whereas the contemporary understanding expects the
hearty and perpetually fresh bread of pure Thomism. In short, a rallying
cry has spread: Zurück zu Thomas, bypass the Thomistic school!
* Originally: “La tradition thomiste,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint Thomas

d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 241–53.Translation by Bernhard
Blankenhorn, O.P.

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The Necessary Reference to the Thomistic Tradition
I will certainly not dispute the value of a direct reading of Aquinas. But is
this incompatible with a prudent reference to the school? Must one set up
the systematic mistrust of the Thomistic tradition as a methodological principle, almost as a dogma? It seems strange to think that the painstaking and
assiduous research of the Thomists that spans multiple centuries has
absolutely nothing to offer to our understanding of Thomas’s text. Besides,
it is precisely the historical approach that demonstrates the profoundly
traditionalist character of Scholasticism in general and of Thomism in
particular, regardless of the eventual divergences between Thomas, John
Capreolus, Domingo Bañez, and Marie-Michel Labourdette. In effect, for
Thomas, the exercise of thought—both theological and philosophical—is
inconceivable outside of a reference to the authorities, to foundational
texts, and more, to the foundational texts tightly inserted within a living
tradition of interpretation that has handed them on in a concrete way, even
to the present day.The personal exercise of thought is conditioned by the
reference to something known by a tradition which, far from sterilizing the
effort of reflection, grounds, orients, and stimulates it.
It is thus paradoxical that the Thomism of the second half of the twentieth century has espoused a typically “modern” structure of thought
which, in antithesis to the Scholastic spirit, obscures this constitutive relation to a living tradition. On the contrary, everything indicates that, if it
is going to be faithful to the very nature of Thomism as a Scholastic form
of thought, the effort for the renewal of Thomism cannot think of itself
as an excavation that skips the layers of several centuries in order revive
the cadavers that lie underneath. One must therefore take into consideration the Thomist tradition posterior to Thomas.
Undoubtedly, this tradition is not the homogeneous and harmonious
development of Thomas’s doctrine that some have imagined it to be.
Etienne Gilson had good reasons to ridicule the conception of the
Thomistic school as undivided and unfailingly faithful to the authentic
Thomas:“The legend, given credence by certain popes, that the Dominican school has never diverged from the doctrine of the master ‘even by
an inch’ . . . suffices to prove that papal infallibility has its limits” (Lettre
d’Etienne Gilson à Jacques Maritain, 217). But the Thomist tradition is also
not a pure and simple betrayal of Thomas either. As with every living
doctrinal tradition, it produced certain regrettable deviations from its
source, even alterations that verge on corruption.Yet it also contains gems
of faithful creativity. In short, a study of the relation between Thomism
and its history is not optional but rather a necessity.

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Therefore, if there is reason to rejoice in the immense effort that has
been expended to restore Thomas’s corpus to its proper historical context,
a work that enables a better expression of its intelligibility, one would be
wrong to stop there, as if ending a journey mid-way. For to abstract
Thomas—no matter how well he has been contextualized—from the
tradition that has brought him to us is to end up falling into a trap that
one ought to avoid, which is to turn Thomas into a thinker who hovers
above history, and thus to turn Thomism into a Platonic Idea. Thomas
vigorously fought the platonizing theory of “the giver of forms” that
posited a supernatural intervention for the appearance of any new form,
including forms in the physical world and in the realm of knowledge. He
thought that this theory undervalued the immanent causalities at work in
nature. And yet, is this not precisely what happens when one isolates
Thomas from the Thomist tradition? Is Thomism passed on through an
infusion and a new creation in each era? Or rather, is it transmitted by a
kind of generation, that is to say, by virtue of a fleshly continuity that
binds one age to another? In fact, the doctrinal complex that originates
in the work of Thomas is not a pure abstraction but a yeast that operates
at the heart of the contingencies of doctrinal history. It is therefore most
advantageous for contemporary Thomism to reread the “commentators”
in a critical manner, and thus to give careful attention to the history of
the Thomist tradition. The primary focus ought to be on the history of
Thomistic doctrine. One should also research the fascinating cultural
history of Thomism, a history of the interactions between the Thomistic
doctrinal tradition and literature, the arts, politics, etc.
The Doctrinal History of Thomism: Methodological Questions
The historian of Thomism must face some formidable methodological
problems whose solution is, in the final analysis, philosophical. Hence,
there is a properly Thomistic methodology for the history of Thomism.
The first and quite crucial problem involves the criteria that allow us
to classify an author and his or her work as Thomistic.There are two such
criteria, and these should not to be separated. One is external or institutional, while the other is internal or doctrinal.
A history of doctrines that claims to be Thomistic ought to give much
consideration to the sociological conditions of doctrinal life. It should
grant the institutional criteria of membership in the Thomistic tradition
their full importance.This approach has been neglected far too often by
an idealist history. In fact,Thomism has always incarnated itself in certain
institutions—in the Order of Preachers for seven centuries, in the bursa
Montana of Cologne in the fifteenth century, in the Higher Institute of

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Philosophy during the era of Cardinal Désiré Mercier, etc.—and membership in these institutions is a first exterior sign of one’s membership in
Thomism. Thus, unless there are clear counter-signs, one will presume
that a “Jacobin” (that is, a French Dominican) author of the seventeenth
century is a Thomist by profession.
That being said, these external criteria are insufficient, for they must
be confirmed by the properly doctrinal criteria that remain the determining factor. However, a work could be considered as doctrinally
“Thomist” when the teaching it contains presents a certain identity with
that of Thomas. Like Maritain, one could approach this identity with the
model of the substantial identity of a living, developing organism:
This work (of the development of Thomism) should be accomplished
through vital assimilation and immanent progress—if I may say so, by
the progressive formation of the same spiritual organism; by a kind of
perpetual growth and maturing; by a kind of transfiguration of which
we find a rather imperfect image in the growth of corporeal organisms.
Consider a small child that becomes an adult. His metaphysical personality has not changed. Rather, it is still fully present. No heterogeneous
parts have been grafted onto him from the outside.Yet everything has
been transfigured in him, has become more differentiated, stronger, and
has attained a more perfect proportion.1

Thus, according to Maritain, the Thomism of the commentators is nothing but the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. It is the same doctrine, but at a
later, more mature period of development.
To this optimistic model, one might prefer the more flexible metaphor
of a line of ancestors or the members of a single species spanning different
generations.The same specific essence is transmitted to a plurality of distinct
individuals by way of generation.The Thomism of Thomas of Vio Cajetan
or Maritain is another doctrine than the Thomism of Thomas. However,
since these Thomisms have been engendered in a certain way by Thomas’s
corpus, they demonstrate a specific resemblance with his thought.
And yet, the real problem is not the choice of a model with which to
conceive the unity of the Thomistic tradition. Rather, the greater difficulty
is how to determine whether this presumed unity corresponds to the
historical reality! Is there a doctrinal unity of the Thomistic tradition? Do
the differences and variations that have been found within the Thomistic
tradition remain on the plane of individual differences within a single
species, or do these differences place the specific identity into question?
1 Sept leçons sur l’être (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1940), 18.

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873

Gilson—who never hid his profound dislike for Cajetan, corruptorium
Thomae, and other commentators—tended toward the second solution to
this question. But it seems to me that this negative judgment rests on a
highly disputable approach to the nature of doctrine and on an all-tooCartesian excess of systematization. For Gilson, Thomism is a “system”
structured and specified by a single principle, which alone gives meaning
to the whole.This principle is the “fundamental truth” of Thomism, to take
up an expression of Norbert Del Prado. For him, this truth, this cornerstone of the Thomistic system, is the thesis of the real distinction between
being (esse) and essence in creatures, and its necessary complement, the
thesis of the real identity of being and essence in God. In other words, as
Gilson will specify, this fundamental truth is a certain understanding of the
mystery of being as existential act.This first principle, which can be grasped
only intuitively, is the soul of Thomism. In this perspective, those who overlook this principle miss everything, no matter how great their subjective
desire for fidelity to Thomas may be, and they are left with nothing but a
Thomistic corpse. Since most “Thomists” have not understood being the
way Gilson has, a veritable massacre follows. There is no history of
Thomism, just a history of the forgetting of Thomism.
This apocalyptic historiography of the Thomist tradition rests on the
postulate according to which Thomas’s thought is so systematized and
unified that we find ourselves in the binary logic of “all or nothing.”
There is no Thomism without an understanding of the first principle! It
is true that philosophical or theological thought cannot dispense itself
from the search for a unifying principle. Furthermore, by its very nature,
philosophical and theological thought tends toward systematization. But
in the concrete, a doctrinal teaching such as that of Thomas integrates a
plurality of principles that are not tightly interconnected.The Thomism
of Thomas is a complex, articulated whole that includes certain theses
which are relatively independent of one another. Thus, a “commentator’s” shortcoming in a certain domain does not ipso facto entail a
disqualification of his entire work. For example, one can maintain very
authentically Thomistic positions in morals and politics, as Francisco de
Vitoria did in the sixteenth century, without necessarily adopting
Thomas’s view of the relation between being and essence.The weakness
or regress of a body part has repercussions for an entire organism, but it
does not necessarily cause death. Consequently, one can have limping
Thomisms, or those afflicted with a horrible Scotistic swelling of the
throat, which nevertheless merit the name of Thomism. In short,
Thomism is an analogical reality.There are more or less profound, more
or less perfect,Thomisms, yet they still partake in the same heritage.

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The historian of the Thomist tradition is thus invited to combine the
doctrinal and the institutional criteria.Yet in each case, these criteria must
be carefully contextualized. This is obvious for the institutional criteria
that are by their very nature historical.Thus, the institutional connection
between Thomism and the Dominican Order has known its ups and
downs, as it still does today.This is just as true for the doctrinal criteria.
It is not possible to define the Thomist tradition a priori using doctrinal
criteria that are extrinsic to the historical context of a certain era without being anachronistic. To be a Thomist at the end of the thirteenth
century did not mean defending an Augustinian conception of predestination against improbable Molinists, for an Augustinian doctrine was still
admitted by everyone and remained unquestioned. Rather, to be a
Thomist meant maintaining the unicity of substantial form and the superiority of the intellect over the will against a very active Franciscan opposition! To be a Thomist in the fifteenth century meant fighting the
Scotistic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and not the promotion
of the notion of esse as existential act! Thus, one must avoid projecting
the doctrinal criteria that characterize one era of Thomism onto another
historical period of Thomism.
The second methodological problem that the doctrinal history of
Thomism presents involves a particular application of a general philosophical problem: what is the engine or explanatory principle of doctrinal history? Here, one should avoid two tempting extremes.The first or
“idealist” temptation suggests an explanation of doctrinal development
using only the logic of ideas. Thus, the history of doctrines appears as
nothing but the unfolding of the logical consequences of a set of initial
doctrinal options. For example, Géry Prouvost, taking up one of Gilson’s
intuitions, thinks that the history of Thomisms is in the service of “an
experimental laboratory which seeks the secret or un-thought tendencies” of the doctrine of Thomas.2 Prouvost proposes that “perhaps the
diversity of Thomisms finds its first source in the very ambiguity of
Thomas’s text” (17).Thus, they reveal “aporias and speculative dissonance”
(126). The conflicting interpretations inside the Thomistic school thus
appear as nothing but the unfolding and actualization of an ambivalence
already virtually present in the works of Thomas himself. Although this
type of approach is not un-interesting, it hardly corresponds to the
historical conditions of doctrinal history; at the same time, moreover, it
flirts with an “idealist” approach to history that is hardly in harmony with
the principles of Thomistic anthropology.
2 Saint Thomas et les thomismes (Paris: Cerf, 1996), 33.

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The “materialist” temptation is to reduce the development of ideas to
a “real history,” to the evolution of infrastructures and sociopolitical life,
an evolution of which doctrines will be only an epiphenomenal reflection. Yet a good understanding of the connection between the proper
finality of the doctrinal act and its sociopolitical inscription excludes this
kind of reductionism. The doctrinal act, however conditioned it may be
by its social context, is not reducible to it (this would mean the end of
philosophy, theology, and the history of doctrines), except when thought
degrades itself into an ideology, that is to say, when the doctrinal act is
directly governed by goals that are radically extrinsic to the quest for the
truth.Again, in the face of every temptation toward a simplistic univocity,
the historian of doctrines must demonstrate a sharp and discerning spirit.
Highlights from the History of Thomism
Thomism experienced a painful birth, first as a reaction to an antiThomism. The 1270s were marked by a growing suspicion that culminated in the doctrinal condemnations of 1277 directed at an Aristotelian
naturalism and certain theologians who had integrated this philosophy
into their thought. The first Thomism, essentially Dominican, focused
primarily on a defense of certain controversial doctrines in Thomas’s
works against the attacks of some Franciscans and the reaction that has
been called (rightly or wrongly) “neo-Augustinianism.”The main points
of conflict were the same as when Thomas was alive. Are there multiple
substantial forms in the human being, or only one? Is a created eternal
world possible? Does the intellect play a more determining role in
human liberty than the will? This was the time of the Correctoria. Just
before 1279, the Franciscan William de la Mare’s Correctorium pinpointed
a number of controversial aspects in Thomas’s doctrine. The Dominican
response to the Correctorium, re-baptized as the Corruptorium, was not long
in coming. It consisted of five refutations of William de la Mare’s work.
This literature is the first manifestation of a Thomistic tradition. It
emerged from the two great centers of the Thomistic resistance: Paris and
Oxford. Indeed, while Oxford, with Robert of Kilwardby and John
Peckham, was at the heart of the anti-Thomist offensive, its Dominican
priory also housed a young and dynamic team of Thomists who engaged
in a thorough defense of “our doctor,” Thomas Aquinas. Among these
were Richard Knapwell (†1289), author of the correctory Quare and
proto-martyr of Thomism, and Thomas Sutton († after 1315). While
Sutton did not compose a Correctorium, he was very active in the defense
of Thomistic ideas. He also seems to have been one of the first Dominicans to engage in the debate with Scotism, which was destined to last.

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In the closing years of the thirteenth century, the literary genre of the
Correctorium was succeeded by that of the Impugnatio, a genre in which
the Dominican Bernard of Auvergne († after 1304) distinguished himself.
These treatises offered a systematic Thomistic critique of the new theologies that emerged at the end of that century, including a critique of their
philosophical foundations. The thinkers targeted included Henry of
Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Gilles of Rome.
In the first half of the fourteenth century, the thought of Thomas
Aquinas continued to inspire to varying degrees a number of Dominicans. In the south of France, Bernard of Trillia (†1292) had already distinguished himself as one who was, in the words of Bernard Gui, “richly
impregnated with the teachings and nectar of Brother Thomas,” and did
not recoil before outright plagiarism. One should also mention Cardinal
William of Peter Godin (†1336), the first provincial of the Dominican
province of Toulouse and author of a commentary on Peter Lombard’s
Sentences hailed as a lectura thomasina, as well as the exegete Dominic
Grima, and Armand of Belvézer († after 1348), who was the first
commentator on the De Ente et Essentia. In the north of France, one must
mention Hervaeus Natalis (†1323), perhaps the most controversial figure
in medieval Thomism (he rejected the real distinction of being and
essence!), but one with considerable influence. Natalis made himself the
promoter of institutional Thomism. In addition, one can mention Peter
of Palude (†1343), a man of little speculative talent, though he was well
known for his moral and sacramental theology.Among the Italians, Remi
dei Girolami, Gui Vernani, and especially John of Naples were well
deserving of the title “Thomist.” In Germany, Albertism remained so
dominant that, after the condemnation of Meister Echkart, two Toulouse
Dominicans were commissioned to bring their German brothers into the
Thomistic fold.
Two major phenomena marked the Thomistic tradition in the first half
of the fourteenth century. First,Thomism became the official doctrine of
the Dominican Order, not only in their university teaching but also in
their internal formation, with all the consequences that this Thomistic
penetration can have, given the Dominican influence on socio-cultural
life at that time. Here, the “affair of Durandus of Saint-Pourçain” marks
a turning point.The direct inheritor of a pre-Thomist Dominican vein,
Durandus opposed numerous Thomistic positions in his teaching. The
scandal was considerable. A number of Dominican theologians—led by
Hervaeus Natalis—felt obliged to refute the theology of their excessively
independent confrere. The institutional reaction was no less firm. In
1313, the Order of Preacher’s General Chapter at Metz declared:

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Since the teaching of the venerable doctor, brother Thomas Aquinas, is
regarded as the most sound and the most common, and since our Order
is especially obligated to follow it, we strictly forbid any brother in his
courses, determinations, or responses to have the audacity to maintain
and propose as true the contrary of that which is commonly believed
to be the opinion held by the doctor.

With the help of the canonization of Thomas by Pope John XXII in
July of 1323, this institutionalization of Thomism even began to extend
itself to the universal Church. The recognition of Thomas’s sanctity
occurred in a very particular context, that of the controversy about
poverty between the Franciscans and a papacy that regarded the theology
of Thomas Aquinas as a precious ally.Thomas’s canonization contributed
greatly to the establishment of his doctrinal authority, as did his solemn
doctrinal rehabilitation by the University of Paris in 1325, an event that
later Thomists will recall time and again.
Yet Thomism also suffered the repercussions of the profound mutation
in Scholasticism in the fourteenth century, a change both in Scholasticism’s
methodology and in the problems with which it dealt.This was a century
of critique rather than a century of decadence.This shift can be explained
by the end of the “great translations,” of the translatio studiorum, which
closed the Latin mind in on its own history, as well as by the growing separation between philosophy and theology. These developments—aided by
other mediating factors that cannot be explained here—were expressed in
a new “style” of thought. This new thought was characterized by the
inflated role that it granted to logic and epistemology.
Beyond this change in “style” that also marked Thomism, doctrinal life
in the first half of the fourteenth century was characterized by the
predominance of a certain number of challenges, in which one can
distinguish two kinds. First, the constellation of problems was directly
tied to the critical problem, that is, to epistemological questions that
focused on the status of theology and its scientificity, and other problems
related to the theory of knowledge.Thomism responded with a defense
of an Aristotelian noetic system, which had found much opposition.
Second, we find three problems tied to the great sociocultural conflicts
of the era. First, there was the fight between the papacy and certain
temporal powers that led to the emergence of a political philosophy and
theology.The Thomists oscillated between a strict theocratism (especially
the Italians, including John of Naples and Gui Vernani) and a more
refined sense of the autonomy of political realities (especially among the
French, e.g. John of Paris). Second, the revived conflict between the

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mendicants and the secular or diocesan clerics stimulated a reflection on
the internal structure of the Church, and in particular, on the proper role
of the pope within that structure.The Thomists showed themselves to be
fully convinced supporters of the papacy, whatever the differences in
their approaches to the problem of the relationship between the Church
and civil society. Third, the above-mentioned conflict between the
papacy and the Franciscans encouraged a deeper reflection on the theology of religious life and in the areas of social and political philosophy (for
example, on the question of property).
The second half of the fourteenth century was a kind of journey
through a desert for the Thomist tradition. In general, this era was doctrinally poor, yet the decline of Thomism is also explained by the success of
another kind of Scholasticism, one that later solidified itself into the via
moderna. Thomism’s decline was also reinforced by its memorable defeat
in the debate on the Immaculate Conception. One thinks especially of
the conflict between John of Monzon and the University of Paris
(1387–89), from which the Dominicans were temporarily excluded.
We find the first “Thomistic renewal” in the fifteenth century. It
occurred in the general context of a return to the thirteenth century. A
romantic image of the 1200s had emerged, of an era of harmony between
faith and reason, one exempt from the deviations of the fourteenth
century.The monumental Thomistic work of the fifteenth century—the
Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae by the French Dominican John Capreolus (†1444)—offers a good example of this project. Capreolus sought a
return to Thomas himself, to Thomas sui interpres, by means of a critique
of the fourteenth-century critique (Duns Scotus, Durandus of SaintPourçain, Peter Auriol, Gregory of Rimini, etc.). However, it was not in
France but in Germany and in Italy that Neo-Thomism flourished. At
Cologne, the Thomistic torch passed to the secular clerics, with the bursa
Montana and its masters, such as Henry of Gorcum (†1431), Gerard of
Monte (†1480), and their confrontation with Neo-Albertism. This
Colognian Thomism exercised a considerable influence on the universities in Germany and in Central and Eastern Europe, institutions that were
then in full bloom. In Italy, the success of Thomism was inseparable from
the reform movement within the Dominican Order, especially at
Bologna, where Dominic of Flanders (†1479) and Peter of Bergame
(†1482) taught.
But in fact, the fifteenth century marked the arrival of a new kind of
Thomism. A Thomism of inspiration was succeeded by a Thomistic
school that distinguished itself by four traits. The first was literal fidelity
to Thomas. In a context where the category of doctrinal certitude tended

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to follow right after the category of truth, the cult of the ipissima verba of
Thomas became a kind of ideal. But this “canonization” of Thomas’s text
had some fortunate results. It caused a somewhat timid manifestation of
the first beginnings of textual and historical criticism. It also produced
the genesis of an unprecedented exploration of Thomas’s corpus, one that
included the immense work of indexing, whose greatest accomplishment
remains Peter of Bergame’s Tabula aurea.The second trait of the Thomistic
school in this era was, fittingly, the reduction of Thomas’s corpus into the
form of a textbook. Here we find the first Thomistic manuals. Thus,
Henry of Gorcum was a good pedagogue and an author of manuals
rather than an original thinker. This was also the age in which the first
commentaries on the Summa theologiae appeared (by Henry of Gorcum,
the Dominicans Laurent Gervais, Gerard of Elten, and others). These
were works whose pedagogy targeted a very broad audience. The third
trait was the solidification of the boundaries between the schools. The
doctrinal debate degenerated into a “war of positions,” a “trench war” in
which each camp defined itself by simple and well-defined theses that
were opposed to the theses of the adversarial camp. Finally, the last trait,
one that especially pertains to the end of the fifteenth century, is the
appearance of a tradition of interpretation. To be a Thomist meant not
only to refer oneself to Thomas but also to read him with the help of a
certified series of Thomistic authors.
The Thomists of the fifteenth century also sought to construct a
systematic Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. One finds it especially in
their commentaries on Aristotle, works largely inspired by Thomas’s own
Aristotelian commentaries. In theology, the school took part in the great
controversies of the era, especially the ecclesiological debates brought
about by the Great Western Schism. In general, Thomism became the
great defender of papal authority against the conciliarists. A good example is found in the work of John of Torquemada (†1468), author of the
first Summa de ecclesia.This pro-papal tendency in Thomistic theology was
not unrelated to the renewed support from Rome that Thomas would
enjoy henceforth.
This late-medieval renewal prepared the way for the sixteenth century.
This was the golden age of Thomism and the era of the great “commentators.” In Italy, Thomas of Vio, alias Cajetan (†1534), and Francesco
Silvestri (†1526) composed the two classic commentaries on the Summa
theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles, respectively. In Spain, Francisco
de Vitoria (†1546), initiated into Thomism at Paris, was the first of a series
of illustrious masters that included Domingo Soto (†1560) and Melchior
Cano (†1560), the men who formed the Thomistic school at Salamanca.

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More attentive to morals than to metaphysics, and anxious to integrate
the contributions of the humanist tradition and positive theology into
Thomism,Vitoria had the great merit of applying Thomistic principles to
the elaboration of a theory of international law and the defense of the
natural rights of the indigenous people in the Americas. On these points,
his ethical doctrine rested on the Thomistic conception of the distinction
between nature and grace. This Iberian Thomism produced a plentiful
late harvest that continued into the seventeenth century, with the systematic Thomistic courses of John of St.Thomas (†1644) and the Carmelites
of Salamanca (Salmenticenses ).
The Thomists were soon confronted by the drama of the Reformation.
They opposed a narrow Protestant theology that reserved all efficacy to
God with Thomas’s conception of the non-competitive relation between
the first and the second cause. This conception provided the foundation
for the principle of mediation, including mediation in the order of salvation. In this context, it is understandable that the Thomistic theologians
were omnipresent at the Council of Trent, where they directed in a decisive way the Christian reflection on the great questions concerning justification, the sacraments, et cetera. The proclamation of St. Thomas as
Doctor of the Church by St. Pius V in 1567 marked the zenith of this
Thomism. This school provided the doctrinal structure for the Catholic
Reform.Thomism also took an active part in the spiritual movement that
distinguished the great French century. Authors such as Louis Chardon
(†1651), Vincent Contenson (†1674), and Antoine Massoulié (†1706)
built the foundations of a spirituality shaped by Thomism. The Dominican reform of S. Michaëlis effectively produced a plethora of solid
Thomists in the south of France, both at Toulouse and at Bordeaux. Here
one might mention Vincent Baron (†1674), the intemperate anti-Jesuit
polemicist Antoine Réginald (†1676), Jean-Baptiste Gonet (†1681), and
Antoine Goudin (†1695).These men dedicated themselves to the development of Thomism’s potential as a “third way” between the Molinist and
probabilist theologies of the Jesuits and Jansenism.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were largely occupied by the
endless controversies about grace.The Society of Jesus had quickly rallied
to the Thomistic cause and given it Francisco Suarez (†1617), an extraordinary thinker whose connections with Thomism still need to be clarified.
Nevertheless, the Jesuits, heavily influenced by modern humanism, felt
extremely uncomfortable with the traditional doctrine of grace as efficacious by itself, one that was inspired by St. Augustine and defended by St.
Thomas. To the Jesuits, it seemed to leave too little initiative for human
liberty in the work of salvation. In addition, the way Protestantism

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employed Augustinianism seemed to confirm the need for a profound
revision of this part of the Christian faith. In his celebrated Concordantia,
Luis Molina (†1600) elaborated a general system of relations between
divine causality and human liberty. He consistently made the efficacy of
divine grace depend on the prior consent of human liberty. In the face of
this subversion,Thomists such as Peter of Ledesma (†1616), Diego Alvarez
(†1635), Thomas of Lemos (†1629), and especially the great Domingo
Bañez (†1604) made themselves the champions of the primacy of grace,
of a grace efficacious by itself and not in virtue of the prior consent of
human liberty. The free consent to grace already appeared to them as an
effect of grace.The human being and God are not in competition, simply
because the first and the second cause are not on the same plane. Furthermore, it is God himself who gives the free choice of the creature all of its
(determined) reality. Confronted with the immense mystery of predestination and the unequal distribution of grace, one ought not to propose a
“solution,” but to situate the mystery in its proper place: in the fathomless
liberty, goodness, and wisdom of God, and not in the “no God’s land” of
a human liberty improperly raised to the rank of a secondary divinity.
Henceforth, Bañezianism—and the thesis of physical premotion—became
N&V
the official doctrine of the Dominican Order.

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883

Christ Is the Sure Foundation:
Priestly Human Formation Completed
in and by Spiritual Formation*
J AMES K EATING
Institute for Priestly Formation
Creighton University
Omaha, Nebraska

F IFTEEN years ago, Father Louis Camelli urged seminary formators
not to complicate human and spiritual priestly formation by trying to
fuse them. He warned that intense commitment to spiritual practices will
not, of itself, lead to affective or psychological maturity. He also noted,
however, that human and spiritual formation ought to be integrated in a
mutual relationship.1 What might an integrated human-spiritual formation process be built upon, and how might it be understood within seminary life? 2
In this article, I want to argue that deep within the heart of priestly
formation is a perichoresis of human formation and spirituality. In
human formation, the seminarian listens to the truth about himself so
that, within spiritual formation, he can relate all that he knows about
himself to the mystery of Christ.

* My thanks to Edward Hogan, Kathy Kanavy, Peter Ryan, S.J., Michael C. Barber,

S.J., and Christine Lynch, who read earlier drafts of this essay.
1 Louis Camelli, “Origins and Promise: Perspectives on Human Formation for

Priesthood” Seminary Journal 1, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 16.
2 See John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis (PDV ) (1992), 45, wherein it is noted that

human formation finds its completion in spiritual formation. If PDV 45 is to become
enfleshed, seminary formators need to continue to articulate a compatible
anthropology and theory of human personality based upon this capacity of the
human to commune with God.

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884

Rationale for Integration
After Camelli wrote his essay calling for a mutual relationship between
human and spiritual formation, something dramatic happened in the
minds of the U.S. bishops: spiritual formation became the “heart and
core” of priestly formation around which all other aspects of formation
are integrated.3 Further, and even more telling, the Program of Priestly
Formation calls Christ the “foundation” of all human formation.4 Therefore, knowledge of and intimacy with Christ encompasses all aspects of
formation and is explicitly its foundation in human formation. Substantially, the Church envisions human formation to be a set of relationships
that enable a seminarian to become a man of communion; “that he
becomes someone who makes a gift of himself and is able to receive the
gift of others.”5 The seminarian achieves this self-donative character
through “the love of God and service to others.”6 We see here that both
spiritual and human formation hinge on the openness of the seminarian
to receive love, and to receive the truth about himself as a sign of being
loved. Such a complex reality as human formation is held together by the
structures of faith even though, for reasons articulated by philosophy and
the human sciences, it is held distinct from spiritual intimacy. In order
that human formation be integrated with spirituality, a seminary is not to
falsely reduce such formation to devotionalism. A seminarian becomes a
man of communion from within the depths of his own intimacy with
Christ, and not simply by entering into pious practices. Such intimacy
sustains and orders a man’s personality and virtue, directing them toward
full healing where necessary.To separate human formation from spiritual
progress would create an untenable, bifurcated world of inner life and
supernatural life, of private faith and public ethic.Albeit not all aspects of
a man’s faith life ought to be made public (for example, the deepest of
intimate prayer and its companion images); faith, ultimately, is as public a
reality as a man hanging on the Cross.
As Pope John Paul II noted,“the man who wishes to understand himself
thoroughly . . . his unrest, uncertainty, his weakness and sinfulness . . .
[must] draw near to Christ. He must . . . enter into [Christ] with all his
own self, he must appropriate . . . the incarnation and redemption in
order to find himself.”7
3 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Program of Priestly Formation (Wash-

ington, D.C.: USCCB, 2006), 115.
4 Ibid., 74.
5 Ibid., 83.
6 Ibid., 84.
7 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (1979), §10.

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John Paul II further alludes to the fact that this type of formation will
lead a man to adore God and experience wonder at his own being. Such
formation is called Christianity (Redemptor Hominis §10). Here we see how
human formation is affiliated with catechesis and mystagogy. Mature
humans adore God and are grateful to Him for their own being. Human
formation is the work of becoming a vir catholicus.We can say, then, that the
seminarian who receives the truth about himself in the process of human
formation has “put on Christ,” has been established upon the firm foundation (1 Cor 3:11). He has suffered the coming of truth about his own character, and the truth has set him free ( Jn 8:32). Such freedom, received by
one who is open to the truth, is the authentic hallmark of a man who has
fully entered into the formative relationships that facilitate maturation.
Formators can assist a seminarian to appropriate this freedom by ushering him into the mystery of Christ’s own Baptism (Mt 3:17).The mystery
of sharing in the Beloved Sonship of Christ is a foundational element in
a man’s capacity to receive the Love of the Father and, therefore, his own
personal mission. If he does not receive this identity and come to savor
and contemplate it, the man will make decisions that reflect a search for
the Father’s love, rather than make decisions in the light of such love.
Prayer as a Way of Integration
If we are created in the image and likeness of God, it stands to reason that,
to reach human fulfillment, we have to listen to God. In this way, we can
say that the integrating dynamism between human and spiritual formation
is prayer.This concept becomes even more apparent when we remember
that the Church is asking for all dimensions of seminary formation
(pastoral, human, and academic) to be integrated around spiritual formation. Spiritual formation (that is, living in intimate and unceasing union
with God and the mysteries of Christ) is the heart and core of seminary
formation; the other dimensions are to be informed by spirituality.These
other dimensions await their completion in intimacy with the indwelling
Trinity, as communicated within the sacraments of the Church.8
Among other meanings, prayer is a way of listening to God and discerning His call to truth. In meetings with his human formation director, and
in events throughout the day, a seminarian can prayerfully listen to the truth
about himself and receive this truth in a discerning manner in the context
of faith.This prayerful listening is a way for the seminarian to relate all of
what he knows about himself to the mystery of Christ. For any of us to
8 The Program of Priestly Formation specifies what it means by priestly spirituality in

paragraph 109:“their spirituality draws them into the priestly, self sacrificial path
of Jesus . . . the Good Shepherd, the Head, and the Bridegroom.”

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886

reach affective maturity, we must learn how to contemplate Christ.9 Such
contemplation is not esoteric in its execution, but it does require an openness to a “sacred exchange” at the level of the heart, the conscience. Prayer
is a matter of wanting to be affected by God in the very depths of one’s
openness to His truth and love.Thus, the mind and heart know the delight
of thinking about such gratuitous love. “In the course of human maturation there comes a point . . . when every individual . . . realizes that the
purpose and meaning [he] is looking for . . . cannot be found simply by
searching within himself. . . .Truth does not lie within the self. It is distinct
from the self and can only be found in God.”10 The very nature of truth
requires the seminarian to be available to what it encompasses in both the
spiritual and the natural realms. Without this full availability to truth, a
seminarian cannot be a man of integrity. Indeed, it is dangerous for a seminarian to think that he can separate the truth about his need for affective
maturity from the healing reality of who Christ is for him. It is equally
dangerous to think that spirituality alone, separated from the processes of
receiving the full truth about one’s personality, conscience formation, and
patterns of living, can bring about growth in human formation.
In prayer, a seminarian receives God, who reveals, unfolds, evokes, and
gently raises the truth about his life. In God, the seminarian comes to live
in the truth.11 God alone defines us. Other people can indicate only how
we affect them, but they cannot give us our identity. Our true identity is
given only by Him who also gives us our true mission in life.12 If a
person’s mission is given with his identity, then the seminarian finds his
affective maturity and virtue only along the path of fidelity to the priestly
identities: chaste spouse, spiritual father, pastoral physician, good shepherd, and beloved son. As noted above, the foundational identity is
beloved son. In the absence of this identity, which constructs a secured
interiority, a man mistakes lies about his identity, rooted in human
wounds and satanic whispers, for truth.The formators must explore these
wounds and whispers if the seminarian is ever to live the priestly identities and the missions that issue from them.
9 Victoria Harrison, The Apologetic Value of Human Holiness (Dordrecht: Kluwer,

2000), 29.
10 Ibid., 30–31.
11 Ibid., 41; Benedict XVI, “Homily” 20 July 2008, World Youth Day: “Prayer is

pure receptivity to God’s grace, love in action, communion with the Spirit who
dwells within us, leading us, through Jesus, in the Church, to our heavenly
Father. In the power of his Spirit, Jesus is always present in our hearts, quietly
waiting for us to be still with him, to hear his voice, to abide in his love, and to
receive ‘power from on high,’ enabling us to be salt and light for our world.”
12 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961), 99.

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887

The seminarian is not only to receive the truth about himself in prayerful discernment but to suffer these truths, endure them. If human formation
entails receiving the truth about oneself, then spiritual formation sublates
these received truths into a freedom to be loved by Christ. Living out one’s
mission in spiritual and affective maturity (that is, abiding in Christ unto
self-donation) defines one as a “man of communion.” Nevertheless, one of
the key reasons to retain a distinction between spiritual and human formation is to serve the healing of emotional wounds. Not all wounds are immediately healed through prayer. Such wounds need to be taken up into a
“prayerful therapeutic,” which may include some assistance by psychotherapists. Becoming a man of communion is a lifelong commitment.13
In order to become a man of communion, a seminarian needs to
“see”—to behold the beauty of Christ’s self-donation, to see the lives of
the saints as real, to recognize the truth delivered by his formator as
something to be joyfully accepted.14 Even if this truth costs and causes
affective pain, a seminarian endures it because “Christ . . . fully reveals
man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”15 Formators want
the seminarian to be open to truth, to possess a gifted capacity to stand
before God as a son and speak his mind ( parrhesia ), to look God in the
face without fear because God is a Loving Father ( Jn 16:26).16 The
capacity to speak the truth and hear the truth about oneself is the result
of an intimacy that comes from love. Does the seminarian who avoids the
truth about himself do so because he has yet to receive the love of the
13 St. Louis de Montfort struggled with becoming a man of communion his whole

priestly life. Such a struggle was relaxed by way of his prayer life but also through
simple human experience, the wisdom of his superiors, and other contingencies
that played a role in his becoming more charitable in his relations with certain
ecclesial and civil authorities. See Thelagathoti Raja Rao, “The Mystical Experience of St. Louis-Marie De Monfort,” Studies in Spirituality 17 (2007). “For most
of his life, Louis-Marie had been scrupulously attentive to his relationship with
God. His relationships with other people, on the other hand, left much to be
desired, since he was often totally unaware of the effect his behavior had on others”
(174).This disproportionate attention to prayer on the part of seminarians, to the
disregard of the needs of other persons, has always been the fear of some seminary
formators. If this fear runs formation, however, it can hollow out the soul, making
intimacy with God in prayer impossible. In such a fearful formator, all the emphasis on seminarian maturation is placed upon “good works,” skills, and meeting
measurable objectives. Letting spirituality inform all the facets of priestly formation,
however, bodes well for seminarian integration and maturation, since grace is not
to be restricted to spiritual direction, the “traditional” confine for spirituality.
14 See Harrison, The Apologetic Value of Human Holiness, 89.
15 Documents of Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes (1965), §22.
16 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, 38.

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Father? When the seminarian trusts the Father enough to receive His
love in Christ and through the Spirit, then he becomes open to all truth,
including painful truth about his own flaws.
We must not mistake the necessity of a seminarian receiving the love of
the Father for the error about which Louis Camelli rightly warned formators. Saying that the love of God must be received by a seminarian is not
equivalent to saying that “intense commitment to spiritual practices” leads
to affective maturity. It is to say that spiritual formation is endemic to any
and all progress toward becoming a mature priest. The seminarian must
learn to dwell in the spiritual realm of a mutually interpenetrating love
between himself as a member of the body of Christ and the Father’s own
love for that body.The human formation of the seminarian, then, is enfolded
within the mystery of spirituality.As Pope Benedict XVI teaches,“The good
pastor must be rooted in contemplation.”17 “The contemplative man does
not merely come into the presence of truth and think about it as an object,
he lives in truth, stands in truth, comes from truth.”18 To have the seminarian live in truth, stand in truth, and come from truth is the goal of all human
formation. Such a goal, however, is reached only when seminarians are
rooted in contemplation and stand freely before God, receiving His love.
Spousal Love
What truth does human formation have as its object?19 Human formation
assists the seminarian to reach full stature, full maturity, in and through his
acceptance of the mystery of the Father’s love in Christ. In accepting this
love, the seminarian awakens to his sonship and then begins to listen to
the Father in the Son.The anthropological truth of sonship is summed up
well by the aphorism of Francis of Assisi, “What a man is before God, that
he is and no more.”20 It is the “before God” perspective that orders all
conversation toward truth in the external forum.
Gentle, persistent effort must be placed upon the seminarian to stop
hiding from God. To continue to hide is to ruin his chances at ever
becoming a man of communion—in other words, a mature man. To
continue to hide in sin, fear, entitlements, and academic success thwarts
the possibility of a seminarian coming to possess the full stature and
17 Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005), §7.
18 Balthasar, Prayer, 63.
19 The proximate object is affective maturity, or the reception of the truth about

oneself and one’s capacity to give that self away in love, whereas the ultimate
object is the ability to receive and accept the mystery of the Father’s love as the
truth about oneself.
20 St. Bonaventure, Major Life of St. Francis of Assisi, §6.1

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889

maturity needed to espouse the Church in the Spirit of Christ. Until
such “hiding” (Gen. 3:8–10) is shunned, he will not be capable of giving
himself to the Church. Instead, he will simply lust after her, taking from
the church in order to serve his own immature purposes. Such “lusting”
by a man toward his future bride should stop or delay the “marriage
preparation” process immediately.21 A mature man seeks the good of his
spouse and is not fixated upon what he will get out of the marriage.
To live in the light of truth, to accept his spousal call, the seminarian must
confront the naked vulnerability of the Son of God upon the Cross. He
must contemplate such self-donation as the antidote to his own self-involvement. Contemplation is not simply meditating upon a narrative and
marveling at its drama. Contemplation that heals a man lets the living
mystery of divine love affect the intellect and move the will to new life
commitments.22 Human formation places the mystery of prayer without
ceasing (1 Thess 5:25) within its purview, since one ought not to consider
spiritual and moral progress in human formation apart from truths perceived
in prayer.23 Human formation encompasses a development of moral virtue
but cannot simply be reduced to growth in moral virtue alone.
Furthermore, contemplation deepens the seminarian’s connection to
the Church, since he never receives anything in legitimate contemplation
other than what the Church has already received in the Paschal mystery.
This connection to the Church, and the gift that is Christ’s own mission,
enters the seminarian and begins to order his thinking. His sharing in this
mission begins to break down a seminarian’s fantasies, which lead him to
daydream about what he will get out of the priesthood, materially or
egocentrically (that is, the best parish assignment, praise and adulation
from parishioners, bachelor freedom to travel, et cetera). As Balthasar
notes, we enter God in prayer by contemplating the wounds of His Son.24
The seminarian is to be invited to press his own wounds (affective,
psychological, and physical) into the mystery of Christ’s open wounds
upon the Cross. In this activity, the seminarian’s wounds, some of which
21 Such lusting can be partially uncovered by noting the way a seminarian speaks

about future ministry and priestly life. He may be fixated upon the trappings of
priestly life, a perceived privilege, a sense of entitlement, a covetousness about
wanting “the best” parish or only chancery work, etc.
22 We can see this in the lives of saints, such as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
contemplating St. Teresa of Avila’s life (“This is Truth”), or St. Francis of Assisi
receiving Matthew’s Gospel (19:21) in its full force, leading to his new life
commitment of possessing nothing of his own.
23 Balthasar, Prayer, 65.
24 Ibid., 56.

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are brought about by his own sins, meet the pierced heart of Christ.This
heart, open and vulnerable as well, becomes the corrective, the balm for
the seminarian’s wounds. Whereas the seminarian has opened himself to
suffering through ignorance or a lack of trust in God’s love, Christ has
opened himself to suffering out of love for the seminarian. Christ’s wound
of love meets the seminarian’s ego wound and transfigures the site into a
place of intimacy and new life ( felix culpa).This activity of a man pressing
his fears, doubts, lusts, and sorrows into Christ’s generosity, as imagined in
contemplation, becomes the place where the future priest is formed by
mature spousal love. Here, near the Cross, the seminarian becomes aware
of a spousal love becoming fatherly love. Christ’s own sons are born at the
Cross. This Cross embodies spousal love and awakens the heart of the
seminarian to want to give even more.The seminarian wants not only to
will the welfare of the spouse through complete self-donation but slowly
to welcome an emerging spiritual fatherhood under the tutelage of the
Bride herself (the Church, Mary). Affective maturity demands a commitment on the seminarian’s part to press his deepest wounds into the
mystery of Christ’s torn body upon the Cross. The seminarian needs to
name his wounds, and any concomitant grief, so that Christ can heal him.
While this spousal love is daunting, the seminarian will come to see
this self-donative mystery as the only way to secure happiness. It is a
happiness born of contemplating and entering priestly identity (sacrificial self-giving by way of a vulnerability to divine love). This spousal
identity, which Christ shares with His priests, is Christ’s own answer to
affective and moral immaturity.25
Healing the fear of this spousal self-giving, along with the fears of
paternal commitment and receiving love from God and others as son,
may well be the heart of seminary human formation.The recent clerical
sexual scandals involved emotionally ill men, but they also involved
vicious men.These vicious men were simply takers, not spouses. Not all
the sexual activity of errant priests can be reduced to pathology.A refusal
to receive and stay in the love of God no doubt plays a weighty role in
many priestly scandals, from misuse of finances, to broken promises of
chastity. And here we recognize that a man who cannot enter such a
contemplative reception of truth about himself before God may best
belong outside of formation.Then he can pursue healing as an exclusive
endeavor and not simply as part of the process of becoming a priest.

25 Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.:The Catholic

University of America Press, 1995), 208–9.

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Healing the Sorrows and Fear
Beholding the truth of oneself before the self-giving love of Christ is the
place where both the fear of receiving love and the fear of self-donation are
healed.26 A seminarian does not behold Christ in order to measure himself
against such divine love; that would lead only to despair. He beholds the
Christ so that he might allow his vulnerability (his own wounds) to be
healed by Christ’s own wounds. The greatest wound that Christ wants to
heal is fear of self-giving. Such a fear, born of lack of trust, is a shadow of a
deeper fear of death and love (“What will happen to ME if I give? Who will
care for ME?”). This fear is the reverberation of Adam’s lack of trust that
God is providential. In fear, one is always led to take rather than to give and
to receive. Also, grief and sorrow lie dormant in some men, affecting them
unconsciously with bouts of displaced anger and depression.These emotions
lead to temptations to enter false consolation, such as pornography, alcohol,
and arrogant behavior.This sorrow and grief is born in many past experiences of the seminarian’s youth and may fuel his present struggle, whether
with anger toward celibacy or toward authority, or with self-hate:
Before Christ . . . men and women are defined in the whole of their
being . . . spirit, soul and body, thereby indicating the whole of the
human person as a unit with somatic, psychic, and spiritual dimensions.
Sanctification is God’s gift and His project, but human beings are called
to respond with their entire being, without excluding any part of
themselves. It is the Holy Spirit himself . . . who brings God’s marvelous
plan to completion in the human person, first of all by transforming the
heart and from this center, all the rest.27

These wounds of fear, impure eros, egocentric taking, sorrows, and more are
to be prudently articulated by the seminarian before his human formation
director, as well as held in the seminarian’s consciousness during Rector’s
conferences or days of reflection sponsored by the seminary. In spiritual
direction, he brings the fullness of these burdens to light. Since the seminarian is striving to become a contemplative pastor, as Benedict XVI counseled, he is willing and eager to receive all truth about himself in light of the
desire of Christ to heal him and his need to be healed for the sake of his
26 See the vital essay by Fr. John Cihak,“The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Role in the Celi-

bate Priest’s Spousal and Paternal Love,” insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/07/
the-blessed-virgin-marys-role-in-the-celibate-priests-spousal-and-paternallove.html (20 July 2009). See also Cihak’s “The Priest as Man, Husband, and Father”
Sacrum Ministerium 12, no. 2 (2006): 75–85.
27 Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, First Sunday of Advent, 2005.

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priestly mission to the Church. If the seminarian is allowing his spiritual
director to guide him deeply in prayer, then he will experience the Spirit as
healer. If the seminarian does not relate his sorrow, grief, anger, impure
erotic movements and temptations to such movements to the mystery of
Christ upon the Cross, he will jeopardize his reception of one of the deepest spiritual gifts and consolations—gratitude. If this gift is alien to the man,
then joy will be alien to him as a priest. Human formation should be seeking the release of this joy. It is joy that helps evangelize people and keeps the
priest steady in his commitment to say ”yes” to chaste celibacy and pastoral
self-giving. Joy is the fruit of freedom (PDV 44).
Suffering One’s Own Freedom
Ultimately, the seminary exists to assist grace in cultivating the spiritual
freedom of the seminarian.The formators desire to invite men to a new
kind of listening within the human formation process, a listening that
allows for the suffering of conversion, a conversion that orders the seminarian toward action, change, and new choices.This action is not a busyness but rather the choice of a man to be available for sacrifice. Such
action is the filial, spousal, and paternal mystery of the priest as he longs
to care for the Church in her pain, confusion, sorrow, and wounds.
“When Mary sat at Christ’s feet listening, she was not . . . intent on
acquiring ideas . . . that she thought herself capable of evaluating, . . . ideas
she might expect to pass off later as her own . . . she was wholly alert . . .
prepared to give herself . . . following Christ in His greatest designs.”28
Formation does not simply provide new ideas or information but facilitates
the conversion of seminarians by which they come to offer their lives as
gifts to the Church.29 The seminarian is to embrace a new kind of freedom, one tasted in the effects of becoming wholly alert, of allowing what he
knows about himself from the formation process to be the impetus for
making his life a gift to the Bride.This freedom is best accomplished in an
environment where fear does not rule. Instead, a man is invited to explore
the true will of God for himself—priesthood or marriage.30 In an envi28 Balthasar, Prayer, 75.
29 Balthasar has noted that contemplation did not lead Christ to “action,” a busy-

ness, but to sacrifice, to his Passion. In other words, contemplation led Christ into
his own priesthood. Explorations in Theology: 1. The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 236.
30 Canon 241, §1 states the following: “ A diocesan bishop is to admit to a major
seminary only those who are judged qualified to dedicate themselves permanently
to the sacred ministries.”Although this canon is to be observed, experienced seminary personnel know that some men undergo profound levels of conversion when

Priestly Human Formation and Spiritual Formation

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ronment where trust rules, a seminarian can receive the truth more readily. In such a community, while becoming a priest is the goal of formation,
it is accomplished within a foundational search to know God’s will regarding which kind of fatherhood a man is being called to: spiritual fatherhood
or biological fatherhood. Barring any psycho-pathology, a seminarian will
want to know this, receive this, and not impose his own will upon God.31
Chastity
If the seminary is a set of relationships that conspire to form a spiritual
husband and father in a manner after Christ’s own spousal self-gift, then
the virtue of chastity plays a key role in human formation.
Affective maturity, which is the result of an education in true and
responsible love, is a significant and decisive factor in the formation of
candidates for the priesthood . . . [sexual education] should present
chastity in a manner that shows appreciation and love for it as a virtue
that develops a person’s authentic maturity and makes him capable of
respecting and fostering the nuptial meaning of the body.32

This nuptial meaning of the body is articulated in John Paul II’s Theology
of the Body and is a great gift to both married couples and the chaste celibate.33 Doctrinal orthodoxy alone does not keep a man chaste in his
celibacy; academic education alone does not keep a man chaste, but, along
with these, an affective and prayerful reception of the nuptial meaning of
his body in the context of contemplating the Paschal Mystery will.A man’s
body indicates that his whole life is to be a gift to another. In the case of
the priest, this gift is given to the Church.34 The chaste life is to be the
seminary formation is of a high quality. Even in major seminary
it is not uncommon for seminarians to visit the question of marriage again in spiritual direction and human formation.
31 What psychology can do is to function as a tool to help the man receive his identity
from God more freely, liberating him from false identities received from others,
sources that blocked his capacity to receive divine love deeply. In this role, the
psychologist endeavors to integrate his or her gifts with spirituality as well. The
Program of Priestly Formation expressly notes that, “while psychology . . . can be a
resource for human formation, [it] is not the same as human formation” (105).
What any human formation process is looking to do is to see where a priestly spirituality compenetrates with the “stable structures of a personality” (Timothy
Costello, Forming a Priestly Identity [Rome: Gregorian University Press, 2002], 129).
32 PDV 44.
33 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston:
Pauline Press, 2006).
34 See Fr. John Cihak, “The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Role in the Celibate Priest’s
Spousal and Parental Love.”

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normal practice of the seminarian years before he enters major seminary,
and all the practices of such a life are to be reinforced by formators by
everything they give witness to in their own lives and by their instruction.
Until the seminarian begins to see that he is one called to give himself
in a spiritual spousal-paternal love, he may simply imagine he is attending a college or graduate school. In this error, if the seminary structures
cooperate, he can safely calculate progress toward his own goal of priesthood by way of attaining academic success and becoming competent at
community service.35 In such a case, he need never be cognizant of God’s
desire for him to give himself to God by way of a nuptial commitment to
the Church. In such a sad case, the erotic becomes pathologically directed
toward self-fulfillment. Here we have a man whose eros never becomes
agape.36 Affective maturity is the interpenetration of a man’s reception of
divine love with the awakening of desire to give the self away to another
as a result of receiving this love (that is, communion with Christ bears
fruit in pastoral charity).37 To fail to suffer this integration is to become
a priest who may well organize priesthood around his own needs.38
35 Of course, maturity is progressive, developmental. See Joyce Riddick, “Preparing

Priests:The Road to Transformation,” in Journey to Freedom, ed. Franco Imoda, S.J.
(Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 187: “Maturity, achieved by passage through consecutive
human developmental stages is basic to and integrated in growth in all areas,
particularly in one’s capacity to love. . . . The human capacity for theocentric, selftranscendent love is certainly a gift of grace; but it is also a conquest of the developmental stages in the process of human growth.” Consider also this passage from
Fr. Servais Pinckaers:“The involvement of the Holy Spirit in our growth in virtue
shows us that the Spirit acts in us through the normal paths of daily effort, rather
than through extraordinary revelations, sudden motions, or exceptional charisms.
He moves us like sap, whose movement we neither see nor sense, so discrete is he
before the activities and projects that engross us” (Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Morality,The Catholic View [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2003], 88).
36 Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §10:“. . . eros directs man towards marriage, to a
bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfill its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous
marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of
the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving
becomes the measure of human love” (11).
37 What is essential to this human maturation, influenced by vulnerability to divine
intimacy, is the role that a prayerful conscience plays.Truly, no human formation
can progress in a man who is leading a double life in the seminary—one life
public for those who measure observable behavior and one secret that lies in wait
for ordination day so he can “finally be himself.” For an overview of human
formation and psychology, see Peter Egenolf, “Vocation and Motivation: The
Theories of Luigi Rulla,” The Way 42/43 ( July 2003): 81–93.This essay contains
a critique of the thought of Rulla and his method. The author says that Rulla
separated human formation too much from spiritual formation. See also Dennis

Priestly Human Formation and Spiritual Formation

895

In integrating human formation with spiritual formation, we see the
foundation of seminary life—human formation—being summoned by
the heart of seminary life—spiritual formation—to ascend to healing and
integration. Such integration leaves it difficult for a seminarian to “act”
his way through formation.39 The goal of seminary is to get the seminarian to the point where he enters formation for its intrinsic worth: it
is for and of Christ. A seminarian moves from fear, self-concern, needlove to gift-love and an interior freedom of the heart. He can then more
clearly hear the call to priestly celibacy, if there is one.40
Mystery and Human Formation
Perhaps we can construe human formation in the context of spirituality
in a way that is similar to the way in which Andrew Louth understands
mystery.“The mystery of the Ultimate is met in the particular. [The Ultimate is] present actively, seeking us out, making itself known to us. Here
more than anywhere else, we realize the true character of mystery:
mystery not just as the focus for our questioning and investigating, but
mystery as that which questions us, which calls us to account”41
Human formation is integrated into the heart of seminary life, spirituality, when formators and seminarians conspire to reverence both the
Billy and James Keating, Conscience and Prayer:The Spirit of Catholic Moral Theology (Minneapolis: Liturgical Press, 2001).
38 Egenolf, “Vocation and Motivation,” 88.
39 See Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2000), 62, wherein he notes that integration is the opposite of depression.
The externally identified, needy seminarian is depressed because he cannot bear the
weight that is crushing him (neediness, seeking to please, trying to derive a sense of
self without developing interiority). He cannot see a healthy way out of his pain.
40 Riddick, “Preparing Priests,” 199. The formator consistently explores with the
seminarian any fears of delving into his conscience, his motivations, and intentions
for wanting to be formed in the first place.“Why,” a formator asks,“are you here
in the seminary if not to receive the intrinsic worth of what the truth can give to
you?” Also, see Costello, Forming a Priestly Identity, 161: “. . . we need to look for
a seminarian’s respect for ‘other,’ other persons and God. . . . This is a distinctive
criterion for evaluating affective maturity.” Here we are looking for men who
“emphasize the self at the expense of the other through mild forms of selfishness
to an aggravated form of subjectivism.We look for those who tolerate no limit to
their personal freedom, those looking for constant attention, aiming conversation
and actions toward constant self-reference, to the narcissist who sees relationships
only in light of utilitarian motives. Affective immaturity can also be expressed
through the opposite phenomenon of self-abasement, succorance. . . . [I]t can also
be glimpsed in the man who pursues rational objectivity in an exaggerated way,
and one who promotes a heavy handed authoritarianism”.
41 Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 145.

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896

mystery of each man who is discerning priesthood and the One who is
calling and questioning him. Each seminarian is necessarily vulnerable to
such divine questioning if he is to discover what needs healing in the
depths of his humanity.This questioning, as an inquiry to uncover truth, is
accomplished in the spirit of St. John of the Cross when he noted that ultimately, God will examine us in love. Such examination lowers the fear level
in seminary culture. When fear subsides, the seminarian can become
hospitable to truth about himself. It is fear that keeps the seminarian externally comported to the “program” but internally disturbed or duplicitous.
Human formation informed by the spiritual life is to assist the seminarian
in attaching his freedom to God.42 This goal is achieved in many seminarians, but it stands as a deepening aspiration for those men who continue in
ongoing formation and spiritual direction once ordination has occurred.
Conclusion/Summary
As mysteries, seminarians are drawn into moral and spiritual development
by their capacity to host the truth about themselves and their vocations
in the context of both the desires of the self and the needs of the
Church.43 This capacity should be developed in formation and should be
clearly stated at the outset of seminary formation.There is no guarantee
of, or right to, ordination—but if one enters formation fully, there is a
hope that he will meet Christ; and Christ will communicate to him a
sense of self that is healthy and spiritually mature, since it was born in the
interchange between his own receptivity to host the truth and Christ’s
own desire to be that truth for him.
It will take some work to see how both the human formation director
and the spiritual director can cooperate. It will be a struggle, perhaps, to bring
spirituality out of the realm of the secret, but the director of human formation will not lead a man to fuller freedom unless spiritual consciousness
guides many of the conversations between himself and the seminarian.44
42 Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (Hyde Park, NY: New City

Press, 1996), 90.
43 “The rationale for human formation is not the humanistic desire to develop full

personal potential but, rather, the desire to enhance the candidate’s effectiveness for
the church’s mission. . . .The human personality of the priest is his essential instrument for this mission.The aim of formation . . . is to transform the personality of
the candidate . . . into the likeness of Christ the priest. . . . Such human maturity
comes by way of developing interior freedom, fostering strong conscience, enhancing affective maturity” (Costello, Forming a Priestly Identity, 88, 30–31).
44 Although the Church does encourage spiritual directors to assist in human formation (PPF 80), it does not, in turn, envision a direct role for human formators to
assist in spiritual formation. This latter role is still developing, as bishops discern

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897

In the human formation process, I would urge seminarians to imbue
their prayers with cries for freedom. Such cries are longings for interior
peace, integrity, and emotional stability. Seminarians do not want to be
driven or tossed about each day by emotions that rule them.They want
to be peacefully directed by a desire for holiness. In human formation,
this cry is heard; and the seminarian is directed to the sources that will
heal his pain. The seminarian is invited to become adept at hearing this
cry for freedom and trust his director to lead him to truths that will liberate. If this trust is lacking, the human formation process collapses. If trust
is secured, the seminarian comes to see his weaknesses and own them.
The spiritual life does not wait artificially in the wings until this process
is complete, but, rather, assists, elevates, and heals in its own right, directly
within the human formation relationship.
In summary, then, how does the spiritual life both assist and crown the
processes of human formation? The PPF makes clear that the diocese and
seminary should do all they can in the screening process to omit candidates who will resist formation (for example, those exhibiting extreme
narcissism, serious pathologies, deep anger, materialistic lifestyle, and
compulsive behaviors, and those suffering from deep-seated same-sex
attraction). Excluding these, we can assume that the candidate is capable
of appropriating the truth and living by it. Human formation endeavors
to promote men “who have the potential to move from self-preoccupation to openness to transcendent values and a concern for the welfare of
others.”45 If a man does not choose to live in truth or is incapable of
doing so, then progress in all the other formation pillars will cease.
As noted previously, the Program of Priestly Formation calls Christ the
foundation for all human formation. Thus, human formation founds
progress in other areas of priestly formation, but it is faith in Christ that
founds human formation. Here we see the perichoresis of priestly formation. Deep within the heart of priestly formation is the interpenetration
of spiritual formation (“I receive the offer of sharing in Christ’s identity
and mission”) with human formation (“I know, love, and give myself in
and through surrender to Christ”).Within this mutual indwelling of the
spiritual and the personal, contextualized in the Church, rests all progress
in priestly formation. By invoking the term perichoresis, I want to emphasize—without destroying the distinction between growth in human freedom and growth in intimacy with God—that both human formation
how to protect the internal forum of spiritual direction without making spirituality solely a private reality.
45 PPF, 89.

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and spiritual formation interpenetrate and inform one another.They are
distinct but not separate. In other words, it is legitimate to retain a
distinction between spiritual formation and human formation, but only
within a context that acknowledges that the free man is drawn toward
the Paschal mystery from within and seeks his completion by the power
of that same Christic mystery.46 Such a man participates within these
mysteries by way of his developed intellect, will, and affect. A seminarian’s freedom and maturity are expedited when he allows Christ to live
His mysteries over again in his heart. This is so because Christ is the
healer, the reconciler, the One who integrates.
Directors of Human Formation welcome a seminarian where they find
him, assess his areas of growth, affirm his gifts, and articulate how his
human gifts and weaknesses can be deepened or healed by surrender and
abandonment to Christ. As a man walks the way of self-knowledge and
opens himself to receive his authentic identity as gift, he places himself
within a trusting relationship to his formator and spiritual director. In this
trust, he can more easily love the truth and progress in both freedom and
holiness. Even though direction in human formation is fundamentally a
reality of the external forum, it is not fundamentally a secular endeavor.
Formators see the spiritual life of the seminarian as enabling an encounter
between the seminarian and his own personality, so that he can develop
into a man of communion.This process is public to the extent allowed by
prudence and formational norms and canons.
Spiritual directors, on the other hand, guide the seminarian to name
the places of intimacy between himself and Christ, so that in prayer and
through sacramental living, nothing can separate that man from Christ.
Spiritual direction creates a space where the indwelling Spirit can speak
freely the word of love and salvation received at Baptism and appropriated over the length of adult living. In human formation, priestly spirituality is present as a power enabling the seminarian to name the truth
about himself courageously. In spiritual direction, communion with
Christ is present as a direct end, which enables the seminarian to listen
intently to the Spirit as the Spirit speaks the truth about the seminarian
(traditional area of human formation) and Christ in relationship. Ultimately, these are different dimensions of the same reality, but they are
handled distinctly so that each facet can be more solidly fixed in place,
thus assuring both affective maturity and self-gift in and through the
power of accepting the love of God in Christ. At its depths, the interpenetration of human formation with the spiritual is simply a description
46 Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, 80.

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of the reality of Christian life: in Christ, human nature is capable of
receiving the power of the Resurrection.47
The key to the human formation process lies in a seminarian’s ability
to name the truth about himself and for the formator to love the truth
about priestly identity. Only in an environment that calls a man to selfexamination, in the context of formators who love the priesthood in its
self-sacrificing mystery, can a seminarian ever reach his full potential as
someone who becomes Christ’s man of communion. In the end, human
formation attempts to instill within a seminarian “a boundless gratitude
to those who rudely destroy [his own] illusions concerning [his]
person.”48 Ultimately, it is Christ, the Foundation, who shows a seminarN&V
ian the truth and invites him to live in the light, not illusions.

47 Ibid., 89
48 Ibid., 49.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 901–921

901

The Angels and Cosmic Liturgy:
An Oratorian Angelology
K EITH L EMNA
Saint Meinrad School of Theology
St. Meinrad, Indiana

M AN IS essentially a liturgical creature, homo adorans, and in this he
recapitulates in his own being the essence of creation. He is both imago
Dei and microcosm. He is the synthesis of created being who is, as many
Church Fathers understood, imprinted in his very nature with the divine
task to unify the created order in his life of praise, lifting up all things in
sacrifice to the triune God, who brought him and all of creation into
being out of nothing. His religious activity is of cosmic importance.The
liturgy of the Church, which God has given to man as the highest of all
his gifts, is the culmination of both history and the cosmos. Indeed, the
liturgy of the Eucharist is, to borrow an expression from Pope Benedict
XVI, the motive for the existence of all things in creation.1
In recapitulating the order of creation in his own liturgical being, man is
intimately intertwined in his destiny with the hierarchy of the angels.This
is a traditional doctrine of theological anthropology and one that has been
neglected by many modern Catholic theologians. But there are at least two
theologians who stand as notable exceptions to this general neglect: the
English Oratorian Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and
the French Oratorian Louis Bouyer (1913–2004). Both of these great
Oratorian theologians had a profound sense of the cosmic presence of the
1 Pope Benedict XVI, Meditation during the First General Congregation of the

Twelfth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (6 October 2008).
The Holy Father, in this meditation, refers to salvation history as the “motive”
for creation. This statement is in accord with the context of his wider thought
which is, of course, strongly liturgical: as he has said, the Church, the preordained
locus for God’s encounter with his creature, subsists in the liturgy.

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Keith Lemna

angels and of the connection of angelology to anthropology. Bouyer, an
eminent scholar of Newman and, like Newman, a convert to the Catholic
Church, gave a systematic and biblical exposition of the cosmic mission of
the angels that is very much a development of Newman’s angelology. He
placed the angelology that Newman had articulated in his Parochial and Plain
Sermons into the context of a theology of the Eucharist, of the Paschal
Mystery, and of the liturgy of creation. It is my goal in the present study to
give a detailed exposition of the angelology of Newman’s that Bouyer
develops in the context of the motif of cosmic liturgy. I shall start, in a first
section, with a brief exposition of Newman’s theology of the angels as
found in his Parochial and Plain Sermons and of Bouyer’s development of this
theology. In a second section, I shall make a couple of brief suggestions in
regard to the rational credibility of angelology, particularly by drawing on
arguments from Berkeley, a figure who looms in the background of
Newman’s angelology, and from Saint Thomas. In a third section, I shall
place, with Bouyer, the liturgy of the angels and the Eucharistic liturgy into
the context of the story of salvation and of the quest for liturgical ascent that
is the essence of human and all created existence. In a fourth and concluding section, I shall briefly argue that Newman and Bouyer together enable
us, through their emphasis on the invisible world of the angels as the deepest motive force in the cosmos, to recover the cosmic breadth of the Christian vision of faith and a full sense of the importance of the liturgy of the
Church as the highest activity in creation.Their angelology, I shall argue in
this concluding section, is of great practical importance.
Newman’s “Sacramental System”
Cardinal Newman’s Angelology
Both Newman and Bouyer are quite forceful in drawing our attention to
the reality of the invisible world of angels, which, on the shared interpretation of these two followers of Saint Philip Neri, Scripture reveals to
be the deepest dimension of our own world. The invisible world of
angelic persons is, on their interpretation, at once beyond our world and
within it.We are meant to experience it as the hidden essence of our own
world through the gift of faith and by our participation in the liturgy. In
line with Pseudo-Dionysius and Saint Thomas, each of these great
Oratorians sees that the angelic hierarchy is as diverse in its magnitude of
species as the hierarchy of physical creation itself, which can be understood to be the inverse reflection of the angelic hierarchy.2 Each man
2 Cf. Louis Bouyer, Cosmos:The World and the Glory of God, trans. Pierre de Font-

nouvelle (Petersham, MA: Saint Bede’s Publications, 1988), 199–200.

The Angels and Cosmic Liturgy

903

shows that all of created reality is personal or reflective of personal existences, uncreated and created. Even the physical world is, as Bouyer says,
“but the envelope, the external clothing of a wholly spiritual world.”3 It
is, as Newman says, “the skirts of their garments, the waving robes of
those whose faces see God.”4
Newman had, from early on in his ecclesiastical career, powerfully
preached about the ultimate reality in our midst of the invisible world of
the angels.There were two early sermons of his in which he did so with
particular boldness, and that proved formative for Bouyer: “The Powers
of Nature,” found in volume 2 of Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons,
and “The Invisible World,” found in volume 4 of the same collection.
In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, written some years after his conversion to
the Catholic faith, Newman explained his understanding of the invisible
world, which he, in this writing, referred to as his “Sacramental system.”5
Newman saw the world in the light of an analogy between the celestial
and terrestrial realms. He admitted in this writing a possible connection
between his sacramental view of the world and what he calls the
“Berkleyism” of Anglophone theology, though he says that he never
directly studied Berkeley.6 Louis Dupré has suggested that Berkeley’s
thinking may have reached Newman indirectly through the latter’s reading of Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed (1736).7 Be
that as it may, Newman’s evangelical faith, in connection with his inherent poetic sense, had given him the capacity, from very early on in life, to
see the material universe in a powerfully religious light. His reading of
the Church Fathers confirmed him in this way of seeing. He relates to us
that some portion of the teachings of the Fathers “came like music” to
his inward ear,
as if in response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage them,
I had cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies or Dispensations
of the Eternal. I understood these passages to mean that the exterior
world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses
3 Ibid., 195.
4 John

Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London: Penguin, 2004), 45.
Newman quotes here from a sermon that he had preached on Michaelmas Day
in 1831.
5 Ibid., 37.
6 Ibid.
7 Louis Dupré, “Newman and the Neoplatonic Tradition in England,” in Newman
and the Word, ed.Terrence Merrigan and Ian T. Kerr (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2000), 143–44.

Keith Lemna

904

of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable: Scripture was an
allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel.8

Newman saw the whole of creation and history as a praeparatio evangelii.
The fullness of God’s revelation was directly foreshadowed in the Jewish
prophets and indirectly foreshadowed in the pagan prophets, who also were
inspired by thoughts beyond their own. It is especially in the school of the
Alexandrian masters that Newman found resonance with this intuitive,
poetic vision of the universe and of history.This “Christian Platonism” of
his comes to the fore in his discussion of how near to his own thinking he
found the Alexandrian masters to be in regard to the angels. For both
Newman and the Alexandrian theologians, the angels are not only
the ministers employed by the Creator in the Jewish and Christian
dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture, but as carrying on, as
Scripture also implies, the Economy of the Visible World. I considered
them as the real causes of motion, light, and life, and of those elementary principles of the physical universe, which, when offered in their
development to our senses, suggest to us the notion of cause and effect,
and of what are called the laws of nature.9

In this same passage, Newman repeats what he had said in “The Powers
of Nature,” a sermon that he had preached for Michaelmas Day in 1831:
“Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect is,
as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those
whose faces see God.” Though he speaks in the Apologia of his cosmology of the angels in the past tense, a view that he had long cherished,
there is no indication that he ever forsook his “Sacramental system.”
In his two sermons mentioned above, Newman endeavors to bring his
modern congregation to a conscious awakening to the reality of the invisible world. In the “Powers of Nature,” he argues that if we are to see the
world in its deepest religious significance, we must strive, through faith, to
recognize that all created things are in the service of God.The world itself
is a revelation of God, and all things have meaning in proportion to their
glorification of God.10 In “The Invisible World,” Newman shows the
rationality of the scriptural view of creation. It is no less stunning, he
argues, to our quotidian sensibilities to consider the angelic world than it
8 Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 44.
9 Ibid.
10 John Henry Newman, “The Powers of Nature,” in Sermons and Discourses (New

York: Longmans and Green, 1949), 64–71.

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905

is to consider the myriad unseen worlds that constitute visible nature, and
even human society. Even the physical and historical worlds, he argues, are
constituted by worlds within worlds, a known fact whose consideration
should make it less strange for us to acknowledge the existence of the
angelic realms.The physical world is constituted by animals whose natures
we can never fathom, whose activities go largely unseen by us. Indeed,
their existence, as we experience it, though we can never fathom the
depths of their brute natures, points to a mysterious depth of being at the
heart of nature.This depth of being, Newman implies, is a reality that goes
far beyond the ability of reductionist science to grasp in its nets. History
itself is constituted by human societies within societies, whose activities
are unknown outside of their respective spheres. Each of us lives in a
particular society or sphere: of poets, of scientists, of religious men, of
scholars, of artists, of artisans. And we live in our respective spheres, going
about our daily lives, as if other societies or spheres did not even exist.11
Newman teaches that the invisible world of the angels is no less present to us than the worlds within our visible world that go unseen by us
but that we know to exist. Through the light of faith we know that the
invisible world of the angels is always present to us, in our own world,
though it will only burst forth, into the open, in the future.Yet, he argues,
we can reasonably anticipate this eschatological breaking-in of the invisible world by considering it as analogous to the yearly emergence of the
flourishing of springtime in nature, in which life and activity burst forth
from out of the frozen winter. Just as in the change of the seasons from
winter to spring the budding of the trees and the flowering of the earth
transfigures the barren, wintry soil, so the eternal springtime that is to
come will break through into our world. The veil that at present covers
the invisible world will be removed.The eternal kingdom of God, hidden
within the world of our direct experience, will shine forth in Christ’s
Second Coming. “Shine forth, O Lord,” Newman prays in order to
hasten the coming of the eternal springtime, “as when on Thy Nativity
Thine Angels visited the shepherds: let Thy glory blossom forth as bloom
and foliage on the trees; change with Thy mighty power this visible world
into that diviner world, which as yet we see not . . . ”12
Bouyer’s Liturgical Extrapolations
This sacramental cosmology preached by Newman elicited a strong
attraction in Bouyer from his first encounter with it. His first published
11 John Henry Newman,“The Invisible World,” in Sermons and Discourses (New York:

Longmans and Green, 1949), 258–68.
12 Newman, “The Invisible World,” 266.

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study was dedicated to Newman’s cosmological vision, which he considered to be indicative of the influence of Christian Platonism in English
theology.13 Bouyer wrote a book on theological cosmology—as part of a
nine-volume synthesis of Catholic doctrine, which can be understood as
the fruit of lifelong reflection, drawn from study of the whole Christian
tradition and in conversation with modern thought—on the implications
of Newman’s “Sacramental system.” He brings his reflections on
Newman’s Sacramental system to expression with a rhetorical aplomb that
rivals Newman’s own famously beautiful prose. He sees Newman’s
cosmological angelology in explicit connection with the Church’s traditional doctrine that all of creation is from the Trinity. The entire world,
seen in this light, is but a reflection of the Trinitarian glory, though marked
by struggle and conflict because of the Fall of the angels and of man.
Bouyer contends that it must be concluded from this Trinitarian understanding of creation that the universe is itself personal in character, reflecting the personal reality of God’s inner life. In expounding this tradition of
Trinitarian creationism, Bouyer puts the point very strongly: “since God
is the quintessentially personal being, the only world he could conceivably
create is a world of persons.”14 Given that this is so, it follows that the
angels are essential to the very meaning of God’s creation.
There can be little denying the fact, on Bouyer’s reading, that biblical
cosmology, in all of the senses in which Scripture can be taken, requires
the theologian who sees with the eyes of faith to acknowledge the existence, power, and cosmic importance of the angels. Indeed, Bouyer, more
thoroughly than any other theologian in the past two centuries, makes
the case for a biblical cosmology of the angels.15 He argues that if the
angels are demythologized, the books of Scripture, and the Gospels most
of all, become meaningless, and the world is no longer able to be seen in
its fully religious significance.16
There is a specifically liturgical dimension that forms the basis for the
religious cosmology that he brings to light. Bouyer is well known as a
theologian of the Eucharist. His theological work is founded on the study
of the Church’s liturgical texts and rites. He was not only one of the
Church’s greatest modern theologians but one of her greatest liturgists.
13 Louis Bouyer,“Newman et le Platonisme de l’Ame Anglaise,” in Revue de Philoso-

phie ( July 1936): 285–305.
14 Bouyer, Cosmos, 194.
15 Cf. Louis Bouyer, “Les Deux Économies du Gouvernement Divin: Satan et le

Christ,” in Initiation Théologique par un groupe de théologiens (Paris: Cerf, 1952),
504–35.
16 Ibid.

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907

In his role as liturgist, he traced, in a study of capital importance, the
Eucharistic prayer in its many variations and its development. In studying the development of the Eucharistic prayer he saw, among many other
important insights, that the liturgical texts of the tradition cannot be
clearer in their support of Cardinal Newman’s angelology.The Eucharistic texts, like Newman himself, speak of a hierarchy of angels forming a
seamless whole with the world of our direct experience.17
There is a particular section of this study of his on the Eucharist where
he brings out this point in full.18 He shows that the Jewish-Christian
liturgical interpretation of God’s revelation understands the invisible
world of angels and the visible world of physical nature to be so closely
interwoven that it cannot be truly said that there are two worlds, visible
and invisible. It is better to say that there is only one world in two
aspects.19 Bouyer demonstrates that it is not at all a Platonic distortion of
Christian revelation to interpret cosmic processes in connection with the
angelic presences. In fact, he argues, the Jewish-Christian mind is quite
unlike the purely Hellenistic in refusing to separate the visible light of
creation from the invisible light of the spiritual world and to oppose
them.20 Platonism is transformed in this regard in its encounter with
biblical revelation, not the other way around. Biblical revelation, interpreted through liturgy, shows, contra the Hellenistic mentality, that the
angelic world and the physical world “are but two successive aspects of
one reality.”21 “The angelic world,” Bouyer says,“is not a world different
from the material world.” “It is,” he continues, “the same, although seen
in its deepest or most exalted aspect.”22
Following the exegesis in a book by A. M. Ramsey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Bouyer expounds the meaning of Isaiah 6, so
essential to the Jewish liturgy, in terms of the connection of the angels to
the glory of God. It is worth quoting the essential points of Bouyer’s
exegesis of this biblical text and its liturgical interpretation in full:
The higher Angels, the Seraphim, as their name indicates, are themselves products of a mysterious fire which is like a first reflection of the
glowing hearth of the divine life, and the altar fire and sanctuary lamps
17 Louis Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans.

Charles Underhill Quinn (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1968), 64–68.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 64.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.

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act as a reminder of it.This fire recalls the illumination, the transfiguration of all things that is the product of the descent of the Shekinah, the
divine presence, in the luminous cloud in which it is enveloped. The
glory given to God by the Seraphim’s singing of the Qedushah is the
reflection of divine glory returning to its source. But in them it is a
conscious reflection expressed in song, just as in God the igneous light
is that of the Spirit expressed in the Word.23

Humanity has, on this liturgical interpretation, the responsibility to join
its own song of praise to that of the angels, as all of creation together
returns in glory to God.The cosmic dimension of the Eucharist of Christ
is a consummating continuation of this Jewish biblical and liturgical
understanding of the lyrical return of creation to the Creator. Christ is
the fully embodied, personal presence of the Shekinah, who makes possible, through his expiatory sacrifice on the Cross, the return of all creation
to the Father in a liturgy of praise centered on the Church’s Eucharist.24
In his theological study of the cosmos in his trilogies on Catholic
doctrine, Bouyer invokes wide streams of traditional Christian theology to
express the intelligibility of this biblical notion of cosmic liturgy that was
present in the Jewish tradition and consummated in Christ. He brings to
the fore especially the Christian mysticisms of light and music, the Taboric
Light and the Canticle of Creation, as foundational for a Christian articulation of cosmology. In its essence, according to these streams of the
tradition, all of the cosmos was meant to be a choral Eucharist or
symphony of gratitude and praise to the Creator. It was meant to be a
translation into the realm of finitude of the infinite glory of the one, true
King. It was first of all the creation of the choirs of angels, the first-born
heavenly stewards and ministers of the cosmos.25 This theological cosmology is symbolist and personal rather than purely metaphysical—it stresses
symbolic analogy between the corporeal realm and the spiritual—but it is
rational in the way of the unified ordering of a musical symphony.
The theology that Saint Francis would bring to expression in his
Canticle of Creation was prefigured by Saint Augustine in the West and
by those who followed him. Drawing on this tradition, Bouyer makes
striking use of the metaphor of music to describe creation. He sees the
angels as a unified choir composed of an immense, harmonious array of
tonal components, each tone representative of a person, from which the
physical universe itself emerges. All of the particles of the universe, all of
23 Ibid., 65.The book by Ramsey is The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ

(London: Oxford, 1964).
24 Bouyer, Eucharist, 65.
25 Bouyer, Cosmos, 194–208.

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its material energies, are moved by and formed through the resonant
power of these angelic choirs. But it is particularly in terms of temporal
harmony that the musical metaphor has its direct application: by fixing
their watchful eyes on the conductor and Creator, the angels keep the
temporal measure and rhythm of the universe.26
The theology of the Light of Tabor was first developed in the Eastern
tradition, most profoundly so by Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. A.D. 500), the
elusive, pseudonymous mystical theologian who so greatly influenced
Western Scholastic theology in the thirteenth century. Saint Bonaventure
would bring this theology of light to an even fuller articulation. Bouyer
follows Pseudo-Dionysius in invoking the theology of light to express the
spatial dimension of creation. He suggests that the world is like “a shimmering white light breaking down into the harmony of innumerable
colors that distinguish themselves only by melting into one another.”27
Both of these images, musical and visual, evoke in us a sense that creation
is a reflection of the harmonious unity in diversity of the triune God.These
images enable us to envisage materiality as a religious and sacramental reality.They enable us to see more readily than is our modern wont that mind
and will are ever-present causal influences in the world of nature.
Bouyer follows Pseudo-Dionysius’s theology in suggesting that the
creation of the material world is so much carried out through the ministry
of the angels that it is like a projection into being of their very thoughts,
just as they were themselves projected into a free and distinct existence
through the thought and free will of the Creator.28 This is an idea very
much in line with Newman’s preaching that the angels are “the real causes
of motion, light, and life.”29 It is interesting to note that another great
modern Catholic intellectual, J. R. R.Tolkien, who was a personal friend
of Bouyer’s, also thought of the causal influence of the angels in this way.
In his book The Silmarillion, he sees the angels as instruments used by God
in the creation of the material world. Peter Kreeft, following C. S. Lewis,
has suggested that this way of seeing the cosmic role of the angels is
important in addressing the riddle of cosmic evil.30 This PseudoDionysian (or Newmanian or Tolkienian) manner of speaking about the
26 Ibid., 198–49.
27 Ibid., 209–10.
28 Ibid., 208.
29 See above, note 9.
30 Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien:The Worldview behind the Lord of the Rings

(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 72–73. Bouyer acknowledges his indebtedness to J. R. R.Tolkien, of whom he was the first French reader, in his Les Métier
de théologien: Entretiens avec Georges Daix (Geneva: Ad Solem: 2005), 114–15. See
also Bouyer, Les Lieux Magiques du Graal (Paris: O.E.I.L, 1986), 12.

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causal power of the angels sounds foreign to many Western Christian ears,
and it may seem to threaten the integrity of lower levels of secondary
causalities in their various spheres. Moreover, it might seem to take away
from God his unique, creative causality.
To defend against these concerns, one must have a full sense of PseudoDionysius’s theology of the hierarchy of creation, which Bouyer himself
sympathetically analyzes. It is important not to confuse his understanding of
the celestial hierarchy with that of the pagan neo-Platonists. For PseudoDionysius, all of creation is indeed constituted by its interpersonal and hierarchical relationality, but this is not, as for the neo-Platonists, a static,
compartmentalized hierarchy that returns to its source only by self-annihilation. Pseudo-Dionysius sees that creation extends and communicates in
the wondrous diversity of its finitude the eternal agape of the divine
thearchy.31 His theology of the angels enables us to see that even though the
world is hierarchically constituted, each stratum of finite being having its
own particular integrity, it is nevertheless the case that the hierarchy of
creation is a dynamic and ceaselessly intercommunicating reality. Each being
on a higher level is all that it is, and keeps all that it has, which is itself a
divine gift, only in giving itself away. Influence from above and self-completion are not mutually contradictory realities in this view of nature, and there
is dynamism to this theology—as it sees creation as ceaselessly returning to
its source. Moreover, the angels do not replace God as the creators of matter.
Rather, God creates lower dimensions of being through the higher, and thus
it can be said that the angels participate, in some mysterious manner, in the
creation of the lower regions of the universe. It is in this sense that we might
understand that even though matter is a “kind of projection of angelic
thoughts,” to use Bouyer’s words, it is nevertheless a direct creation of the
divine will. Bouyer himself argues that God, through his divine fiat, gives the
angelic thoughts an autonomous existence, just as he had given the angels,
who were once his own thoughts in his eternal Word, an autonomous existence by breathing the fire of his Spirit into them.32
One often speaks, as I have done above, of Christian Platonism, and the
Oratorian theology of cosmic liturgy that I am discussing here certainly fits
31 Cf. Endre von Ivanka, La signification du Corpus Aeropagiticum, in Recherches de

science religieuse 36 (1949): 18. One should also mention in this regard Edith
Stein’s much-neglected comments on the angelology of Pseudo-Dionysius in
her Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, trans.
Kurt F. Reinhardt (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002), 411–17.
32 Dom Denys Rutledge argued in Cosmic Theology: The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of
Pseudo-Denys (Staten Island, NY:Alba House, 1964) that, for Pseudo-Dionysius, the
angels were the creators of matter. Bouyer rejects this extreme interpretation.

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911

into the category that one imagines obtains in the application of this label
to various theologies. But the truism must be reasserted that Plato’s philosophy was transformed when it was brought into the ambit of revealed religion and used to express the Christian mystery.The personalism that I have
described in this study so far is indicative of this transformation. Bouyer
himself gives an interesting account of how certain Church Fathers transformed Plato’s doctrine of divine ideas. He shows that, unlike Plato, the
great patristic Christian theologians understood the divine ideas, through
which all of creation is modeled and created, to be, not static and lifeless,
but vivified, personal presences in the divine mind, more specifically
contained in the divine Word in whom the Father eternally expresses his
being.33 On this Christian view, the exemplary ideas through and in which
material being was created are angelic persons expressed through and in the
eternally generated Son, who is “the first born of all creation” (Col. 1:15).
It follows that the eternal ideas tied to creation in concreto are not free-floating abstractions, as they are for Plato, but are free and distinct personal
beings given the breath of life by the very power of the Holy Spirit. God
works in the world in and through the personal, celestial hierarchy that
communicates, according to its own capacity, his interpersonal being.34
In Bouyer’s own words, recommending a return to this patristic theology, which he considers to be quite compatible with both Saint
Bonaventure and Saint Thomas, these spiritual beings, the angels who
form the incorporeal world and who constitute the primary cosmos, are
“the total and harmonious combination of the individual thoughts which
God, in his Wisdom, chose to include in the one thought wherein he
recognizes himself in the person of his Word and Son.”35 The physical
33 Cf. Bouyer, Cosmos, 196. Yet Bouyer accepts William Norris Clarke’s Thomist

rejection of the realism of the divine ideas, an understanding of the divine ideas
that was common in the tradition prior to Thomas. So, in order to put forth a
consistent interpretation of Bouyer’s own thinking, Bouyer’s suggestions in
regard to the “living nature” of the divine ideas would somehow have to be
reconciled with Clarke’s critique of the tradition that preceded Thomas. For
Clarke on the divine ideas, cf. The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic
Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2001), 236–37.
Indeed, Clarke argues that the Christian Platonists failed to differentiate themselves from the neo-Platonists because they continued, like the neo-Platonists, to
think of the divine ideas as “really real.” This analysis by Clarke, in spite of
Bouyer’s commending of it, seems to contradict Bouyer’s account of the difference between Christian theology and Plato on the divine ideas. But Bouyer, in
fact, argues directly from Gregory of Nyssa in making his point. Gregory had
recognized the “Christian distinction” in terms of these living ideas.
34 Bouyer, Cosmos, 208.
35 Ibid., 210.

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912

world is a secondary world, a concrete image of the angelic “symphony
of light,” itself a created image of the uncreated light.The multiplicity of
physical forms in this “secondary” cosmos reflects, through the materiality of nature, the angelic hierarchies. The laws that adapt these physical
forms, and the life that fills them, find “an echo in the interplay of
melodic changes in which the whole cosmos is involved in a single
concert.”36 Each type of body, in its microcosmic organization,“is like an
inverted image of one of those angelic forms in the material mirror that
is the web of the cosmos.”37 Materiality, for man, is “the paradoxically
translucent opacity” through which the exteriority of his world is open
to cosmic being. For the angels, materiality is “the harmony of reciprocal distinctions in which they live.”38
Matter, in this way of seeing the cosmos, might be said to be a “hardened” or “condensed” expression of angelic praise, with an inherently
sacramental significance for both angels and humans. On the one hand,
matter is a gift to all created spirits, given to them by the Spirit of God
as an instrument for the symbolic expression of infinite being within the
finitude of creation. On the other hand, it is the immanent means by
which created spirits communicate themselves to one another and lift
their song of praise to the Creator. Matter serves, in this view, even
considered within the immanent processes of creation and apart from
human subjectivity, the function of linguistic expression. It is in its very
essence an instrument of religious signification. The forms of the world
in which matter subsists are so indicative of the angelic presences and
reflective of them that the angels might be inferred from this account to
be the universals of physical species. One might argue that for Bouyer the
angels are operative universal causes of material beings, as they were for
John Scotus Eriugena.39 Yet Bouyer does not make any hard and fast
decision in favor of Eriugena on this point. Like Newman’s angelology,
Bouyer’s theology of the angels is more evocative than purely analytical.
Like Newman, he does not provide a thoroughly worked out, Scholastic
account of the causal power of the angels.
A Note on the Angels and Philosophy
To see the material universe in the way that I have been discussing in this
essay is extremely difficult for modern eyes, trained as they are to see
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 226.
38 Ibid., 210.
39 On Eriugena, cf. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy:Volume III: Medieval

Philosophy: From Augustine to Duns Scotus (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 116–35.

The Angels and Cosmic Liturgy

913

nature as a system of universal, immanent, impersonal laws. Admittedly, it
requires the eyes of faith to “see” the invisible world, to understand
creation as a song of praise, or to see the world as a reflection of the Light
of Tabor. Modern Eastern Orthodox theologians often argue that ratio
alone is unable to open our vision to these wider vistas. Only nous or
intellectus, so this argument runs, formed by faith within the sacred liturgy
of the Church,“sees” the invisible world, and even then only in an anticipatory, proleptic fashion. Yet, in the spirit of what Newman argues in
“The Invisible World,” we might be able to formulate a tentative rational
argument for the plausibility of the existence of that “other” world of
angels and demons that Revelation discloses to us, which both Newman
and Bouyer consider in fact to be but another aspect of our own world.
I wish here to bring into consideration the theology of a thinker whose
work was eminently expressive of the English “Christian Platonism” by
which Newman was partially formed and that Bouyer greatly admired. I
refer to the enigmatic theology of Bishop Berkeley. As mentioned above,
Cardinal Newman recognized in his Apologia that his “Sacramental
system” calls to mind the figure of Berkeley. Bouyer himself, no doubt
following clues in Newman’s sermons, turned directly to Berkeley’s writings, especially as interpreted by his distinguished modern exegete A. A.
Luce, for insight into communicating the Sacramental system that he
shared with Newman.40 There is no question of giving a detailed exposition of Berkeley here. I must confine myself to Berkeley’s ultimate theological point in this regard, namely, his argument that if perception is to
have veracity and meaning the universe must be filled with created spirits, whose ground can only be the uncreated triune Spirit of God.41
Berkeley’s immaterialism is ultimately a defense of the religious significance of perceptible nature.Though he denies that the modern concept
of matter has objective reference, this denial is not a negation of the existence of a world external to human perception but in fact serves the
purpose of affirming that objective physical nature is essentially fitted to
the perceptions of created spirits. In his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and
Philonous, Berkeley makes this point in a passage of great beauty:
Are not the fields covered with a delightful verdure? Is there not something in the woods and groves, in the rivers and clear springs, that
soothes, that delights, that transports the soul? At the prospect of the
wide and deep ocean, or some huge mountain whose top is lost in the
40 Cf. A. A. Luce, Sense Without Matter, or Direct Perception (London: Nelson, 1954).
41 The argument that follows works out briefly some of Bouyer’s own suggestions

regarding Berkeley. Cf. Bouyer, Cosmos, 114–15; 132–34; 218; 222; 258.

Keith Lemna

914

clouds, or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled with pleasing horror? Even in rocks and deserts, is there not an agreeable wildness?
How sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural beauties of the earth!
To preserve and renew our relish for them, is not the veil of night drawn
over her face, and doth she not change her dress with the seasons?42

This passage speaks of the world as ordered to human perception, of a
world that communicates itself. The world exists for the purpose of our
delight, our soothing, our horror, and our relishing. How repugnant to
our intuitive understanding of the reality of our perception, if we truly
understood its implications, must be the materialist philosophy that
would take all of this away from us and in the process deny the very
meaning and reality of physical nature itself.
Following in the direction of Berkeley’s thought, we might wonder if
it is plausible that in between the level of human personhood and divine
personhood there exist in creation only impersonal things, whose very
existence is to be perceived. Certainly, for Berkeley, all things exist in the
divine mind and so are “perceived,” even if human perception does not
alight upon them. But does not the world that exists outside of human
perception lack significance or meaning if it is not taken in, in some
manner, by created spirit? Vast regions of nature would seemingly not be
able to unfold their beauty and mystery for the delight and relishing of
created spirit if it were only in the domains of human or divine perception that nature could accomplish its purpose. This may seem like an
overly theological point, if one is seeking to establish the credibility of an
angelic cosmology on the basis of natural reason, but it follows from the
recognition that all things in creation exist in order to be perceived.This
recognition, in turn, follows from a philosophical accounting of human
perception that may have, if Alfred North Whitehead has taken the measure of the situation, so firm a basis that even Hume and Kant could not
undo it.43 The conclusion could be derived from these considerations
that, in fact, the world must be filled with both human and angelic spirits if the very meaning of nature is to be unfolded, accomplished, and
therefore comprehensible.
Of course, the foregoing argument is meant only to be suggestive and
not to establish indubitably from a philosophical perspective the reality of
the angels. It is meant to be taken as a possible, partial aid in one’s assent
42 George Berkeley, “Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous,” in The

Empiricists (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 254–55.
43 Cf. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free

Press, 1964), 66–74.

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to the Church’s doctrine of the existence of the angels. But we might also
briefly consider Saint Thomas’s argument for the existence of the angels,
an argument that he thought to have established a conclusion that is practically certain. Thomas, of course, understood quite deeply the cosmic
importance of the angels in the Christian vision of faith, but, what is more,
he saw angelology as a necessary doctrine of philosophy: “All corporeal
things are governed by the angels.And this is not only the teaching of the
holy doctors, but of all the philosophers.”44 According to Thomas, the
existence of the angels follows from the existence, which we know from
our experience, of grades of being.We know,Thomas argues, that there are
grades of being below us in the material order, in the genera of plants and
animals. Why not, then, he asks, admit the possibility of grades of being
above us in the intellectual order? Human intellect, joined as it is to the
body, is (he argues) the most imperfect of intellects. Like all imperfect
genera, it points to the existence of more perfect exemplars in its genus
and ultimately to the absolutely perfect exemplar—the divine intellect
itself.Thomas argues that it is therefore impossible to believe that human
intellect should be the only intellect, or even the only created intellect: the
existence of the angels is thus credible on the grounds of natural reason.45
There is a parallel between Thomas’s argument from the grades of
being to the existence of the angelic intelligences and the Berkelian argument from the grades of perceptible being to the existence of the
perceiving angels. Berkeley begins with the idealist starting point that all
finite being exists in order to be perceived by (created) spirit, but this
need not imply the doctrine of absolute subjective idealism. It need only
imply, rather, that God has created the world for the express purpose of
sharing his beauty and glory with those who are other than he. It need
only imply that there are grades of perceiving intelligences in creation,
whose respective powers correspond to the immense hierarchy of material forms, which is an idea whose lineage can be traced back in a Christian context at least far as Pseudo-Dionysius. Without recognition of
these grades of intelligence, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to
recover a sense of creation as a religious reality that communicates God’s
glory through the prism of its finitude.
Angelology and Liturgical Ascent
I have emphasized thus far the universe as a place of reflected beauty and
glory, illuminated by the vast hierarchy of created intelligences who form,
as the great tradition tells us, the primordial chorus of praise to the
44 ST I, q. 110, a. 1.
45 Cf. ST I, q. 50, a. 1–2; ScG II, q. 91.

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Keith Lemna

Creator. But this gives us only a part of the picture, and both of the Oratorian theologians under discussion here were well aware of this. If we are
to see the angels in the light of the all-encompassing vision of the world
and of history that was common to the Church Fathers, then we must see
them in the drama of Christ.This requires seeing them in their connection to both man and the God-man.The universe, after all, not only is a
symphony of praise but is marked by a battle between good and evil. No
other modern theologians have understood this better than Newman and
Bouyer. Indeed, this is so true of Newman that Bouyer could say of him
that he saw the universe in “its dark face more fearsomely than perhaps
any Christian thinker at any time.”46 Newman had already recovered the
ancient Christian monastic theology of cosmic and supra-cosmic spiritual
warfare, and of the all the great twentieth-century Catholic theologians no
one was as faithful to this monastic theology as Bouyer.
If we are to understand the angels in the shared theology of these two
great Oratorians, which is thoroughly patristic in key, it is essential to take
account with them of the spiritual conflict that exists at the very heart of
created being.The universe was, by its very creation, meant to be a unanimous chorus of melodic praise to the Creator, self-diffusive of its own
goodness in imitation of God’s eternal goodness and being. 47 This is the
ultimate lesson to be derived from the patristic angelology that I
described, with Newman and Bouyer, in the first section of this study.
But it is obvious, from both common experience and from divine Revelation, that a dissonance has invaded this primordial chorus of praise, this
harmony of self-giving. Newman and Bouyer uphold the traditional
liturgical interpretation of divine Revelation, which tells us that the
angels and the material universe formed a seamless web in the paradisal
state.All of creation was joined together in a unity of praise.The choir of
the angels and the choir of physical creation were as one. However, the
world as we now know it is fractured, divided, beset on all sides by the
disintegrating effects of pride, greed, and egoism.
How is it that this has come to pass? It is not only the Fall of man that
can account for this situation of sin and its cosmic effects. Divine Revelation tells us as much, but our own experience indicates that the cosmic
scope of evil is inexplicable as a moral force if man is understood as the
lone spiritual intelligence in the universe. Cosmic evil is tied to the first
Adam, but, as the tradition tells us, it precedes even his creation. Bouyer
46 Bouyer, Cosmos, 205. One sermon of Newman’s, in particular, portrays this “fear-

somely dark” face of the universe: “Anthony in the Conflict,” in Historical
Sketches:Volume II (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1906), 94–111.
47 Bouyer, Cosmos, 206.

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develops Newman’s angelology in that he takes as one of his central
concerns the recovery of this story of cosmic Fall and Redemption in
connection with the angels.The angels, he shows, are absolutely essential
to the story, so much so that it cannot even be convincingly told without taking them into primary account.
The story of the cosmic Fall and Redemption is first of all a story of
how, as Bouyer puts it, “a whole segment of the great mystic rose flowering around the Trinity has become detached and, as it were, torn
open.”48 The highest of all God’s creatures, the first among all the angels,
has, out of pride and out of the desire for self-glorification, disturbed the
heavenly and cosmic liturgy. Lucifer, and his lesser minions, have turned
away from the divine Word, the eternal image of the Father and the
source of all created being, and have directed their love only to themselves. These demonic beings have made it their goal to turn the lower
hierarchies of creation from the glorification of the uncreated being of
the Creator to the glorification of their own finite being. They have
formed “a screen against the spontaneous movement of response which
was rising up to the Creator from the most remote strata of creation.”49
The unified liturgy of heavenly and physical creation has been thrust into
dissonance, reflected in the existence of cosmic evil.
The devil and his minions have cast a veil of darkness over the world,
and they have turned the harmonious chorus of heavenly and cosmic
praise into armies at war. However, it has never been within the power
of these fallen angels to take full control over the material universe.
Recall from the first section of this study that Bouyer holds that it is only
by the will of the Creator that the thoughts of the angels could be given
autonomous being. God is the Creator of both finite spirit, which is in
the image of his eternal Son, and material being, which is in the image
of the angelic images. Matter, as a projection of the angelic thoughts, is
given over to the created stewardship of the angels, but because it is not
their creature it is not completely tied to their authority. God, the one
and only Creator of material being, has used this created resource—this
image of a created image—as the instrument for bringing a new type of
spirit into the world. Only this time, it is a spirit clothed in flesh, a spirit
“who will embrace matter in the ascensional movement of its own
creation, and will establish it once more in the cycle of thanksgiving, of
the cosmic eucharist which has been frustrated by Satan.”50 The first
48 Louis Bouyer, The Meaning of the Monastic Life, trans. Kathleen Pond (New York:

P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1955), 30.
49 Ibid., 30.
50 Ibid., 31.

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918

Adam was, on this neo-patristic interpretation, a substitutionary angel.
He was created to be a “new Lucifer,” taking his place in the heavenly
choir and leading the “remote strata of creation” back to their eternal
Source. The first Adam was a potential Redeemer, the potential new
master of the earth, whose obedience and faithfulness to the Creator
would have reintegrated the world in the praise of love that was the
essential character of the primordial cosmos.
But, alas, the first Adam failed in his mission, and in his failure the earth
has come “under a positive curse.”51 However, God’s eternal will to
rescue creation from its fallen condition was not thwarted by this second
fall, and from the first instant of the Fall of the first Adam, God would
prepare the world through his Spirit for the final victory of his love in
the incarnation of the Second and Definitive Adam. God sends his eternal image directly into the world for its salvation.This salvific work is, in
fact, a transfiguring accomplishment of the redemptive vocation of the
first Adam.The first Adam was called to replace Satan in the choir of the
angels. The Second Adam, the Son of Man, though possessing Adamic
nature fully, has an incomparably greater status:“[T]he Son of Man, gathering up the whole of mankind in himself and retrieving the whole of
creation in that humanity, is henceforth to be identified with the eternal
leader of the heavenly choir: with the Word, with the eternal praise of the
Father’s Love.”52
Christ, the Definitive Adam, is the eternal image of the Father. In his
personal subsistence he is infinite self-gift and perfect thanksgiving. He is
the eternal, personal Eucharist to the Father in the Spirit, and, by the
power of his redemptive Cross, he draws mankind and all of creation
directly into his perfect being of praise. He fulfills Adamic nature, but
through the power of his divine personhood, in a manner that surpasses
all conceivable expectations. He does not merely restore the paradisal
cosmic or heavenly liturgy.The Christian life, fulfilled in the New Adam,
cannot be a simple return to the primordial chorus of praise. In his
Resurrection, he restores the liturgy of physical creation. In his Ascension, he reunites the physical creation in man with the heavenly liturgy
of the angels. But he does something incomparably greater. He draws all
things directly into his own divine canticle of thanksgiving:
The cosmic liturgy is not indeed merely restored but reunited to its
divine exemplar. Through the incarnation of the Word in humanity,
which is itself an incarnation of the created spirit, all things are reca51 Ibid., 32.
52 Ibid., 33.

The Angels and Cosmic Liturgy

919

pitulated in their divine Model and the choir of spirits is gathered up
into the very heart of the Godhead. Christ leads humanity back to the
earthly paradise through the Resurrection: through the Ascension he
brings it back to the angelic sphere whence the prince of this world
had fallen to ruin. Finally, entering right into the heavenly sanctuary, he
makes us sit down with him at God’s right hand, he makes us, and the
whole universe with us, re-enter heaven, taking us with him right to
the very heart of the Father from whom all fatherhood proceeds. In the
whole Christ, in the heavenly humanity of which Jesus is the head,
man, associated with the angels’ choir, is initiated into the very canticle
of the Word himself.53

Christ unites human nature to himself in the hypostatic union and joins
us personally to his eternal being, which is in fact one with the Eucharist
of the Church. He brings us, and the cosmos, into the very heart of the
Trinity. The Eucharistic liturgy is not only a sharing in the primordial
cosmic and supra-cosmic liturgy; it is a “recapitulation” of it in Christ’s
eternal canticle of thanksgiving to the Father.Through man, an angel of
substitution, Christ completes, in a transfiguring way, the liturgical
mission of both man and angels.
The angelology that Bouyer brings forth thus teaches us a profound
truth about our own being, a truth that is in danger of being lost to the
extent that strongly de-mythologizing currents of thought still predominate in Catholic theology. It teaches us that the very reason for our existence is ascent to the light of the divine sanctuary. The Christian life is
essentially “ascensional.” It is exemplified or lived to its fullest degree in
the monastic vocation, which is misunderstood if it is not seen as a life of
angelic ascent.The Christian life is a joining in the choirs of heaven, and,
even more, it is ordered in its essence to beatific vision. It is a breaking of
all ties with the earth—so that, as Bouyer emphasizes in his many books,
the earth itself may be rescued from bondage to the Prince of Darkness.
A strongly developed, realistic angelology is essential for us to grasp the
very meaning of our vocation as Christians.A truly “integral humanism”
would be, as Bouyer often says, an “eschatological humanism.”54 Our life
must be oriented to the Rising Sun (or Son) of the East, who draws us,
as angels of substitution, out of enslavement to sin and egoism and brings
us to the true and eternal Garden of the Orient, the otherwise unapproachable temple of his divinity.
53 Ibid., 34.
54 Cf. Louis Bouyer, Le métier de théologien: Entretriens avec Georges Daix (Geneva:Ad

Solem, 2005), 187–208.

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Keith Lemna

Conclusion
I wish to conclude this study by introducing a new argument. I wish to
argue, albeit very briefly, for the practical importance of the angelology
that has been described here.The Church Fathers clearly understood that
it is through acknowledging the presence of the angelic beings that God’s
glory is experienced in the cosmos and our own being is experienced in
its historical meaning. In other words, it is only by “seeing” the presence
of the angels in creation through faith in the divine Word that we are able
to understand the purpose for our existence.A realistic angelology is thus
of great significance for our daily lives. Both Newman and Bouyer are
surely correct to affirm the patristic teaching in this regard—and in
explicit contrast to the utilitarian vision of the universe held by modern
man.They each help us to see in their “neo-patristic” angelology that all
of creation is essentially liturgical, and that the inner meaning of all things
is ultimately revealed only in the light of the Christian Eucharist. 55
The two Oratorians discussed in this study rightly see it as of the
utmost religious significance to uphold a realistic doctrine of the angels
in this age of fragmentation and dissolution.Their bold exposition of the
doctrine of the angels forces us to confront our sense of what is socially
and cosmically important.They bring us to a profound consideration of
the connection of knowledge and activity, or reason and life, which is a
persistent concern in the modern age. Newman and Bouyer each compel
us to question, in seeing the cosmos in the light of the angels, whether
the world should be thought of merely as an instrument for man’s material progress and whether God is of interest to man only insofar as his
providence supports man’s earthly aspirations.
The angelology that I have described in this study gets at the very
heart of the Church’s life in sacred liturgy and addresses perhaps the
greatest challenge that the Church has faced in the modern age. The
challenge of which I speak is the emergence of a sense among the mass
of Christians in the West that sacred liturgy is a mere fossil, a useless antiquity with no relevance for life in the world today. Those many liturgists
in the past half-century who have tried to make sacred liturgy more
“relevant” by making it more horizontal have themselves contributed to
this condition of fallen Christian consciousness. But the ultimate reason
why many Christians have come to think or to feel that liturgy is of little
importance for daily life is mostly a matter of resignation. They have
accepted as an irreversible situation the fact that the cosmos has been
55 Cf. Bouyer, Newman’s Vision of Faith:A Theology for Times of General Apostasy (San

Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 72–90.

The Angels and Cosmic Liturgy

921

given over in modern thought and culture entirely to scientists and to
empirical and mathematical investigation of its processes. Too many
Christians are resigned to the idea that the cosmos can no longer be seen
as bearing any religious significance, and they are prone to think of the
universe as nothing more than a spatio-temporal grid in which insentient
bodies bump into each other. Indeed, many Christians, without even
giving it a second thought, have come to think of modern man’s utilitarian technology, which is in many ways just a new and particularly
effective form of magic, as the most significant action by which man
relates to the universe.
The liturgical and sacramental angelology of the Church Fathers,
which has no greater modern exponents than Newman and Bouyer, is
the remedy for undoing the Christian capitulation to this technological
concept of the world. The recovery of this realistic angelology is of the
most pressing significance for re-instilling in Christian consciousness a
proper sense of the universal significance of the Church’s sacred liturgy.
Modern technology is only of secondary importance in human existence. It is not the human action most in accord with the true lines of
force by which the cosmos is sustained in its being. The universe is, to
paraphrase Bouyer, essentially personal in character, and it can thus be
understood in its deepest essence only in the personal categories of selfgift and diffusive goodness as described in the first section of this study.
Liturgical praise is thus the human action that most fully aligns our being
to the very truth of cosmic reality.
We can conclude from all of this, in addressing the unfortunate distortion in modern Christian consciousness just described, that science and
technology, although important human occupations, are not the most
cosmically important activities of man. They can remain humanist practices, and in touch with the truth of cosmic being, only if they are seen in
relation to their liturgical ordering in created existence. A cosmology and
anthropology of the angels, which explicitly and forthrightly sees the presence of these first created ministers of the divine will in and beyond the
processes of nature, helps to keep our vision focused on the liturgical
meaning of all things. It helps, furthermore, to orient our vision and earthly
activities centrally and essentially toward that “recapitulating” liturgy—the
very redemptive action of the divine within history and the cosmos—
which sums up creation in a transfiguring manner: the Eucharistic sacrifice
of Christ in his Church. The Oratorian angelology of Newman and
Bouyer is thus of the greatest practical importance.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 923–957

923

Liberation, Development, and Human Advancement:
Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate*
M IGUEL J. ROMERO
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

In this effort to come to know the message of Christ and to make it a
guide for our own lives, we must remember that evangelization has
always developed alongside the promotion of the human person and
authentic Christian liberation.
—Address of Benedict XVI at Aparecida (2007), §3
“Between evangelization and human advancement—development and
liberation—there are in fact profound links”: on the basis of this
insight, Paul VI clearly presented the relationship between the proclamation of Christ and the advancement of the individual in society.
Testimony to Christ’s charity, through works of justice, peace and
development, is part and parcel of evangelization, because Jesus Christ,
who loves us, is concerned with the whole person.
—Caritas in Veritate, §15
Where truth and love are missing, the process of liberation results in the
death of a freedom which will have lost all support.
—Libertatis Conscientia, §24; Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §46
* I owe a debt of gratitude to Roberto Goizueta and Dan Finn for their presenta-

tions at the Transformed by Hope Conference (Chicago, 2008), during the session
entitled “Pope Benedict XVI and Liberation Theology.”The first draft of this essay
directly benefitted from informal exchanges with Roberto Goizueta, Luis RiveraPagan, Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, Geoffery Wainwright, Peter Casarella, and Reinhard
Hütter. An early version was read and commented upon at the Duke Theology
and Ethics Colloquium, and from that I am especially grateful to Matthew
Whelan, Tommy Givens, and Sean Larson for their thoughtful commentary and
suggestions. Matthew Whelan, Karina Robson, Colin McGuigan, and Erin Galgay
provided generous feedback on the final draft of this essay.

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Miguel J. Romero

I N Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI describes the Christian vocation to overcome the obstacles that hinder the establishment of authentic fraternity in the world. Through the theme integral human
development, the pope maps a theological grammar for Catholic social
doctrine that takes charity in truth as its principle and purpose. This
understanding of charity in truth is developed in continuity with the
teachings of Paul VI and John Paul II, and as an explicit continuation of
the interpretive tradition of Populorum Progressio. In this essay I focus on
the aspect of that interpretive tradition having to do with the theologies
of liberation. My central claim is that the magisterial response to the
liberation theology movement is important background for our interpretation and reception of Caritas in Veritate.
In the first section of this essay I briefly introduce three texts that show
the relationship between the themes “liberation,” “development,” and
“authentic human advancement” in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope
Benedict, and I outline the figuration of those themes in anticipation of
Caritas in Veritate. Second, taking my cue from Caritas in Veritate, I sketch a
retrospective “doctrinal grammar” of human advancement toward authentic fraternity as it unfolds in Paul VI’s and John Paul II’s social teachings on
development and liberation. In section three I describe how the thematic
configuration and entailments of charity in truth at the heart of Caritas in
Veritate were developed and refined, in part, through Joseph Ratzinger’s
varied engagements with the liberation theologies. In the fourth section I
discuss Caritas in Veritate directly, with the aim of showing Pope Benedict’s
reception of the doctrinal framework established by his predecessors, and I
highlight the extension of key doctrinal themes in the encyclical. Finally, I
trace the contours of Catholic social doctrine in the light of Caritas in Veritate’s figuration of charity in truth as the heart of Christian social existence.
The Relationship between “Liberation,” “Development,”
and “Human Advancement”
In his work as theologian, as prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and as the bishop of Rome, Joseph
Ratzinger/Pope Benedict has considered liberation (or liberative action),
integral development, and human advancement from various perspectives.Three particular texts stand out in his body of work and illuminate
the significance of these themes in Caritas in Veritate : his essay The Open
Circle (1958), the CDF instruction Libertatis Conscientia (1986), and his
papal address at CELEM in Aparecida, Brazil (2007).
In his essay The Open Circle: The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, Fr.
Ratzinger outlines the Christian understanding of fraternity or “brother-

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

925

hood” in historical, dogmatic, and moral terms. His basic claim is that
“Christian brotherhood,” in stark contrast to Stoic, Enlightenment, and
Marxist renderings of socio-political fraternity, is distinctive in two ways.1
First, every social and natural barrier is understood to be relativized
through our incorporation into Christ’s Body.2 And, second, a “new
duality” is thereby recognized among humanity: the distinction between
Church and World.3 Having been set apart from the World, and united
in Christ, the Church is directed by God to serve the World.4
When The Open Circle is considered in light of Caritas in Veritate, one
of its most striking features is Ratzinger’s insistence that Christian service to the World is essentially evangelistic, entailing both the proclamation
of the truth and the performance of charity.5 In particular, Ratzinger highlights the compassionate love of Christian charity as the evangelistic
response to oppression and suffering: Christians direct
their love to all those who need them, without asking for thanks or a
response. . . .The last and highest mission of the Christian in relation to
non-believers is to suffer for them and in their place as the Master did.6

Thirty years later, in Libertatis Conscientia, Cardinal Ratzinger again
outlines the evangelical task as consisting of both message and action, and
as concerned with the holistic advancement of humanity. He writes:
The love which impels the Church to communicate to all people a sharing in the grace of divine life also causes her, through the effective action
1 The Open Circle: The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (New York: Sheed and

Ward, 1966).
2 Ratzinger explains that our union with Christ relativizes every barrier that

might arise from the social and natural differences that are brought together in
the community of the Church. Each generation of Christians, therefore, is tasked
to continually identify and overcome both the old and the new barriers that arise
from our differences. Moreover, each generation is called to allow the recognition of our social and natural differences to continually purify Christian fraternity by illuminating through “crisis” the barriers that remain. See The Open
Circle, 89–90, 94–95.
3 See ibid., 109–15. In The Open Circle, the Church-World distinction is cast as the
most determinative distinction for the Ecclesia Militans. In contrast to the “one
true barrier: that between Creator and creature” (89).
4 Ratzinger, The Open Circle, 114–16.
5 Ibid., 116–19. “The first obligation laid on a Christian is that of missionizing . . .
to witness publically before the world to the public salvation work of God. . . .
The second obligation of the Christian toward the non-Christian is agape.” On
the correspondence of caritas and agape, see Deus Caritas Est (2005), §§22, 25
6 Ibid., 118–19.

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Miguel J. Romero
of her members, to pursue people’s temporal good, help them in their
needs, provide for their education and to promote an integral liberation
from everything that hinders the development of individuals. The
Church desires the good of man in all his dimensions, first of all as a
member of the city of God, and then as a member of the earthly city.7

In Libertatis Conscientia, Ratzinger expresses the need for an “integral
theology of liberation,” oriented toward the authentic freedom of
humanity in all its dimensions: the temporal and eternal, the natural and
the supernatural. The authentic freedom announced in the gospel,
Ratzinger explains, is the principle way Christians understand the significance of their work for justice, in defense of vulnerable persons, and in
service to the common good.8 Specifically, Christian evangelism entails
working to establish a social order that anticipates the final and complete
fraternity of Christian eschatological hope. Ratzinger concludes Libertatis
Conscientia with this forward-thinking gesture:
Liberation, in its primary meaning which is salvific, thus extends into a
liberating task, as an ethical requirement. Here is to be found the social
doctrine of the Church, which illustrates Christian practice on the level
of society.The Christian is called to act according to the truth, and thus
to work for the establishment of that “civilization of love” of which
Pope Paul VI spoke. The present document, without claiming to be
complete, has indicated some of the directions in which it is urgently
necessary to undertake in-depth reforms.9

In Libertatis Conscientia the unity of truth and love is the condition
for identifying, in the light of the gospel, how Christian practice “on the
level of society” must respond to the obstacles that frustrate integral
human development. For Christians, by Ratzinger’s account, authentic
and integral freedom entails being liberated from these obstacles. He
maintains, moreover, that the “noble” task of articulating the full anthropological and eschatological scope of overcoming those obstacles is the
deep aspiration of an integral “theology of freedom and liberation,” one
“which faithfully echoes Mary’s Magnificat.”10
The continuity between Ratzinger’s early work as a theologian and his
work as prefect is unmistakable, particularly when his writings are consid7 Libertatis Conscientia (LC ) (1986), §63. Clearly Ratzinger’s articulation of the

Christian task, as pilgrim members of the earthly city, has deep thematic resonances with the central concern of Caritas in Veritate (2009) (e.g., CV §7).
8 Cf. Libertatis Nuntius (LN ) (1984), §XI.5–8.
9 LC, §99.
10 LC, §98.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

927

ered by way of the themes liberation, development, and human advancement. Caritas in Veritate is a document that is likewise in continuity with
Ratzinger’s earlier treatment of these themes. Moreover, there is reason to
believe that Caritas in Veritate addresses important aspects of the forwardlooking gesture articulated at the conclusion of Libertatis Conscientia.
The thematic and doctrinal links between the CDF instructions on
liberation theology and Caritas in Veritate are recognizable in the Holy
Father’s recent address at Aparecida (2007), where Pope Benedict gave
the opening speech at the fifth general conference of the Latin American
Bishops (CELEM). In his message, Pope Benedict reminds those gathered
that, ultimately:
it is only the truth that can bring unity, and the proof of this is love.
That is why Christ, being in truth the incarnate Logos, “love to the
end”, is not alien to any culture, nor to any person; on the contrary, the
response that he seeks in the heart of cultures is what gives them their
ultimate identity, uniting humanity and at the same time respecting the
wealth of diversity, opening people everywhere to growth in genuine
humanity, in authentic progress.11

Benedict highlights for his brother bishops the understanding that the
unity of truth and love which conditions authentic progress is a unity that
originates from “God with a human face,” the God who loves humanity
even to the point of death on the Cross. It is through Christ’s Cross, he
continues, that the Christian disciple receives
a family, the universal family of God in the Catholic Church. Faith
releases us from the isolation of the “I”, because it leads us to communion: the encounter with God is, in itself and as such, an encounter with
our brothers and sisters, an act of convocation, of unification, of responsibility towards the other and towards others. In this sense, the preferential option for the poor is implicit in the Christological faith in the
God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty.12

Men and women are liberated from the self-imposed isolation of sin when
they encounter Christ. Those who have been set free are enriched by
Christ’s poverty and are made responsible for brothers and sisters within the
Church, and for those outside the Church. Pope Benedict highlights the
outward impulse of Christian freedom and makes explicit the connection
11 Opening Address at the Inauguration of the Fifth General Conference of the

Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean at Aparecida (13 May 2007), §1.3.
12 Aparecida, §III.9; cf. Spe Salvi, §14.

Miguel J. Romero

928

between liberation, development, and human advancement under the logic
of evangelism. He writes that in the
effort to come to know the message of Christ and to make it a guide
for our own lives, we must remember that evangelization has always
developed alongside the promotion of the human person and authentic Christian liberation. . . .The disciple, founded in this way upon the
rock of God’s word, feels driven to bring the Good News of salvation
to his brothers and sisters. Discipleship and mission are like the two
sides of a single coin: when the disciple is in love with Christ, he cannot
stop proclaiming to the world that only in him do we find salvation. In
effect, the disciple knows that without Christ there is no light, no hope,
no love, no future.13

In Caritas in Veritate Pope Benedict expands upon those basic themes
in a manner continuous with his earlier formulations. He recalls to the
mind of the Church that charity and truth are indeed the principle and
purpose of authentic human advancement—which, first and foremost,
pertains to humanity’s liberation from sin and the restoration of freedom.14 This baptismal restoration of the freedom of divine grace elevates
the actions of liberated men and women to the supernatural vocation
which is the preferential option for the poor.15 Called by God, Christian
men and women are made free to witness to the goodness of God in
Christ through the suffering love of charitable self-sacrifice and, likewise,
they are empowered to receive the sufferings of others into their own
bodies.16 It is an authentic Christian humanism that is ordered towards
the performance of Christian mercy, and which is exemplified in witness
of the compassionate martyrs.17 Christians are enriched by Christ’s
poverty when they freely respond to the misery and sufferings of their
neighbors with complete and unambiguous solidarity. Anything less than
a full response is to choose the bondage of isolation and alienated self.
According to Pope Benedict, Christian men and women proclaim the
gospel truth through the “open circle of the Church in the world” with
the uttered word and by their concrete work to overcome the sin-saturated obstacles that hinder authentic development.18 The Pope explains
that liberated men and women respond to God’s love in the performance
13 Aparecida, §III.15.
14 CV, §34, 77; cf. Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN ) (1975) §9 and LC §37.
15 CV, §§5a, 13, 17; cf. Spe Salvi §3.
16 CV, §78; cf. Spe Salvi §4.
17 Cf. Spe Salvi §10, 38–39.
18 CV, §§16, 18; cf. LC §§63, 99; and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (SRS ) (1987) §46.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

929

of their individual and collective vocation to pursue the integral development of their own person and of their fellow human being.19 Thus, for
Christians, the work for integral development presupposes a freedom
secured through a process of integral liberation.
Moreover, the Pope contends that this vocation to responsible freedom
is a vocation that belongs to the whole Church.20 The aim of this work
is the discovery and establishment of the common good of authentic
fraternity in the world—justice, unity, and peace—a social order that
anticipates and prefigures the undivided city of God.21 For Pope Benedict, the aspiration to authentic fraternity, which is the “more human
condition” sought in the work of integral development, is a graceanimated and profoundly supernatural aspiration of free men and
women.22 This aspiration is the freedom to love, which is nothing other
than the natural consequence of our own liberation from sin and death;
our salvation in Jesus Christ.23
Pope Benedict explains that the actions of love, inspired and ordered
by the truth of the gospel, are the only means available to Christians to
overcome the obstacles to integral human development in a global society that “makes us neighbors, but does not make us brothers.”24 For
where truth is missing, he maintains, the actions of Christian charity lack
the logos that constitutes the bare intelligibility of those liberative and
charitable efforts qua Christian acts.25 Moreover, Benedict contends,
insofar as the fullness of human creaturely being is obscured or denied,
appeals for a charity-informed social order will amount to little more
than a “pool of good sentiments.”26 Such sentimental adherence to the
values of Christianity may be “helpful for social cohesion, but of little
relevance” to the goal of advancement toward a more just and peaceful
society and to the establishment of the integral freedom necessary for the
work of integral human development.27 Whatever “freedom” is secured
by such truth-deficient social action will, as a matter of course, be a
temporary and incomplete liberation that ultimately does violence to the
politically liberated.28
19 CV, §17; cf. Populorum Progressio (PP ) (1967) §18.
20 CV, §16.
21 CV, §§7, 17.
22 CV, §§16, 20; cf. Spe Salvi §34.
23 CV, §1, 5a.
24 CV, §19; cf. §9.
25 CV, §4.
26 CV, §4.
27 CV, §§4, 7.
28 CV, §5; cf. SRS §41c.

Miguel J. Romero

930

In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict observes Pope Paul’s eschatological configuration of authentic human advancement.29 For Pope Paul,
authentic human advancement is best understood in terms of a thick
theological anthropology rooted in our ultimate return to God.Thus in
the first section of Caritas in Veritate we see that the supernatural destiny
of every particular man and woman is taken to entail and correspond to
the yearning of all human creatures for love and truth. This search finds
its end in Christ, for it is a restlessness purified and liberated in the “Face
of his Person.”30
The Interpretive Tradition of Populorum Progressio
and the Notion “Integral Liberation”
In Caritas in Veritate, the matter at stake in the question of integral human
development is the establishment of “authentic fraternity.”31 One prominent theme in Benedict XVI’s doctrinal formulation of authentic fraternity is the vocational exercise of “responsible freedom” to overcome the
“obstacles and forms of conditioning that hold up development” in our
time.32 Obviously, there is more than one way to parse Caritas in Veritate
for the purpose of interpretation. In this essay I’ve chosen to focus on the
grammar of the Catholic social teaching displayed in Caritas in Veritate as
it relates to the liberation theology movement and the interpretive tradition of Populorum Progressio.33
29 PP, §§15–16.
30 CV, §1.
31 CV, §20.
32 CV, §17.
33 The structure I am presuming looks like this: In chapters 2–6 we see the provi-

sional application of the doctrinal propositions mapped in the Introduction, in
chapter 1, and in the Conclusion of the encyclical. In this essay I am primarily
interested in the theological grammar that frames both the doctrinal propositions
and the prescriptive proposals of the encyclical. In particular, I am interested in
how that grammar illuminates the unity of the document and its integral nature
within the interpretive tradition of Populorum Progressio. For that reason, despite
its relevance, I will not address the constructive application of the doctrinal
teaching as it unfolds in chapters 2–6 of the encyclical.This should not be read
as a division of the encyclical into “more true” and “less true” parts. Rather, it is
merely to claim that the unity of an encyclical is not exclusively located in the
intra-systematic integrity of the doctrinal propositions and the prescriptive
proposals contained in the encyclical. Like Populorum Progressio, Caritas in Veritate
is a document with roots, and it seems to me to be a worthwhile endeavor to
view Caritas in Veritate —to paraphrase the Holy Father—within the context of
Benedict XVI’s specific magisterium and within the tradition of the Church’s social
doctrine (cf. CV §10).

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

931

The programmatic and doctrinal horizon of Caritas in Veritate is
summarized in §§8–9 of the encyclical.The program of the encyclical is
relatively straightforward: it is to revisit the teachings of Pope Paul VI on
integral human development and to apply those teachings to the present
moment.34 What I am here calling the doctrinal grammar of the encyclical has both semantic and syntactical entailments. First, the semantic aspect
has to do with Pope Benedict’s decision to accentuate certain doctrinal
themes (and not others) as he receives the teachings of Pope Paul VI and
Pope John Paul II. Second, those semantic judgments are given syntactical
form by Pope Benedict in their application to the challenges that presently
face the Church, and he organizes the judgments around the principle
charity in truth.35
For Benedict XVI, the occasion of this encyclical is the challenge
Christians face in their performance of charity in truth amid the process
and fact of societal globalization.36 In that way, Caritas in Veritate is a fresh
application of the grammar of Catholic social teaching to new circumstances and the challenges of the present moment.
Crucial to the Pope’s adoption of Paul VI’s semantic field is Benedict’s
development of the doctrinal formulation of those themes according to
the evangelical horizon of Catholic social teaching, as framed by Paul VI
and John Paul II. Specifically, the social doctrine of Caritas in Veritate is
organized around the principle of charity and truth, and according to the
evangelical imperative of Christian social existence outlined in Populorum
34 CV, §8.
35 CV, §§6, 9.
36 CV, §5. I think that one of the most important things to remember in our read-

ing of Caritas in Veritate is that by most reports Benedict began writing it within
the first few months of his elevation (April 2005). Moreover, he even announced
in the first days of his papacy his intention to write a social encyclical. Further,
we have at least ten major interviews with Ratzinger from 1996 to 2005 in
which he explains that there is a great need for a social encyclical—one that
would “update the themes of Populorum Progressio.” With all that in mind, the
economic and political concerns of the encyclical can be understood as thematically relevant, but not central to the overarching theological concern of Caritas in
Veritate. This is to suggest that the practical economic and political guidance of
the encyclical is provisional, though by no means irrelevant. The proposals are
broad, aesthetic gestures that illuminate what the implications might be of the
central theological arguments at the heart of the text. Understood in that way, we
are pressed to attend more carefully to the Introduction, chapter 1, and the
Conclusion as setting the heuristic terms for a reading of the text focused on
doctrinal matters.When we read Caritas in Veritate in this way, it seems to me, the
broad gestures of chapters 2–6 are more intelligible and far richer than are
commonly recognized.

Miguel J. Romero

932

Progressio. This evangelistic orientation is given clear articulation in Paul
VI’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), and is subsequently
expanded in John Paul II’s 1979 opening address at the Puebla Conference and in John Paul II’s social encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987).
In essence, the integral process of overcoming the obstacles (i.e., liberation) that
stand in the way of integral human development is an evangelical endeavor rooted
in charity and truth, and oriented toward the establishment of authentic fraternity.
Paul VI’s and John Paul II’s magisterial engagements with the various iterations of the liberation theology movement illuminate the contours of
this doctrinal grammar, which I will now treat in greater detail.
The Foundation Set by Paul VI
A theological account of human advancement toward authentic fraternity is the fundamental concern of Populorum Progressio.37 Pope Paul’s
account provides a basic conceptual vocabulary for the articulation of the
object and aim, practical means and functional intent, of human advancement as a distinctively evangelical Christian practice. For Paul VI the
concerns of the Church in her promotion of “genuine progress and the
true development of peoples” are implicit in the gospel message.38 The
truth of the gospel, moreover, demands a particular kind of response from
Christians. He writes:
The progressive development of peoples is an object of deep interest
and concern to the Church.This is particularly true in the case of those
peoples who are trying to escape the ravages of hunger, poverty,
endemic disease and ignorance. . . .With an even clearer awareness . . .
of the demands imposed by Christ’s Gospel in this area, the Church
judges it her duty to help all men explore this serious problem in all its
dimensions, and to impress upon them the need for concerted action
at this critical juncture.39

It is important for Pope Paul that the duty of the Church in response to
these obstacles extends to all the dimensions of the problems confronting
modern society, and not just the social problems.The Church is impelled
by the gospel to a manner of action that seeks to overcome these “less than
human conditions” in their authentic complexity and their full existential
breadth: the natural and the supernatural, the technological and the moral.
Pope Paul proposes that authentic and integral human development
requires a “full-bodied humanism” that respects the natural and super37 PP, §85.
38 PP, §86.
39 PP, §1.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

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natural destiny of the human creature.40 He explains that only a humanism of this sort “will permit the fullness of authentic development, a development which is for each and all the transition from less human conditions
to those which are more human.”41 According to Pope Paul, faith and our
loving unity in Christ constitute the highest and most authentically human
conditions toward which Christians can aspire to advance.42
Pope Paul concludes Populorum Progressio with an exhortation to lay
Catholics to embrace their task to improve the temporal order.43 Specifically, he calls upon the Catholic laity to recall that their work is
eminently evangelical in character: “Changes must be made; present
conditions must be improved. And the transformations must be permeated with the spirit of the gospel.”44 Thus, a profound interconnectedness
between evangelization and the work for integral human advancement is
articulated in Populorum Progressio, and that thematic constellation is
presented as paradigmatic to the Catholic view of faithfulness during the
time of the world.45 Paul VI writes:
It must be admitted that men very often find themselves in a sad state
because they do not give enough thought and consideration to these
things. So We call upon men of deep thought and wisdom—Catholics
and Christians, believers in God and devotees of truth and justice, all
men of good will—to take as their own Christ’s injunction, “Seek and
you shall find.” Blaze the trails to mutual cooperation among men, to
deeper knowledge and more widespread charity, to a way of life marked
by true brotherhood, to a human society based on mutual harmony.46

Pope Paul develops that constellation of themes in his apostolic letter
Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975). There, he takes up the task of unfolding the
implications of the deep connection between “Christian social witness to
the truth of the gospel” and the role of Christians in humanity’s “transition from less human conditions to truly human conditions.”47 Pope Paul
traces the contours of the complete or authentic evangelization to which
the Church aspires. He writes that

40 PP, §§14–21, 42; cf. CV §18.
41 PP, §20.
42 PP, §21.
43 PP, §81a.
44 PP, §81b.
45 Cf. CV §13.
46 PP, §85.
47 EN, §§ 20–21.

Miguel J. Romero

934

evangelization would not be complete if it did not take account of the
unceasing interplay of the Gospel and of man’s concrete life, both
personal and social. This is why evangelization involves an explicit
message, adapted to the different situations constantly being realized,
about the rights and duties of every human being, about family life,
without which personal growth and development is hardly possible,
about life in society, about international life, peace, justice and development—a message especially energetic today about liberation.48

In Evangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Paul shows the formal connection between
salvation in Christ and the political liberation of human beings. It is worth
noting that in this instance, as indicated by the textual apparatus of the
exhortation, the pope is referencing the 1968 bishops’ conference at
Medellin, Colombia. Pope Paul is careful first to distinguish between salvation in Christ and political liberation, explaining that many discrete conceptualizations of temporal liberation are inconsistent and incompatible with
the evangelical vision of humanity.49 On the basis of that fundamental
distinction, he continues with the strong affirmation that the Christian
vocation to work toward the political liberation of oppressed peoples from
the “less human conditions” in which they are caught is implicit in the
message of salvation in Christ that the Church proclaims. For Pope Paul,
the proper understanding of the Christian vocation to work for the political liberation and temporal wellbeing of our neighbors can never be separated from that most determinative liberation which the Church
proclaims: the complete liberation announced in the gospel and which
was wrought for humanity through Christ’s death on the Cross.50
Pope Paul makes these connections explicit:
Between evangelization and human advancement—development and
liberation—there are in fact profound links. These include links of an
anthropological order, because the man who is to be evangelized is not
an abstract being but is subject to social and economic questions.They
also include links in the theological order, since one cannot dissociate
the plan of creation from the plan of Redemption. The latter plan
touches the very concrete situations of injustice to be combated and of
justice to be restored. They include links of the eminently evangelical
order, which is that of charity: how in fact can one proclaim the new
commandment without promoting in justice and in peace the true,
authentic advancement of man?51
48 EN, §29.
49 EN, §35.
50 EN, §38.
51 EN, §31.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

935

Thus we see that for Pope Paul the proclamation of the gospel, understood as encompassing both the anthropological and theological aspects
of human advancement, is a vocation to charity. Moreover, according to
Pope Paul, this vocation entails both the proclamation of the truth of the
gospel and the promotion of human advancement. The development of
peoples, as part of that work for human advancement, corresponds to the
anthropological order: where the freedom for the new commandment of
the gospel—love of God and love of neighbor—is offered to people who
necessarily exist amid complex social and political circumstances. The
liberation of humanity, as likewise part of the work for authentic
advancement, corresponds to the theological order: where freedom from
injustice and violence, in the plan of creation and the plan of redemption, is rooted in the eschatological hope of the gospel.
John Paul II
In 1979, Pope John Paul II addressed the Latin American bishops at the
opening of their third international conference in Puebla, Mexico. In his
address, the themes of development, liberation, and evangelism were
organized around a central concern: namely, the fraternal and eucharistic
unity of the Church in the truth of the faith.There was little ambiguity
in John Paul II’s address regarding the way those themes were related to,
and illuminated by, the questions that were arising for the Church of
Latin America by way of various theologies of liberation. Pope John Paul
declared to his brother bishops:
The truth that we owe to man is, first and foremost, a truth about man.
As witnesses of Jesus Christ we are heralds, spokesmen and servants of
this truth.We cannot reduce it to the principles of a system of philosophy or to pure political activity. We cannot forget it or betray it. . . .
Thanks to the Gospel, the Church has the truth about man . . . this
complete truth about the human being constitutes the foundation of
the Church’s social teaching and the basis also of true liberation. In the
light of this truth, man is not a being subjected to economic or political processes; these processes are instead directed to man and are
subjected to him.52

For Pope John Paul, the truth of the gospel is the truth about human
beings. Moreover, the evangelistic proclamation of that truth in Catholic
social teaching is the foundation of “authentic liberation.” Understood in
52 Address of His Holiness John Paul II at the Inauguration of the Third General

Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean at Puebla (28
January 1979), §I.9.

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936

this way, the freedom attained through the liberating proclamation of the
gospel is the context from which human beings are able to recognize
their proper relationship to the economic and political processes of
development. In particular, the gospel of Jesus Christ liberates human
beings to order those processes to accord with the truth of humanity.
Pope John Paul recalls the bishops to their ministry as “teachers of the
Truth,” encouraging them to continue to proclaim “the truth concerning the mission of the Church,” because the “Church was established by
the Lord as a fellowship of life, love and truth.”53
By situating the processes of integral development as endeavors that
follow and do not precede the liberation from sin in the proclamation of the
gospel, Pope John Paul highlights the evangelistic character of Catholic
social teaching.This evangelistic mission of liberation is a ministry of truth
and love, for it is only by way of the truth of the faith and the practical
proclamation of the gospel in society that the freedom for integral development is properly realizable. He concludes his address to the Latin American bishops with the following picture of authentic Christian liberation:
Pastoral commitment in [the transformation of hearts and the humanization of the political and economic systems] must be encouraged
through a correct Christian idea of liberation. The Church feels the
duty to proclaim the liberation of millions of human beings, the duty
to help this liberation become firmly established; but she also feels the
corresponding duty to proclaim liberation in its integral and profound
meaning, as Jesus proclaimed and realized it. . . . Liberation made up of
reconciliation and forgiveness. Liberation springing from the reality of
being children of God, whom we are able to call Abba, Father; a reality which makes us recognize in every man a brother of ours, capable
of being transformed in his heart through God’s mercy. Liberation that,
with the energy of love, urges us towards fellowship, the summit and
fullness of which we find in the Lord. Liberation as the overcoming of
the various forms of slavery and man-made idols, and as the growth of
the new man. Liberation that in the framework of the Church’s proper
mission is not reduced to the simple and narrow economic, political,
social or cultural dimension, and is not sacrificed to the demands of any
strategy, practice or short-term solution.54

In 1987, John Paul II picks up and deepens this evangelistic schematic
of development and liberation in his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,
written to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio.There Pope John Paul outlines a programmatic process for interpret53 Ibid., §I.6 (emphasis mine).
54 LN, §III.6.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

937

ing and advancing the teachings of Paul VI on the development of
peoples.55 He writes:
Following the example of my predecessors, I must repeat that whatever
affects the dignity of individuals and peoples, such as authentic development, cannot be reduced to a ‘technical’ problem. If reduced in this
way, development would be emptied of its true content, and this would
be an act of betrayal of the individuals and peoples whom development
is meant to serve.This is why the Church has something to say today,
just as twenty years ago, and also in the future, about the nature, conditions, requirements and aims of authentic development, and also about
the obstacles which stand in its way. In doing so the Church fulfills her
mission to evangelize, for she offers her first contribution to the solution of the urgent problem of development when she proclaims the
truth about Christ, about herself and about man, applying this truth to
a concrete situation.56

For John Paul II, the true content of authentic development is
founded upon the truth about the dignity of human beings in relation to
God, the Creator. For that reason, when faced with the problems of
underdevelopment, the evangelistic mission of the Church is a ministry
of truth that directly addresses the full scope of the obstacles that stand in
the way of authentic development in their natural and supernatural
breadth. It is in the proclamation of the truth and the application of the truth
to concrete situations that the Church, according to Pope John Paul,
contributes to the common endeavor to overcome the obstacles to
authentic development. In this way, he explains, when men and women
are liberated by the truth, the reflections of Christian men and women
on the nature, conditions, requirements, and aims of authentic human
advancement are likewise liberated from the temptation to reduce development to a technological problem. Thus, for Pope John Paul, it is
through the evangelical process of working for true or authentic liberation (that is, the proclamation and concrete performance of the truth of
the gospel) that the freedom for authentic development is established.
On the Catholic view, integral liberation is first and foremost liberation
from sin, which is the aim of the Church’s proclamation of Christ’s love.
However, the integral liberation proclaimed by the Church is an embodied witness that likewise works to overcome the societal structures
produced by sin—in particular, those social structures that obscure the
oppression or suffering of vulnerable peoples. Absent the freedom secured
55 SRS, §4.
56 SRS, §41c.

Miguel J. Romero

938

by the process of authentic and integral liberation, development is emptied
of its true content, and any efforts to realize a social order corresponding
to the dignity of individuals and peoples is destined, according to Pope
John Paul, to frustration. Pope John Paul concludes the encyclical with a
formal account of the nature and aim of authentic liberation. He writes:
The aspiration to freedom from all forms of slavery affecting the individual and society is something noble and legitimate.This in fact is the
purpose of development, or rather liberation and development, taking
into account the intimate connection between the two. . . . The principal obstacle to be overcome on the way to authentic liberation is sin
and the structures produced by sin as it multiplies and spreads.The freedom with which Christ has set us free encourages us to become the
servants of all. Thus the process of development and liberation takes
concrete shape in the exercise of solidarity, that is to say, in the love and
service of neighbor, especially of the poorest:“For where truth and love
are missing, the process of liberation results in the death of a freedom
which will have lost all support.”57

The unity of the twofold process of integral development and integral
liberation is rooted in the mission of the Church. Moreover, the process
of integral liberation addresses the obstacles to development in the freedom of truth and love. In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, John Paul II gestures
toward a configuration of Catholic social teaching in which the unity of
love and truth is shown as the principle and purpose of Christian work
in the process of liberation. For Christians, according to Pope John Paul,
the purpose of liberation is the freedom to proclaim the truth of Christ
and apply that truth in the love and service of our neighbor, especially
the poor. As such, for Christians, the process of integral liberation is the
necessary condition for any work in the area of human development.
Authentic and true liberation, where the obstacles that stand in the way
of authentic development are overcome, is the precondition and essential
requirement of authentic development.
Reflecting upon the largely negative picture (in his time) of the
distinctively Christian vision of freedom and liberation, Pope John Paul
reaffirms the prominent place of liberation in the evangelistic horizon of
Catholic social teaching on development, human advancement, and
authentic fraternity during the time of the world. He writes:
In the context of the sad experiences of recent years and of the mainly
negative picture of the present moment, the Church must strongly
57 SRS, §46.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

939

affirm the possibility of overcoming the obstacles which, by excess or
by defect, stand in the way of development. And she must affirm her
confidence in a true liberation.58

Cardinal Ratzinger’s Engagement
with the Theologies of Liberation
In this section, I discuss the themes liberation, development, and human
advancement as they are found in the CDF instructions Libertatis Nuntius
and Libertatis Conscientia. In doing so, I draw upon a number of
Ratzinger’s other writings and some secondary accounts of his work as
prefect of the CDF. When viewed as part of a trajectory that ends in Caritas in Veritate, the twin CDF instructions on liberation theology suggest a
preoccupation on the part of Ratzinger to protect the core intuitions of
the liberation theology movement. He is concerned with protecting the
foundational principles of a theology of liberation adequate to the task of
describing the lives of those Christians who embrace and love the most
vulnerable among us. Such a theology, according to Ratzinger, would
illuminate the challenge and the way forward in the formation of Christian martyrs for our day: a people of virtuous compassion, who reject the
temptation to violence, and who are prepared to give their lives in the
performance of charity in truth.
Joseph Ratzinger’s work as prefect of the CDF is best understood as
belonging to the specific Magisterium of John Paul II. Nevertheless, a germ
of the distinctively Ratzingerian contribution to Catholic social teaching
(the primacy of charity and truth) is evident in his work as prefect. In that
regard, it is important to take special note of John Paul II’s identification of
the principle of authentic liberation as a “unity of truth and love” in §46
of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987)—that is,“where truth and love are missing,
the process of liberation results in the death of a freedom which will have
lost all support.” The formulation is referenced by Pope John Paul as
belonging to the CDF instruction Libertatis Conscientia (1986), written one
year earlier by then-Cardinal Prefect Joseph Ratzinger.
When it is read in context, Ratzinger’s distinctive articulation of
Catholic social teaching is readily identifiable:
To different degrees, the sense of faith, which is at the origin of a radical experience of liberation and freedom, has imbued the culture and
the customs of Christian peoples. But today, because of the formidable
challenges which humanity must face, it is in a wholly new way that it
has become necessary and urgent that the love of God and freedom in
58 SRS, §47.

Miguel J. Romero

940

truth and justice should mark relations between individuals and peoples
and animate the life of cultures. For where truth and love are missing, the
process of liberation results in the death of a freedom which will have lost all
support.A new phase in the history of freedom is opening before us.The
liberating capacities of science, technology, work, economics and political activity will only produce results if they find their inspiration and
measure in the truth and love which are stronger than suffering: the
truth and love revealed to men by Jesus Christ.59

The historical and conceptual warrant for reading Caritas in Veritate in
light of the magisterial response to the liberation theology movement is
well represented in Pope John Paul’s use of Ratzinger’s formulation in
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Specifically, in his meditation on Populorum Progressio, Pope John Paul nuances his description of the “intimate connection”
between liberation and development in Catholic social teaching by
invoking Ratzinger’s figuration of truth and love as the animating principle of Christian work for integral liberation.
In Libertatis Conscientia, Ratzinger explains that the salvific and ethical
dimensions of the Christian view of integral liberation are united by the
truth of a transformative encounter with Christ. Moreover, it is precisely
the experience of salvation that animates the Christian desire to rightly
use this newfound freedom to confront the challenges that face humanity. Ratzinger writes:
The power of this liberation penetrates and profoundly transforms man
and his history in its present reality and animates his eschatological
yearning. The first and fundamental meaning of liberation which thus
manifests itself is the salvific one: man is freed from the radical bondage
of evil and sin. In this experience of salvation, man discovers the true
meaning of his freedom, since liberation is the restoration of freedom.
It is also education in freedom, that is to say, education in the right use
of freedom. Thus to the salvific dimension of liberation is linked its
ethical dimension.60

Because Christians know that they are loved by God, they “live in the
freedom which flows from truth and love.”61 And it is by that freedom,
Ratzinger claims, that the Christian is privileged to recognize the destiny
of her or his vocation “to the extent that he recognizes that truth and
love are at the same time the principle and the purpose of his freedom.”62
59 LC, §24 (emphasis mine).
60 LC, §23–24.
61 LC, §21.
62 LC, §37.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

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A Catholic Social Teaching Worthy of the Blood of the Martyrs
A commonly held view persists that during his time as prefect of the CDF,
Ratzinger rejected the liberation theology movement of Latin America as
a homogenous and uniformly unorthodox reduction of the Christian
faith to political and social action. Very often, accounts of Ratzinger’s
engagement with the liberation theology movement identify particular
iterations of liberation theology as representative of the whole lot, and
presume that Ratzinger did the same.63 However, despite the pervasiveness of that common misconception, Ratzinger’s actual engagement with
the theologies of liberation was usually nuanced and carefully stated.64
Certainly, Ratzinger’s explicit treatment of the various theologies of liberation is limited and occasional in comparison to his other, more systematic projects. Nevertheless, the consistency of Ratzinger’s reflections on
liberation and freedom as theological themes, and the incorporation of
those assessments into his fundamental theology provide a positive vantage
from which to unpack some important threads pertaining to Caritas in
Veritate.To be clear, Ratzinger never articulates an unqualified rejection of
liberation theology, nor did he issue such a rejection during his time as
prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
For example, consider Libertatis Nuntius (1984), which is widely
regarded as Ratzinger’s most forceful and unenthusiastic engagement
with the liberation theology movement of Latin America. The instruction begins with a description of the powerful and entirely valid aspiration for liberation that predicates the inquiry; it likewise indicates that the
Christian aspiration to liberate those who suffer from the cause of their
sufferings is uncontested as a logical consequence of the gospel.
Ratzinger writes:
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of freedom and a force for
liberation. In recent years, this essential truth has become the object of
reflection for theologians, with a new kind of attention which is itself
full of promise. Liberation is first and foremost liberation from the radical slavery of sin. Its end and its goal is the freedom of the children of
63 Cf. Maximilian H. Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology

(Ignatius, 2007), 217. In a footnote, Heim takes a 1996 summary definition from
Leonardo Boff as the operative norm for “liberation theology”; he then references the 1971 work of Gutierrez, as if Gutierrez’s original articulation of the
theology of liberation were a continuation of Boff ’s 1996 project.
64 In Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), Ratzinger offers a very sympathetic narration of
the emergence of “liberation” as a theological theme at the first assembly of the
Latin American Bishops in 1966 (384–85).

Miguel J. Romero

942

God, which is the gift of grace. As a logical consequence, it calls for
freedom from many different kinds of slavery in the cultural, economic,
social, and political spheres, all of which derive ultimately from sin, and
so often prevent people from living in a manner befitting their dignity.
To discern clearly what is fundamental to this issue and what is a byproduct of it, is an indispensable condition for any theological reflection on liberation.65

Ratzinger takes it to be a given that this yearning of the Church to act corresponds to an authentic recognition of human suffering—whether it be physical suffering or moral suffering, both stand as an affront to human dignity.66
Moreover, Ratzinger insists that scandalous inequalities and injustices persist
which require a formal and practical response from the Church.67
On the basis of these fundamental affirmations, Ratzinger explains that
the narrow and circumscribed purpose of Libertatis Nuntius is to draw
attention to the problems created when certain forms of theology “use, in
an insufficiently critical manner, concepts borrowed from various currents
of Marxist thought.”68 After stating this general purpose, Ratzinger immediately warns readers who are culpably indifferent to human misery and
remain hostile to the valid intuitions of the liberation theology movement. He writes that the instruction
should in no way be interpreted as a disavowal of all those who want to
respond generously and with an authentic evangelical spirit to the “preferential option for the poor.” It should not at all serve as an excuse for
those who maintain the attitude of neutrality and indifference in the face
of the tragic and pressing problems of human misery and injustice.69

When the instruction is read in its entirety, it is clear that Ratzinger’s
critique of particular iterations of liberation theology in Libertatis Nuntius
is not addressed to an undifferentiated and homogenous movement of
“liberation theology.” Nevertheless, while Ratzinger correctly acknowledges the diversity of the theologies and theologians who take the theme
of “liberation” as a point of departure, in the instruction he often refers
to the iterations of liberation theology he is critiquing as “liberation
theology.” When these particular passages are read in context, it is clear
what is being considered. However, as a result of this stylistic ambiguity,
much confusion arose in the months following the instruction.
65 LN, Introduction.
66 Cf. Salvifici Doloris, §5.
67 LN, §I.6–9.
68 LN, Introduction.
69 LN, Introduction.

Catholic Social Doctrine in Caritas in Veritate

943

In any case, thinking back on his time and work as prefect, in 1997
Ratzinger spoke on what he thought was the principle threat to one of
the most important ongoing movements within the Church. Ratzinger
explains:
There is the basic idea of liberation theology. This idea has found an
echo on every continent, really, and it must be said, too, that it can be
given a very positive expression. After all, its core idea is that Christianity also has to have an outward effect in man’s earthly existence. It has
to give him freedom of conscience, but it also has to try to vindicate his
social rights. However, when this idea is understood one-sidedly, it
attempts to conceive of Christianity in general as an instrument for
refashioning the world politically. This approach gave rise to the idea
that all religions are basically just instruments for advocating freedom,
peace, and the conservation of creation, so that they would have to
justify their existence through political success and political goals.70

During his time as prefect of the CDF, Ratzinger’s most forceful objections against “one-sided” theologies centered on the risk that the instrumentalization of Christian conviction in the political sphere would
ultimately leave Catholic-identified liberation movements unable to realize the integral freedom that is the basis for authentic human development. For Ratzinger, when human liberation is reduced to political
liberation, the full breadth and potential of those things to which persons
aspire in relation to their fellows (that is, justice, the common good, and
authentic fraternity) are nothing more than vague utopian fantasies.
On Ratzinger’s view, when Christians unreflectively pursue human
liberation as primarily a this-worldly political enterprise, the properly
Christian notion of liberation is emptied of its complex and comprehensive content. Moreover, when Christian work for liberation is reduced to
political and economic ends, Christians sacrifice the very means by
which we are able to make moral sense, on Christian terms, of the evangelical witness to charity in truth exemplified in the lives of Servants of
God like the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero.
When separated from the truth of the gospel, Christian work for political liberation is made vulnerable to ideological manipulation.71 For
70 Joseph Ratzinger and Peter Seewald, Salt of the Earth:The Church at the End of the

Millennium (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 132.
71 D.Vincent Twomey writes, regarding the terms “theology of politics” and “polit-

ical theology” (the latter of which is a concept that Ratzinger rejects entirely),
that Ratzinger rejected “any theology such as that of JB Metz or the classical
forms [sic] of liberation theology, that involves the instrumentalization of either
the Church or the faith for political purposes or the attribution of sacral or

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Ratzinger, the influence of an ideologically atheistic and reductively materialistic Marxism (in its various forms) upon Catholic social action was the
principal cause of the unbalanced character of certain iterations of liberation theology in the two decades following the Second Vatican Council.72
Marxism, Political Liberation, and the Semblance of Fraternity
In his biography of Pope Benedict XVI, Fr. Aidan Nichols reports on the
common allegation that Joseph Ratzinger’s objection to Marxism (and
Marxist influence upon certain streams of Catholic theology) arose from a
psychological “trauma” incurred in May 1968.73 At that time, so the story
goes, a series of German student revolts deeply distressed Ratzinger, who
was just beginning his career as a university professor at Tübingen.Terrified
by the unmoored and dissembling tendencies of the Marxist conceptual
schema, Ratzinger retreated to the safe haven of Regensburg University,
where he could work unperturbed by the grumblings of fanatical youth.
The intrigue of this “trauma” narrative resides in the pathologization of
Ratzinger’s sustained critique of Marxism. Claiming to unmask his “real”
motivations, it supplies a rationale for the dismissal of Ratzinger’s theological conclusions without dealing with the reasons he articulates.
In contrast to that common account of Ratzinger’s experience of the
student revolts, Ratzinger’s recollection of that time (and his experience of
the events) is less dramatic. In his book Principles of Catholic Theology,
Ratzinger explains that in the chaotic challenge of the German students
against the standard accounts of the relevance, origin, and purpose of the
university, the protesting youth relied heavily upon Marxist analytic categories, while failing to apprehend the implications of those categories; and
failing, moreover, to recognize the very conditions that made their appropriation of the Marxist analytic possible: namely, the university as a mediating and authorizing institution.74 For Ratzinger, the ultimate effect of
this Marxist intervention upon the German university was a directionless
rejection of the resources implicit to any time-tested intellectual tradition,
culminating in the widespread renunciation of the basic and holistic task of
theology.75
For Ratzinger, the Marxist analytic was not an innovative or particularly
interesting challenge to Christianity and the Christian intellectual tradisalvific significance to politics” (D. Vincent Twomey, Pope Benedict XVI: The
Conscience of Our Age [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005], 72).
72 See Tracey Rowland’s book Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 43–44.
73 Cf. Nichols,The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI (London: Burns & Oates, 2007), 182.
74 Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 387–88.
75 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 183.

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tion. Years before, in his habilitation thesis on Bonaventure’s theology of
history, Ratzinger argued that the roots of Marxist thought are to be found
in a twelfth-century Christian heterodoxy: Joachim of Fiore’s teaching on
the third age of the Holy Spirit, which expected a this-worldly fulfillment
of redemptive history—a synthesis of utopia and eschatology.76 As Heim
notes, Ratzinger convincingly argued that Joachim prepared the way for
Hegel’s vision of history, which supplied the basic conceptual model and
apocalyptic imminence to Marx’s understanding of history’s progressive
unfolding and revolutionary consummation.77 Ratzinger reiterates this
genealogy of Marxism in his book Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life
(1988), where he writes:
The Joachimist dispute filled the thirteenth century and, in part, the
fourteenth also, ending with a renewed rejection of this particular form
of hope for the future.The present-day theologies of liberation belong
in this context [i.e., the context of this historical theological dispute].
But just why did the Church reject that chiliasm which would allow
one to take up the political task of realizing on earth parousia-like
conditions? The rejection of chiliasm meant that the Church repudiated the idea of an inner fulfillment of history. On the contrary, it
affirms the impossibility of an inner fulfillment of the world. The
Christian hope knows no ideas of an inner fulfillment of the world.78

The strong resistance of Ratzinger to the influence of Marxism upon
Catholic theology had much to do with what Ratzinger took to be the
necessary implications of Marxism’s philosophical underpinnings.79 In
particular, the integrity of the principles that frame any recognizably
Christian account of Christian social existence was a major concern for
Ratzinger. It was primarily his theological preoccupation with the
themes liberation, unity, truth, and love—principles by which Christians
are able to recognize the form and shape of authentic fraternity —that
inspired Ratzinger’s suspicion of uncritical implementations of the Marxist analytic. For Ratzinger, the distortion of these principles constitutes
the medieval heritage of Marxism. And it follows for Ratzinger that the
Catholic concern for the integrity of these principles is the point of
departure for any critical appropriation or rejection of Marxism’s utility
as an analytic resource.
76 Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, 160–63.
77 Ibid., 162.
78 Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic

University of America Press, 1988), 212–13. See 209–14.
79 Cf. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 57–66.

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Miguel J. Romero

Ratzinger’s deep concern in his role as prefect of the CDF was to
defend the valid theological principles and Christian intuitions at the
heart of the liberation theology movement: the recognition of human
alienation and mortal suffering, the preferential option for the poor and
dispossessed, and the Christian imperative to act with compassion. Moreover, Ratzinger was keen to resist the unreflective distortion of those
properly theological intuitions by ideologically Marxist political endeavors. Ratzinger’s sympathies with the essential intuitions of the liberation
theology movement (intuitions that he understood as the logical consequence of the gospel)80 frame and ultimately determine his misgivings
with Marx’s actual thought and his unambiguous rejection of ideologically Marxist enterprises of political liberation.
For Ratzinger, the problem with Marxism was not its use as an analytic
resource. Ratzinger maintained (and continues to maintain as Pope Benedict) that the analytic is a useful tool, so long as it is understood that Marxist analysis will afford us only an incomplete understanding of any given
social situation.81 The problem, according to Ratzinger, was the mistaken
attribution of comprehensiveness to Marx’s narrowly materialistic account
of class struggle and political revolution.When Marx’s view is uncritically
presupposed in theological reflection, the analytic has the consequence of
thinning out traditionally and conceptually thick biblical concepts into
two-dimensional metaphors for social and political engagement.82
Returning to Libertatis Nuntius, Ratzinger’s primary concern, then, is
that a “Christianized” Marxist analytic reduces human freedom to political and economic liberation. On that view, the class struggle is the means
80 Cf. LN, Introduction.
81 Spe Salvi, §§20–21; cf. Jesus of Nazareth, where Pope Benedict writes: “Is it not

true that man, this creature man, has been alienated, battered, and misused
throughout his entire history? The great mass of humanity has almost always
lived under oppression; conversely, are the oppressors the true image of man, or
is it they who are really the distorted caricatures, a disgrace to man? Karl Marx
painted a graphic picture of the ‘alienation’ of man; even though he did not
arrive at the real essence of alienation, because he thought only in material
terms, he did leave us with a vivid image of man fallen among the robbers” (Jesus
of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration [New York:
Doubleday, 2007], 199–200).
82 In his 1985 interview with Joseph Fessio, Ratzinger observes that “secularist
liberation programs have one element in common: they are attempting to
achieve this liberation exclusively in the immanent place, in history, in this world.
But it is precisely this limited view, restricted to history and lacking an opening
to transcendence, that has brought man to his present state” ( Joseph Ratzinger
and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of
the Church [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985], 172–73).

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and message of Christian liberation. For Ratzinger, one result of this
methodological move is that Christians are often left unable to distinguish between the technical tool of Marxist analysis and the ideological
underpinnings of the analytic method. Those ideological tenets,
Ratzinger argues, are “not compatible with the Christian conception of
humanity and society”—insofar as Marx’s atheistic and narrowly materialistic metaphysic are implicit to the various technical applications of
Marxist analysis.83 Thus, when Christians uncritically incorporated
Marx’s thought into their theological treatments of liberation, they likewise incorporated metaphysical presuppositions that undermined the
distinctively transcendent aspect of Catholic social doctrine.According to
Ratzinger, to abandon the transcendent aspect of Christian social existence is to abandon the vital core of the logic of the Christian vocation
to work for the integral liberation of oppressed and suffering persons.84
Regarding the Marxist-influenced streams of liberation theology, then, it
was not that the various political appeals to the “option for the poor” were
too radical; rather, for Ratzinger, their option for the poor was not radical
enough, with respect to human nature and our creaturely status before God.
A truly radical politic is one that corresponds to the full reality of human
life. According to Ratzinger, many Christian liberationists were seduced by
the seemingly comprehensive scope of the Marxist analytic, and were left
unable to get to the radical truth of the matter at hand because they did not
attend to the complexities of the human creature as one who has both
immanent and transcendent longings for freedom.
The result was that in theological discourse, those theologians who
began from the metaphysically materialistic viewpoint of a descriptively
oppressed and revolutionary class—as the Marxist analytic maps the social
landscape of the Church—ended up essentializing one particular aspect
of a specific social location.85 Under that mode of theological reflection,
Christ was often reduced to a revolutionary political figure whose death was
the outworking of a political struggle. And the very notion of Christian
83 LN, §VII.8.
84 LN, §VIII.9
85 LN, §X.3 Ratzinger writes, that the “Theological criteria for truth are thus rela-

tivized and subordinated to the imperatives of the class struggle. In this perspective, ‘orthodoxy’ or the right rule of faith, is substituted by the notion of
‘orthopraxy’ as the criterion of the truth.” Libertatis Nuntius continues with the
observation that the most significant problem facing some of the theologies of
liberation is the tendency to presume that the “poor” of Scripture unproblematically corresponds to the ‘proletariat’ of Marx (LN, §XI.10).As a result, the Marxist analytic is applied to the Church itself, wherein the “Church of the poor” is

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salvation was likewise reduced to a matter and project of primarily political liberation from oppression.86
For Ratzinger, the problem with thinly Christian attempts to theologize liberation as class struggle was the inevitable reduction of the “political being” of human beings to a constellation of political and economic
concerns. Understood in that way, the disheartening consequence was
that “their effective omission of the idea of God . . . also changed the
figure of Christ fundamentally. . . . He simply was not needed in regard
to the ‘reality’ that mankind had to deal with.”87
During his time as prefect, Ratzinger was adamant that the concept of
“liberation” should continue to be recognized as a legitimate locus for
theological reflection and that it should be eagerly explored given its
thematic versatility, prominence in scripture, and its continuous recollection in the Christian intellectual tradition. He was convinced that Christian social action on behalf of the oppressed must be rooted, if it is to
remain Christian, in an understanding of liberation that is integral and
complete. In particular, the basic evangelical horizon of liberation must
be maintained. For Ratzinger, if social endeavors for political liberation
seen as entrenched in an oppositional class-struggle with the Church of the
powerful: a ruling class of clerical elites who maintain the sacramental and hierarchical ecclesial structure in the form of a teaching Magisterium (cf. LN
§XI.13). Understood in this way, the aim of such metaphysically thin understandings of human liberation could not help being morphed into an unmoored
social critique of doctrinal conventions, ultimately seeking to destabilize through
class-struggle the institutional conditions that made the distinctively Christian
aspect of integral liberation possible—not altogether different from the 1968
German student revolts.
86 Aidan Nichols argues that for Ratzinger the concepts of eschatology and utopia
marked the overarching difference between an authentic theology of liberation and
a secular ideology of liberation wrapped in Christian metaphors. The aim of a
utopian vision of liberation locates the significance of humanity’s political endeavors in
the actual realization of the utopic vision in the present political order, whereby the
means employed to realize that end are judged good solely by the criteria of the
end. In that way, violence, social chaos, and the collateral damage of revolution are
taken to be suitable paths to peace and political order. In contrast, Nichols continues, the eschatological vision of liberation distinct to the Christian intellectual tradition
locates the significance of humanity’s political endeavors in not the realization, but
in the pursuit of a just and peaceful political order that can only come to fruition
as a divine gift from God. Understood eschatologically, practical political endeavors
in pursuit of an authentically human liberation are intrinsically subject to moral
criteria that disqualify some practices as antithetical to the principal aim of Christian political engagement—which is the faithful proclamation of the truth of Christ’s
love in society. See Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 180–91; cf. CV §5b.
87 Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Communio Books, 2004), 16.

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are to be sustained by a truth that is more determinative than a crude
“will to power,” Christians must not lose sight of the fact that in light of
the gospel the notion of “liberation” is first and foremost the event and
the encounter with the person of Christ.88 Ratzinger took this to mean,
moreover, that Christians must always be clear about which understanding of “liberation” they are drawing upon, recalling with Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi that not all conceptualizations of “liberation” are equal.89
On Ratzinger’s view, the primary and fundamental point of reference
for the Christian understanding of liberation consists in the radical experience of “Christian liberty.”90 When human liberation is sought in a
manner corresponding to the fullness of humanity’s created nature, liberated persons are likewise free to shape with their fellows “the earthly city
in unity and peace”—an authentic fraternity—which is “an anticipation
and prefiguration of the undivided city of God.”91 Ratzinger writes:
Christ, our liberator, has freed us from sin and from slavery to the Law
of the flesh; which is the mark of the condition of sinful mankind. . . .
This means the most radical form of slavery is sin. . . . Freedom is a new
life in love.92

When we consider Caritas in Veritate from this vantage point, we are
better positioned to recognize that one of the benefits of Benedict’s social
encyclical may very well be to secure a future for a robust theology of
liberation with a “universal radius.”93 For Benedict, in the words of Aidan
Nichols, a theology of integral liberation would be realized “in the working out of the Trinitarian and Christological preconditions of Catholic
social doctrine, [and would] give those who seek to realize that doctrine
new inspiration and motivating power.”94
Benedict XVI and the Liberation Theology Movement
At the conclusion of Libertatis Conscientia Ratzinger indicates that the
“liberating message” of the gospel extends into a “liberating task,” which
is the work to establish the “civilization of love.”95 Caritas in Veritate is a
88 LN, §§3–4.
89 EN, §34.
90 LC, §71.
91 CV, §7.
92 LN, §IV.2.
93 H. Urs von Balthasar,“Liberation Theology in the Light of Salvation History,” in

Liberation Theology in Latin America, ed. J.V. Schall (San Franciso: Ignatius Press,
1982), 131.
94 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI (2007), 191.
95 LC, §99.

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950

meditation on that liberating task, insofar as ‘liberation’ means the Christian performance of love in truth.
Continuing in the interpretive and practical task of Populorum Progressio, which was initiated in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Benedict formulates his
own teaching in Caritas in Veritate as one likewise rooted in the fundamentally evangelical character of the Christian vocation to work for the
advancement of the individual and collective human condition. For his
part, in Caritas in Veritate Benedict expands upon the relationship
between charity and truth on the one hand, and, on the other, the evangelistic work of Christians to respond to human suffering as it unfolds on
the global scale. Benedict writes:
This dynamic of charity received and given is what gives rise to the
Church’s social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the
proclamation of the truth of Christ’s love in society. This doctrine is a
service to charity, but its locus is truth. Truth preserves and expresses
charity’s power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history.96

The Pope emphasizes that the unity of charity in truth is the singular
principle from which the concrete particulars of Christian social existence
in the world draw inspiration and aim. Although this formulation of
“charity in truth” within Catholic social teaching is unique to Benedict
XVI, the essential nature of the theme is not without precedence in the
teachings of his predecessors. In particular,“charity in truth” and “charity
and truth” have regularly been held forth as the unified principle and
programmatic aim of the evangelical essence of Catholic social teaching.97
Pope Benedict’s contribution to the interpretive tradition of Populorum
96 CV, §5.
97 “Charity in truth” as a Christian way of being in the world, is seen in Pope John

XXIII’s commendation of the bishops at the close of the first session of Vatican
II (Address on the Occasion of the 36th General Congregation of the Council,
7 December 1962, §5). The Pope said, “Praeterea meritae vestrae laudi etiam
tribuimus, quod in vestris coetibus caritas in veritate profecto principem obtinuit
locum; idque causa est cur Deo plurimas gratias persolvamus.” Also, and most
pertinently, the thematic constellation of charity and truth are emphasized in the
closing challenge and exhortation of Paul VI to the Latin American Bishops at
Medellin, 26 August 1968. Pope Paul says “El Episcopado de América Latina, en
su Segunda Asamblea General, desde el puesto que le compete, ante cualquier
problema espiritual, pastoral y social, prestará su servicio de verdad y amor en
orden a la construcción de una nueva civilización moderna y cristiana. [The
Episcopate of Latin America, in its Second General Assembly, from its position
of competent authority, before any social, pastoral, and spiritual problem, will
offer its service of truth and love according to the proper order of building a new
civilization that is both modern and Christian.]”

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Progressio is to highlight and expand that part of human advancement that
has to do with overcoming the obstacles that hinder development. The
work of overcoming the obstacles to development is the work for integral
liberation.The evangelical ministry of the Catholic Church to secure the
integral liberation of those who are not free is sustained by the wellspring
of charity in truth. In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict offers a formulation that reminds the Church of the fundamentally evangelical character
of her corporate vocation to social action and compassionate solidarity.
As Pope Benedict locates his reflections on charity in truth within the
interpretive tradition of Populorum Progressio, the enterprise of authentic
human advancement he presumes takes integral liberation to be operationally prior to development. His understanding that development is a
process conditioned and capacitated by authentic freedom is the specific
aspect of development and human advancement addressed in Caritas in
Veritate.98
Caritas in Veritate stands in continuity with Sollicitudo Rei Socialis by
taking Populorum Progressio as a point of departure. Nevertheless, there are
important thematic differences between Sollicitudo Rei Socialis and Caritas
in Veritate. John Paul II, on the one hand, is concerned in his encyclical
with the nature and scope of integral human development (that is to say,
what integral development is); Benedict XVI, on the other hand, presumes
in Caritas in Veritate the insights of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis and addresses
himself to the means and process of overcoming the obstacles that frustrate integral human development (that is to say, how we work for and
achieve integral human development. Specifically, in Caritas in Veritate,
Pope Benedict maps the way in which the liberative Christian performance of charity in truth makes possible the authentic freedom which is the
necessary condition for the work of integral development.99 In Caritas in
Veritate it is the process of Christians actively performing the liberating
truth of the gospel in concrete social situations that stands as the first step
in securing the common good, which is the good anticipated in Christian work for an authentic human advancement.
For Benedict, the particular Christian activities that condition integral
human development are vocationally sustained practical measures of
compassion.100 These practical measures are intended to secure the integral
and authentic liberation of individuals and/or peoples from all that would
hinder the integral process of their development as human beings.101 In
98 CV, §17.
99 CV, §18.
100 CV, §17; Cf. SRS §46.
101 CV, §16.

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Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict is keen to remind the Church that the
unity of charity in truth animates faithful engagements in the field of peace
and justice, and ensures that the social witness of our liberative practices are
oriented toward realizing the authentic freedom necessary for integral
development.102 For Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, the unity of charity and truth animates and sustains Christian engagement in the liberative
work for peace and justice in the world.103 Through this enterprising
work, Christians hope to realize with their fellows the integral freedom
which makes efforts of authentic human development possible.
This logic is evident in the structure of Caritas in Veritate: Benedict does
not begin or take his point of departure in the encyclical from a problem
or from an urgent call. Rather, he takes the revelation of God in Christ—
charity in truth—as the means by which one is able to recognize a social
situation as problematic and thereby understand the true urgency entailed
in the call to action.104 The problem addressed in Caritas in Veritate is indicated in the second paragraph of §5, which is framed generically as “the
grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity.” The urgency,
however, is the urgency of charity in truth.105 By approaching the topic
of integral human development in this way, Benedict reconfigures both
the nature of the problem (and any other social problem that concerns
human flourishing) and the condition of urgency as recognizably urgent
to Christians precisely because of their faith in Christ.Thus, it is the truth
of the gospel, and the freedom conferred on individuals and society by
way of that truth, which distinguishes, on the one hand, the integral
Christian practice of responding to urgent social problems from, on the
other hand, narrowly political projects of liberation. Benedict writes:
In the present social and cultural context, where there is a widespread
tendency to relativize truth, practicing charity in truth helps people to
understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely
useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral
human development. A Christianity of charity without truth would be
more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful
for social cohesion, but of little relevance.106

Displaying the evangelical character of his meditation in Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict explains that, on the Christian view, a proper under102 CV, §6.
103 Cf. LC §§2–4.
104 CV, §§1–5.
105 CV, §20.
106 CV, §4.

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standing of authentic human advancement (natural and supernatural)
takes its principle in the order of knowing from the Christian experience
of liberation from individual sin.107 However, for the Pope this understanding of liberation is incomplete without the eschatological horizon
of true faith. The purpose of the liberation entailed within authentic
human advancement is, in the order of being, fundamentally prior to the
experience of liberation. In the order of being, God’s preferential option
for the poor, humanity impoverished by sin and the structures of sin, is
purposed and oriented toward the ultimate good of man, which is the
vision of divine glory.108
Benedict XVI explains that the work “to shape the earthly city in unity
and peace” is a vocation that belongs to every Christian.109 No individual
is excused from the command to love one’s neighbor, which is justice
animated and outdone by the transcendent gratuity of charity: God’s love
manifest in human relationship.110 For Benedict, God’s gift of charity, the
interior impulse to love authentically, and God’s gift of truth, which is the
means and end of authentic freedom—charity in truth—enkindle a truly
integral humanism that desires the common good and sustains the ceaseless
pursuit of that good—even to the point of martyrdom.111 Baptized into
Christ’s death and Resurrection, every Christian is called to participate,
according to the Pope, in the integral development of his own person,
which is the life of holiness and virtue. Likewise, all Christian men and
women are called to be instruments of truth-enlightened charity, which
takes practical form in work for justice and in pursuit of a common good.112
Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI are consistent in highlighting the intrinsic unity that exists between evangelism and human
advancement, such that the gospel message is the condition by which
Christians understand what it means to aspire and advance toward
anything at all. For Benedict, advancing the interpretive tradition of
Populorum Progressio, the unity of the missional imperative of the Church
in the world takes on the twofold character of salvation as achieved by
Christ and as proclaimed by the Church: freedom for our eternal destiny,
which is the beatific vision of divine glory, and freedom from the greatest
oppression, which is sin and death. Human social advancement, understood in light of the truth of the gospel, is held forth as an enterprise of
107 CV, §5.
108 CV, §§1, 79.
109 CV, §§1, 7.
110 CV, §6; cf. §§53–54.
111 CV, §78; cf. §§1, 7, 16.
112 CV, §§5, 16.

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a twofold order: the “freedom for” a more human condition, which Pope
Paul called integral and authentic development, and the “freedom from” sin
and the structures of sin, which, writing in Libertatis Conscientia, Cardinal
Ratzinger called integral and authentic liberation.
The Grammar of Catholic Social Doctrine
in Caritas in Veritate
Predicated upon the primacy of the evangelistic mission of the Church to
the world, Pope Benedict XVI’s vision of the Christian vocation to work
toward the establishment of authentic fraternity is twofold: First, it involves
the explicit proclamation of Christ. This proclamation of the truth is the
foundation of the Church’s mission and, as such, this truth animates and
sustains the Church’s social witness. Second, that proclamation necessarily
entails the vocational embodiment of the truth of the message in the lives
of Christians. From the love of neighbor that is inspired by the truth of the
gospel follows the promotion of human advancement within society, an
endeavor aimed at the establishment of authentic fraternity.
The evangelical promotion of human advancement, the vocational
embodiment corresponding to the second pillar of the evangelistic mission
of the Church to the world, likewise has two aspects:The first aspect, which
Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI call “integral development,” is the
promotion of the good of every person and the whole person.113 Reflection on the manner and mode of authentic development takes place on the
anthropological order.114 The second aspect, which in Caritas in Veritate
Benedict calls “responsible freedom” and which in Libertatis Conscientia he
calls “integral human freedom and liberation,” serves as the foundation and
necessary condition for integral human development.“Integral freedom” is
the status of those who have been set free by Christ to address, in the words
of Paul VI, the “obstacles and forms of conditioning that hold up development,” of which each person’s liberation from sin and the effects of sin is
the most pressing concern.115 According to Paul VI, John Paul II, and
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, reflection on the manner and mode of
authentic or integral liberation takes place on the theological order.116
For Benedict, in Caritas in Veritate and following Paul VI, a theologically disciplined interrogation of the problems besetting humanity takes
113 CV, §18.
114 Cf. EN §31.
115 CV, §17; cf. PP §15–16, where there is little ambiguity about the integral nature

of Paul VI’s understanding of responsible freedom, pertaining to both the natural and supernatural faculties of the human creature.
116 Cf. PP §29–40; LN §V.1–8; LC §63; SRS §46.

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the truth of the human creature as its primary object, for only “truth is
the ‘guarantee of freedom’ and the possibility of integral development.”117 Such an inquiry is what Ratzinger called in Libertatis Nuntius
an “authentic theology of liberation.”118
In essence, for Pope Benedict XVI, charity in truth is the foundation
of complete or integral human freedom, and the process or work of integral human development presupposes a state of authentic freedom.119
Pope Benedict follows closely Leo XIII’s theological description of the
two aspects of human freedom pertaining to the “anthropological order”
and to the “theological order.”120 On the anthropological order, the
process in which one moves from a state of mortal bondage to a state of
political freedom is rightly called liberation.121 However, when such
matters are considered by way of the theological order, it becomes clear
that, if the freedom received through liberation is to be authentic, the
liberation must be integral—that is to say, it must correspond to the
whole truth of the human creature.122
For Benedict, following John Paul II, the primary aim of integral liberation, understood by way of the theological order, is freedom from sin
and the structures of sin.123 The work for integral liberation is a process
of overcoming those obstacles that stand in the way of authentic human
freedom, insofar as authentic freedom is the condition of possibility for
integral development.124
Conclusion
Adorno contends in Minima Moralia that the only tenderness to be
found in a disordered world—a world deformed by our frenetic drive
toward subhuman affections—consists exclusively in the coarse demand
that no human being should ever die of hunger.125 Those of us who do
117 CV, §9.
118 LN, §V.8; cf., EN §32.
119 CV, §17–18.
120 See the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, §350; Also, of

course, Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum (1888) remains an everrelevant reminder of what, exactly, Catholics mean when we talk and meditate
on human freedom and liberation—in particular, when we reflect upon the deep
relationship between revealed truth and human freedom.
121 Cf. LC §§23–24.
122 CV, §8.
123 CV, §17; cf. SRS §§33, 46.
124 CV, §9.
125 Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (London: New
Left Books, 1974), 100. Adorno writes:“To the question of the goal of an emancipated society, one receives answers such as the fulfillment of human possibilities

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Miguel J. Romero

not know hunger, thirst, or the threat of violence are confronted by a
plundered and violated humanity in the face of neighbor.The cry of the
hungry and our acute awareness of profound human misery challenges
Christians to explain what exactly we mean when we proclaim Christ’s
teaching that “man does not live on bread alone.”
When charity and truth are not understood and practiced in their
intrinsic unity, the unaffected invocation of a higher order is the glutted
mouth of Dives dropping bits of cheese and half-chewed pudding into
the bowl of wretched Lazarus—it is nothing less than a revolting display
of inhumanity.What, then, are we to say? How do we explain ourselves?
We have no explanation or theological formula that is worthy of the
challenge of profound human misery. Our only response is a gesture to
the compassionate witness of our martyrs, and our daily pursuit of the
virtues they exemplify. Caritas in Veritate is not an explanation; it is a
gesture toward the radical and comprehensive character of the Christian
vocation to proclaim the gospel in society.
Christians proclaim the truth of Christ’s love in a world where five
thousand children die every day for want of clean water.Those of us who
will never hold the diarrhea-ravaged corpse of a three–year-old girl, insofar as we are Christians, are confronted with the fact of our vocation to
merciful love in the profound mortal suffering of our neighbor. Christians are called to perform this truth animated love in a world where
technology makes us global neighbors (we see images and hear stories of
abused, suffering, and exploited humanity every day), yet cannot unify us
as a human family: our work is the establishment of authentic fraternity;
our responsibility is to wipe away any sentimental mercy-talk that could
mask an unwillingness to embrace our suffering neighbor.126
At the same time, according to Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, when we
attempt to respond to the mortal challenge of human hunger without
due attention to the truth we proclaim as Christians, we risk an inhumane and distorted response.127 We do not take seriously the challenge
of human hunger and mortal suffering when we reduce the complex
truths of human creaturely existence to a narrowly materialistic struggle
for resources, because “man does not live by bread alone.” In Caritas in
Veritate, the evangelical witness of lives supernaturally animated by the
divine gift of charity in truth is the full and complete response of Christians taking into themselves, into their bodies, the sufferings of their
or the richness of life . . . [Yet,] there is tenderness only in the coarsest demand:
that no-one should go hungry anymore.”
126 CV, §33; cf. §§9, 20.
127 CV, §27.

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957

fellow human beings. It is a manner of martyrdom that bears faithful
witness to the revelation of God in Christ.
Throughout his body of work it is clear that Pope Benedict’s nuanced
refusal to accommodate the influence of metaphysically anemic political
programs within Catholic social teaching originated from a theological
anthropology that affirmed the full reality of the human creature: we
hunger for more than food.That is to say, if Christians give bread, but withhold our friendship and solidarity from a starving man, we have not loved
our starving neighbor in the truth of Christ’s love. Moreover, if Christians parrot Christ’s message of integral freedom, but remain culpably
indifferent to the bondage and suffering of our neighbor, we have not
proclaimed the truth of Christ’s love.
The authentic fraternity to which we are commended in Caritas in Veritate is an integral Christian humanism that is ordered toward the performance of Christian mercy, and which is exemplified in the witness of the
compassionate martyrs. This humanism bears witness to the truth of
Christ’s gospel, and points toward the civilization of love that was founded
at Golgotha and inaugurated at Pentecost.This always-incomplete fraternity of the pilgrim people, among each other and in relation to the earthly
city, is sustained by our eschatological hope in the God who became poor.
Caritas in Veritate—charity in truth—is the principle and purpose of the
Christian vocation to proclaim Christ’s love through our work to shape
the earthly city in unity and peace. Our work is to build a civilization of
love that is an anticipation and prefiguring of the undivided city of God.
N&V
This is not only an argument, it is a picture.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 959–995

959

Seek First the Kingdom:
A Reply to Germain Grisez’s Account
of Man’s Ultimate End
E ZRA S ULLIVAN, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

N OT EVEN FRIENDSHIP WITH G OD can utterly fulfill man,
either in this life or in the next: so argued Germain Grisez in the 2001
American Journal of Jurisprudence.1 This was in contrast, he said, to the position of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose “opinions” about man’s ultimate end
have been “regarded as tantamount to the truths of faith.”2 Responding to
Grisez in the same issue of the journal, Fulvio Di Blasi contended that
Grisez’s “general theses” are not only “daring,” they are “self-contradictory,
and indeed dangerous from the point of view of faith.”3 More recently, in
2008, Grisez has returned to the topic. His position is more definitive and
emphatic—and therefore more potentially dangerous to Catholic faith—
* I would like to thank Fr. Basil Cole, O.P., Dr. Joseph Capizzi, Mrs. Robin

Hugens, and others, especially Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., for reading and
commenting on previous versions of this article and for all of their encouragement.The defects and conclusions herein are entirely my own. A.M.D.G.
1 Germain Grisez, “Natural Law, God, Religion, and Human Fulfillment,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 3–36 at 28.The context of Grisez’s claim is
his disagreement with St.Thomas Aquinas about whether man’s beatitudo consists
in “God’s goodness alone.” Grisez states: “As I explained in Part I, above, their
capacities [i.e., that of human persons] are naturally inclined toward the basic
human goods—friendship with God, knowledge of truth and aesthetic experience, and so on. But no single instantiation of any of those goods—not even friendship
with God—can utterly fulfill anyone.” Emphasis added.
2 Grisez, “Natural Law, God, Religion, and Human Fulfillment,” 36.
3 Fulvio Di Blasi, “Ultimate End, Human Freedom, and Beatitude: A Critique of
Germain Grisez,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 113–35 at 113.

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Ezra Sullivan, O.P.

than it was before. At the end of his article, Grisez again pits his understanding of faith against that of St. Thomas Aquinas: “Thomas maintains
that it is contrary to the faith to hold that human beings’ ultimate end is to
be found in something other than God. . . . But I hold it to be a truth of
faith that human beings’ true ultimate end is the kingdom of God, not
God alone.”4 Grisez’s emphatic assertion, his faith-claim, cannot be
dismissed as mere rhetorical hyperbole, coming as it does from so
eminent a theologian who has such a wide knowledge of the faith.While
not questioning Grisez’s adherence to the Church’s Magisterial teaching,
I agree with Di Blasi that there could have been “greater clarity and
detachment in Grisez’s use of Scripture and Tradition.”5 The purpose of
this article is to evaluate Grisez’s daring faith-claim by focusing on the
Catholic Tradition he calls his own.6
4 Germain Grisez,“The True Ultimate End of Human Beings: the Kingdom, Not

God Alone” Theological Studies 69 (2008): 38–61 at 61 n. 69. Emphasis added. All
in-text citations refer to pages in this article, hereafter “The Kingdom, Not God
Alone.”
5 Di Blasi, “Ultimate End, Human Freedom, and Beatitude,” 114 n. 5.
6 Through its emphasis on arguments from authority, this present article distinguishes itself from critiques of Grisez published inThe American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001). Authors of those critiques were interested in showing why one
conception of man’s ultimate end was better than another, but without taking
account of reasons suggested by the Magisterium; our interest here is primarily
about what the Church teaches about man’s ultimate end. For example, Di Blasi,
cited above, answers Grisez by utilizing a Thomistic conception of “ultimate
ends” and the nature of the beatific vision. He mentions tradition without
discussing it. Scott MacDonald responds to Grisez and tries to show that rational
reflection reveals the coherency and persuasiveness of Thomas’s view and the
inadequacy of Grisez’s. MacDonald notes, “Grisez’s first argument—about the
New Testament’s view of ultimate human fulfillment—raises deep and important
hermeneutical and theological issues that deserve probing,” but he does not
discuss the Scriptural issue and he makes no mention of Magisterial teaching on
man’s end. See Scott MacDonald, “Aquinas’ Ultimate Ends: A Reply to Grisez,”
37–49 at 37. Others, such as Peter Simpson in “Grisez on Aristotle and Human
Goods,” 75–89, mention neither Scripture nor Tradition, since those sources
were outside the scope of their inquiry. The most attention that Tradition
receives comes from a supporter who assumes that because Grisez “repeatedly
and with delight quotes Gaudium et Spes . . . Grisez’s answer to secularism is the
same as Vatican II’s.” But the author does not analyze Vatican II’s view of ultimate
ends in the texts cited or in light of Tradition—see Patrick Lee, “Germain
Grisez’s Christian Humanism,” 137–51 at 142. In sum, this present article may
help to clarify many of the issues involved in discussions surrounding a properly
Catholic understanding of man’s ultimate end—not least because it asks the
question “What does the Church teach about man’s ultimate end and the kingdom of God?”

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961

The authorities to which Grisez appeals in the course of his 2008 article are Sacred Scripture, Benedict XII, Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, and the
current Catechism of the Catholic Church. One notes that Grisez does not
directly invoke any Magisterial authority between 1336 and 1965.Therefore, in addition to the authorities cited by Grisez, we will examine the
First Vatican Council and Roman pontiffs from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI.
This will give us a broad perspective of more than a century’s worth of
Magisterial teaching on man’s ultimate end.We will see that there are many
elements of Catholic tradition in Grisez’s position, but these elements do
not constitute full continuity with the faith as formally expressed. The
authorities unmentioned by Grisez, including Vatican I, make it abundantly
evident that the Church has clearly and consistently taught that God alone,
in Himself, apart from creatures, is man’s ultimate end.7
After our extensive look at the Magisterial position on “God alone,” we
will discuss a crucial distinction between man’s supreme ultimate end and
his secondary ultimate end. The distinction rests on the difference
between the object of man’s end (God in Himself) and the subject’s attainment of the end (primarily in the beatific vision). We will see that this
crucial distinction is maintained, not only by a number of pre-Vatican II
popes, but also by the current Catechism of the Catholic Church. Despite the
witness of many authoritative sources, Grisez misunderstands the objective and subjective aspects of human finality.This leads him to misinterpret a key passage in Gaudium et Spes, which speaks about the kingdom
of God and man’s ultimate end. In contrast, our reading of Gaudium et
Spes reveals that the passage Grisez quotes is in continuity with previous
Magisterial teaching; at the same time, its use of the Biblical term “the
kingdom of God” must be harmonized with the various ways of speaking about man’s ultimate end.
In order to understand how God’s kingdom relates to man’s objective
and subjective ultimate ends, in the final section of the article we consider
7 Although Grisez quotes Sacred Scripture as if it agrees perspicaciously and unde-

niably with his position, it is not at all certain that it does. For example, one may
note the following references (all biblical quotations are from the NAB): Ps 16:2,
5, and 11,“I say to the LORD,You are my Lord, you are my only good. . . . Lord,
my allotted portion and my cup, you have made my destiny secure. . . .You will
show me the path to life, abounding joy in your presence.” Ps 145:16,“You open
wide your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” Jn 17:3, “Now this
is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom
you sent, Jesus Christ.” Rom 11:36,“For from him and through him and for him
are all things. To him be glory forever.” Col 1:16b, “All things were created
through him and for him.” At the very least, these passages show that Scriptural
authority does not necessarily support Grisez’s case.

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four different interpretations of the kingdom of God: as (1) heaven, (2) the
Church, (3) the union of the soul with God, and (4) Jesus Christ himself.
Although Scripture and Tradition support each interpretation, the first
two are not complete pictures of the kingdom; the most complete understanding of the kingdom is in interpretations (3) and (4).The kingdom as
union of the soul with God corresponds with man’s secondary, ultimate
end (the beatific vision). The kingdom as Jesus Christ, God Incarnate,
corresponds with man’s supreme ultimate end (God in Himself). Hence,
one can agree that the kingdom of God is man’s ultimate end—provided
that the kingdom is equated with man’s primary or secondary ultimate
ends: God considered in Himself, or the beatific vision in which man
attains God. This leads us to conclude that Grisez’s faith-claim is untenable as it stands, while a position more closely allied with Magisterial
sources and the theology of St.Thomas Aquinas provides a more complete
and convincing account of human finality and the kingdom of God.
Benedict XII and Complete Fulfillment
Our extended look at the Church’s teaching begins with Benedict XII’s
constitution Benedictus Deus, promulgated in 1336.8 The fullest version of
the relevant section reads:
They [separated souls who die in Christ] see the divine essence with an
intuitive vision and even face to face, without having any mediating
creature as an object of vision, yet the divine essence reveals itself to
them simply, openly, and clearly; thus seeing, each has the full enjoyment of the same divine essence, and indeed, by reason of such a vision
and enjoyment of their souls, those who are now departed, are truly
beatified and have eternal life and rest.9

Notice that, while Benedictus Deus does not state that men could be
fulfilled in some way by creatures, neither does it exclude the possibility
that beatitude consists in man’s fulfillment by creatures along with God.
The document is silent about the role of creatures with respect to human
beatitude. Instead, it focuses on teaching that true beatitude and eternal
rest are results of union with God in the beatific vision. Grisez correctly
notes that the document “leaves it open” for one to agree with his posi8 Grisez cites the decree four times in “The Kingdom, Not God Alone,” on pp.

51, 52, 52 n. 47, and 60, respectively.
9 For an excellent summary of the historical context and theological issues at stake

in this document, see Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in
Western Christianity, 200 –336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), esp.
283–91.

Germain Grisez’s Account of Man’s Ultimate End

963

tion that the separated soul, though experiencing the beatific vision, has
further desires (52, n. 47).
Grisez, for his part, agrees with the teaching that “the beatific vision
will fulfill human persons” (59). But Grisez does not mean that man’s
fulfillment is solely a result of the beatific vision, or that beatitude is
unchangeable. Rather, he suggests that beatitude is “not static” but “an
ongoing process, in which fulfillment will increase” as more persons enter
heaven and after the general Resurrection (52).
On this point, Benedict XII’s formulation in Benedictus Deus allows for
one to agree with Grisez. This is because, as Simon Tugwell shows, the
pope privately held a similar view regarding beatitude.10 Before he was
Benedict XII, Cardinal Fournier argued that beatitude is “the condition
which is complete with its collection of all goods,” so that where some
goods were lacking, beatitude is somehow incomplete.11 This led
Fournier to conclude that, before the last judgment, “neither men nor
angels will be fully blessed.Though they see the essence of God and are
blessed . . . because they already have the thing that is most important in
beatitude, all the same, they do not have all that they legitimately want or
could legitimately want.”12
Fournier’s view of beatitude is remarkably similar to Grisez’s position
that “our ultimate end should include all the benefits that can be realized
by protecting and promoting all the fundamental goods of persons” (56).
Since fulfillment involves a number of goods, it logically follows that
“each of the fundamental human goods is only one element of human wellbeing and flourishing, and each realization of any of those elements . . . is
only one part of an individual’s or community’s overall fulfillment” (56).
Therefore, Grisez reasons, the beatific vision is only a part of “integral
communal fulfillment.” By “integral communal fulfillment” Grisez means
“divine good together with the well-being and flourishing of created
persons in respect to all of their fundamental goods” (57).Two small steps
lead to Grisez’s faith-claim that we are examining.To begin with, if it is
necessary that things other than (but not apart from) God fulfill man,
10 See Simon Tugwell, Human Immortality and the Redemption of Death (Springfield,

IL: Templegate, 1990), 145–49. Bynum agrees with this view: “Benedict did not
settle the issue . . . of whether there is increase in the intensity of the beatific
vision after the Last Judgment, although his personal opinion was that there was.”
The Resurrection of the Body, 285.
11 Quoted in Tugwell, Human Immortality, 147.
12 Ibid. For a detailed discussion of arguments from the East and West regarding the
nature of the beatific vision, see H.-F. Dondaine, “L’objet et le ‘medium’ de la
vision béatifique chez les théologiens du XIIIe siècle,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 19 (1952): 60–130.

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then God alone (apart from those things) does not fulfill man. In addition, integral communal fulfillment may be equated with the kingdom of
God.This leads to Grisez’s major conclusion: “God alone is not the ultimate end toward which we direct our lives.That end is integral communal fulfillment in God’s kingdom” (58).
If Benedict XII’s thought were the sole source of Magisterial teaching
on man’s ultimate end, there would be plenty of room to agree with
Grisez. But Catholic eschatology has developed since 1336. As Tugwell
notes, Benedict XII’s formal definition was restricted to “the essential
minimum that needed official clarification.”13 It left unresolved a number
of questions about beatitude, including what essentially constitutes man’s
ultimate end.We will see that, in the course of time, especially in the past
one hundred and fifty years, the Church has further elaborated on man’s
ultimate end and developed doctrines which Grisez’s theory overlooks.
Vatican I: God Alone is Man’s Ultimate End
Any authoritative claim about Catholic teaching on man’s ultimate end
must take the First Vatican Council (Vatican I) into account. In the course
of their deliberations, the fathers of the Council responded to a theological error that threatened to undermine the Catholic understanding of
God’s nature and a fundamental principle of morality. In doing so, they
formulated a definitive teaching about man’s ultimate end, one that many
of the popes in the last century have affirmed and developed.
A theological and historical explanation of Vatican I’s teaching on man’s
ultimate end was advanced by Philip J. Donnelly in an article published in
1933 in Theological Studies.14 He carefully treated the context of the original discussion, outlining the views to which the Council was responding
and quoting at length the Schema Prosynodale, official annotations, and the
Relatio in which the Council fathers discussed the formulations included
in the final documents. From these sources, we can see that, in developing
a position about man’s ultimate end, they were responding to the teaching
of Georg Hermes, a priest who taught theology from 1807 until his death
in 1831. As influenced by Kant, Hermes developed a system in which a
fundamental principle of morality is “the duty of loving and esteeming the
dignity of man for its own sake.”15 Hermes’ thought on man’s ultimate end
13 Tugwell, Human Immortality, 146.
14 See Philip J. Donnelly, “The Doctrine of the Vatican Council on the End of

Creation,” Theological Studies 4 (1943): 3–33.
15 Ibid., 11. For a thorough discussion of Kant’s understanding of man as a willing

sovereign in a kingdom of ends, see Patrick Riley, “Kant on Persons as ‘Ends in
Themselves,’ ” The Modern Schoolman 57 (1979): 45–56.

Germain Grisez’s Account of Man’s Ultimate End

965

is summed up in his statement “Since I am a being of reason and, as such,
constitute an end unto myself, therefore I must be the end of God’s will.”16
Hermes and Grisez agree on a crucial argument: both think that, if
some created good is an end unto itself, then God alone and in Himself,
apart from creatures, cannot be the ultimate end for man.17 In addition,
each firmly holds that at least one created good is an end in its own right.
For Hermes, the end is the human person; for Grisez it is “integral
communal fulfillment in God’s kingdom” (59). From these principles,
they conclude that God alone is not man’s ultimate end.
There are a number of problems with the thinking of Hermes and
Grisez on this point; authorities in Hermes’ day recognized one that
centered around the nature of a final cause. The problem, formally
expressed, is this:An end is a final cause.Whatever is an end moves something as the final cause of the thing. If God’s ultimate end in creating
were something created (that is, some good in addition to Himself), then
God was moved by some thing or things lesser than Himself. But whatever moves is greater than that which is moved. Therefore God (as
moved) is less than man’s good (which moved Him). In sum, Hermes’
theory detracts from divine impassibility and perfection.To correct such
errors, the Council of Cologne condemned the Kantian-based system in
1862.This local council taught, in opposition to Hermes:“If the finis operantis, or that which impelled God to create, be sought, it should be stated that
nothing which is distinct from God could have impelled Him, since,
being self-sufficient, He could intend nothing for Himself,” that is, God
cannot intend something distinct from Himself as an ultimate end
because He cannot augment His own substantial perfection.18
The fathers of Vatican I developed the doctrine taught by the Council
of Cologne. In the course of their conciliar discussions, the bishops came
16 Georg Hermes, Einleitung in die christkatholische Theologie (Münster, 1831), 479.

Quoted in Donnelly, “Vatican Council,” 15. Italics added.
17 There are, of course, many differences between the doctrine and system of

George Hermes and that of Germain Grisez. Here we simply focus on a point of
intersection between the two thinkers and highlight the fact that part of Grisez’s
thought on that point had been anticipated by Hermes.As will be seen below, the
Church strongly critiqued Hermes on the very point in which he agrees with
Grisez. For a fuller exposition of Hermes’ overall theology, which was condemned
as “semi-rationalism,” see Alan Vincelette, Recent Catholic Philosophy:The Nineteenth
Century (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), 50–55, 61–67.
18 Provincial Council of Cologne (1862), quoted in Philip Donnelly,“Saint Thomas
and the Ultimate Purpose of Creation,” Theological Studies 2 (1941): 53–83 at 58.
Italics in the original. One notes that, though it was regional, the Council of
Cologne received the official recognitio of the Holy See.

Ezra Sullivan, O.P.

966

to recognize that one denigrates God’s intrinsic perfection if one holds
that creation has an ultimate end other than God’s own Goodness. The
Schema for the third session of Vatican I states that the Council fathers
intended to condemn the “damnable heresy” that the world was not
created for the sake of God in Himself.The Annotationes show that their
teaching was meant to “exclude false doctrines about the end of creation,”
including the idea that “the end in creating was only the happiness and
good of the creature.”19 Therefore, on April 24, 1870, the assembled bishops definitely declared that the end of all creation, human and otherwise,
was not ultimately human good. Rather, God created all things “in order
to manifest His perfection through goods which He communicates to
creatures.”20 Put negatively, the doctrine runs, “If anyone . . . denies that
the world was made for the glory of God: anathema sit.”21
So far the teaching of Vatican I contradicts the notion that man’s ultimate
end consists in “integral communal fulfillment.”22 The Council teaches that
man’s ultimate end is God’s glory, for that is the ultimate end of all creation.
Nevertheless, one could raise an objection. Perhaps the language leaves
room for the idea that God’s glory is the end of all things along with or in
addition to some created good/s, and thus it leaves room for Grisez’s position. In other words, one might claim, “I hold that man’s ultimate end is
God’s glory, but I also hold that God’s glory includes created goods.”
Donnelly demonstrates that this position is problematic and unsustainable.23
The theological background of Vatican I’s Dogmatic Constitution on the
Catholic Faith shows that the ecumenical council taught that God alone is
man’s ultimate end.The key teaching in this regard is the statement that
we can know by “the natural light of human reason” that “God is the
source and end of all things.”24 By saying that God, without any qualification, is man’s end, the Council means that God in Himself, as perfect,
19 The Latin original is quoted in Donnelly,“Vatican Council,” 21. My translation.
20 Concilium Vaticanum, sessio III, Constitutio Dei Filius, caput I, “De Deo rerum

omnium creatore.”
21 Dei Filius, can. I.5.
22 As

has been mentioned, Grisez defines “integral communal fulfillment” as
“divine good together with the well-being and flourishing of created persons in
respect to all of their fundamental goods” (57). See also his statement, “Integral
communal fulfillment—the ultimate end for all created persons—will therefore
be realized in the kingdom as a whole” (59).
23 Donnelly wrote two articles, cited in notes 14 and 18 above, to explain the
Catholic position on man’s ultimate end and to correct some manualist theologians of his day. Led by Leonard Lessius, many manualists held that the ultimate
end of all creation was a created good: the created communication of God’s
goodness, His extrinsic glory. See Donnelly, “Vatican Council,” 3–4, 31–33.
24 Dei Filius, caput II, “De revelatione.”

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967

infinite, and substantial Being, is man’s ultimate end.25 In other words,
“God Himself, intrinsically and objectively, not merely by extrinsic
denomination and metaphorically, is the finis simpliciter ultimus of all finite
beings.”26 Since God in Himself is man’s supreme ultimate end, nothing
else can be so in the same respect, for God is radically and unalterably
distinct from creation.27 It would be pantheistic to claim that man’s ultimate end is God’s intrinsic being which includes something created.28
When the Council taught that God’s glory is man’s ultimate end, it was
speaking of God’s intrinsic glory, which is not distinct from His being.
Therefore, Vatican I taught that man’s supreme ultimate end is God in
Himself, apart from all creatures—and that is equivalent to saying, “God
alone is man’s ultimate end.”
Leo XIII to Benedict XVI: God Alone Is Man’s Ultimate End
Donnelly has shown that Vatican I verifiably but only implicitly taught that
God alone is man’s ultimate end; we will now see that, following Vatican
I, the Church has frequently and explicitly taught that God in Himself is the
ultimate end of all. In order to show how consistently the Ordinary
Magisterium has taught about man’s ultimate end, we will take into
account some important contributions of Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius
XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. Here we will focus on three kinds
25 Here the fathers of Vatican I employed a Scholastic understanding of God:

because God is Being itself and the source of all being, He must simultaneously
be the highest good and the ultimate end of all things. Jan Aertsen shows that, in
St.Thomas’s mind,“The perfect is the ultimate. . . . Insofar as something is in act,
it is good. There is an identity of ‘perfect’ with ‘end’—‘good’—‘act’.” He references St. Thomas’s statement in his Summa theologiae (ST ) I, q. 5, a. 1, which
shows the convertibility of the terms. Jan Aertsen, Nature and Creature: Thomas
Aquinas’s Way of Thought (New York: Brill, 1988), 376, 376 n.166. See also ST I,
q. 5, a. 4 and In II Metaphysicorum, lectio 4, 317.
26 Donnelly, “Vatican Council,” 29–30.
27 Dei Filius, cap. I, taught that God is radically other than His creation: “Since He
is one, singular, completely simple, and unchangeable spiritual substance, He must
be declared to be in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, supremely
happy in Himself and from Himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything
besides Himself which either exists or can be imagined.” For a discussion of the
theoretical foundations and implications of this insight, see Robert Sokolowski’s
discussion of the “Christian distinction” in his work The God of Faith and Reason:
Foundations of Christian Theology (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1982), esp. chap. 4,“The Metaphysics of Christian Belief.”
28 Donnelly notes,“Whoever would place the supreme end of creation in something
outside of God, if he possesses any correct notions of final causality, must logically
either place the summum bonum [solely] in something created or adhere to some
form of pantheism.” Donnelly,“Ultimate Purpose of Creation,” 72.

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of arguments employed by the pontiffs: those which start from God’s
nature as the perfect, substantial Good; those which start from man’s
nature as a rational, moral being; and arguments from authority.
From the basis of God’s perfect nature, Pope St. Pius X taught, “No
matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he
cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of
Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end,
namely, the Highest Good.”29 This doctrine, according to Pius X, constitutes one of the “fundamental principles” of faith “that all Catholics have
a sacred and inviolable duty, both in private and public life, to obey and
firmly adhere to and fearlessly profess.”30 Because God’s nature never can
change, nor will it, Pius XII emphasized that man’s ultimate end is
morally always the same: “The ordination and direction of man to his
ultimate end—which is God—by absolute and necessary law based on
the nature and the infinite perfection of God Himself is so solid that not
even God could exempt anyone from it.”31 More recently, Benedict XVI
has taught the same truth in the context of speaking about man’s hopes.
While not denying that created goods are “hopes”—or “ends,” since an
object of hope is an end to be obtained—the pontiff points out that there
is a hierarchy of hopes: “Let us say once again: we need the greater and
lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough
without the great hope, which must surpass everything else.This great hope
can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can
bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain.”32
Implicit in the papal statements we have just seen is the following kind
of reasoning: something is an end insofar as it is good; the ultimate end
must be the ultimate good. But the ultimate good can be nothing other
than God.Therefore God in Himself must be the ultimate end. Combining the argument based on God’s nature with that based on human
nature, John Paul II taught in Veritatis Splendor that man’s true good
consists ultimately in God’s intrinsic Goodness: “Acting is morally good
when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man’s true good and thus
express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end:
God himself, the supreme good in whom man finds his full and perfect
happiness.”33 With respect to the argument based on human nature, John
Paul II was following his predecessors, including Pius XI. The lesser29 Pius X, Singulari Quadam, §3.
30 Ibid., §2.
31 Pius XII, Musicae Sacrae, §24.
32 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, §31.
33 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §72. Italics in the original.

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known pope Pius of the twentieth century wrote that he wanted to
affirm a “fundamental doctrine” for Catholics, one that “may be gathered
from reason and Faith.” The argument from faith, or authority, is based
on a careful reading of Vatican I and Pius XI’s predecessors, including Leo
XIII, who wrote in his great social encyclical, Rerum Novarum: “All men
are children of the same common Father, who is God . . . all have alike
the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men
or angels absolutely and perfectly happy.”34 Pius XI based an argument
from reason on the dignity and nature of man’s “spiritual and immortal
soul,” united naturally to a body. Because of his nature, Pius XI wrote,
man has “a value far surpassing that of the vast inanimate cosmos. God
alone is his last end, in this life and the next.”35 One would be hard-pressed
to find a more explicit rejection of Grisez’s thesis than this.
In light of our study thus far, we can come to a few conclusions about
man’s ultimate end. First, we have found that Grisez’s assertion, “Strictly
speaking, God alone is not the ultimate end toward which we should
direct our lives” is opposed to various doctrines that the Magisterium has
incontrovertibly taught. More than this, we have come to a positive truth:
the Church explicitly and consistently teaches that God in Himself and
apart from creatures (that is, God alone) is man’s ultimate end. Donnelly
formulated the Catholic position well when he said,“The end ultimately
intended by God and the supreme finis operis are identical, namely, the
34 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §25. Leo XIII taught many times in different contexts

that God in Himself is man’s ultimate end. We find another example in his
encyclical on human freedom, Libertas Praestantissimum, §20, where he wrote,“We
are ever in the power of God, are ever guided by His will and providence, and,
having come forth from Him, must return to Him. . . . Moral virtue is concerned
with those things which lead to God as man’s supreme and ultimate good.”
35 Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, §27. Emphasis added.The last sentence of the English
translation follows closely the official French and Spanish (respectively): “En
cette vie et dans l’autre, l’homme n’a qu’un Dieu pour fin dernière”;“Dios es el
último fin exclusivo del hombre en la vida presente y en la vida eternal.” The
original Latin contains the same teaching, albeit with more nuance:“Ita reapse «
microcosmos » ex veterum scriptorum sententia ea de causa vocari potest, quod
inanimarum immensitatem rerum longissime evincit ac superat. Non modo in
hac mortali vita, sed in perpetuo etiam mansura supremus ei finis est unice Deus;
et cum per sanctitatis effectricem gratiam ad fili Dei dignitatem evectus sit, in
mystico Iesu Christi corpore cum divino Regno coniungitur.” A literal translation of this reads: “He [man] is truly a ‘microcosm,’ as he was able to be called
accurately in the writings of the ancients, so that he subdues and surpasses the
very great immensity of inanimate things. Not only in this life, but also destined
to remain as such forever, God alone is his [man’s] supreme final end; and
through the efficacious grace of sanctity he is raised to the dignity of a son of
God, conjoined with the kingdom of God in the mystical body of Christ.”

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Divine intrinsic goodness.”36 In other words, the objective end of the
work of creation and God’s own primary intention are the same: God in
Himself. Only the Supreme Good can constitute the finis simpliciter
ultimus of all creation, including man.37 Divine simplicity and perfection
necessitate a strict dichotomy of being: the Creator on one side, all
created goods on the other.38 Consequently, if man’s ultimate end were
to include created goods, it could not be in a way that contradicts God’s
primacy as the absolute end.
Created Goods and Ultimate Ends
It is as yet unclear, given the Magisterial teaching discussed above,
precisely what role created goods have with respect to human finality.We
have seen that they cannot be man’s supreme ultimate end. Nevertheless,
we should not despise created goods just because they are not the pinnacle of man’s destiny. Grisez recognizes that Creator and creation must
always remain distinct, and his theory holds that both are man’s end in
some way (see 61). It is possible that a created good is man’s ultimate end
in some kind of secondary way.To better understand the Church’s position, and to grasp a key distinction between primary and secondary
aspects of man’s ultimate end, we will turn to the theology of St.Thomas
Aquinas. His insights will be crucial for evaluating Grisez’s claims about
what is essential to man’s ultimate end.
Grisez notes Thomas’s position that, because of a difference between
an object which is obtained and the attainment of that object, there must
be a primary aspect of man’s ultimate end (God Himself) as well as a
secondary aspect (see 39 and 43). Considering the object first, Thomas
reasoned, “If, therefore, we speak of man’s last end as of the thing which
is the end, thus all other things concur in man’s last end, since God is the
last end of man and of all other things.”We have seen that Vatican I and
subsequent Roman pontiffs have confirmed Thomas’s teaching as a part
of Catholic faith. Considering the attainment of the object, Thomas
continues, “If, however, we speak of man’s last end, as of the acquisition
[or attainment] of the end, then irrational creatures do not concur with
man in this end. For man and other rational creatures attain to their last
end by knowing and loving God: this is not possible to other creatures.”39
36 Donnelly, “Ultimate Purpose of Creation,” 83.
37 One could also say that “God’s glory” is man’s supreme ultimate end, for His

intrinsic glory is not something other than His very being.
38 See note 27 above.
39 ST I–II, q. 1, a. 8, c. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. by Fathers of the

English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger, 1947). All quotations of the

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In a later article,Thomas explains that the attainment is distinct from the
object and is ordered to it: “For, since the end, as stated above [i.e., our
previous citation], signifies sometimes the thing itself, and sometimes the
attainment or possession of that thing (thus the miser’s end is either
money or the possession of it); it is evident that, simply speaking, the last
end is the thing itself.”40 Given that the attainment of God is distinct
from God Himself, it follows that the attainment is the human person’s
participation in God.41 In consequence, man has a primary, objective end
(God in Himself), and a secondary, subjective end (human attainment of
God).We have already discussed the Church’s doctrine that God is man’s
supreme ultimate objective end. Our task, then, is to determine the character of man’s secondary, subjective end.42
We saw above that Grisez holds man’s ultimate end to be “integral
communal fulfillment in God’s kingdom,” that is, obtaining “divine good
together with the well-being and flourishing of created persons in respect
to all of their fundamental goods” (59, 57). It is unclear whether, in saying
that “divine good” is part of human fulfillment, Grisez means divine good
in itself—that is, God’s very being—or whether he is referring to something else. On the one hand, it could seem that Grisez is referring to
God’s very being when he says that “God alone” is not man’s ultimate
end. As we have seen, the words have traditionally been interpreted as
indicating God insofar as He is distinct from creation, that is, God’s
intrinsic being. But if Grisez meant this, there would be manifest tensions
with Catholic Tradition.This leads us to consider the alternative. Perhaps
Grisez is not speaking about God’s very being. In his list of six points
essential to Thomas’s “treatise on beatitude,” Grisez is silent about
Thomas’s understanding that God in Himself is the only supreme and
substantial Good because of His intrinsic being.43 Grisez considers
Summa theologiae (ST ) are from this translation unless otherwise noted. Grisez
references the same passage on p. 39, n. 4 in “The Kingdom, Not God Alone.”
40 ST I–II, q. 16, a. 3, c.
41 See Thomas’s statement “Each good thing that is not its [own] goodness is called
good by participation. . . . We must, therefore, reach some first good, that is not
by participation good through an order toward some other good, but is good
through its own essence.This is God.”Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles,
Book One: God, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Image, 1955), chap. 38, p. 153.
42 By speaking of man’s “subjective” end, I do not mean that his end is something
derived from feelings, ideals, or desires. Rather, I mean man’s end insofar as he is
an acting subject, a rational person with an end specific to his nature.
43 See Grisez’s discussion of the six points on pp. 38–40 in “The Kingdom, Not
God Alone.” In points (4) and (5), Grisez quotes St. Thomas’s position that the
“divine goodness” is man’s ultimate end and that only the universal good can
satisfy man’s desires (referencing ST I–II, q. 2, a. 8, cc.). Surprisingly, Grisez does

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“divine goodness” only insofar as it is the source of good things for us;
he therefore focuses on trying to demonstrate that beatitude is not as
fulfilling as Thomas argues it is.44 But Grisez does not discuss why
Thomas thinks beatitude is fulfilling, namely, because it focuses on God,
the supremely Good object.45 Grisez’s silence inclines one to conclude
that he does not mean to discuss God in Himself.
So is Grisez speaking about God in Himself or not? It is unclear.
Grisez’s understanding of the term “divine good” is ambiguous; he could
mean (a) God as the supremely good object who beatifies man, or (b)
man’s beatific attainment of God. Evidence suggests that Grisez conflates
these two ends of man. In the body of the article, Grisez claims that
“harmony with God” is not the sole object of human hope or fulfillment
(59–60). But he concludes his article by declaring that “God alone” is not
the sole object of human hope. He is arguing that, since harmony with
God is not the sole object of human hope, man’s primary ultimate end is
therefore not God in Himself.46 This confuses the attainment of fulfillment
with the object of fulfillment. Grisez, then, is making a category mistake.
not connect this position to St. Thomas’s understanding that God in Himself is
the universal and ultimate Good.
44 Grisez describes two ways in which we can “intend divine goodness” without
revelation: insofar as God gives us good things, and insofar we can cooperate
with God’s plan for ourselves and the common good. He does not mention
intending God in Himself because He is the substantial Good. See “The Kingdom, Not God Alone,” 55.
45 The Scholastic use of the word “object” here and throughout this article is not
meant to depersonalize God but to indicate that which actuates the potential
within a subject. For example, a visible object, when seen, actuates an animal’s
power of sight. St. Robert Bellarmine makes useful remarks regarding God as the
object of man’s desire: “Delight which comes from knowledge requires three
things—power, a sensible object suitable to that power, and an union of the
object with this power. . . . In proportion as the power is capable of knowledge,
and the object more noble, and the union more intimate, so much the greater
pleasure is derived. But no one can doubt but that the mind is much more pure
and noble, and more capable of knowledge than the exterior senses. Now, all
must admit that God is the highest and most noble object, placed not only above
all objects of sense, but also above those of the mind, being infinite Goodness
itself. But it is also equally certain, that a union of the mind with God by a clear
vision is so intimate that the essence of God will penetrate the soul herself will
be transformed into God as if she were plunged into a great sea.Who, therefore,
can imagine the greatness of this joy? The sweetness of this embrace from an infinite Good, from a Spouse of infinite beauty?” Robert Bellarmine, The Kingdom
of God, or, the Eternal Happiness of the Saints, trans. John Dalton (London:Thomas
Richardson and Son, 1847), 157–58.
46 We will see below that at least once Grisez equates “harmony with God” and
the beatific vision.

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We can more easily see that Grisez has confused the secondary, subjective end for the supreme ultimate objective end, by analyzing a key statement of his. “Perfect life with the Holy Trinity,” Grisez asserts, “essentially
includes communion of life and love not only with the Trinity, but with
Mary, the angels, and all the blessed” (52, emphasis added).47 By saying
“essentially,” Grisez is denying that man’s ultimate end is God’s perfect
Being. Without an essence, a thing as such does not really exist, though
parts which could compose it may exist separately. If we have only frosting, eggs, and flour, we do not yet have a complete cake. Similarly, according to Grisez, if we have only the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we do not
have complete human fulfillment, for God’s essence—inseparable from the
Persons—is not the sum of man’s end. For Grisez, Mary and other saints
are essential to human beings’ perfect life with the Holy Trinity. It follows
that God in Himself is only an ingredient, a sine qua non, of man’s fulfillment.The Holy Trinity, as only one part among others, cannot constitute
the whole of man’s fulfillment. Grisez admits that “a whole is greater than
its parts” (56). Therefore, the whole of man’s fulfillment must be greater
than the Holy Trinity. Now when one thing is greater than another, it
means that the first thing has what the second lacks. Since the Holy Trinity does not constitute man’s complete fulfillment, it must be lacking in
some perfection. To put the argument another way, Grisez’s assertion
means that if Mary and other saints are not present in heaven, then part of
the essence of human fulfillment with the Holy Trinity will not be experienced.The Holy Trinity alone cannot constitute essential human fulfillment.This implies that these created goods have some perfection that God
lacks; in this line of thinking, God is imperfect.48
Some might object that Grisez does not mean to say that God is imperfect. Granted that he does not intend to do this, we must still pay attention
47 Grisez here is interpreting the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC ) §1024 as

if it teaches that Mary, etc., are “essential” to heaven—a word that is not in the
original text. A more complete discussion of CCC §1024 and the position of
the Catechism is given below.
48 St. John of the Cross radically opposes this way of thinking; he says with respect to
man’s ultimate desires, “Those who love something together with God undoubtedly make little of God,” for God is infinitely and substantially Good while created
things are only finitely good by participation. He goes on to say,“It is well known
from experience that when the will is attached to an object [as an ultimate end],
it esteems that object higher than any other, even though another, not as pleasing,
may deserve higher admiration. . . . Since nothing equals God, those who love and
are attached to something along with God [in the same respect] offend him
exceedingly.” John of the Cross,The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 5.4–5 in The Collected
Works of John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 128–29.

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to the direct implications of his language. If Grisez’s affirmations about
created goods mean that human fulfillment consists essentially in God along
with created goods that are equally essential, then we are revisited with the
problem that God in Himself is somehow insufficient to be the final
purpose of human existence. If the affirmations mean that man’s ultimate
end consists primarily in God alone but consequently in created goods subordinated to God as secondary ends, then Grisez’s formulation that “God
alone” is not man’s ultimate end undermines his intention.
In addition to misconstruing how God alone is man’s supreme ultimate end, Grisez’s language also misinterprets man’s secondary ends. To
grasp how this is the case, we can first notice that Grisez equates the
beatific vision with “harmony with God.” In discussing the beatific
vision, Grisez states that it is “entirely a gift of the Father, Son, and
Spirit—a sharing, somehow, in their own joy. Nevertheless,” he continues, “the beatific vision will fulfill human persons. Integral communal
fulfillment includes human persons’ harmony with God, a fundamental
good of human persons that can be realized less and more” (59–60).The
smooth transition from one concept to another indicates that Grisez
equates the two.
Grisez’s claim that the beatific vision (or harmony with God) is a fulfilling fundamental good sounds innocuous enough. But it must be read in
light of his earlier statement, “the fundamental goods of human beings
[include]: life, including health and bodily integrity; skillful work and play;
knowledge and esthetic experience; harmony with God; harmony among
human beings . . . and marriage, including parenthood” (54).49 Surprisingly, Grisez does not say that harmony with God is a higher basic good
than others. As he wrote in an earlier article, “they are incommensurable:
no basic good considered precisely as such can be meaningfully said to be
better than another”; for him this means there is no hierarchy among the
basic human goods in themselves. He explains further on that, though
there is a moral order “involving the basic human goods, nevertheless,
[there] is not a hierarchy among them. . . .The principle of this order is a
49 To defend his claim that marriage is found in heaven, Grisez points his readers

to his work The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL:
Franciscan, 1993), 607–9. In contrast to Grisez’s view of marriage in heaven,
Bernard Lonergan argues that marriage is immediately directed to procreation
and the upbuilding of a family but ultimately has a “dispositive upward
tendency” which subordinates it to the beatific vision as its end.This obviates the
role of marriage once heaven is reached. Bernard Lonergan, “Finality, Love,
Marriage” in The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 4, Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1988), 17–52 at 29.

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moral truth—the integral directiveness of practical knowledge—not the
primacy of any one of the basic goods.Thus, none of these is so absolutely
prior that it prevails in every morally good choice.”50 Man’s fulfillment
must therefore be an undifferentiated combination of Creator and creature. Thus, harmony with God is not more ultimate as an end: it is one
good that fulfills man along with other goods, such as play and marriage.
Such a view takes insufficient account of Pius XII’s teaching that the
beatific vision is the full flowering of the indwelling of the Holy Trinity
in the righteous soul. Pius XII explains that God dwells in the souls of the
just “in a way that lies beyond human comprehension, and in a unique and
very intimate manner which transcends all created nature.”51
50 Germain Grisez et al., “Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends,”

American Journal of Jurisprudence 32 (1987): 99–151 at 110 and 139. Grisez implicitly endorses this view in his 2008 article, 54 n. 52. My reading of Grisez is borne
out by other scholars who have treated similar questions. James Hanink discusses
“Grisez’s claim that the basic goods are incommensurable. To claim that they are
such,” says Hanink,“is to claim that there is no scale of value common to them by
which they can be ranked in a hierarchy of worth.” Recognizing serious problems
in a moral system that does not rank goods, Hanink asserts that “Grisez would
surely agree” that there must be a hierarchy among the basic goods.To support his
assertion, Hanink cites the Summa theologiae I–II, q. 94, a. 2, showing that it is
reasonable to hold that a hierarchy of basic goods exists. But this overlooks
Hanink’s own reading of Grisez and begs the question: does Grisez really agree
with Aquinas on this point? See James Hanink,“A Theory of Basic Goods: Structure and Hierarchy,” The Thomist 52 (1988): 221–45 at 233 and 236. Jean Porter’s
read, by contrast with Hanink’s, is less irenic. She summarizes Grisez’s position on
basic human goods, stating that he holds that, since they are incommensurable,
there can be no hierarchy among the basic goods. Further, she notes that this is a
“serious difficulty” for Grisez’s theory. See Jean Porter, “Basic Goods and the
Human Good in Recent Catholic Moral Theology,” The Thomist 57 (1993): 27–49
at 31–32 and 46. Finally, Peter Simpson exposed the root issues at stake in Grisez’s
systematic rejection of a hierarchy among basic goods. He ably demonstrates the
deficiencies and incoherencies in Grisez’s arguments. See Peter Simpson, “Grisez
on Aristotle and Human Goods,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 75–89.
51 After saying this, the pope approvingly quotes Leo XIII’s explanation of the beatific
vision (see n. 63 below) and continues,“In that celestial vision it will be granted to
the eyes of the human mind strengthened by the light of glory, to contemplate the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in an utterly ineffable manner, to assist throughout eternity at the processions of the Divine Persons, and to rejoice with a happiness like to that with which the holy and undivided Trinity is happy.” Pius XII,
Mystici Corporis, §§79, 80. Additionally, see the Roman Catechism, also known as the
Catechism of the Council of Trent: “Solid happiness, which we may designate by the
common appellation, essential, consists in the vision of God, and the enjoyment of
His beauty who is the source and principle of all goodness of perfection. . . . For the
blessed always see God present and by this greatest and most exalted of gifts, being
made partakers of the divine nature, they enjoy true and solid happiness. . . . Supreme

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Grisez’s position on ends is greatly influenced by his aversion to hierarchies of goods, an aversion foreign to Magisterial teaching and classic
theology. Grisez reasonably wants to give created goods their rightful place
in human life, but he does so by rejecting a traditional way of approaching
such goods. For example, Pius XI explained that God in Himself is man’s
ultimate end, for the righteous, “in ascending through them [i.e., created
goods], as it were by steps, shall attain the final end of all things, that is
God—to Himself and to us, the supreme and inexhaustible Good.”52 In
saying that man ascends to God step-wise through created goods, the pope
recalls a venerable tradition that recognizes created goods as ends ordered
to one another and ultimately ordered to God.53 Grisez argues that man
has other ends or desires in addition to the beatific vision (see 46–47), but
he does not consider that lower ends may be subordinated to and find their
fulfillment in the highest end.According to the traditional view, just as each
rung on a ladder is either higher or lower than another, depending on its
distance from the summit, so created goods/ends are greater or lesser with
respect to their distance from the ultimate end, their goal—God the perfect
Good.54 This does not necessitate that we equate created goods other than
the beatific vision with mere means, to be surpassed and forgotten. Rather,
and absolute happiness, which we call essential, consists in the possession of God,
for what can he lack to consummate his happiness who possesses the God of all
goodness and perfection?” Catechism of the Council of Trent, trans. Charles J. Callan and
John A. McHugh (Rockford, IL:TAN, 1982, repr. 1923 ed.) part I, art. XII, pp. 136,
137, 138.
52 Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §43.
53 The idea that a hierarchy of goods leads to God has been held by diverse
thinkers. Plato’s Symposium, 209e–212c is a locus classicus. Perhaps the best-known
Christian treatise on the subject is St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum.
St. Robert Bellarmine treated similar insights in his work The Mind’s Ascent to
God by the Ladder of Created Things. More recently, Pope Benedict XVI noted this
theme in the thought of St. John Chrysostom. See Benedict XVI, Church Fathers:
From Clement of Rome to Augustine (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 104–5.
54 In Thomas’s theology, the natural inequality of things undergirds the hierarchy of
ends: see ST I, q. 47, a. 2, c. Thomas attributes the inequality to God’s wisdom,
for a variety and hierarchy of goods displays God’s goodness in manifold ways.
The natural hierarchy of goods corresponds to an order in the supernatural
virtue of charity (see ST II–II, q. 26, a. 1, ad 2). In considering charity,Thomas
lists objects that one loves in charity; the order is founded on one’s relation to
them (from highest to lowest): the Holy Trinity, one’s soul, the soul of one’s
neighbor, one’s body.Though Thomas’s questions on the order of charity do not
address every “basic human good,” Thomas would insist that each good has a
place within the ordered universe.The order of charity, which places God as the
ultimate end who is loved above all things, begins on earth, encompasses all, and
persists in heaven (see ST II–II, q. 26, a. 13).

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we value those created goods as secondary ends: though they are not ultimate ends, they have intrinsic value and finality while also leading to a
good greater than themselves.55
As a summary of how created goods relate to man’s ultimate end,
Donnelly’s formulation is quite apt: “The created communication of
Divine goodness is indeed the ultimate end of all creatures in the finite
order ( finis-quo); but it is not the absolutely last end ( finis-qui).”56 That is,
the beatific vision, the formal subjective aspect of the end, the “created
participation of the Divine goodness,” is man’s secondary, ultimate end.57
Each term in the previous sentence is meaningful. Man’s finis-quo is
“formal” because, in the Thomistic view, one thing participates in another
thing by means of a form. For example, a person participates in the love
of two of his friends for each other when he grasps the form, or the meaning, of their love and espouses it with his own love.Analogously, man will
participate in God’s inner life by a formal aspect suited to human nature—
God will be united with man’s intellect through the lumen gloriae which
will bear fruit in charity.58 Man’s finis-quo is “subjective” because it is man’s
end from the point of view of the intellective and volitional human
subject who acts to reach his goal. It is a “secondary” end because it is
subordinated to God in Himself, but it is “ultimate” because there is nothing in the created order above it. In sum, while the supreme ultimate
objective end of all things is God alone, the secondary ultimate subjective
end of man is the attainment of God in the beatific vision.59
55 Bernard

Lonergan explained well the difference between mere means and
secondary ends—ea quae ad finem sunt —saying: “Means are willed, not at all for
their own sake, but only for the sake of the end. On the other hand, what is loved
in love’s self-expression is loved in itself though as a secondary object and from
a superabundance of love towards the primary object which is imitated or reproduced.” God wills the created order out a superabundance of His love; similarly,
Christian charity, which is primarily directed to God, has a number of secondary objects. “Hence,” Lonergan concludes, “it is gravely mistaken to term means
and instrument whatever is not the primary end.” Lonergan, “Finality, Love,
Marriage,” at 34–35 n. 60.
56 Donnelly, “Ultimate Purpose of Creation,” 83.
57 Ibid., 78.
58 See ST I, q. 12, aa. 5–6.
59 Alice von Hildebrand helpfully addresses the relation between man’s primary and
secondary ends, saying, “According to the Church’s doctrine, the glorification of
God is man’s primary end; beatitude is our secondary end, and secondary not only
in order of time, but also in the order of importance.” She elaborates: “God should be
loved for His own sake because ‘He alone is Holy, He alone is the Lord, He alone
is the most High,’ but the sublimity of this very love brings in its train what we
call ‘beatitude.’ ” Alice von Hildebrand, “Aristotle the Philosopher,” Logos 8:3
(2005): 112–22 at 120–21 and 122. Emphasis in the original.

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Our consideration of the beatific vision raises the question about what
role the body plays in man’s beatitude.This question is of great importance
to Grisez and demands its own study; by briefly addressing it, we may
better see the connection between the primary and secondary ends of
man. Grisez is correct that man hopes for the resurrection of the body, a
created good, an end that is a part of man’s ultimate end.60 But, as we have
seen, it would be incorrect to claim that the resurrection of the body is
the primary aspect of man’s supreme ultimate end; it would also be incorrect to say that it is the most important secondary aspect of man’s ultimate
end. Having a body in the resurrection cannot be the highest secondary
end of man, for knowing and loving God is intrinsically greater than
having a body.61 In this vein, Leo XIII taught,“To contemplate God, and
to tend to Him, is the supreme law of the life of man.” This is because our
specific nature as a rational and volitional creature necessitates that only by
knowledge and love of God can we reach him as persons: “For, indeed,
God is the first and supreme truth, and the mind alone feeds on truth,”
and similarly, “God is perfect holiness and the sovereign good, to which
only the will can desire and attain.”62 Because the intellect and the will,
the only human faculties capable of directly attaining God, are spiritual,
they can be perfected without the body in heaven.Thus, the saints, without bodies, already know and love God and thus are fulfilling the
“supreme law of the life of man”—living in divine beatitude.63 One could
60 See Grisez’s discussion on pp. 49–53 in “The Kingdom, Not God Alone.”
61 Pius XII, Miranda Prosus, §22: “Since God is the Supreme Good, He continually

bestows His gifts upon men. . . . Some of these gifts look to the spirit; others to the
conduct of earthly life.These latter gifts are clearly subject to the former, in much
the same way that the body should be subject to the soul with which, before He
communicates Himself by the beatific vision, God is joined by that faith and love.”
The pope here agrees with St. Thomas’s position that the goods of the body are
ordained to the goods of the soul. See ST I–II, q. 2, a. 5; ST II–II, q. 25, a. 5, ad 2;
and ST II-II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 4: “Since hope is a theological virtue having God for
its object, its principal object is the glory of the soul, which consists in the enjoyment of God, and not the glory of the body. Moreover . . . the glory of the body
is a very small thing as compared with the glory of the soul . . . one who has the
glory of the soul has already the sufficient cause of the glory of the body.”
62 Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christiani, §1.
63 Leo XIII’s profound understanding of the beatific vision is revealed in his statement
“God by grace resides in the just soul as in a temple, in a most intimate and peculiar manner. From this proceeds that union of affection by which the soul adheres
most closely to God, more so than the friend is united to his most loving and
beloved friend, and enjoys God in all fullness and sweetness. Now this wonderful
union, which is properly called ‘indwelling,’ differing only in degree or state from
that with which God beatifies the saints in heaven . . . is most certainly produced by
the presence of the whole Blessed Trinity.” Leo XIII, Divinum Illud Munus, §9.

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object that if the soul is perfectly happy, then the resurrection is superfluous, which is contrary to faith. In reply, we can say that the resurrection is
not superfluous; it is a gratuitous restoration of nature.
The Catechism on Man’s Ultimate End
In addition to the witness of Leo XIII and Pius XII, we find the Catechism
of the Catholic Church teaching that man’s highest secondary, subjective end
is the beatific vision—which is a higher good than other created goods.
In §1045, the Catechism states, “The beatific vision, in which God opens
himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing wellspring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion.”64 Like a mountain
spring that begins from on high and waters the plains below it, the beatific
vision constitutes the “ever-flowing well-spring” of happiness; it resides at
the summit of secondary ends and it pours out its fullness onto the other
goods that man enjoys in heaven, such as the body.Although entering into
the glory of Christ through the beatific vision is distinct from other goods
that we will also receive in heaven, those goods are somehow contained
within and subordinated to it.65
Despite the clarity of the Catechism’s teaching here, Grisez reads the
document as if it supports his position.Without taking account of CCC
§1045, Grisez claims that the Catechism supports his view that “perfect
life with the Holy Trinity essentially includes communion of life and love
not only with the Trinity but with Mary, the angels, and all the blessed”
(52). His proof-text is CCC §1024:“This perfect life with the Most Holy
Trinity—this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the
Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed—is called ‘heaven.’ ”66
A more careful reading of the Catechism demonstrates that Grisez’s
claim could be more nuanced. First, the language of §1024 reveals his
claim to be a non sequitur: the Catechism here is silent about what essentially constitutes life with the Blessed Trinity. In addition, Grisez’s interpretation of §1024 is nowhere affirmed in the Catechism. Rather, the
Catechism clearly teaches that the entire providential order of creation,
including man, aims at God as its ultimate end. For example, the Catechism
64 CCC, §1045.
65 St.Thomas said,“the soul desires to enjoy God in such a way that the enjoyment

also may overflow into the body, as far as possible” ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5., ad 4. For a
thorough discussion, see Montague Brown,“Aquinas on the Resurrection of the
Body,” The Thomist 56 (1992): 165–207. Also helpful is Carlo Leget, Living with
God: Thomas Aquinas on the Relation Between Life on Earth and ‘Life’ after Death
(Leuven: Peeters, 1997), esp. 217–29.
66 CCC, §1024.

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states that “the ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of
God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity”; here we
should understand that the object of beatitude is the Blessed Trinity in
itself, while entry into the Blessed Trinity—participation in God’s life—is
the way the object is attained by humans.67 This truth is echoed in
another passage:“God created the world for the sake of communion with
his divine life.”68 Being created for communion with divine life means
being made to participate in the life of God Himself with no mediating
creature, as Benedict XII taught. This should dispel any doubt about the
quid sit of man’s ultimate end, for God’s beatitude in itself cannot essentially involve any creatures:“The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own
beatitude.”69 The beatitude of God is nothing less than the uncreated perichoresis, the mutual indwelling, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a
beatitude that existed before all creation. Hence, the object of man’s end
cannot essentially involve any created good as such.
“Beatitude,” the Catechism teaches, “makes us ‘partakers of the divine
nature’ and of eternal life. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of
Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.”70 The Catechism can hardly
be clearer that God alone is man’s ultimate end when it continues, “The
beatitude we are promised . . . invites us to purify our hearts of bad
instincts and to seek the love of God above all else. It teaches us that true
happiness is not found in riches or well-being . . . or indeed in any creature, but in God alone, the source of every good and of all love.”71 Recognizing that God in Himself and apart from creatures is his ultimate end,
man gains a new perspective on created goods, a perspective emphasized
by St. John of the Cross and ascetic saints through the ages: “Desire for
true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of
this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of
God.” Quoting St. Gregory of Nyssa, the Catechism concludes,“Whoever
sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can conceive.”72
Gaudium et Spes on Man’s Ultimate End
At this point the reader may have noticed a glaring omission in our argument from Magisterial authority: we have not mentioned the Second
67 CCC, §260.
68 CCC, §760.
69 CCC, §1719.
70 CCC, §1721.
71 CCC, §1723. Emphasis added.
72 CCC, §2548.

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Vatican Council. The teachings of Vatican II, especially those found in
Gaudium et Spes (GS ), are important not only in themselves but also
because Grisez believes that they support his position. Our purpose then,
is to respond to Grisez’s claim by carefully reading the text he cites; this
will provide an introduction to understanding the Church’s teaching on
the kingdom of God.73
Grisez claims that Gaudium et Spes supports his position that human
beings’ true ultimate end consists, not in “God alone,” but in “integral
communal fulfillment in God’s kingdom” (58–59). To support his position, Grisez references GS §39. In order to give full weight to his argument from authority, we will reproduce what he quoted, including the
reference to the document’s footnote 23:
Hence, while earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the
growth of Christ’s kingdom, to the extent that the former can
contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern
to the Kingdom of God.[23]
For after we have obeyed the Lord, and in His Spirit nurtured on
earth the values of human dignity, brotherhood and freedom, and
indeed all the good fruits of our nature and enterprise, we will find
them again, but freed of stain, burnished and transfigured, when Christ
hands over to the Father:“a kingdom eternal and universal, a kingdom
of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace.” On
this earth the kingdom is present in mystery even now; with the Lord’s
coming, however, it will be consummated.

Let us consider three arguments which militate against Grisez’s interpretation of GS §39. These arguments can be seen as concentric circles,
which go from more general truths to those that more specifically address
Grisez’s argument.
The first argument rests upon a basic understanding of Catholic tradition. A hermeneutic of continuity proposes that Vatican II was not denying or contradicting earlier definitive teachings, as Grisez’s interpretation
73 Other scholars hold that the kingdom of God is central to man’s ultimate end.

Without citing Grisez, Peter F. Ryan comes to a remarkably similar conclusion
regarding man’s ultimate end, arguing that St. Thomas Aquinas was mistaken in
saying that “the restless heart seeks a perfect fulfillment that can be found exclusively in God.” Ryan argues that, instead of focusing on God alone, Christians
“must be taught and encouraged to hope for fulfillment in God’s kingdom,” and
suggests that this “calls for a rich concept of the heavenly kingdom.” Peter F.
Ryan, “Must the Acting Person Have a Single End?” Gregorianum 82, 2 (2001):
325–56 at 356. Insofar as the following discussion proposes an account of the
kingdom of God, it can be seen as one attempt to answer Ryan’s call.

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implies it does. Benedict XVI’s reading of Populorum Progressio can be
applied to our understanding of Gaudium et Spes: “The correct viewpoint,
then, is that of the Tradition of the apostolic faith, a patrimony both ancient
and new, outside of which [the text at hand] would be a document without roots.”74 Hence, the contents of Gaudium et Spes can be adequately
interpreted only in light of the teachings of ecumenical councils and
popes who have discussed this issue. As we have seen,Vatican I, Leo XII,
Pius XI, and their successors unequivocally teach that God in Himself,
alone and apart from creatures, is man’s ultimate end. At the same time,
one can point out that Vatican II called attention to those aspects of man’s
ultimate end which previously had been understated. Whereas earlier
modern popes were wary of the dangers of emphasizing created goods as
ends, Vatican II, especially Gaudium et Spes, was optimistic about the
advantages of such an emphasis. These distinct approaches make, not a
contradiction, but a difference in emphasis.75
The next argument is based upon the hermeneutical principle that a
statement must be interpreted in its proper context. According to its
context within the document as a whole, GS §39 should be seen in light
of GS §24, which teaches (in obvious continuity with earlier tradition),
“All, in fact, are destined to the very same end, namely God himself, since
they have been created in the likeness of God.” In addition, we should
not overlook the fact that footnote 23 of GS §39 refers to Pius XI’s
Quadragesimo Anno, which distinguishes between earthly and heavenly
progress. As quoted above, the pope writes elsewhere in the encyclical,
“We, in ascending through them [i.e., created goods], as it were by steps,
shall attain the final end of all things, that is God, to Himself and to us,
the supreme and inexhaustible Good.”76 This shows that one cannot
accurately understand GS §39 to teach that God in Himself is not man’s
ultimate end.
The final argument proceeds from a close examination of the text
itself. Even granted that, in the words of Grisez, GS §39 implies that
created goods will “contribute to the fulfillment of those who find them
there again,” the document is simply stating that the blessed will find
74 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §10. Emphasis in the original.
75 Benedict XVI insisted,“It is not a case of two typologies of . . . doctrine, one pre-

conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary,
there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. It is one thing to
draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of
the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus.” Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §12.
Emphases in the original.
76 Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §43.

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created goods in heaven (58).The document here is silent about precisely
what role created goods have in man’s essential fulfillment. It is also silent
here about whether or not God alone is man’s ultimate end; it did not
mean to address the issue directly. In sum, Grisez’s interpretation of
Gaudium et Spes, §39 is more eisegesis than exegesis.
It is notable that Grisez did not cite a passage in Gaudium et Spes
which, at first glance, bolsters his claim. The passage, §45, says: “The
Church has a single intention: that God’s kingdom may come, and that
the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass.” Although this
passage seems to support strongly the position that the kingdom of God
is man’s ultimate end, it must be read in its wider context.The document
explains that the Church works for the coming kingdom because she has
the dual role of “simultaneously manifesting and exercising the mystery
of God’s love for man.” Further, Jesus Christ best manifests God’s loving
concern for the world:“For God’s Word, by whom all things were made,
was Himself made flesh so that as perfect man He might save all men and
sum up all things in Himself.The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal
point of the desires of history and civilization, the center of mankind, the
joy of all hearts, and the fulfillment of all aspirations.”77 Thus, Gaudium et
Spes teaches that the kingdom is the “single intention” of the Church, but
in a way that is compatible with the notion that Jesus Christ, God
Himself incarnate, is the also the end of all things. In order to grasp fully
the implications of this teaching, we must explore the various meanings
of “the kingdom.”
The Kingdom of God as Man’s Ultimate End
So far we have seen that God in Himself, apart from creatures, is the ultimate objective end of man, while the beatific vision is the secondary,
subjective end of man. There seems to be no room for the kingdom to
be man’s ultimate objective or subjective end.Yet Gaudium et Spes speaks
of the kingdom of God as the “single intention” of the Church, which
implies that the kingdom is somehow an ultimate end of man as well. In
light of the Church’s tradition and the various distinctions among ends
made by St.Thomas Aquinas, how are we to understand the kingdom as
an end?
To answer this question, we first turn to the declaration Dominus Iesus,
whose fifth section is devoted to the kingdom of God. It usefully notes
that there are different ways to understand the term:“The meaning of the
expressions kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God, and kingdom of Christ in
77 Gaudium et Spes, §45. Emphasis added.

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Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, as well as in the documents of the Magisterium, is not always exactly the same. . . .Therefore,”
the document states, “there can be various theological explanations of
these terms.”78 Below we will discuss four different meanings associated
with the kingdom of God: (1) the general state of heaven; (2) the Church
as the communion of saints in the body of Christ; (3) the union of the
soul with God; (4) Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate.79 Because the
kingdom of God is so vast a subject, our discussion will be focused on
showing how our understanding of the kingdom of God as man’s ultimate end can be in conformity with the Catholic doctrines discussed
above—that God in Himself constitutes man’s primary ultimate end and
that the beatific vision constitutes man’s principal attainment of God.
We begin by observing that we can interpret the kingdom of God as a
state in which the human person will, in the future, somehow experience
a conglomeration of all goods. As we have seen, Grisez holds a version of
this view. He says that in the kingdom of God, human persons can find an
eschatological “integral communal fulfillment,” a fulfillment will be continually increasing (cf. 61). The broad outline of this understanding of the
kingdom is not unique to Grisez. St. Thomas recognized that when
Boethius considered “happiness in general,” he equated it with “a state
made perfect by the aggregate of all good things.”80 Aquinas himself
affirms,“The kingdom of heaven is called the glory of paradise. . . .Therefore, when we petition, ‘thy kingdom come,’ we pray that we may be
participants in the kingdom of heaven and the glory of paradise.” And we
look for the future paradise “on account of its wondrous abundance” of all
good things.81 Christians agree that such a state can be obtained only in
heaven. Jesus himself spoke about the kingdom in future terms, preaching
parables about a marriage banquet, the wheat and tares separated at harvest

78 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Dominus Iesus: On the Unic-

ity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, §18.
79 A number of theologians have enumerated various meanings of the kingdom of

God.While our list does not correspond precisely to that of any other, it has been
influenced by Thomas Aquinas’s brief list in his Super Evangelium S. Matthaei
lectura, on ch. 3 v. 2, no. 250. I also rely greatly on the insights of Joseph Ratzinger
(Pope Benedict XVI) in the chapter “The Gospel of the Kingdom of God” in
his Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans.
Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 46–63. My argument does not
assume that this book, though theologically important, has Magisterial authority.
80 ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, obj. 2 and ad 2.
81 Thomas Aquinas, In Orationem Dominicam Expositio in Opuscula Theologica vol. II,
ed. Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti, 1954), nos. 1054, 1057, p. 226. My translation.

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time, and a king who calls his servants to reckoning.82 Following this tradition, which stresses the future sense of the kingdom, the Catechism teaches,
“At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness.Then
the just will reign with Christ for ever, glorified in body and soul, and the
material universe itself will be transformed. God will then be ‘all in all’ (1
Cor 15:28), in eternal life.”83
While there is much to be said for a substantive and eschatological
understanding of the kingdom, it is not sufficient by itself.We saw above
that Catholic tradition affirms that the essence of finality for the human
subject is the beatific vision, while the object of beatitude is God in
Himself.84 So if man’s subjective ultimate end is the beatific vision, then
the kingdom-as-eschatological-conglomeration-of-goods cannot epitomize man’s ultimate end. This deductive conclusion, based on the
Church’s teaching on man’s ultimate end, is upheld by an exegetical
understanding of the kingdom.
Research shows that a solely eschatological view of the kingdom
disregards important aspects of Scripture and Catholic Tradition. Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger insisted,“The exponents of the apocalyptic interpretation of Jesus’ kingdom . . . are simply forced, on the basis of their
hypothesis, to ignore a large number of Jesus’ sayings on this matter, and
to bend others violently in order to make them fit.”85 Although some
passages of the New Testament present a future understanding of the
kingdom, others have different emphases. For example, Jesus repeatedly
preached that the kingdom of God was “at hand,” using parables such as
the leaven in the dough and sprouting seeds to describe what has been
called “realized eschatology.”86 Not only is the kingdom to come at the
end of time as a future state, it is something present, it “has come upon
82 See Mt 22:2–14, 13:24–30, 18:23–35.
83 CCC, §1060.
84 Thomas recognizes this in the same passage in which he says that Paradise

contains the wondrous abundance of good things. After the portion quoted
above (see note 81), he says,“Note that, whatever man searches for in the world,”
that is, among created things, “he will find all more perfectly and excellently in
God alone. If you search for delights, you find the heights of them in God; if
riches, there you will find all sufficiency, for all riches are from Him; and thus of
other goods.” Aquinas, In Orationem Dominicam Expositio, no. 1057.
85 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 58. See also his analysis of Albert Schweitzer’s eschatological view of the kingdom on pp. 52–53.
86 Mt 3:2, Mk 1:15. For the parables, see Mt 13: 33, Mk 4:26–29. C. H. Dodd’s
arguments about Jesus’ preaching a “realized eschatology” became a source of
much discussion among Scriptural scholars. See his work Parables of the Kingdom
(New York: Scribner, 1961), 21–59 at 35.

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you.”87 This leads us to a key hermeneutical principle: though it may be
a worthwhile exercise to focus on certain Scriptural passages to the
exclusion of others, one should not confuse the part for the whole.
Rather, “The reality that Jesus names the ‘Kingdom of God, lordship of
God’ is extremely complex, and only by accepting it in its entirety can
we gain access to, and let ourselves be guided by, his message.”88
It seems that Grisez does not fully acknowledge the complexity of the
Biblical concept of the kingdom of God. Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium do not support his position as much as his advertence to them
suggests they do. The same is true regarding the authority of Scriptural
exegetes.While he cites Raymond Brown’s “reified and localized” understanding of the kingdom, he avoids mentioning Brown’s observation—
on the same page—that by the time of the later New Testament, “the
kingdom and the Church have begun to be partially identified.”89 Grisez,
by exclusively emphasizing the kingdom as a reified conglomeration of
goods reached in the eschaton, overlooks the ancient Christian understanding that the kingdom somehow corresponds to the Church in this
present world. Brown’s insight shows that Grisez’s understanding of the
kingdom is incomplete, and we can see the same by recalling our earlier
arguments. A more comprehensive view of the kingdom, which takes
account of Scripture, Tradition, and authorities cited in their proper
context, would benefit Grisez’s position.
This leads us to the second connotation of “the kingdom”: as the
Church. Parables congruous with this interpretation include that of the
mustard seed, which grows into a tree housing birds of all feathers, and a
net that gathers all kinds of fish.90 The tree and the net are images of a
universal Church in which all peoples and nations find a home. St.
Augustine closely associated the Church in the present time with the
kingdom of God, for “the saints of Christ are reigning with Him even
now.”91 Without accepting a complete identification between the ecclesiological and kingdom realities, Lumen Gentium still recognized their
87 Mt 12:28. See also Lk 10:8–9, “Whenever you enter a town and they receive

you, eat what is set before you; heal the sick in it and say to them,‘The kingdom
of God has come near to you.’ ”
88 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 59.
89 Raymond E. Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist,
1984), 51. On p. 58 n. 59 of his 2008 article, Grisez emphasizes the reified, localized view, saying, “The basileia Jesus proclaimed is not only God’s reign but his
kingdom.” He then references Brown’s book without quoting it.
90 See Mt 13:31–32, 47–50.
91 Augustine, The City of God Against The Pagans, ed. and trans. R.W. Dyson (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), bk. 20, chap. 9, p. 987.

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intimate union. It taught that the Church “is, on earth, the seed and the
beginning of that kingdom” of Christ and God.92 With a similar understanding, Paul VI’s motu proprio Solemni hac liturgia, better known as the
Credo of the People of God, said the kingdom of God “had its beginnings
here on earth in the Church of Christ.” Paul VI later explained, “the
Church is . . . establishing herself in the midst of the world as the sign and
instrument of this kingdom which is and which is to come.”93
John Paul II helped to explain the inseparable connection between the
kingdom of God and the Church when he observed, “The Kingdom’s
nature . . . is one of communion among all human beings—with one
another and with God.”94 The communion of persons, the pope said, is
founded on “the love which the Father has for the world.”95 When
human persons follow the commandment of love, they are truly
members of the Body of Christ, who loved us and died for us, and are
thereby in communion with each other.96 Thus united to their head and
king, members of the Church are also members of the kingdom.This is
why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated, “Charity is
the law of the kingdom of God and our charity on earth will be the
measure of our sharing in God’s glory in heaven.”97
When we identify charity as the “law of the kingdom,” we come to
appreciate the Catechism’s teaching that “The Church is the goal of all
things.”98 As an unparalleled locus of the Holy Spirit’s action in the
world, manifested in Pentecost, the Church is intimately associated with
man’s destiny of unification with God through the communion of divine
love.“God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine
life,” the Catechism explains,“a communion brought about by the ‘convocation’ of men in Christ, and this ‘convocation’ is the Church.”99 The
Church does not have some end disconnected with Christ and his kingdom, but rather finds her deepest meaning and purpose in them, through
the communion of charity. At the same time, we must recognize that, as
John Paul II said, “it is true that the Church is not an end unto herself.”
92 Lumen Gentium, §5.
93 Paul VI, Solemni hac liturgia, §27; and Evangelii Nuntiandi, §59.
94 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, §15.1.
95 Ibid.
96 See Leo XIII’s observation: “Yea, truly, charity is the bond of perfection, for it

binds intimately to God those whom it has embraced and with loving tenderness, causes them to draw their life from God, to act with God, to refer all to
God.” Sapientiae Christiani, §40.
97 CDF, Letter on Certain Questions Concerning Eschatology, §7.
98 CCC, §760.
99 Ibid.

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In the most proper sense of the terms, the Church is “distinct from Christ
and the Kingdom, [yet] the Church is indissolubly united to both.”100
Accordingly, the Church is not the supreme objective end of man, since
she is distinct from God in Himself. Neither is the Church the supreme
subjective end of man, since the Church does not consist in the act of the
beatific vision that breathes forth in divine love. Nevertheless, the
Church’s finality resides in her unification with God through her
members’ beatific vision in the communion of charity.
In grasping the connection between the kingdom of God and a
knowing charity, we approach man’s end considered insofar as man is a
responsible, acting subject. This is man’s ultimate subjective end: in its
most general terms, a personal relationship between God and the just.
“The ‘Kingdom of God’,” Ratzinger noted, “is not to be found on any
map. It is not a kingdom after the fashion of worldly kingdoms; it is
located in man’s inner being. It grows and radiates outward from that
inner space.”101 A foundational source for this interpretation is Jesus’
statement,“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither
shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is
within you.”102 Another Scriptural key is St. Paul’s assertion “For the
kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and
joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). With these and like sources in
mind, Christian theologians have developed an understanding of the
kingdom as the union of the soul with God. Origen, perhaps, may be
credited with inaugurating the interpretation that “sees man’s interiority
as the essential location of the Kingdom of God,” but we should not
overlook Albert the Great’s extraordinary contribution.103 In his
commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, while discussing the petitions in
the Pater Noster, Albert writes:
But accepting these things in our spirits, the divine processions then
create the domain of the kingdom within us, exalting and enriching
and strengthening us: and those processions are the rays of His grace,
100 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, §18.3.
101 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 50.
102 Luke 17:20–21 (Authorized Version). Most contemporary translations read other-

wise:“The kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (RSV);“The kingdom of God
is among you” (NAB). But the Authorized Version’s “within” is a perfectly accept~
~
~
heot
em≤ sòy e> lx
m e≤ rsim, as well as
able translation of the Greek g> barikeía sot
the Vulgate’s “regnum Dei intra vos est.”
103 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 49. I am indebted to Benedict Viviano’s analysis of
Albert the Great’s insight. See Benedict T.Viviano, The Kingdom of God in History
(Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988), 66–76.

Germain Grisez’s Account of Man’s Ultimate End

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which elevate our heart above all that would slavishly oppress it: so that
now we should not consider it fitting to care for such things, but be
raised above such in power and, overcoming them, to be filled overflowingly with beautiful and good things.104

This significant statement first anticipates Magisterial teachings about
the kingdom; then it gives a precise description of the soul’s union with
God. Regarding the first point, Albert says that the indwelling of the
Holy Trinity in the soul of the just creates “the domain of the kingdom
within us.” The Magisterium has at various times confirmed that the
kingdom may be understood as the union of the soul with God. Building on the fact that man can participate in the life of God, Pius XI
explained that “the Kingdom of Christ” can refer to the relationship
between God and man such that “Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of
individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one’s life
by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example.”105
Similarly, the Catechism teaches: “With beatitude, man enters into the
glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.”106
Regarding the second point, Albert’s metaphysical description of the
indwelling helps us understand the kingdom as man’s union with God in
beatific vision.Albert states that man’s union with God is a spiritual union,
for God is by nature immaterial, a union in which man enjoys God as He
is, with no mediating creature, a union whose effect is to fill the soul
“overflowingly” with supernatural goods. In continuity with the tradition,
Albert attests that man’s union with God is first and foremost a union in
intellect and will, and this happens especially in the beatific vision.107
104 Albertus Magnus, Ennarationes in Evangelium Matthaei, in Opera Omnia vol. 20, ed.

Borgnet (Paris:Vivés, 1893), comment on 6:10, p. 269. Further on, Albert says,
“God the Father strengthens His kingdom in us, such that He gives a participation in His kingship through grace, by which He exalts us and makes us like His
Son the King, who sits at His right hand” (270). My translation.
105 Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, §48.We might also note Paul VI’s teaching,“This
kingdom and this salvation, which are the key words of Jesus Christ’s evangelization, are available to every human being as grace and mercy.” Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, §10. In a similar vein, John Paul II stated in Veritatis Splendor,
§12.2, “This same reality of the Kingdom is referred to in the expression ‘eternal life’, which is a participation in the very life of God. It is attained in its
perfection only after death, but in faith it is even now a light of truth, a source
of meaning for life, an inchoate share in the full following of Christ.”
106 CCC, §1721.
107 The popes cited above said that the kingdom of God is in man through knowledge and charity while on earth; the kingdom understood in this sense is more
fully present in heaven, where man’s knowledge and charity are completely

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We can summarize this third way of understanding the kingdom of
God in the following manner: when the kingdom connotes the union of
the soul with God, and the soul is most united with God in the beatific
vision (which is a knowing that breathes forth love), the kingdom can be
understood as the beatific vision.108 As we have seen, the beatific vision
is man’s secondary, subjective end, above all other created ends. Insofar as
the kingdom is identified with the beatific vision, the kingdom is the
highest of all finite ends, that is, ends considered insofar as they are goods
of the soul.109 Thus understood, “the kingdom” indicates that man’s
participation in and attainment of the Most Holy Trinity, the object of
his beatitude, is man’s secondary, ultimate end.With this interpretation in
mind, we can heartily accept the claim that the kingdom of God is man’s
ultimate end.
As lofty as this interpretation of the kingdom is, we can ascend even
higher.While not repudiating this point of view, Ratzinger notes that “it
is not sufficient, even from a linguistic point of view,” for there is an even
greater mystery here.110
We now come to the final interpretation of the kingdom: as identical
with Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself.This interpretation may seem
surprising and perhaps even unsupported by Scripture. Where, after all,
does Jesus equate Himself with the kingdom? A superficial reading of the
Gospels could suggest that Jesus does not make this equation, but more
careful exegesis belies this result. According to Ratzinger, “the term
perfected. For Thomistic treatments of the divine indwelling, see Gilles Emery,
The Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 372–94. See also Bernard Lonergan, The
Triune God: Systematics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), Question 32
and Assertion 18, pp. 501–23.
108 Such an understanding is implied in CCC §1720: “The New Testament uses
several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man: the
coming of the Kingdom of God; the vision of God: ‘Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God.’ ” Also, a straightforward interpretation of CCC
§1726 would be that the kingdom of God and the beatific vision are somehow
equivalent: “The Beatitudes teach us the final end to which God calls us: the
Kingdom, the vision of God, participation in the divine nature, eternal life, filiation, rest in God.”
109 See ST I-II, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3: “Happiness itself, since it is a perfection of the soul,
is an inherent good of the soul; but that which constitutes happiness, viz., which
makes man happy, is something outside his soul.” Here the good of the soul is
the attainment of the object; this is equivalent to man’s secondary, ultimate end:
the beatific vision.That which makes man happy is the object outside of his soul,
namely, God Himself.
110 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 60.

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‘Kingdom of God’ is itself a veiled Christology.” Only gradually did Jesus
reveal that he manifests, embodies, and realizes the kingdom, for he
wanted to lead men slowly “to realize the overwhelming fact that in him
God himself is present among them, that he is God’s presence.”111 Such
a pedagogical aim fits with Jesus’ way of hiding the inner meaning of his
parables from the crowds. Along with many of the Church Fathers, St.
Robert Bellarmine penetrated the depths of the kingdom parables and
saw that they ultimately refer to Jesus. If the kingdom is like a treasure in
a field, Bellarmine says, “This ‘treasure’ is the Divinity itself, which is
hidden in the field of the humanity of Christ,” for, he explained, “the
divinity is the truest treasure of all good.”112 When the kingdom is
compared to a precious pearl, Bellarmine argues,“the heavenly beatitude,
or Christ himself, is named a ‘pearl’.”113 If the kingdom of heaven is seen
as a payment given to laborers who are hired at different times of the day,
Bellarmine replies,“Behold, then, how precious this ‘penny’ [payment] is,
which is called by our Lord Himself a kingdom! Nor without reason is
it called so, since it represents Christ no less than the treasure or pearl does.”114
One could read many, perhaps all, of the parables in this way.
“God’s plan for the fullness of time is to unite all things in Christ,”
Grisez wrote (61); our interpretation of the kingdom parables and our
understanding of man’s ultimate end wholly agree with his Christological
focus. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the focus and center of all things,
including the kingdom of God (see Rev 22:13). Recall Gaudium et Spes,
§45, which teaches that the Word of God became incarnate “so that as
perfect man He might save all men and sum up all things in Himself ”; this
recalls St. Paul’s teaching that “all things hold together” in Christ, for Christ
is “preeminent” in all things (Col 1:17, 18).The document elaborates,“The
Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the desires of history and
civilization, the center of mankind, the joy of all hearts, and the fulfillment of
all aspirations.” Even apart from the parables, we can note a telling equation between Jesus and the kingdom in the Synoptic Gospels.115 Hence we
111 Ibid., 49.
112 Robert Bellarmine, The Kingdom of God, 195. See Mt 13:44.
113 Bellarmine, The Kingdom of God, 200. See Mt 13:45–46.
114 Bellarmine, The Kingdom of God, 207. Emphasis added. Ratzinger explicitly

makes the same connection: Jesus of Nazareth, 61. See Mt 20:1–16. Additionally,
Bellarmine treats of the kingdom as a marriage banquet, talents, prize, and
crown—all with a Christocentric interpretation.
115 Consider, for example, the following verses (emphases are added): “Jesus said,
‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers . . . for my sake
and for the gospel ’ ” (Mk 10:29), with “And he said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you,
there is no man who has left house or wife or brothers . . . for the sake of the

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Ezra Sullivan, O.P.

read in Lumen Gentium §5: “Above all . . . the Kingdom is made manifest
in the very person of Christ, Son of God and Son of Man.” Christ manifests and realizes the kingdom, for, because his human soul is ineffably filled
with the Holy Trinity, he is the unsurpassable exemplar of one who has the
kingdom of God within. Even more, because Christ’s soul is hypostatically
united with the Person of the Son of God, he is “the kingdom.” John Paul
II summarized this insight, saying,“The kingdom of God is not a concept,
a doctrine, or a program subject to free interpretation, but it is before all
else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the
invisible God.”116 Additionally, he continued, interpretations of the kingdom can become so anthropocentric that they end up denying the faith:
“If the kingdom is separated from Jesus, it is no longer the kingdom of God
which he revealed. The result is a distortion of the meaning of the kingdom, which runs the risk of being transformed into a purely human or
ideological goal.” Even worse, such an earthly view of the kingdom, being
focused on earthly goods, can become “a distortion of the identity of
Christ, who no longer appears as the Lord to whom everything must one
day be subjected (cf. 1 Cor 15:27).”117
In our analysis of Magisterial texts, we found that God in Himself is
man’s ultimate objective end. Provided that the kingdom of God is identified with Jesus Christ, God Himself in the flesh, then the kingdom can
rightly be called man’s supreme ultimate objective end. To put it differently, one may agree with Grisez that man’s true ultimate end is the kingdom—so long as the kingdom is identified with Jesus Christ.
We have seen, in light of Scripture and Tradition, that the kingdom of
God may be understood as a general aggregation of all goods, the
kingdom of God ’ ” (Lk 18:29). Or again, compare “And the crowds that went
before him and that followed him shouted,‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’ ” (Mt 21:9)
with “Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the
highest!” (Mk 11:10) and “saying, ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of
the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ ” (Lk 19:38). These examples are from Adrio König, The Eclipse of Christ in Eschatology: Toward a ChristCentered Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 108.
116 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, §18.2. Ratzinger uses remarkably similar
language: “Jesus himself is the Kingdom; the Kingdom is not a thing, it is not a
geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is he.” Jesus of
Nazareth, 49.
117 Ibid. See also CCC §2816, quoting St. Cyprian: “It may even be . . . that the
Kingdom of God means Christ himself, whom we daily desire to come, and
whose coming we wish to be manifested quickly to us. For as he is our resurrection, since in him we rise, so he can also be understood as the Kingdom of
God, for in him we shall reign.”

Germain Grisez’s Account of Man’s Ultimate End

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Church, the union of the soul with God, and as the Person of Jesus
Christ. The most explanatory interpretation of the kingdom is the last.
Jesus Christ sums up in himself the other meanings of the kingdom: after
his Ascension, he resides physically in heaven and he remains personally
the center of heaven; the Church is the body of which Christ is the
Head; the union of a Christian soul with God results from the hypostatic union of Jesus’ soul with the divinity; as the Son, Jesus is the actualization of the kingship of God, which will be fully manifested at the end
of time but is already present in his glorified humanity.118 In this light,
the biblical scholar Adrio König comes to this definitive conclusion:“We
must affirm with Origen that Jesus is the autobasileia, the kingdom-asperson,” and along with this we must maintain, “Jesus is the eschatos.The
goal lies in him and is therefore attained in every phase of his history.”119
Summarily: the kingdom of God and man’s ultimate end find their
complete meaning and fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of
God.“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” means: seek
first your true ultimate end; seek first the Highest Good; seek first Jesus
Christ—“and all these things will be added unto you” (Mt 6:33).
Conclusion
In 2008, Germain Grisez wrote, “I hold it to be a truth of faith that
human beings’ true ultimate end is the kingdom of God, not God alone”
(61, n. 69). In contrast to previous discussions of Grisez’s thought, this
article has examined Grisez’s faith-claim primarily in light of the faith as
taught by the Catholic Magisterium.120 We have seen that, though
Grisez’s citations of Magisterial authority seem to verify his faith-claim,
Catholic Tradition as a whole teaches otherwise.Vatican I, Leo XIII, Pius
X, Pius XI, Pius XII,Vatican II, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, when
read within their proper context, clearly affirm that God in Himself, apart
118 Bl. John Henry Newman notes that the hypostatic union, by which Jesus lived

the divine life even while on earth, is the foundation of saying that Jesus is the
center of the kingdom of God. He puts these words into the mouth of Christ:
“It is mysterious how regenerate man should be a citizen of a heavenly kingdom,
but I Myself, who speak, am at this moment in Heaven too, even in this My
human nature.” Newman goes on to say, “Such is the Kingdom of God; Christ
the centre of it, His glory the light of it, the Just made perfect His companions,
and the Apostles His witnesses to their brethren.” Sermon 18, “The Gift of the
Spirit,” in John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 3 (London:
Longmans, Green & Co, 1907), 265, 266.
119 König, The Eclipse of Christ, 108, 110.
120 I summarize previous scholars’ discussions of Grisez’s thought in notes 6 and 50
above.

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Ezra Sullivan, O.P.

from all creatures, is man’s supreme ultimate end. Magisterial sources,
understood in light of the theology of St.Thomas Aquinas, also teach that
man’s secondary end, his attainment of God as a human subject, is the
beatific vision, which occurs without the body and other created goods.
In addition to providing a critique of Grisez’s understanding of man’s
ultimate end, this article has proposed a positive understanding of human
finality. Our analysis of the various meanings of “the kingdom of God” has
discovered that the term can stand for a general state of heaven, the
Church, the union of the soul with God, and Jesus Christ himself. Each
interpretation allows us to admit that the kingdom is man’s end, but only
with respect to the last two may we assert that the kingdom is man’s ultimate end. The union of the soul with God corresponds ultimately to the
beatific vision, man’s secondary final end, while Jesus Christ, particularly in
his divinity, is man’s supreme ultimate end. Grisez’s position does little
justice to the Tradition to which he adheres, but even more, it does little
justice to the truth that Tradition teaches—namely, that in Jesus Christ,“the
different, seemingly contradictory aspects,” not just of the kingdom, but of
life itself, “can be joined together.”121 “For in him,” St. Paul declares, “all
the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all
things unto himself ” (Col 1:19–20). Jesus, in sum, is the capstone of all
creation; all things were made through him and for him; he holds all things
together in himself. In the words of Adrio König, “If Christ is the goal
[telos] of creation, only in him can things exist harmoniously and only
through him can they be reconciled. . . . Only through him are they
restored to a correct relationship with God and each other.”122 If the truest
purpose of human life is God Himself, revealed in Jesus Christ as the kingdom of the Father, Catholics can say, “God alone is man’s true ultimate
end” and “the kingdom is man’s end”; we can even say “the kingdom alone
is man’s end,” but we cannot say,“God alone is not man’s ultimate end.”
121 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 61. Acknowledging this truth, John Paul II said: “In

the last analysis—and each of us knows this by experience—man either seeks
himself, his own affirmation, personal utility, as the ultimate purpose of his existence, or he turns to God, the supreme Good and real ultimate Purpose, the only
one able to unify, by subordinating them and directing to Himself, the many
purposes that constitute the object of our aspirations and our work at different
times. Science and culture, therefore, take on a full, consistent and unified meaning, if they are ordained to reaching man’s ultimate purpose, which is the glory
of God.” John Paul II, The Whole Truth about Man: John Paul II to University Faculties and Students, ed. James V. Schall (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1981), 171.
Italics in the original.
122 König, The Eclipse of Christ, 29. He references Col 1:16–17, 20; Eph 2:14, 16; 2
Cor 15:18–19.

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The truth that God alone, as substantial Goodness, is man’s true ultimate end is of supreme importance to Catholics. We have seen that the
Church has repeatedly taught this doctrine, with the most binding levels
of her authority, in a variety of contexts, including considerations of
eschatology, God’s nature, Scriptural interpretation, and the role of creaturely goods in human fulfillment.The importance of this truth can hardly
be overestimated. As Donnelly wrote in his careful study of St. Thomas’s
thought on man’s ultimate end, it is a truth that “is not merely basic in
dogmatic theology but also constitutes the necessary foundation of ChrisN&V
tian morality and of all asceticism that is not chimerical.”123

123 Donnelly, “Ultimate Purpose of Creation,” 53.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 997–1006

997

Book Reviews
Athanasius: A Theological Introduction by Thomas G. Weinandy,
O.F.M. Cap. (Burlington,V T: Ashgate, 2007 ), x + 150 pp.
OVER the past two decades, a number of important works on Athanasius in English have appeared, chief among them Khaled Anatolios’s
superb monograph (2004), as well as the studies of Duane Arnold (1991),
T. D. Barnes (1993), David Brakke (1995; 1998) and Alvyn Pettersen
(1995).Thomas Weinandy has now contributed to this body of literature
a very fine theological (as its subtitle emphasizes) introduction to the
Alexandrian bishop.
Weinandy, a Capuchin Franciscan and, since 2005, executive director
for the Secretariat for Doctrine of the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops, published in 2000 a thoughtful and historically
informed discussion of the question of divine impassibility, Does God
Suffer? (T&T Clark). His new book is another accessible, intelligent, and
worthy volume, which offers the reader an overview of Athanasius’s
thought within the context of his full, if at times harried, ecclesiastical
life. It is a frequent temptation for contemporary biographers and essayists to portray ancient Christians through the much later lens of postNietzschean will-to-power social theories, and in so doing to downplay
as insignificant or simply to ignore the properly theological issues at stake.
Weinandy is certainly shrewd enough to take into account the complex
social and political context in which Athanasius’s theological vision
developed, but he rightly and more helpfully situates Athanasius and his
thought within a liturgically shaped and ecclesially lived desire to
communicate the mystery of the divine economy in a way faithful to the
Scriptural witness and the sacramental experience of the Church.
In his introductory remarks,Weinandy considers four thematic premises that guide Athanasius’s theology: the rationality of the Christian faith;
the truth of the evangelical kerygma; the conviction that God, in Christ,

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Book Reviews

has acted within human history; and that the work of the Cross heals and
restores creation to communion with God.
After a preliminary sketch of the details of Athanasius’s life, in chapters
2 and 3 Weinandy treats the soteriological vision that informs and guides
Athanasius’s thought, through his analysis of the Contra Gentes and of the
De Incarnatione : the former outlines fundamental Christian convictions
about God and the world, in particular rational creatures, while the latter
deals explicitly with the work of the Logos in restoring the created order
to communion with the Creator (with emphasis on the fittingness of the
Incarnation). Having established the soteriological foundations of
Athanasius’s thought,Weinandy turns in chapter 5 to Athanasius’s Christology proper, where he discusses how Athanasius grappled with relating
the genuine divinity and full humanity of the Incarnate Son. In particular, he is concerned with how Athanasius understood such an “incarnational becoming” in a way that is neither adoptionist (the Word coming
to inhabit a man) nor what, for lack of a better term, might be called
proto-Apollinarian, seeing the Word as the animating principle of a
human body.
In the fourth chapter, Weinandy treats Athanasius’s ascendancy as the
principal interpreter of Nicaea and in the process its great defender. Here
he discusses the various possibilities available to Arius, Athanasius, and
their contemporaries for articulating the relation of Father and Son; he
offers careful consideration of the central terminological minefields:
hypostasis, ousia, agenetos, agennetos, and homoousios.
The final chapters treat the Spirit (6) and the Christian life as configuration to Christ (7), the latter chapter concluding with Antony of Egypt,
a “living illustration” of Athanasius’s pastoral teaching in his Festal Letters.
Weinandy, in the final chapter, discusses Athanasius’s importance to and
influence on the subsequent tradition. What emerges is the importance
of understanding the divine Person of the Son as subject of the Incarnation as the condition of possibility for maintaining a proper understanding of Christ’s full humanity: there is not, in Athanasius, an undue
emphasis on the divinity at the expense of his humanity (a charge later
leveled by critics against Cyril, for example). One is left to infer that
Christologies constructed—to use the jargon of contemporary systematic theology—“from below” are at best problematic, in that they ultimately never ascend to become anything other than adoptionist or
ebionite, as the man Jesus expresses or attains some kind of special relationship with God.
The strengths of this brief but very helpful introduction, appropriate
for both undergraduates and graduate students, are its emphasis on the

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999

comprehensive biblical vision that informs Athanasius’s theology, its rightful emphasis on the guiding power of soteriology, and the useful way that
Weinandy supports his analysis with ample textual evidence from Athanasius’s works. His efforts further support the argument of Lewis Ayres
(Nicaea and its Legacy, 2006) that the Christological and Trinitarian disputes
were very much about the right reading and interpretation of Scripture;
yet because of the way the discipline of biblical studies has not infrequently been construed in the past two centuries, modern students are apt
to experience a kind of dissonance between what counts as biblical theology in their (almost exclusively academic) experience and what Athanasius and his contemporaries were about. Weinandy’s analysis shows what
this attention to Scripture looked like in the fourth century.The volume
N&V
includes a select bibliography, as well as name and subject indices.
Michael Heintz
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

The Word Has Dwelt Among Us by Guy Mansini, O.S.B. (Ave Maria,
FL: Sapientia Press, 2008 ), ix + 276 pp.
A N Associate Professor of Theology at Saint Meinrad School of Theology, Indiana, Father Guy Mansini presents here a remarkable collection
of previously published essays in Christology/soteriology and ecclesiology/sacramental theology. Displayed in each essay is a methodological via
media characterized by groundedness in the tradition, appreciation of
doctrinal and theological development, and, indebted to theological
wisdom, a properly critical appraisal of key twentieth-century theological proposals. These characteristics accomplish a discernible aim in the
collection, namely, the modeling of a theology that keeps its eye trained
on the divine mysteries, while employing “whatever is true” from things
old and things new, so as to set its compass neither progressively nor
conservatively but faithfully, waiting for the coming of the Lord.
The book falls into two parts. Part I addresses Christology and Soteriology. Although the essays are parts of a collection and so are not written
as chapters of a single book, there is an intelligible order among them.The
first two essays are both compact and profound.They bear rereading.The
second essay explicitly calls for a Christology with a compass that is metaphysical-eschatological:“If there is but one history, moreover, a history of
the whole, and if being does not so encompass history as to provide for an
infinity of eternal recurrences, then history must be commensurate with
being. Eschatological thought has to become metaphysical thought” (13).

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This is to say that theology can settle neither for a purely historical, positive narration of facts nor for a simply philosophical articulation. Theology must be a science but of a person who is divine: a science of the Logos
made flesh.This Logos made flesh displays the intelligibility of the Hebrew
narratives, for he is the eschatological prophet; at the same time, this Logos
displays the intelligibility of the world, raising the mind above Greek
wisdom. Greek wisdom could fathom only entities within being, but the
Logos is the author of being and Son of the Father, and the Father and
Son, in their embrace, breathe out the Holy Spirit.The only thing to be
regretted in this essay, as in a number of the essays of Part I, is its compactness. On the other hand, one could consider this trait evidence of a
monastic austerity that would rather the reader follow the vector of
Wisdom than mince words.
The three essays explicitly treating either Rahner or von Balthasar or
both (chapters 3, 4, and 7) are exemplary deployments of sapiential theology in assessment of recent theological proposals. Chapter 3 aims to
uncover the root of two key Rahnerian claims—that only the Logos can
become incarnate and that only human nature can be that which the
Logos assumes—in the theory that God exercises “quasi-formal causality” in his self-communication to the creature. Mansini lets Lonergan
criticize this root by way of Lonergan’s (yet to be published) critique of
Maurice de la Taille’s distinction between act and actuation. Since
Rahner’s hypothesis relies on this distinction, if the distinction cannot
hold, there is no substance to Rahner’s subtle “quasi.” Even if one does
not agree that all of Rahner’s arguments for the two exclusive claims are
rooted in the theory of “quasi-formal causality,” one can appreciate
Mansini’s criticism that whereas Rahner argues for “necessary reasons” in
the manner of Anselm (as Anselm was read for many centuries),Thomas
and others argue using the humble category, the conveniens. Paradoxically,
it is precisely theologians utilizing the category conveniens who, while
appreciating the divine power for sundry (infinite) arrangements of
wisdom, attend to salvation history as it has unfolded.
According to Mansini, Rahner displays a similar inattentiveness to
history in his reading of the efficacy of the Cross (chapter 7). For Rahner,
the satisfaction tradition begun (so Rahner claims) with Anselm portrays,
wittingly or no, the change of an angry God into a benevolent God.
Since, however, God cannot change, this tradition must be faulty.
Mansini’s diagnosis targets the faulty logic:“It is a mistake to suppose that
if the Cross does not change God, it changes nothing” (109). What
changes involves the economic order, the availability of grace. Mansini
lets von Balthasar, who is entirely rooted in the dramatic events of salva-

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1001

tion history, criticize Rahner on this count. However, von Balthasar
seems to have left behind what was wise in Greek wisdom, namely, the
immutability of the divine persons qua divine (chapter 4). For von
Balthasar, the divine persons are engaged in an everlasting (eternal?)
enrichment by way of exchanges of Trinitarian freedom. Because of this,
von Balthasar proposes, it is no threat to the divinity if the Incarnation
works a change in those immanent relationships (chapters 4 and 7),
because that change actualizes one of the infinite possibilities of the
divine persons that could have been actualized without the Incarnation
but that in fact has been actualized in the economy. Mansini lets Rahner
(in his essay “The One Christ,” which is, Mansini astutely notes, in some
tension with Rahner’s essay “The Theology of the Symbol” and its
notion of “change in the other”) criticize von Balthasar on this count.
One wishes the keen analysis in chapter 4 were pressed further: If qua
divine each divine person is “in every way” identical with the divine
nature (ST I, q. 28, a. 2), how could the divine essence remain unchanged
(von Balthasar’s claim) while the persons qua divine grow by way of
mutual exchanges of love? At the same time, one wishes that the praise
uniquely given to von Balthasar in chapter 7 had been elaborated.
Mansini rightly claims that von Balthasar’s theologically fruitful novum is
his appreciation of the cry of abandonment: “This contribution is a lot,
and cannot be adequately appreciated here” (112).A development of this
claim could prepare a sapiential way forward in the ongoing discussion
between Thomists and Balthasarians. Still, close attention to Mansini’s
fine (though slightly choppy) essay on monastic satisfaction theory in
Benedict and Anselm allows one to discern Balthasarian harmonics
therein, for it was von Balthasar who stressed the theology of the saints,
especially reflection on the dark nights.
• • •
Part II of the book explores issues in Ecclesiology and Sacramental
Theology. Chapter 8, the first essay in this part, exposes the difficulties in
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s teaching that the
universal Church is “ontologically and temporally” prior to the particular church (not simply to be identified with the local church). After
exposing these difficulties, the essay displays the intelligibility of the
claim.The universal Church was certainly prior in both ways in its initial
constitution at Pentecost, for although the one Church was local (in
Jerusalem) it was simply universal and not particular. More relevant for a
contemporary ecclesiology, the universal Church, although composed of
particular churches, can be identified, in its ecclesiological plenitude, in a

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way other than a simple pointing to the set of particular churches. How?
In the person of the successor of Peter, who, enjoying the supreme
power, can speak for the universal Church and can bind it.
The remaining essays treat holy orders, both episcopal and priestly.
Chapter 9 is a discussion of the roots of the male-only priesthood in the
(implicit) intention of our Lord. This essay is also quite compact, and its
argument could be drawn out in more detail. However, as the author
suggests at the end, the merit of the essay is “in the reminder of the relevance of the theorem of the Lord’s immediate knowledge of the divine
essence, and perhaps, also, of the nature of doctrinal development” (141).
Both of these are indeed among its merits, and each of them constitutes
part of the author’s acknowledged debt to his mentor, Bernard Lonergan.
The claim of an implicit intention of our Lord—as opposed either to a
total dismissal of any intention or to a merely virtual intention—may seem
farfetched to those who rest the theological endeavor simply in historicalcritical “data.” It seems to me that Mansini would wish to rest the
endeavor, rather, in a properly theological exegesis of Scripture, which, as
Pope Benedict has indicated (October 14, 2008), simply following Dei
Verbum (§12) and Divino afflante Spiritu (§§23–25), must utilize both the
historical-critical method and also the rule of faith, the canonical unity of
the Bible, and the analogy of faith. As do other essays, this essay bears the
marks, albeit in adumbrated form, of a theology that strives for systematic
understanding (what Lonergan calls the “in itself prior”), not content
simply with the data of positive theology, whether historical theology or
historical-critical biblical studies. Although the latter are fundamentally
necessary for the overall theological project, of themselves they yield only
insights into relative points of view and thus constitute the materials for
systematic reflection.Yet again, systematic reflection is hardly constituted
by an “essentialist” or “abstract” consideration; it is constituted by a gaze,
in the light of faith, into the Divine Mysteries.Thus again, while the argument in favor of a Dominical intention of an all-male priesthood could
be further developed, the adumbrated theological modeling is impressive.
The final four essays are more tightly ordered together, one anticipating another.The overall theme is highly fruitful: According to the teachings of Vatican II, the priest and bishop enjoy, by their ordination, a
consecration to sanctify, to preach, and to rule.These three munera are the
result of that ordination; thus, the older theology that seemed content
with identifying the chief gift of ordination, character, with the power of
sanctifying, is further developed. Still, although all three munera are
grounded in ordination, they are not simply on a par with one another.
The one indelible power is that of sanctifying, while the powers of

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1003

preaching and ruling depend upon the faith, prudence, and spiritual gifts
of the hierarch. That is, to preach and to rule rightly and constructively
for the building up of the Mystical Body, both bishops and priests must
be men of prayer, united with the Vicar of Christ. If they are not men of
prayer united with the Vicar of Christ, they can neither teach nor rule
(179). A sober reminder indeed.
More positively, Mansini demonstrates that Vatican II, in its teachings
on the priest, does not simply juxtapose two “camps.” Sundry are the
theologians who read not just the teachings on the priest in this way but
all or most of the documents of the council this way. Mansini, appealing
to the providential design of the Holy Spirit—who, let it be granted,
worked with what may be described as two really different “camps”—
insists that Vatican II presents a “durable synthesis” on the nature of the
priesthood.The entire life of the priest is cast in terms of the sanctifying
image which was once restricted simply to the service at the altar. That
service is indeed the central act of the priest, but that act is integrally
involved in preaching and ruling, in building up the Body. The end to
which all are called is spiritual worship, the love of God above all things
and the love of neighbor.To that end the sacraments are ordered, and yet
without the sacraments, especially the Eucharistic sacrifice, the end is not
attained (Mansini is speaking of the ordinary order of God’s dispensation).
The people attain their end only because God has looked with favor
upon his people, sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, who in
turn sent out apostles, who in turn (following his implicit intention,
marked by his explicit intention to have a Church on earth for the ages)
constituted successors (bishops) and helpers (priests). Thus, the people
attain this end because grace comes down from the Father of lights
through the hierarchs who, acting in the person of Christ, come with
heavenly gifts to the people and thus lead them to their end, union with
God.These closing essays, then, bring the discussion full circle to a robust
Christology and a theo-centrically focused ecclesiology.
Notwithstanding these and other fine features of the closing essays, I
would suggest that, whereas the first few essays were somewhat compact,
the concluding essays challenge the reader with a wide array of data
(especially from the Acta of Vatican II), making the reader chew before
tasting the honey in the comb. Other than these twin difficulties, one
would simply wish for bibliographical references to the originally
published essays.The subject and biblical indices are appreciated.
This collection is a must read for those who wish to found a supple
and wise theology on solid rock.The theological sketches herein exemplify, in adumbrated form, the theological vocation at its best. It might be

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hoped, also, that this book furthers a recovery (and corrected reading) of
N&V
Bernard Lonergan at the heart and in service of the Church.
Christopher J. Malloy
University of Dallas
Dallas,Texas

In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early
Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J. edited by Peter W. Martens
(Notre Dame, IN:The University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), xii + 290 pages.
F EW in today’s universities elicit the esteem and respect of other academics as does Father Brian Daley, S.J., Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame University. Surely this is why his colleagues, friends,
and even former Doktoranden have come together to produce this fine
volume of thirteen essays, each dedicated to Father Daley’s abiding
academic love, patristic Christology. Daley began his higher studies at
Fordham University and then went on to Oxford for “Greats”; upon
returning to the United States in 1964, he entered the New York
Province of the Society of Jesus. As part of his Jesuit theological training
he was sent to the prestigious Hochschule Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt,
Germany, where he also became Aloys Grillmeier’s research assistant.
There Father Daley saw first hand how his mastery of the classical world
and his love of Christ could come together in the field of patristics. He
returned to Oxford to write a doctoral thesis on Leontius of Byzantium
and was granted the D.Phil. in 1978.Thereafter he was missioned to the
Jesuit Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he
taught for eighteen years before beginning his teaching at Notre Dame.
The essays collected here appear in the chronological order of their
subject matter. The book opens with an excellent overview and introduction by (the volume’s editor and my colleague) Peter Martens. In
“The Apocalypse, Christ, and the Martyrs of Gaul,” Dallas Theological
Seminary’s D. Jeffrey Bingham argues that the Gallic martyrial acta reveal
a Christian eschatology based upon the martyrs’ imitation of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice; as such, these martyrs’ deaths were thus presented as both
an athletic as well as a liturgical event.The ever-reliable Khaled Anatolios
of Boston College next uses Karl Rahner’s Christological concerns in
striking the proper balance between an ontological and a functional
understanding of the Lord’s Incarnation (the classical “fact” versus “act”
tension), to show how Athanasius’s De Incarnatione not only satisfies
Rahnerian demands in this regard but provides a beautiful basis for
addressing contemporary concerns as well. One of Daley’s former doctoral

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1005

students, Michael McCarthy, S.J. (now at Santa Clara University) uses the
“Expectatio Beatitudinis” to demonstrate how a soteriology of divinization runs through Hilary of Poitiers. Carl Beckwith (Samford University’s Beeson School of Divinity) continues with Hilary, seeking to put to
rest the accusations of Doceticism originally leveled against Hilary by
unfolding the Bishop of Poitiers’s provocative phrases, such as Christ’s
“suffering without pain” and so on.Yale Divinity’s Chris Beeley explores
“Gregory of Nazianzus on the Unity of Christ.” Kelley Spoerl (Anselm
College, Manchester, New Hampshire), in her “Early Nicenes: Eusthasius
of Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra,” shows how these two rather diverse
thinkers shared a common pro-Nicene Christology; she raises questions
about how Eusebius of Caesarea’s tirades against Marcellus should be
understood and also about how that dispute influenced what has come
down to us as the Apollinarian heresy.
Next come four essays treating St. Augustine. The first is from Basil
Studer, O.S.B. (beatae memoriae), who juxtaposes Origen and Augustine on
the nature of charity, stressing above all how our love of God is always a
response to his. Love of God for both Origen and Augustine consists in
realizing Christ as the truth (a doctrine of “Christian gnosis” is here
advanced). Studer shows not only how both Origen and Augustine understand Jesus Christ as the person of “Truth,” but also their understanding
how the Lord is appropriated and assimilated by the human soul.The next
essay comes from the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams,
who argues that the unifying factor of Augustine’s most lasting Christology
is sapientia. If wisdom is contemplation of the eternal, “God’s delight in
God” as Williams expresses it, it follows that to actualize fully humanity’s
fullest capacity is to participate in this life of truth and love.To do this is to
embrace the incarnate Christ, the exemplum et sacramentum of human salvation. Lewis Ayres, now at Durham, uses epistle 137 to the Roman senator
Volusianus to show how Christology was really a “contemplative practice”
for Augustine.Ayres suggests that the mystery of incarnate union served as
a “reverse apologetics,” which, rather than appealing to common experience instead shows us that the incomprehensibility of the Incarnation
enables us to understand the complementarity between knowledge of
creation and faith in revelation. David Maxwell from Concordia Seminary
(St. Louis) looks at the sixth-century Scythian monks’ reception of Augustine; he highlights how the issues involved in the Theopaschite controversies threatened to render a reading of the Bishop of Hippo Nestorian by
attributing Christ’s actions to two diverse subjects within the Incarnation.
After this Augustinian interlude comes Creighton’s John O’Keefe’s
excellent work on the notion of decay () in the work of Cyril of

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Alexandria. O’Keefe reminds us that Cyril was first and foremost a pastor
proclaiming the Christian message of renovation and eternal life in the
Lord Jesus. Next, in his “Mystery or Conundrum? The Apprehension of
Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” John McGuckin (Union Theological Seminary of Columbia University) discusses what is ultimately at
stake in speaking correctly about the Messiah. Andrew Louth rounds off
the volume with “From Doctrine of Christ to Icon of Christ: St.
Maximus the Confessor on the Transfiguration of Christ,” in which he
elucidates Maximus’ understanding of the encounters on Mount Tabor
spiritually as humanity’s fullest encounter with the divine, theologically
as the illustration of the union of humanity and divinity, and philosophically as the need to distinguish between apophasis and kataphasis.
Together these essays provide students and scholars of all levels
commanding commentaries on how the most influential of the early
churchmen understood the coming of Christ and his transformation of
all things human. Martens is especially to be thanked: his fine editorial
guidance has helped to produce articles that are uniform in both length
and structure. Each opens with an illuminating introduction, ends with a
clear conclusion, and provides very helpful notes throughout. Brian
Daley’s life attests to Evagrius of Pontus’s treasured tenet that to be a
theologian you must pray truly and to pray truly is to be a theologian
(On Prayer, §61). In some small way, this large volume is a tribute to that
formula. Of course no life is content laboring under the shadow of the
Incarnation only. Like Father Daley, who is such an example to so many
of us, we study, we write, we teach, and we engage each other in spiritual conversation because we wish to move, in the words of Cardinal
N&V
Newman, ex umbris et imaginibus ad veritatem.
David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri