Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2010): 1–10

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Treasures New and Old:
An Introduction to Verbum Domini
M ARK R EASONER
Marian University
Indianapolis, Indiana

T HE P OST-S YNODAL Apostolic Exhortation from the Twelfth
Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that met on October 5–26, 2008 regarding the Word of God was well worth the wait.The
exhortation is dated on the Memorial of St. Jerome, September 30, 2010,
though it seems to have been released, at least in the English translation
on which this introduction is based, on November 11, 2010.
Some wonder what new ideas this exhortation could contain. While
there are no doctrinal innovations in this document, its scope—it
explains with past precedents and writings why the word of God is at the
heart of the Catholic Church and outlines how the word of God should
function in the life and ministry of the Church—is definitely new.
It would be a mistake to judge the book by its cover, as it were, and
assume that this exhortation is simply a reissue of the Vatican II document
on Scripture, Dei Verbum. It is first of all a very clear call for all in the
Catholic Church to deepen their relationship with Christ the Word of
God by hearing, reading, and studying the word of God that we
encounter in the Church’s Scriptures.1 In service of this call, the exhortation clarifies what Dei Verbum left undeveloped, explaining first of all in
what sense Scripture is the word of God and then outlining how the
Scripture is to be heard in the Church and in the world. It is fitting that
1 In this introduction, “Word of God” begins with a capital letter when its sense

includes the idea of Christ as God’s Word.When the phrase is used primarily to
designate Scripture, the phrase is not capitalized, i.e. “word of God.”This seems
to be the convention of the English translation of Verbum Domini as issued by the
Vatican.

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the title of this exhortation is the same as the lector’s acclamation following the reading of Scripture during the Liturgy of the Word, since the
exhortation is all about deepening and extending the faithful people’s
response to the Word of God. After surveying the exhortation, I will
identify its main points of significance and suggest windows for study and
discussion that the exhortation opens up for us.
Survey of Verbum Domini
Part One of the document, called Verbum Dei, deals with the theology of
the Word (§§6–28). Its thematic scriptural basis is John 1:1, 14. Part Two
of the document, called Verbum in Ecclesia, deals with how the Word of
God can be more fully proclaimed and heard within the Church
(§§50–89). Its thematic scriptural basis is John 1:12—“But to all who
received him he gave power to become children of God.” Part Three of
the document, called Verbum Mundo, deals with the amplification and
reception of the Word of God in the world (§§90–120). Its thematic
scriptural basis is John 1:18—“No one has ever seen God. It is God the
only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known.”
The brilliant decision to ground each part of the exhortation in texts
from John’s prologue on Christ the Word is a clear signal that at every
level and in almost every section, this exhortation is deeply scriptural in
orientation and reflection.There are many places in this document where
Benedict XVI is exegeting the text of Scripture; in other places the text
gives evidence of antecedent exegetical labor and meditation.
The first main section of Part One, Verbum Dei, is called “The God Who
Speaks” (§§6–21).This section works out how the written word of God is
related to Jesus the Word of God. In this way, the document displays a
strong adherence to the teaching of Scripture and the Church, that the
Word of God is first of all the Incarnate Son of God. It is this adherence
along with the recognition that the Word of God is communicated within
“the Church’s living Tradition” that leads Benedict to surprise readers by
insisting that Christianity is not a religion of the book (§7). Pope Benedict
later offers an implication of this insistence (§38): “The word of God can
never simply be equated with the letter of the text,” a truth that was forgotten by the second generation of Protestant Reformers.2 Benedict also
2 Verbum Domini §38; Augustine’s description of the voice of John the Baptist as

related to but always distinct from the actual Word of God resembles Benedict’s
point that the written letters on the pages of Scripture are never in themselves
the word of God (Serm. 293.3). On the Protestant conflation of the written
words with the actual word of God, see Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1974), 37.

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issues a call that the different senses of “Word of God” be theologically
explored so that “the centrality of the person of Christ” might become
more evident (§7).The section dealing with “private revelations” addresses
the Protestant-inspired desire for individuals to take their own interpretation from Scripture.While such revelations “can introduce new emphases,
give rise to new forms of piety, or deepen older ones,” as well as at times
contain a prophetic word, the document helpfully distinguishes between
the word of God in the Church and these “private revelations” (§14). A
strong affirmation of the “pneumatological horizon” of the word of God
(§16) signals what is a strong emphasis throughout the whole document,
that the Scriptures must be read with a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s role
both in their composition and in the hearing of the Scriptures today. Calls
for all to recognize the essential roles that the Holy Spirit and faith play in
the interpretation of Scripture are found throughout the first two parts of
the exhortation (§§16, 25, 29, 29, 37, 38, 50–52, 66, 83).This emphasis on
the Spirit allows Benedict to go on and note that the tradition in which
the Church reads Scripture is a “living tradition,” a helpful corrective to
past caricatures of the tradition as lifeless (§§17–18). It is not an accident
that at this point there is a favorable reference to Origen, a character whose
stock is surely raised by five positive references in the exhortation.3
The second main section of Part One, Verbum Dei, is called “Our
Response to the God Who Speaks” (§§22–28). Faith is the quintessential
response to the word of God, and since the Church is Christ’s body, faith is
both a personal response and a church-based response to God’s word (§25).
Sin is the human refusal to hear the word of God (§26). In §27 the Holy
Father states:“The Synod Fathers declared that the basic aim of the Twelfth
Assembly was ‘to renew the Church’s faith in the word of God.’ ” Since he
indicates this “basic aim” in the section called “Our Response to the God
Who Speaks,” it is evident that, like the prophetic books in our Old Testament Scripture, this exhortation is written primarily to evoke a behavioral
change in those who hear God’s word, rather than to provide information
or cognitive illumination. Pope Benedict signals this aim in the introduction
to the exhortation as well:“With this Apostolic Exhortation I would like the
work of the Synod to have a real effect on the life of the Church: on our
personal relationship with the sacred Scriptures, on their interpretation in
the liturgy and catechesis, and in scientific research, so that the Bible may
not be simply a word from the past, but a living and timely word” (§5).
The third main section of Part One, Verbum Dei, is called “The Interpretation of Sacred Scripture in the Church (§§29–49). There are a
3 §12 n.34; §18 n. 64, §40 n. 134, §86, §93.

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number of salient points made here, beginning with the Church as the
primary context for the interpretation of Scripture (§§29–30) and the
identification of the study of Scripture as “the soul of theology” (§31).
While strongly affirming the historical critical method in a way that analogously relates it to the incarnation (§32), the pope directly addresses
Catholic exegetes’ task when he states, “Their common task is not
finished when they have simply determined sources, defined forms or
explained literary procedures.They arrive at the true goal of their work
only when they have explained the meaning of the biblical text as God’s
word for today” (§33). This statement is typical of the exhortation as a
whole: while historical critical approaches are affirmed, the Holy Father
consistently calls all who are involved in the reading and study of Scripture to see that the agenda of historical critical and other scientific
approaches is not the final goal of the exegesis of the Church’s Scripture.4
After recognizing “clear inconsistencies” that are evident when books of
the Bible are compared (§39), Benedict offers a very positive affirmation
of the typological reading of Scripture (§41) and he gives examples in
sections that follow (§§50, 54).5 The section closes with a perspective on
biblical interpretation that those in the academy seldom consider: “A
notion of scholarly research that would consider itself neutral with regard
to Scripture should not be encouraged” (§47).We must listen to and learn
from the saints who sought to conform their lives very closely to Scripture (§48), and holiness in the Church constitutes an interpretation of
Scripture that cannot be overlooked (§49).
Part Two of the exhortation, Verbum in Ecclesia, begins with a section
called “The Word of God and the Church” (§§50–51).This introductory
section establishes that it is the Church that is the primary recipient of
God’s Word, rather than the individual believer or scholar (§50) and that,
since Christ is always present within the Church, those who fully receive
the gospel of Christ are those who participate in the life of the Church.
The second section of this part of the exhortation is called “The Liturgy,
Privileged Setting for the Word of God” (§§52–71). As we would expect
from the author of a book on the liturgy, this section examines how
4 See also Joseph Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis:The Ratzinger Conference on

Bible and Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).
5 Those involved in the production and use of the Brazos Theological Commen-

tary on the Bible have strong support from this exhortation to continue in the
exegetical approaches that they employ.The typological exegesis employed in the
Genesis volume of this series seems to me to exemplify the strengths of the typological approach recommended by Benedict XVI. See R. R. Reno, Genesis: Brazos
Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2010).

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Scripture is related to specific aspects of the liturgy, including the
Eucharist (§§54–55), the lectionary (§57), the homily (§§59–60), and the
liturgy of the hours (§62).6 The section closes with “suggestions and
proposals for promoting fuller participation in the liturgy” (§64). These
proposals include valuing the silence that follows the reading of Scripture; here as in other places of the document Mary is cited as a positive
example of one who received the word (§66).The reading of the Gospel
during the Mass is to be solemn, marked with song or chant to show the
significance of what is read (§67). The book that contains the word of
God is to be given a visible place of honor in the local church, but without usurping the central place that the tabernacle holding the Blessed
Sacrament must continue to occupy (§68). Proclamations of the word in
song, including Gregorian chant, are good (§70). Efforts must be made to
allow the hearing impaired to hear the word of God in the Mass (§71).
The third section of Part Two of the exhortation is called “The Word
of God in the Life of the Church” (§§72–89).This section begins with a
statement that confirms that the primary aim of this exhortation is to
bring the Church’s faithful to a more Scripture-centered existence and
illustrates the historic significance of this exhortation as a challenge to the
claims of Protestant churches that they are more biblical than the Roman
Catholic Church. Pope Benedict writes: “With the Synod Fathers I
express my heartfelt hope for the flowering of ‘a new season of greater
love for sacred Scripture on the part of every member of the People of
God, so that their prayerful and faith-filled reading of the Bible will, with
time, deepen their personal relationship with Jesus’ ” (§72 quoting from
Propositio 9 of the Synod). It is in this section that the pope uses the
phrase “biblical apostolate,” which he defines as an initiative that makes
sure that all work in local churches and Christian organizations is directly
focused on providing “a personal encounter with Christ, who gives
himself to us in his word” (§73, see also §75). Bishops, priests, deacons,
candidates in formation, consecrated people—contemplatives in the
cloister are thanked here (§83)—and faithful laypeople are all called to
make sure that their lives are filled with God’s word in order to be holy
(§§78–84). The seminal relationship between the word of God and the
institutions of marriage and family is underscored, with a concluding
paragraph emphasizing the “indispensable role played by women in the
family, education, catechesis and the communication of values” (§85
drawing on John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem ). Lectio divina is advocated as
an especially effective vehicle for Scripture-based growth in spirituality.
6 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 2000).

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After quoting St.Augustine,7 the Holy Father writes:“Origen, one of the
great masters of this way of reading the Bible, maintains that understanding Scripture demands, even more than study, closeness to Christ and
prayer. Origen was convinced, in fact, that the best way to know God is
through love, and that there can be no authentic scientia Christi apart from
growth in his love.”8 The section on lectio divina ends with a corrective
emphasis on reading Scripture not as an individual but within the
Church in the context of the liturgy, especially the Eucharist (§86). Mary
is the primary example of one who contemplates and accepts the word of
God (§87).The Holy Rosary, the Angelus, and the Akathist and Paraklesis
prayers from Eastern Christianity are all cited as exemplary ways of uniting
our lives with the incarnate Word whose story is told in the Scriptures
(§88). Thus there is a strong affirmation of Marian prayer as a means of
bringing our prayer life into conformity with Scripture. A final unit of
this section, entitled “The word of God and the Holy Land,” notes how
the Synod Fathers called the Holy Land a “the Fifth Gospel” and affirms
how significant it is that Christian communities endure through hardships in this land.9
Part Three of the exhortation, Verbum Mundo, begins with a section
called “The Church’s Mission: To Proclaim the Word of God to the
World” (§§90–98).The proclamation of God’s word is enjoined on all the
baptized (§94), identified as a necessity (§95), and linked to the new evangelization initiated by John Paul II (§96). The second section of Part
Three is called “The Word of God and Commitment in the World”
(§§99–108). It is in this section that the prophetic edge of Part Three is
especially evident. For example, in the unit specifically focused on “the
proclamation of the word of God and migrants,” the Holy Father follows
the recommendation of the Synod:“Taking into account the complexity
of the phenomenon [of migration], a mobilization of all dioceses
involved is essential, so that the movements of migration will also be seen
as an opportunity to discover new forms of presence and proclamation.
It is also necessary that they ensure, to the extent possible, that these our
brothers and sisters receive adequate welcome and attention.”10 After a
moving section on “the proclamation of the word of God and the suffer7 Enarrationes in Psalmos 85,7.
8 Verbum Domini §86. There follows a long quotation from Origen, Epistola ad

Gregorium 3.
9 Verbum Domini §89, quoting from Propositio 51 of the Synod. §89 seems to antic-

ipate the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops held on
October 10–24, 2010.
10 Verbum Domini §105, citing Propositio 38 of the Synod.

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ing” (§106), the Holy Father goes on to consider “the proclamation of
the word of God and the poor” (§107). He quotes the Synod Fathers
affirming that “the poor are the first ones entitled to hear the proclamation of the Gospel; they need not only bread, but also words of life.”11
Section 107 in the exhortation also includes the ideas of poverty as virtue
and poverty as indigence. While stating that “the Church cannot let the
poor down,” Benedict advocates a balance “between the poverty which
is to be chosen and the poverty which is to be combated ” (his emphasis).
The third section of Part Three is called “The Word of God and
Culture” (§§109–16). This section seems to flow out of the burden that
Benedict XVI has taken up for renewing Western civilization.12 “Down
the centuries the word of God has inspired different cultures, giving rise
to fundamental moral values, outstanding expressions of art and exemplary life-styles. Hence, in looking to a renewed encounter between the
Bible and culture, I wish to reassure all those who are part of the world
of culture that they have nothing to fear from openness to God’s word,
which never destroys true culture, but rather is a constant stimulus to seek
ever more appropriate, meaningful and humane forms of expression”
(§109). A knowledge of the Bible, even for those in secular contexts, is
encouraged:“a sense of the Bible as a great code for cultures needs to be
fully recovered” (§110).13 The Scriptures must be taught in schools and
universities (§111), animate artistic expression (§112), be presented
through media like the internet while always remaining part of actual,
personal contact (§113), and must be translated into languages still lacking the Scriptures in their own tongue (§115).While the Bible can speak
to every culture and thus can facilitate the “inculturation of the Gospel”
(§114), the word of God transcends all cultural boundaries (§116).
The fourth section of Part Three is called “The Word of God and Interreligious Dialogue” (§§117–20).This section first affirms that the Scriptures
teach that God loves all people and desires all to become one family.14
11 Verbum Domini §107, quoting Propositio 11 of the Synod.
12 See, though it is not cited in the exhortation, Joseph Ratzinger and Jürgen

Habermas, Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, ed. Florian Schuller,
trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006). See also Joseph Ratzinger
and Peter Seewald, Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End
of the Millennium, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997); George
Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe,America, and Politics without God (New
York: Basic Books, 2005); Weigel, “Britain Can Benefit from Benedict,” Standpoint (September 2010).
13 Cf. Northrop Frye, The Great Code:The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1982).
14 Verbum Domini §117, citing Gn 9:13–14, 16; Is 2:2–4; 42:6; 66:18–21; Jer 4:2; Ps 47.

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Besides the recognition that Islam “includes countless biblical figures,
symbols and themes” (§118) and the assertion that the “religious books” of
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism share some of the values of
Christianity (§119), this section does not offer practical suggestions for how
the Christian Scriptures are to be used in interreligious dialogue.
The conclusion returns to the behavioral goal of this exhortation:“We
must never forget that all authentic and living Christian spirituality is
based on the word of God proclaimed, accepted, celebrated and meditated upon
in the Church.This deepening relationship with the divine word will take
place with even greater enthusiasm if we are conscious that, in Scripture
and the Church’s living Tradition, we stand before God’s definitive word
on the cosmos and on history” (§121, emphasis original). To hear the
word of God anew is linked to the new evangelization (§122) and this
hearing brings joy (§123).The connection between hearing God’s word
and joy is exemplified by Mary (§124; Lk 1:45; 8:21; 11:28). And in an
inclusio that returns to the primary sense of the Word of God emphasized
in this exhortation’s beginning, the Holy Father concludes with a blessing: “May every day of our lives thus be shaped by a renewed encounter
with Christ, the Word of the Father made flesh: he stands at the beginning and the end, and ‘in him all things hold together.’ ”15
Main Points of Significance
1. The exhortation signals how we should exegete the Scriptures.This
document models Benedict’s appreciation of the Church Fathers’
exegesis that is open to the spiritual sense (§37) and a positive,
though defined role for “biblical science” (§§19; 32).The document
as a whole evokes a spiritual reading of Scripture that is open to the
influence of the Holy Spirit and not more dependence on the historical critical method and other scientific approaches. “As the reader
matures in the life of the Spirit, so there grows also his or her capacity to understand the realities of which the Bible speaks.”16
The historical moment of this exhortation differs from the time
of Pius XII’s writing of Divino Afflante Spiritu. Pope Pius was rightfully concerned that the Church’s scholars should avail themselves of
advances in textual and literary criticism and so he led them to focus
on the literal sense of the text in its first Sitz im Leben.17 By contrast,
this exhortation by Benedict XVI is concerned that the Scriptures
15 §124, quoting Col 1:17.
16 Verbum Domini §30, quoting Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of

the Bible in the Church (15 April 1993), II, A, 2.
17 Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu §§13–15, 20.

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never be read simply “as an object of historical curiosity,” but rather
always be read as a product of the Holy Spirit through which readers hear our Lord speak (§19). Whereas Pius XII encouraged the
Church’s Scripture scholars to make use of the riches of Egypt in
their studies of the sacred text, Benedict XVI is now inviting scholars to bring their riches out of Egypt and into the promised land of
the Church:“I urge that the study of the word of God, both handed
down and written, be constantly carried out in a profoundly ecclesial spirit, and that academic formation take due account of the pertinent interventions of the magisterium, which ‘is not superior to the
word of God, but is rather its servant.’ ”18
2. The pope is going on record that the Scriptures are at “the very heart
of the Christian life” (§3, his emphasis).The message of this exhortation is that Scripture study must be regarded as “the soul of theology”
(§31), and this means that such study must be central in the formation of priests (§47). Seminarians must be taught to study Scripture in
a way that simultaneously moves them to pray the Scriptures, for the
study of Scripture is necessarily linked to prayer (§82). Since the
Scriptures are to figure significantly in homilies (§59), the “biblical
apostolate” that this exhortation enjoins on the Church (§§73, 75)
will surely affect how priests and religious are formed for ministry.
3. This is a rather Jewish-friendly document. In the introduction we
learn that a rabbi gave an invited witness regarding the Scriptures for
the first time at any Church synod (§4). The openness to the Jews’
prior possession of part of the Church’s Scriptures is signaled by the
term “Hebrew Scriptures,” first occurring in §4 and then developed
again in §40. Reference is made in §115 to the Targumim and the
Septuagint. The admission that there is an aspect of “discontinuity”
in the relationship (alongside the aspects of “continuity” and “fulfilment and transcendence”) of the New Testament to the Old Testament (§40) is significant and can only help in the ongoing dialogue
with Jews, which the exhortation explicitly encourages (§43).
4. While addressed to the faithful within the Catholic Church, this
exhortation functions as a tactical challenge to Protestants who assert
that the Catholic Church does not ground itself in the Scriptures.
Indeed, this document should help Catholics move from being
defensive about the Church’s infallible magisterium (§§18, 32, 33, 45)
18 Verbum Domini §47, quoted material on the magisterium from the Vatican II

document Dei Verbum §10.

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to challenge other forms of Christianity that vest the individual
interpreter or congregation with a license of infallibility in the interpretation of Scripture.
Windows for Discussion and Study
1. As the Holy Father indicates early in the exhortation, there is a need
for theologians to study how the different senses of “the Word of
God” are related, so that God’s plan might be seen as a unified whole
and so that Christ’s central role in this plan may be highlighted (§7;
see also §18).
2. “The relationship between Mariology and the theology of the word”
is also identified as a locus for further study (§27). The descriptions
of Mary throughout the exhortation surely provide an agenda that
can be usefully followed as this relationship is explored (§§12, 15, 27,
28, 66, 79, 83, 87, 88, 124).
3. The ways in which the idea of “the word of God” might be used in
interreligious dialogue, including possible uses of Scripture in such
dialogue, could be further considered as a development of some of
the final thoughts of this exhortation (§§117–20).
4. An extended examination of the scriptural exegesis that is the happy
and heart-warming engine of much of this exhortation would be
beneficial. Test cases in the integration of typological exegesis with
more modern, scientific approaches would also prove useful (§§41,
50, 54).
5. A discussion of this exhortation among Catholic and non-Catholic
Christians (such as Orthodox, Lutheran, or evangelical Protestant)
known to value the word of God would prove beneficial in highlighting the distinct contributions of this exhortation.
This exhortation represents a blessed and fruitful opportunity for all
Christians. May all who take and read it encounter more fully the word
of God and the Word it communicates. “Every scribe who has been
instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who
brings from his storeroom both the new and the old” (Mt 13:52). N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 11–25

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The Identity of Nova et Vetera
C HARLES M OREROD, O.P.
Pontifical University of St.Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

T HE PERIODICAL Nova et Vetera was founded in 1926 by two
priests of the diocese of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg: Charles Journet (1891–1975) and François Charrière (1893–1976). The first one
spent his life teaching in the diocesan seminary in Fribourg (also giving
weekly public conferences in his city of Geneva and preaching many
retreats), even after he was made a cardinal in 1965. The second one
worked for the periodical only in the initial years, and was bishop of the
diocese between 1945 and 1970.1
“Catholic Periodical for French-Speaking Switzerland”
The periodical initially had the subtitle “Catholic Periodical for FrenchSpeaking Switzerland.”2 The initial purpose was to fill a cultural gap:
Switzerland was then under the domination of a mixture of the Protestant and Enlightenment mindsets. Until the University of Fribourg was
founded in 1889, all Swiss universities were in Protestant cities3 and had
Protestant faculties of theology. Catholic cantons were rural and poor. In
the Protestant cities, Catholics were perceived as culturally inferior, an attitude that Journet noticed early in his life, since he grew up in Geneva, the
city where Calvin had spent the last twenty-three years of his life and
where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born. It was usual for Catholics in
Geneva to receive leaflets of Protestant propaganda in their mailboxes, and
Journet replied to such attacks in books of Catholic apologetics. Before he
1 He published most of his articles during the first four years of the periodical, a

few in the 1930s, and one in 1945.
2 “Revue catholique pour la Suisse romande.”
3 Basel, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchatel, Zurich.

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Charles Morerod, O.P.

was forty years old, he had already published L’esprit du protestantisme en
Suisse (1925), L’union des Églises (1927), and De la Bible catholique à la Bible
protestante (1930).4 These books help us understand the original orientation of the periodical founded during the same period. For instance, De la
Bible catholique à la Bible protestante expresses in the first place a joyful gratitude for the divine gifts:
Here is a God of love. He calls us to the participation in his riches, his
life, his happiness, his light. . . . He thus communicates to us as of now
the definitive certainties, those which in the radiance of the last day will
not be the cloud which is dissipated, but the flower which opens out.5

Because of his Catholic joy at having received the gift of faith, whose
substance remains in the beatific vision, Journet denied the Protestant
claim to have—unlike Catholics—kept the Bible. He actually thinks
exactly the opposite:
The Reformation took the Bible from the Church in order to give it
to the whole people, without intermediary, without go-between. . . .
But one soon perceives that this Bible, put naked into the world, would
melt there like ice. The Reformers hurried to add their glosses to it,
their elucidations, their commentaries.They made a new habit for it. It
was, they said, its true habit of the Apostolic times, rediscovered intact
after fifteen centuries. For the divine presentation of Scripture in the
Church, they substituted, from the beginning and after they had promised a pure Bible, the divine presentation of the Bible by the Reformers. Obviously, that was a substitute. But where the commonly received
Bible did not have enough room in the clothes given to it by Luther,
he did not hesitate to amputate.The texts and the meanings which did
not fit the doctrine of justification by faith alone . . . he excluded from
the new Bible. . . . Learned people of liberal Protestantism, nowadays,
have taken the Bible out of the clothes it had received from the Reformation and which are still venerated in several small cults. For them
[liberals], the Bible is no longer the unique divine book.Then there is
no reason any longer to present it in a divine context. Its only fitting
context is the modern spirit. . . .The move of taking the Bible from the
4 L’esprit du protestantisme en Suisse (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1925); L’union des

Églises (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1927); De la Bible catholique à la Bible protestante
(Paris: André Blot, 1930).
5 “Voilà bien un Dieu d’amour. Il nous appelle à la participation de ses richesses,
de sa vie, de sa félicité, de sa lumière. . . . Il nous communique donc dès maintenant les certitudes définitives, celles qui dans le grand soleil du dernier jour ne
seront point la nuée qui se dissipe, mais la fleur qui s’épanouit” (De la Bible
catholique à la Bible protestante, 17).

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Church to give it to the world could seem to be generous. But in fact
it meant taking a heart out of a living body so that it could beat more
freely.This heart can be put for a while into an artificial environment.
It still beats there for a certain time, perhaps even a long time.Then it
becomes enfeebled, it stops. It decomposes and finally the nourishing
liquid becomes no more than a watery gruel.The Bible taken from the
Church was divine. They wanted to immerse it in humanity. It has so
far decomposed that today it is no more than a human Bible.6

L’esprit du protestantisme en Suisse concludes radically:“At the same time that
the Creed disintegrated, the Bible lost all its significance as divine book.”7
The seemingly limited initial distance between the Reformation and
the Catholic tradition led to two different views of the world:
Zwingli, under the guise of evangelical life, undertook like Luther to
preach “angelism” to the world. . . . He protested, for example, against
feast days and pilgrimages, declaring that “time and space are subject to
Christians, and not conversely.” . . .The ignorance of the help which the
temporal things bring to the life of the spirit inaugurated, between the
Protestant religion and the liturgical and plastic arts, an incompatibility
6 “La Réforme ôta la Bible à l’Église pour la donner au peuple toute pure, sans inter-

médiaire, sans écran. . . . Mais on s’aperçut aussitôt que cette Bible, mise toute nue
dans le monde, allait y fondre comme un glaçon. Les Réformateurs s’empressèrent
de l’entourer de leurs gloses, de leurs élucidations, de leurs commentaires. Ils lui
refirent un nouvel habit. C’était, expliquaient-ils, sa vraie robe des temps apostoliques, qu’on redécouvrait intacte après quinze siècles. A la présentation divine
de l’Ecriture par l’Église, on substituait, dès le début, après avoir promis la Bible
toute pure, la présentation divine de l’Ecriture par les Réformateurs. Manifestement, c’était un ersatz. Or, la Bible communément reçue se trouvant à l’étroit dans
le vêtement que lui taillait Luther, celui-ci n’hésita pas à l’amputer. Les textes et les
sens qui ne cadraient pas avec la doctrine de la justification par la foi seule . . . furent
exclus par lui de la nouvelle Bible. . . . Les savants du protestantisme libéral ont, de
nos jours, enlevé à la Bible le vêtement que lui avait mis la Réforme et qu’on
vénère encore dans plusieurs petites sectes. La Bible n’est plus, pour eux, l’unique
livre divin. On n’a donc plus aucune raison de la présenter dans un appareil divin.
La seule atmosphère qui lui convienne, c’est l’esprit moderne. . . . Le geste par
lequel on avait ôté la Bible à l’Église pour la donner au monde avait pu sembler
généreux. C’était, au vrai, le geste par lequel on enlève d’une poitrine un cœur
vivant pour qu’il batte plus librement. On peut le mettre dans un milieu artificiel.
Il y palpite pendant un certain temps, parfois même longtemps. Puis il s’étiole, il
s’arrête. Il se décompose et ne fait plus, enfin, avec le liquide nourricier, qu’une
seule bouillie. La Bible qu’on avait prise à l’Église était divine. On l’a voulu plonger
en pleine humanité. Elle s’y est tellement décomposée qu’elle n’est plus aujourd’hui qu’une Bible humaine” (De la Bible catholique à la Bible protestante, 54–60).
7 “En même temps que s’est effrité le Credo, la Bible a perdu toute sa signification de livre divin” (L’esprit du protestantisme en Suisse, 60).

14

Charles Morerod, O.P.
which Calvin was to worsen. . . . It prepared . . . the ruin of the belief in
the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh. . . . More generally, it installed
at the heart of Protestantism a mistake still more fundamental, a disembodied spiritualism, of which the increasingly radical effects today are
apparent to all eyes, how essentially the spiritualism of reformed religion
contradicts the spirituality of the religion of the Word made flesh. Christianity is the religion of the Incarnation and sacramentality. In [Christianity], matter became able to transmit to the world divine holiness,
since it has been raised to the extraordinary dignity of being the instrument by which God pours grace into souls: instrument united with the
Divinity in the humanity of Christ and the mystery of the Incarnation,
separate instrument in the sacramental rites.8

Journet identifies these two—Catholic and Protestant—complete
views of the relationship between God and the world. He is grateful to
God for the Catholic view, and therefore sorry for the distortion that he
sees around him. It becomes his mission to show the badly informed
Swiss Catholics that they don’t have any reason to accept the inferiority
complex that the dominant Protestant culture tries to instill into them. Is
he speaking against ecumenism? It would an anachronism to say that. He
was repelling attacks upon the joy of being Catholic. Already during the
first year of Nova et Vetera he published several articles that laid the
groundwork for his future book L’union des Églises,9 where he proposed
a theological judgment on the new Movement of Faith and Order
(which would merge into the World Council of Churches when it was
8 “Mais Zwingli, sous couvert de vie évangélique, entreprit comme Luther de

prêcher au monde l’‘angélisme.’ . . . Il s’éleva, par exemple, contre les jours de
fêtes et les pèlerinages, en déclarant que ‘le temps et le lieu sont soumis aux chrétiens, et non inversement. . . . La méconnaissance du secours que les choses
temporelles apportent à la vie de l’esprit inaugurait, entre la religion protestante
et les arts liturgiques et plastiques, une incompatibilité que devait aggraver
Calvin. . . . Elle préparait . . . la ruine de la croyance au dogme de la résurrection
de la chair. . . . Plus généralement, elle installait au cœur du protestantisme une
méprise bien plus fondamentale encore, nous voulons parler d’un spiritualisme
de la désincarnation, dont les effets de plus en plus radicaux rendent aujourd’hui
sensible à tous les yeux, combien essentiellement la spiritualisme de la religion
réformée contredit le spiritualisme de la religion du Verbe fait chair. Le christianisme est la religion de l’Incarnation et de la Sacramentalité. Avec lui, la
matière est devenue capable de transmettre au monde la sainteté divine,
puisqu’elle a été élevée à la dignité extraordinaire d’être l’instrument par lequel
Dieu verse la grâce dans les âmes: instrument conjoint à la Divinité s’il s’agit de
l’humanité du Christ et du mystère de l’Incarnation, instrument séparé s’il s’agit
des rites sacramentels” (L’esprit du protestantisme en Suisse, 24–25).
9 “Rome et Stockholm,” Nova et Vetera (1926): 117–40; Nova et Vetera (1926):
263–96; Nova et Vetera (1926): 445–76.

The Identity of Nova et Vetera

15

created in 1948).This book shows his approach to the ecumenical question. He did not see it as totally negative:
If, from the beginning, the Catholic Church has kept away from the
great collective effort leading to the Congress of Stockholm, it is not
that all, in this effort, was considered to be condemned. The Church
was being careful to distinguish truth from illusion.10

The unity that Faith and Order sought was simply not good enough.
Because he loved them, Journet wanted more for non-Catholic Christians:
The non-Catholics would see that if, instead of going to them, we ask
them to come to us, it is not that we are lacking in love, it is that we
would like to call them to the participation of a unity higher than that
of their dreams.11

The first period of Nova et Vetera was therefore first of all that of a
“Catholic Periodical for French-Speaking Switzerland,” in the context of
joyful defense of the beauty of being Catholic. Was it not ecumenical
enough? Journet’s statements are not so different from the one expressed
by Pope Paul VI during Vatican II:
If you understand this great problem of the restoration of Christians to
the unity willed by Christ, if you perceive its importance and its historical maturing, you will feel rising from the depth of your soul a
wonderful and precise witnessing to that Catholic safety that will tell
you within yourself: I am already in the unity willed by Christ, I am
already within his flock, because I am Catholic, because I am with
Peter. This is a great prerogative, this is a great consolation; Catholics,
enjoy it. Faithful, be conscious of that privileged position, due of course
not to the merit of anybody, but to the bounty of God, who called us
to such a happy position.12
10 “Si, dès le début, l’Église catholique s’est tenue à l’écart du grand effort collectif

aboutissant au congrès de Stockholm, ce n’est pas que tout, dans cet effort, lui
parût blâmable. Elle restait attentive à discerner la vérité de l’illusion.” (L’union
des Églises, 14)
11 “Les non-catholiques . . . verraient que si, au lieu d’aller à eux, nous leur demandons de venir à nous, ce n’est pas que nous manquions d’amour, c’est que nous
voudrions les appeler à la participation d’une unité plus haute que celle de leurs
rêves” (L’union des Églises, 14–15).
12 “Se voi avete l’intelligenza di questo grande problema della ricomposizione dei
cristiani nell’unità voluta da Cristo, se avete la percezione della sua importanza e
della sua maturazione storica, sentirete salire dal fondo della vostra anima una
meravigliosa e precisa testimonianza di quella sicurezza cattolica, che vi dirà interiormente: io sono già nell’unità voluta da Cristo, sono già dentro il suo ovile,

16

Charles Morerod, O.P.

Both Paul VI and Journet can affirm that the joyful certainty of Catholicity and a desire for Christian unity are not in opposition: they are actually the same thing, under different forms.The similarity between Journet
and Paul VI is not surprising: Giovanni Battista Montini13 had been an
explicit disciple of Journet before he became Pope. They first met in
1945, and Archbishop Montini invited Journet to preach in the diocesan
mission of Milan in 1957.14 Then, as Pope, he created Journet cardinal,
and after the Council he called him weekly to ask for his advice.15
What Paul VI liked in Journet was above all his ecclesiology, the field of
publication in which Journet is best known: the three volumes of the original edition of L’Église du Verbe incarné (The Church of the Word Incarnate),16 uniting articles first published in Nova et Vetera, is in fact a complete
theological synthesis from an ecclesiological perspective. Fr. Congar said
about this work that it “appears as the implementation of the synthesis of
St.Thomas.”17 Starting from the difficult situation of Swiss Catholics—difficulty that had to do with the Church in itself—Journet built a whole theology that was much broader than the initial controversies.
An International Periodical in Time and over Time
New Series
In 1948, Nova et Vetera appeared with the new subtitle Nouvelle Série
[New Series].18 The first article of the New Series was, very significantly,
Jacques Maritain’s speech as French ambassador to the Holy See at the
Second General Assembly of UNESCO:19 it was an international openperché sono cattolico, perché sono con Pietro. È una grande fortuna, è una
grande consolazione; cattolici, sappiate goderla. Fedeli, abbiate coscienza di
codesta privilegiate posizione, dovuta certamente, non al merito di alcuno, ma
alla bontà di Dio, che a sorte tanto felice ci ha chiamati” (Paul VI, General Audience, 22 Jan. 1964, Osservatore Romano 23 [Jan. 1964], 1).
13 That is, Paul VI.
14 See Guy Boissard, Charles Journet, 1891–1975, Biographie (Paris: Salvator, 2008),
467 and 474.
15 Personal testimony of the last secretary of Cardinal Journet, Fr. Bernard Genoud
(who became bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg in 1999).
16 First published by Desclée de Brouwer (Paris) between 1941 and 1969, republished as part of the Collected Works by the Editions Saint-Augustin (SaintMaurice) in four volumes between 1998 and 2004.
17 Yves M.-J. Congar, Esquisses du mystère de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1953), 7.
18 The subtitle was kept through the first issue of 1949. The second issue of 1949
received the subtitle Revue trimestrielle (Quarterly review), which the periodical
still uses.
19 Nova et Vetera (1948): 1–14.

The Identity of Nova et Vetera

17

ing in the new season of a periodical that had become international.
Nowadays, the French edition is sold on all continents, most prominently
in France (first) and in Switzerland. Of course the international dimension was increased by the birth of the English Edition.
Still, the New Series of 1948 and the English Edition of 2003 do not
inaugurate a new periodical. There is an important continuity with the
line of the original Revue catholique pour la Suisse romande, for two main
reasons: first, the cultural situation of the Catholics of Geneva in 1926 is
in many ways similar to the contemporary global situation; second, the
principles that guided the foundation of Nova et Vetera remain valid in
different situations.
As a sign of continuity, the first issue of the English Edition of Nova et
Vetera (Spring 2003) quoted at length the “Definition of Principles and
Aims” published by Journet in the first issue of the French edition.These
principles show immediately why a periodical published for a small region
in a particular situation was from the beginning open to a more global role:
Our faith rests upon authenticated sources, namely, sacred Scripture as
expounded and interpreted by the great Councils of Nicaea, Orange,
Trent,Vatican I, and by papal documents.We seek to understand these
sources by the guidance of that Doctor whose name we hold dear: St.
Thomas Aquinas.Whatever the time period or culture through which
these sources come to us, we believe that that which is truly Catholic
will help us to live more fully and with greater integrity in our own
respective cultures.20

We recognize in this text Journet’s love for Revelation, and his intention to
receive Scripture within Tradition.The full confidence that any culture can
benefit from such a tradition reflects St.Thomas Aquinas’s confidence that
“the false alone is opposed to the true”21 and that “every truth by whomsoever spoken is from the Holy Ghost as bestowing the natural light.”22
Unity of New and Old
The continuity in the editorial position of the periodical over the course
of its history grows out of principles expressed in its very name.There is
no opposition of principle between new and old. In the very first issue
of Nova et Vetera, Jacques Maritain defended himself against an accusation
of living in the past because he had criticized Luther and Descartes:
20 “Définitions” (Nova et Vetera [1926]), as translated in the English Edition 1 (2003):

2.
21 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book 1, chapter 7.
22 Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, a. 1, ad 1.

18

Charles Morerod, O.P.
I never said . . . that the entirety of modern times bore the mark of
Satan. . . .They reproach me for acting as if the will of God were absent
from four centuries of history. Well! It was present also in paradise,
when Adam fell. Strange Christianity, which seems to forget that the
divine will allows evil, of course for a larger good!23

In fact, as the 1926 Definitions explained, the point is not that something
is old or recent. The name Nova et Vetera expresses the conviction of
something deeper than an unfounded temporal preference:
We consider ourselves neither retrograde nor adventurers, since both
types oppose the past and future, both new things and old. Such an
enterprise offers us little pleasure, particularly since it implies the choice
of one over the other. We reject this dilemma. We instead seek to
discover in each moment in time those numerous threads that can
connect the past, present and future.We must set our sights high enough
to allow the delicate hierarchy of spiritual values to reveal themselves,
values that are capable of ordering, under the sign of God and of his
Christ, the most noble and humble of manifestations of the intellectual
and affective life, of the artistic and moral life, of the individual and
corporate life, of national and international affairs, whether they be of
yesterday, today or tomorrow. When they become aligned unto these
spiritual values, human endeavors, works and institutions appear to
possess a parcel of divine peace, no matter if they serve the usefulness of
the moment or satisfy a purely passing need.At such moments, they give
the impression of order, continuity and stability. They are at the same
time known and unexpected, familiar and surprising, ancient AND new.
Through them shine the rays of the Beauty that is ever ancient and ever
new, tam antiqua et tam nova, at which St. Augustine marveled (Confessions, Bk. X, ch. 27); and the scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who, “to give joy to his
family, pulls from his treasure expected yet always delightful jewels, what
is old but always new,” Nova et Vetera (Mt 13:52).24

In constant dialogue with his friend Jacques Maritain, Journet was
acutely conscious both of the permanence of principles and of the historical dimension of institutions and ideas. This double conviction, which is
23 “Je n’ai jamais dit . . . que tout en bloc dans les temps modernes fût marqué de

l’empreinte de Satan. . . . On me reproche de faire comme si la volonté de Dieu
était absente de quatre siècles d’histoire. Allons donc! Elle était présente aussi au
paradis, quand Adam tomba. Etrange christianisme, qui semble oublier que la
divine volonté permet le mal, pour un plus grand bien certes!” ( Jacques Maritain, “Réplique à M. Gillouin,” Nova et Vetera [1926]: 101–2).
24 “Définitions” (Nova et Vetera [1926]), as translated in the English Edition 1
(2003): 3–4.

The Identity of Nova et Vetera

19

one of the aspects of the relationship between Nova and Vetera, made possible for him to speak about political questions without being a politician.
The Definitions state: “Past institutions cannot simply, and lazily, be
copied.”25 In an article published in Nova et Vetera in 1933, Maritain says
that “a rightly founded political philosophy . . . is likely of various practical forms, all more or less defective, because of original sin, which still
wounds history.”26 Principles remain, some of their applications change.
Journet remembered that fact during the Second World War, when he
published several editorials that after the war became the book Exigences
chrétiennes en politique (Christian requirements in politics).27 Because of
Journet’s clear condemnation of totalitarian systems, the official censorship of the surrounded Switzerland sent him a “warning.” On October
14, 1943, he replied to the captain who had “warned” him, insisting on
the moral duty to say what is good and what is bad, and also distinguishing between moral principles and the system in which they are found.
This distinction allowed him to say that he was not the enemy of persons
or countries as such:
You reproach me for having written that `totalitarianism rots all that it
touches’, then, you say,“the criticism of a foreign political regime should
be formulated only with extreme care.” . . . It is not . . .“a foreign political regime” as such that I am criticizing. It is a principle corruptive of any
Christian and human policy. I did not say: Mr. Hitler, or Mr. Mussolini, or
Mr. Stalin rots all that [he] touches. I do not here depart from my role of
Christian philosopher, Christian moralist, of Christian simply.28

There are cases in which a Christian may not shut up. Judging that he
was confronted with such a case, he challenged censorship:
25 Ibid., 4.
26 “[U]ne philosophie politique exactement fondée . . . est susceptible de réalisa-

tions typiquement différentes, toutes plus ou moins déficientes du reste, à cause
du péché originel dont l’histoire reste blessée” ( Jacques Maritain,“Une philosophie de la liberté,” Nova et Vetera [1933]: 289).
27 Saint-Maurice: Editions Saint-Augustin, 1945.
28 “Vous me reprochez d’avoir écrit que ‘le totalitarisme pourrit tout ce qu’il
touche’, alors, dites-vous, que ‘la critique d’un régime politique étranger ne doit
être formulée qu’avec la plus grande réserve’. . . . Ce n’est . . . pas à ‘un régime
politique étranger’ comme tel, que je m’en prends. C’est à un principe corrupteur de toute politique chrétienne et humaine. Je n’ai pas dit: M. Hitler, ou M.
Mussolini, ou M. Staline pourrit tout ce qu’il touche. Je ne sors pas ici de mon
rôle de philosophe chrétien, de moraliste chrétien, de chrétien tout court”
(Charles Journet in Guy Boissard, Quelle neutralité face à l’horreur. Le courage de
Charles Journet [Saint-Maurice: Editions Saint-Augustin, 2000], 192).

20

Charles Morerod, O.P.
Nobody will dare to claim that the extermination of the Jewish race,
and the reduction to slavery of the Polish race, are not the object of
some planning.That would be to defy the evidence.29

Faced with what could not be accepted, Journet spoke.When he did so,
he could not know that he would not be arrested, and that Switzerland
would not be invaded. He maintained principles without which he
would have lost his soul.
The conviction that the changing world must be understood in light
of permanent principles, which are deepened as time goes on, is still dear
to Cardinal Journet’s successor as director of Nova et Vetera, Fr. Georges
Cottier O.P. (who became director at Journet’s death). As the future
director explained in 1965, Revelation is necessary for a full understanding of natural right,30 but natural right is also understood thanks to
human reflection on historical events.31 Ten years later, in the last issue
published by Journet, the same Fr. Cottier comments on philosophical
progress:“It is in the return to the same thing that the new manifests itself
to the philosopher.”32
Permanent principles are constantly deepened through history. It is difficult not to notice a convergence between this line of Nova et Vetera and
Joseph Ratzinger’s evolution. The young Ratzinger’s sympathy for St.
Bonaventure came in part from a historical perspective he found in
Bonaventure that was in contrast to the fixedness of manualistic theology:
“The Saint [Bonaventure] proposes a new theory of the interpretation of
Scripture, which—unlike those of the Fathers and the Scholastics—insisted
more on the historical character of Scripture than on what remains
unchanged and constant.”33 Of course Ratzinger did not think that history
29 “Personne n’osera prétendre que l’extermination de la race juive, et la réduction

en esclavage de la race polonaise, ne fassent pas l’objet d’une planification. Ce
serait s’insurger contre l’évidence” (Charles Journet in Guy Boissard, Quelle
neutralité face à l’horreur, 192).
30 See Marie-Martin Cottier, O.P., “Le droit naturel et l’histoire,” Nova et Vetera
(1965): 172–76.
31 See ibid., 170.
32 “C’est dans la reprise du même que pour le philosophe . . . le nouveau se manifeste” (Georges Cottier, O.P., “Peut-on parler de progrès dans la recherche
philosophique?” Nova et Vetera [1975]: 53).
33 “Auf diese Weise kommt der Heilige aber auch zu einer neuen Theorie der
Schriftauslegung, die im Gegensatz zu der stärker aufs Unveränderlich-Bleibende
gerichteten Auslegung der Väter und Scholastiker den geschichtlichen Charakter
der Schriftaussagen betont” ( Joseph Ratzinger, Offenbarungsverständnis und
Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras, Habilitationsschrift und Bonaventura-Studien, in Joseph
Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften, Band 2 [Freiburg: Herder, 2009], 440).

The Identity of Nova et Vetera

21

alone could solve theological questions.34 Nevertheless, he did think that
the consciousness of the historical factor plays a significant role in the
renewal of theology.35 And this is part of the reason why, as Pope, he does
not think that the mere permanence of structures is sufficient:
If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man’s freedom would be denied, and
hence they would not be good structures at all. What this means is that
every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for
the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed.36

And this is precisely the task that Nova et Vetera has engaged. And this is
simply the structure of that tradition, which was at the very heart of Journet’s understanding and which is summarized by Vatican II: “This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the
help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the
realities and the words which have been handed down.”37
A United Spiritual Approach
Some see a contrast between Journet and Maritain, a difference in their
Thomisms, in their views on the Church, and in their political “openness.” This is wrong in several ways. On the one hand, nothing is less
Catholic than to separate elements of Catholicism.The Definitions of the
first issue insist on that:
34 See Joseph Ratzinger, Discorso in apertura del Simposio, in Il primato del succes-

sore di Pietro, Atti del Symposio teologico, Roma, dicembre 1996, “Atti e Documenti” 7 (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998), 17–18: “Indubbiamente è
vero che la storia come tale non può fornire una certezza apodittica della verità
di fede. . . . La collaborazione tra storia e teologia può essere fruttuosa se l’accrescimento della conoscenza dei dati storici (ed esegetici, con riferimento alla
Bibbia), porterà ad una visione teologica approfondita del Primato Romano e
della funzione ecclesiologica, che aiuti a distinguere sempre meglio ciò che è
necessario e irrinunciabile e ciò che è accidentale o non essenziale alla verità di
fede. D’altra parte tale collaborazione esige che la questione della valutazione
dottrinale dei dati storici sia fatta alla luce della Tradizione, come luogo e criterio della coscienza veritativa della fede ecclesiale.”
35 See Joseph Ratzinger, “Hinweise zum Motu proprio ‘Ad tuendam fidem’ und
zum ‘Lehrmäßigen Kommentar’ der Glaubenskongregation,” in Gott—Ratlos vor
dem Bösen?, ed. Wolfgang Beinert (Freiburg: Herder, 1999), 226: “Das Wachsen
des historischen Bewußtseins in der Neuzeit hat langsam zur Scheidung zwischen fides divina und fides catholica oder ecclesiastica geführt.”
36 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, §§24–25.
37 Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, §8.

Charles Morerod, O.P.

22

[W]e should also recognize the natural tendency in each one of us,
when confronted by our opponents, to diminish or divide the truth
which is entrusted to the Church, a truth that remains far above us
because it is divine. . . . Here Chesterton converges with Pascal: ‘There
is thus a great number of truths of both faith and morals which appear
to be repugnant but which exist in a most admirable order.The source
of every heresy is the exclusion of one of these truths. . . .This is why
the best way to hinder heresies is to instruct in all the truths.’ . . . It is
indeed most difficult to enumerate all the aspects of our Catholic richness. We do an injustice to the Church and we divide her soul each
time we separate her complementary aspects.38

The Church Catholic keeps together past and present—Nova et
Vetera—but also simultaneous truths that heresies keep separate.The social
aspects of charity are not less Catholic than doctrine or than the mystical
aspects of charity: to be Catholic means to keep all of that in unity. For
instance, the social approach must be related to holiness, as Journet says—
quoting Maritain:“A social renewal that is vitally Christian will be a work
of holiness, or it will not be.”39 It is striking to see that Journet says the
same about theology as such:“For the science of theology, that the root be
alive holiness is required, or at least the state of grace.”40
Everything comes from God, and we go back to our Creator: this is
the structure of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. Therefore, “naturally,” as
Maritain said in 1938, “Catholic action proceeds from contemplation.
Only under such a condition is it Catholic action.”41 And as Journet
himself wrote in 1943: “On the road that faith opens through concepts,
love makes faith go further than concepts.”42
38 “Définitions” (Nova et Vetera [1926]), as translated in the English Edition 1

(2003): 6.
39 “Une rénovation sociale vitalement chrétienne sera œuvre de sainteté ou ne sera

pas” (Charles Journet, Exigences chrétiennes en politique, 2nd ed. [Saint-Maurice:
Editions Saint-Augustin, 1990], 278).
40 “Pour la science de la théologie, pour que la racine soit vivace, il faut la sainteté,
l’état de grâce au moins” (Charles Journet, Les dons du Saint-Esprit, unpublished
retreat [Fondation Cardinal Journet, 1941], 65). I found this quote in Fr. Nicolas Glasson’s doctoral thesis, defended at the University of Fribourg in 2009 and
not yet published.
41 “L’action catholique suppose la contemplation, elle n’est action catholique qu’à
cette condition” ( Jacques Maritain,“Action catholique et action politique,” Nova
et Vetera [1938]: 254).
42 “Sur la route que la foi ouvre par les concepts, l’amour fait aller la foi plus loin que
les concepts” (Charles Journet, Connaissance et inconnaissance de Dieu [Fribourg:
Editions de la Librairie de l’Université, 1943], 109).

The Identity of Nova et Vetera

23

Somehow related to contemplation is poetry, and art generally speaking. Between 1926 and 1928, Nova et Vetera published eight poems or
groups of poems and about forty-eight works of art or articles related to
artistic works. Contemplation can lead to a poetic way of expression,
which is higher than the common way of speaking, as in St. John of the
Cross.43 As Raïssa Maritain explained in one of her articles on poetry
and mysticism published in Nova et Vetera, even poetry written by an
atheist is religious.44 Even philosophy is related to mysticism. As Fr.
Cottier said in Nova et Vetera in 2001, “A mystical impulse animates any
philosophy.”45 What unites all these fields is the spiritual dimension.
Conclusion
Nova et Vetera was founded by the future Cardinal Charles Journet as a
theological and cultural help to the French-speaking Swiss Catholics of
the 1920s. The purpose was to show them that they could be happy to
be Catholics in a culture dominated by aggressive Protestant and secular
views. For this reason, the accent was often on the meaning of the
Church as such, but the extension of Catholic life into all fields—for
instance, into artistic dimensions—was also accented.
The basic convictions of the periodical remained when it became
more clearly international. They are summarized in the name Nova et
Vetera : new and old go together.To prefer the new or the old as a matter
of principle is a mistake.Therefore the periodical expresses the unchanging certainties received from divine Revelation, taking into consideration
both the changing aspects of history and the deepening of permanent
faith.This is typically expressed by Journet—and Maritain—in the social
field: human societies are always incomplete, but we understand them
thanks to evangelical principles and we act in them because we love the
human beings God loves.
Nova et Vetera is Catholic: all elements of Christian faith and life must
be taken together. The way to hold them together is spiritual. Contemplation—even holiness—is the only really sufficient root of theology, and
of philosophy, and of social action. . . . Everything holds together because
everything is in God’s hands.At the same time, the fruit of contemplation
is expressed in history, which plays a role.The identity of Nova et Vetera is
constantly influenced by the circumstances of its foundation and by the
personality of its real founders: Charles Journet and—because of their
43 See Charles Journet, Introduction à la théologie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1947), 29.
44 See Raïssa Maritain, “Sens et non-sens en poésie,” Nova et Vetera (1937): 279.
45 “Un élan mystique anime toute philosophie” (Georges Cottier, O.P., “Méta-

physique et mystique,” Nova et Vetera [2001]: 12).

Charles Morerod, O.P.

24

permanent friendship—Jacques Maritain (who was not a founder, but
wrote more than sixty articles for the periodical).46 What Journet and
Maritain had in common was joy in being Catholic and Thomist, together
with the acute consciousness of the cultural difficulty of being so. Journet
grew up in the difficult context of Geneva. Maritain converted. The
second Director of Nova et Vetera, Fr. Cottier, also grew up in Geneva, and
he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Marx’s atheism.47
This line of Thomists conscious of the cultural and religious obstacles
to Catholicism is perfectly continued in the English edition. It is not
surprising to see it in the hands of two converts from different trends of
Protestantism—Matthew Levering and Reinhard Hütter—who both
find significant value in an open minded and spiritual reading of St.
Thomas Aquinas. This also reflects the initial program of Nova et Vetera,
which is first of all interior, but has its eyes open and can receive even
from opponents:
Our task is not to mold physical and moveable realities in a purely
outward manner. Rather, our task consists in an interior act, in molding our minds according to a spiritual and immovable reality.We do not
seek to update or remake the truth.Truth is neither made nor updated.
It is discovered, it is understood and believed, it spreads without deterioration, and it reaches out. Faith of an intellectual sort is not a
modernization but an actuation and contemplation of the mind, and a
progress towards doctrine, that is to say, an interior, homogenous and
organic growth of a spiritual heritage. . . . One of the mysterious applications of this principle is how it allows us to understand the way in
which we can benefit from the errors of our opponents even if our
opponents are of marked intelligence and good faith. Their errors,
which usually stem from an ignorance of one or more Catholic truths
and which we have been able to keep from calling to mind, prevent us
from falling asleep, oportet haereses esse.48

Catholics do not change the faith, but they do understand it better
through the process of explaining it.Therefore, a situation in which faith
is not presumed can be an opportunity. The situations of Catholics in
Geneva in 1926 and Catholics in the United States in 2010 are rather
similar, and divine Providence produces similar fruits in each case. Not by
chance, many articles published in the English edition treat of points
46 Journet published about 250 articles in Nova et Vetera during his lifetime (some

articles were published after his death).
47 Georges Cottier, L’athéisme du jeune Marx. Ses origines hégéliennes (Paris: Vrin, 1959).
48 “Définitions” (Nova et Vetera [1926]), as translated in the English Edition 1 (2003):

4.

The Identity of Nova et Vetera

25

where Catholicity is under attack: the Church, the sacraments, moral
issues . . .The continuity between the French and the English editions is
not first of all material (the same title); it comes from a like interior reaction (which is the main element, coming from divine love) to similar
N&V
external circumstances (which provide an opportunity).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 27–47

27

Bible versus Theology: Is “Theological
Interpretation” the Answer?
M ARKUS B OCKMUEHL
University of Oxford
Oxford, England

T HIS BRIEF study concerns a classic problem that continues to be
one of the most vital and consequential theological questions for today.
Can we say to what extent Scripture and Christian doctrine are or should
be normatively related? Are they largely or entirely independent, is one
dependent on the other, or is there some sort of interdependence?
After laying out the two main alternative views, we shall find that only
the second offers fruitful scope for discussion. Even here, however, there are
some impossible polarities, and in the quest for a mediating position I
propose to examine a couple of widely noted recent proposals for “Theological Interpretation” as a springboard for some concluding observations
of my own.
Scripture and Doctrine: Two Alternative Views
The first alternative argues there can be no meaningful relationship
between biblical scholarship and Christian theology.This has long enjoyed
the status of a default position: it has diverse, if not necessarily compatible,
support among biblical scholars and dogmatic theologians alike.
• Mainstream biblical scholars still very widely take the view that all
responsible study of the Bible is critical, and all critical study of the
Bible is, at least to an important extent, historical. Proper historical
study of the Bible, however, must be concerned first and last with
genetic questions of the origin of texts, and not with the theological or devotional use to which they were later put. On this view,
historical study must distinguish clearly between what things meant

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Markus Bockmuehl

and what they came to mean, let alone what they might mean today.
Some would continue to construe biblical scholarship as “the task of
removing from an original painting the work of later hands”—as
one recently deceased Oxford don liked to put it, apparently without a hint of irony or self-doubt.1 Such historical study, especially as
aided by cultural anthropology, soon reveals that the biblical authors
speak out of and into a world that is vastly different from our own,
and which therefore can have little of relevance to say to our situation.The biblical authors are, as Bruce Malina influentially expresses
this widely held view, “a group of foreigners somehow dropped in
our midst.”2 Most of all, however, historical study must on this reading refrain assiduously from questions of Christian doctrine or
belief, which are the result of a long and complex process of much
later ecclesiastical reception and imposition.3 We must subscribe to
the axiomatic otherness and insurmountable cultural alienation of
first-century authors from their twenty-first-century readers.
• Systematic theologians who hold this two-track view appear to be
concerned with a different set of considerations. Theology from this
angle may be regarded as above all philosophical—and not textual or
historical. This is the flip side of Lessing’s concern that contingent
historical facts cannot underwrite eternal truths.The Bible, by contrast,
looks philosophically inarticulate and trapped in a cultural and historical particularism of often tedious banality. Aristotle, Plato, or for that
matter medieval and modern philosophers yield far more of substance.
Scripture also does not offer careful doctrinal articulations, but is a
record of conflicting interpretations: here too the creeds and leading
patristic thinkers are seen as far more rewarding in this respect.What is
more, this view that the Bible has little of interest to contribute seems
to systematicians perversely to find confirmation in the work of biblical scholarship itself, whose results typically reinforce the impression of
1 Cited with apparent approval in his obituary in London’s Daily Telegraph (Anony-

mous 2009), which includes the equally quaint advice that J. C. Fenton’s 1963
Penguin paperback remains, half a century later, the best (non-specialist) introduction to Matthew.
2 Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3d ed.
(Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 24 (on which cf. more generally my remarks in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, no. 2002.04.19: ccat.sas.upenn.edu/
bmcr/2002/02-04-19.html).
3 It is worth noting en passant Robert Jenson’s insistence that this point, like the
previous one, instantiates classic biblical scholarship’s fundamentally sectarian
view of ecclesiology. See Robert Jenson, “The Religious Power of Scripture,”
Scottish Journal of Theology 52 (1999): 89–105.

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

29

philosophical and theological triviality.And of course there is the more
pragmatic professional reality for many theologians: given what the
biblical colleague down the hall gets up to, one finds a certain happy
economy in a clear division of labour, which allows one to concede
without apparent detriment to one’s own work that the Bible is indeed
the literature of ancient Mediterranean tribes belonging to a culture
wholly alien to ours. In other words, it is philosophically, morally,
and theologically uninteresting for contemporary purposes—except
perhaps in certain aesthetic or poetic ways that are readily accessible
apart from the biblical critics’ soul-crushingly banal esotericism.
So much for the view that the Bible and doctrine, like history and
revelation, can have no formal connection. It is an intellectually defensible and in its own way convenient and tidy division of labor.
The main alternative to this first option emerges among those who
insist au contraire that there is, or at least there ought to be, some sort of
relationship between Bible and Christian doctrine, however imbalanced
that may turn out in practice. It is this more constructive argument on
which we will concentrate for purposes of the present study. Most of
those who support this view would self-identify as practicing believers
(whatever their professional affiliation), although from time to time even
a post-Christian or atheist writer may unexpectedly slip in a quasihomiletical appeal to some perceived moral quality in the text.4
Potentially rather more interesting than semi- or post-confessional
contributions are those from interfaith participants in discussion of the
Christian Scripture. Jewish readers may, for example, insist on the religious force of Jesus’ Jewishness, or Muslim ones press for clarification of
some of the more casual expressions of Christian Trinitarian language.
Both kinds of intervention, we must note, offer theologically engaged
voices whom Christians ignore at their peril.
To be sure, this still leaves the vast majority of advocates for some sort of
logical correlation of Scripture and doctrine speaking from a position
within the Church. Robert Jenson rightly argues that in fact the Bible can
be the Bible only in the Church’s reading of it: outside that context, Scripture appears to bear little compelling interest, force, or consequence.5 It is a
4 Surprising quasi-pastoral, moralizing asides are offered e.g. in Bart Ehrman, Peter,

Paul, and Mary Magdalene:The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
5 Robert Jenson, “The Religious Power of Scripture,” 89–105. For more on this,
cf. idem, “Scripture’s Authority in the Church,” in The Art of Reading Scripture,
ed. E. F. Davis and R. B. Hays (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 28–37.

30

Markus Bockmuehl

matter of historical record and inescapable historical significance that, if it
were not for this liturgical, churchly Sitz im Leben in living communities of
faith, we would not have these documents before us at all—except perhaps for a
few scraps of papyrus from a dump somewhere in Egypt.
From a Christian vantage point the relationship between Bible and
doctrine is therefore usually, and quite rightly, a matter of interdependence. In practice one finds a strong preponderance of positions that give
priority to one or the other—an imbalance that may be defensible in that
it is not easy to see what exactly it might mean to conceive of the relationship as “equal.”
Here we may articulate two deliberately caricatured theses that in my
view can help to identify poles of opinion between which much of the
discussion is situated:
1. Doctrine trumps the Bible. The idea that the senior partner in
the relationship is theology takes two seemingly very different but
epistemologically cognate forms.
a. The Church preceded, wrote, and “owns” the Bible. This
position is often characteristic of a particular sort of conservative
Orthodox and (especially pre-Vatican II) Roman Catholic theology. Some would add that the Church’s tradition is the voice of
the Holy Spirit through which he leads us into all truth—including truth not revealed in the Bible. Although (or because) it still
exerts a degree of “official” ecclesial influence, the thesis in this
form has been less well represented in scholarly debate about
“Scripture and theology.”
b. The Church may indeed “own” the Bible but today no
longer needs it for normative theology and ethics. We
receive new revelation through reason (science) and experience,
and in the modern world the Bible can be only one facet of what
makes for authoritative appropriation of Christian teaching and
praxis. This secular, critical articulation of the thesis arguably
remains the default position in leading university departments and
in seminary faculties representing what survives of the formerly
“mainline,” historic Protestant denominations. It shares important
features with classic nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal
(including “liberal catholic”) positions, offering a paradigm of
ready engagement with the philosophical, scientific, and cultural
challenges of the contemporary world. While my own loyalties
admittedly lie elsewhere, I will suggest in a moment that this

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

31

broadly influential contemporary view could nevertheless usefully
contribute to one of the twin foci of an ellipse around which the
answer to our question might be sought and debated.6
2. The Bible trumps doctrine. The second thesis is in practice equally
varied, but in its pure form is perhaps most characteristic of Protestant
groups of either Pentecostal or pietistic inclination. In these circles the
tradition of the established churches may be perceived as unnecessary,
arcane, dead, humanly invented, authoritarian, etc.—in other words, as
the imposition of alien constructs on a biblical text that speaks for itself.
The assumption here is often that the reader has direct individual
access to the text and its meaning, unmediated by any rule of faith.
That view can appear in pietistic or charismatic forms, but also in more
Barthian ones. It is perhaps no accident that its basically anthropocentric hermeneutical reliance on the experientially (or sometimes
exegetically) expert interpreter of the Bible shows key epistemological
analogies with the supposedly more critical (scientifically or experientially expert) position just described in 1(b) above. In practice, even
the sola Scriptura claim is typically buttressed by more articulate ideological frameworks, which may operate implicitly through the authority of particular groups or their leadership, or explicitly through
confessional statements of faith or catechisms.7
The critical and theological weaknesses of this second thesis are all
too apparent.And yet no serious analysis today can bypass the fact that
6 It is difficult to resist pondering certain links with a critique offered long ago by

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.8.1. He too engaged with a Christian group who
believed that cultural progress since the New Testament era meant that we have
left behind some of its primitive Jewish cultural presuppositions and now have a
rather more advanced understanding of key moral and spiritual issues than the
apostles did. We might call this the “as we now know” phenomenon. Irenaeus
compared such culturally relativizing detachment of the Bible from the apostolic
Rule of Faith to someone dismantling the beautiful mosaic of a king and reassembling it in the form of a dog or fox. Without the key to the mosaic its
meaning is lost. By no means all contemporary manifestations of the “theology
trumps Bible” position are of this form; but the analogy seems salutary nonetheless, and worth pondering.
7 It is often Christian groups with the fiercest anti-traditional rhetoric who appear
most imprisoned in the steely grip of what looks uncannily like authoritarian
tradition in all but name. It seems almost a rule of thumb that individuals and
societies are most prone to that which they are most determined to repress. A
cognate twenty-first-century example in secular Europe is the insinuating force
of quasi-religious fundamentalisms that go unchallenged precisely where the
church’s voice is most insistently stifled in the public square. It is not hard to
think of North American analogies.

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Markus Bockmuehl

this view of the Bible’s superiority over creedal theology represents a
far greater proportion of world Christianity, perhaps easily by a factor
of 10 to 1 or more, than the “liberal” form of the first one (1b), which
to many Western scholars may still seem intellectually more familiar
and perhaps politically and socially more comfortable. The kingdom
of God is not of course a democracy; nevertheless, I wonder if the
intellectual condescension or even derision in which many academic
circles hold supposedly “biblicist” views is in fact deeply out of step
with the twenty-first century’s global Christian reality.What St. Paul
calls “rightly judging the Body” (1 Cor 11:29) would seem to require
an urgent re-appraisal and appropriation of a spirit of humility from
educated Western brokers of church and academy. Although they still
disproportionately control the key institutional, professional, and
publishing organs, academics from the formerly mainline denominations urgently need to recognize that in practical terms their theological constituencies have largely disappeared and been replaced by
others, who are both more vital and more numerous.
3. New directions? In the midst of these stark alternatives, then, I
suggest we may most effectively safeguard the possibility of intellectually and ecclesially serious debate about the Bible and theology by
seeking fresh parameters of discussion. Drawing on the tension
between our two theses above, these parameters may usefully be
understood as an ellipse defined between two foci, neither of which
will by itself suffice to grant access to the truth. In its pure or undiluted form, neither of the two foci will command consent or prove
compatible with the other; indeed they may be thought mutually
exclusive like opposing electrical poles. Between them, however, is
defined an electrical field in which serious interchange and engagement may well prove fruitful.
a. The first of these two foci comprises variations of what one might
broadly call the “liberal” position. Here the Bible may be read
liturgically, but its interpretation is subject to notions of critical or
historical reason, personal or cultural experience, perhaps together
with an account, sometimes more and sometimes less defensible,
of “tradition.”
b. The other focus of the ellipse is constituted by various forms of
credal realism or positivism. On this side of the ellipse prevails a
relatively sanguine understanding of divine revelation and Scripture’s role in it. Here, critical questions of context and criticism
may matter too. But the Bible, properly exegeted in relation to the

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

33

Rule of Faith, speaks clearly and directly on matters of importance; and what it is heard to say to the Church remains Word of
God in Christ for today. This discourse is assumed to operate in
either an unmediated or a very straightforwardly mediated form.
Is “Theological Interpretation” the Answer?
These, roughly speaking, seem to be among the key points of reference
in the current debate about the Bible’s role in theology. I would like in
the remainder of this study to relate this discussion to its instantiation in
the recently popular phenomenon known as “Theological Interpretation,” which some have seen as providing an important new modus vivendi
for the relationship between biblical studies and Christian theology. It is
not necessarily the only or even the most promising discussion in this
area, but I believe it does helpfully focus for us some of the crucial issues
for debate: if it is granted that any theologically serious context will
require some constructive account of the encounter between dogmatics
and critical reason, between revelation and history, then what should
theological interpretation look like?
Recent years have seen in parts of biblical scholarship an encouraging
trend toward renewed openness to certain lost dimensions of interpretation. There are signs of a rediscovery of the sorts of self-involving
connections between the biblical texts and their theological object that
were once common currency throughout the world of Christian (or for
that matter Jewish) biblical study, but which during the period of
modernist biblical criticism were frowned upon and virtually wiped out
from serious scholarly discourse.
Excursus: Benjamin Jowett and the Background
of Anti-theological Criticism
Since first-hand experience of that period is not today universally shared
by those whose formation has been in more overtly confessional
contexts, it may be helpful briefly to illustrate this point by rehearsing an
influential (but dated, and therefore hopefully uncontroversial!) example
from the history of my own institution. A good reminder of the obstacles still facing this discussion is the case of Benjamin Jowett
(1817–1893), one of Oxford’s leading and enthusiastic early adopters of
the new German higher criticism. Raised in an evangelical family, he
articulated views about the Christian heritage of biblical interpretation
that have remained widespread among university-based interpreters to
this very day:

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Markus Bockmuehl
The Early Fathers, the Roman Catholic mystical writers, the Swiss and
German Reformers, the Nonconformist divines, have qualities for
which we look in vain among ourselves; they throw an intensity of
light upon the page of Scripture which we nowhere find in modern
commentaries. But it is not the light of interpretation.They have a faith
which seems indeed to have grown dim nowadays, but that faith is not
drawn from the study of Scripture; it is the element in which their own
mind moves which overflows on the meaning of the text.The words of
Scripture suggest to them their own thoughts or feelings.

Jowett by contrast commended instead the notorious critical principle to
“Interpret the Scripture like any other book,” which was widely
drummed into students until not so long ago: it was still unselfconsciously affirmed when I began my doctoral studies, and perhaps in some
places it may still be believed.8 Related to this principle was Jowett’s
insistence that Scripture has only “one meaning—the meaning which it
had in the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote,
to the hearers or readers who first received it.”9 For this reason “the true
use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation”: even the commentators, properly understood, add nothing of consequence to what we can
discover from the Greek text—at best they offer “either conjecture, or
very slight topographical or chronological illustration.”10
A man unwaveringly sustained by the courage of his own convictions,
Jowett was said once to have quipped, “Even the youngest among us is
not infallible.” Even this insight, however, failed to cast doubt on his own
sense that there was nothing his ancient and medieval predecessors could
teach him about the meaning of Scripture; nor did it lead him to suspect
that his own nineteenth-century mind might likewise “overflow on the
meaning of the text” in such a way that his brand of biblical criticism
made plausible to him his own Victorian thoughts or feelings.
This superior mindset of self-subsistently critical splendor, which until
fairly recently ruled the organs of the biblical guild unchallenged, still
persists in some places despite the lip-service now widely paid to the
contextual and perspectival nature of all our knowing. By contrast, even
for many Protestant interpreters David Steinmetz’s famous article in 1980,
8 Benjamin Jowett,“On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in Essays and Reviews, 7th

ed. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, 1861), 330–433, here cited
from Alister McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001), 601.
9 Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” 378; in McGrath, The Christian
Theology Reader, 602.
10 Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” 384; in McGrath, The Christian
Theology Reader, 605.

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

35

“The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” sounded a clarion call for a
more properly historical awareness of the context of interpretation.11
Along with the work of Brevard Childs and others, there gradually came
about a sea change in the discussion—even if it still remains somewhat
unclear exactly what is emerging instead.
Recent years, then, have indeed witnessed an influential and broadly
based body of theological scholarship in which the Bible’s importance and
even “authority” is affirmed—and yet found to be in need of articulation in
the creedal terms of a catholic “rule of faith.” On the one hand, scholars in
this area tend to agree that the Bible is properly understood only in the
context of such a rule of faith—given that many of the most serious and
worthwhile heretics throughout the ages have been biblicists. On the other
hand, many would insist that this cannot be a one-way relationship: however
unlikely or theoretical it may seem, the force of the biblical witness must in
principle be capable of “pushing back” against ancillary doctrinal formulations, however well-meaning or appropriately formulated. The Church
receives and recognizes and teaches the canon of Holy Scripture; but the
Church in both its unity and its diversity is constituted by and in response
to the Word of God—rather than the other way round.12 Some of today’s
most promising debates on Scripture and theology are taking place in relation to these topics, involving both Protestants and Catholics.
In the midst of this general development, the beginning of the twentyfirst century has witnessed the rise of a more particular trend in biblical
scholarship that is self-consciously styled as “Theological Interpretation.”
These initiatives are now busy servicing a monograph series, a new journal with a further monograph series in tow, a major dictionary, two or
three commentary series,13 several degree programs, as well as unnumbered papers and seminars on the international conference and lecture
circuit. As a topical point of reference in the present debate about Scripture and doctrine, this phenomenon seems an appropriate point of reference for the present discussion.14
11 David Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” Theology Today 5

(1990): 27–38.
12 Cf. e.g. John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2003), 44–47 and passim.
13 Brazos, Church’s Bible, Ancient Christian Commentary,Two Horizons, etc.
14 Here it is worth stating from the outset that, as a sympathetic reader and occa-

sional endorser of publications in this sector, I offer the following remarks necessarily as a balance both of critique and of self-critique.A few years ago I published
a book that appeared as the first volume in a series entitled Studies in Theological Interpretation (see my volume, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study
[Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006]).The history of that title is, however,

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Markus Bockmuehl

Here I wish to highlight just two of the most obvious and high-profile
contributions of recent years: Kevin Vanhoozer’s introduction to the
Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible and Daniel Treier’s manifesto volume Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture. While I
propose to ask critical questions of both and to some extent play devil’s
advocate in seeking to tease out the essence of this project, in what
follows I would ask to be granted the presumption that I am a generally
sympathetic observer with no hostile axe to grind.15
The Dictionary of Theological Interpretation
Kevin Vanhoozer begins by conceding that it is easier to define what theological interpretation is not than to say what it is. He stresses the need to
overcome the separation between exegesis and theology in both modern
and postmodern biblical interpretation. In a section promisingly entitled
“What Is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?” we arrive at the statement “The theological interpretation of the Bible is characterized by a
governing interest in God, the word and works of God, and by a governing intention to engage in what we might call ‘theological criticism’ ”
(22).Theological interpreters, we learn, want “to hear the word of God in
Scripture and hence to be transformed by the renewing of their minds”
(22). This is an edifying thought, but what does it mean for the task of
interpretation? Among other things, it appears to mean that “theological
criticism” seeks “to do justice to the priority of God.”The aim is not to
impose an ideology but to uncover the Bible’s own “original governing
interest.” Such interpretation may indeed make critical use of a range of
existing critical tools, methods, and approaches, but its aim is to illumine
the text rather than what is “behind it” (what actually happened) or
“before it” (an interpretative community’s ideological concerns).
I am largely sympathetic to what Vanhoozer affirms, and on that basis
was happy to write a dustjacket endorsement of his project.Yet I also find
a little more complex than it might appear: I signed a contract for the book before
the series was conceived, and agreed after the fact that it might usefully form part
of it. What I did not realize until later, however, was that the term “Theological
Interpretation” would so rapidly develop into a technical term—let alone, as some
have begun to suggest, a new “movement.”
15 My selection here is inevitably somewhat arbitrary; other formative items could
have been included. Thus the journal Ex Auditu has been claiming the label of
“theological interpretation” for almost twenty-five years, while the Brazos
commentary series is among the more recent high-profile contributions. For
good or ill, Ex Auditu does not feature here, and I have commented on the
commentary series elsewhere: see “Ruminative Overlay: Matthew’s Hauerwas,”
Pro Ecclesia 17 (2008): 20–28.

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

37

myself more critically engaged by what he denies. In particular, it is not
clear why concern for the priority of God should bypass an interest in
what happened historically—or the extent to which readerly motivations
may affect our understanding. Nevertheless, we are told, only this sort of
theological interpretation “ultimately does justice to the subject matter of
the text itself.”16 That seems a surprisingly tall claim for those who set
sail under this particular flag.
A more apposite and defensible conviction, no doubt, is that “to read the
biblical texts theologically is to read the texts as they wish to be read.”There
is more than one way to pursue this sort of reading, as Vanhoozer concedes.
But among the leading commitments are, for him, a stress on divine
discourse, on the final form of the text read “intratextually” (with appeal to
George Lindbeck), and on its Spirit-led reception as Scripture in the believing community today. All three emphases have in recent years rightly
returned to prominence.Yet I am struck by the extent to which all three
appear to highlight hermeneutical preoccupations rather than what one might
wish to identify as more traditional interpretative concerns involving historical, linguistic, and exegetical pursuits. Is not the biblical divine discourse, like
most of its history of interpretation, inalienably engaged with the extratextual
connections between faith and the world we inhabit? It is that world of
history and experience, after all, which is the only world of God’s redeeming. If so,“doing justice” to the texts, even theologically and ecclesially, may
involve rather more critical homework than is encompassed by these three
supposedly dominant commitments. Self-styled “theological” approaches
that favor narrative or literary questions often assume they can achieve their
aims without needing to engage critical questions about the text and its
history (let alone in conversation with fellow interpreters writing in ancient
or modern languages other than their own). Disregard of history does not
characterize the Dictionary as a whole. Even so, it seems right to ask:What it
is that makes an interpretation theological, and what makes it either a good
or a bad theological interpretation?
Vanhoozer concludes that “Theological interpretation of the Bible . . .
is biblical interpretation oriented to the knowledge of God.” In principle
there can be no quibble here for the believing exegete—and perhaps
indeed for any interpreter prepared to take seriously the implied readership of the biblical text. But it does seem that Vanhoozer goes further, in
that he comes close to seeing theological interpretation as strictly an inhouse exercise. It can be achieved only by practitioners of the theological
16 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Introduction: What Is Theological Interpretation of the

Bible?” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic, 2005), 23.

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virtues,“when readers enter into the world of the biblical texts with faith,
hope and love” (24).That seems a reasonable and appropriate proposal for
ecclesial communities of interpretation; but is biblical interpretation
therefore closed to meaningful input from religious outsiders, or even
from anyone with a different conception of how God speaks through the
text? Why should not biblical interpretation “oriented to the knowledge
of God” be something to which interpreters of other faiths, or sometimes
even of no faith, may contribute, however modestly?
Another question concerns the focus of what is included or excluded
methodologically.Vanhoozer writes: “The principal thrust of theological
interpretation is to direct the interpreter’s attention to the subject matter
of Scripture—God, the acts of God in history, the gospel—rather than to
a particular theological tradition or, for that matter, to some other topic
(e.g. the history of the text’s composition, the secular history “behind”
the text, the structure of the text, etc.)” (24, italics mine).Although keenly
sympathetic to this respect for the object of the text, I am left wondering
if those acts of God in history can be separated quite so neatly, and without loss of meaning, from the history of their inscripturation or the wider
historical setting in which they occurred.17
We will have occasion return to some of these questions below.There
is certainly wholesome and meaty fare here, but also perhaps occasion to
wonder if this celebrated Dictionary really offers a sufficiently robust and
convertible currency of what theological interpretation is or practically
does. Nor can the articles following Vanhoozer’s introduction consistently
be said to exemplify the editor’s principles.This is not to deny that some
are excellent. But a good many arguably offer little more than a theologically conservative account of certain familiar topics of hermeneutics and
biblical theology. Even in the book-by-book surveys of biblical articles
extracted and re-published in two separate volumes, only a small minority of articles engage directly with the term “theological interpretation”
at all. Few of those that do offer conceptual analysis or exegetical development; indeed, some contributors appear to run merrily against most of
Vanhoozer’s guiding principles.18
17 In this respect, other recent formulations seem better apprised of the necessary

historical dimensions of the scriptural witness; one thinks for instance of the
Series Preface to the Studies in Theological Interpretation (Baker Academic;
printed e.g. in Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 7–8), although its brevity also permits
less methodological clarity.
18 John Rogerson’s advocacy, in his “Liberal Biblical Interpretation,” is only one of
the more obvious examples. Vanhoozer’s subsequent two-volume Theological
Interpretation survey of each book of the Bible, at 570 pages in total, is in fact a
reprint of the relevant articles of the Dictionary, providing no new authorial or

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

39

A good deal more could be said of these matters, and Vanhoozer himself
of course has offered much fuller accounts of his approach elsewhere.19 One
of the lingering analytical problems this account raises for its reader is a
generally nebulous sense of what exactly we are talking about. Some of
those who are now among the key explicit advocates of Theological Interpretation did not use that terminology at all even in their relatively recent
prior work on related topics.20 Conversely, a number of writers whom one
might have considered sympathetic to this exercise do not employ the
terminology—for example, Matthew Levering recently presented a very
illuminating theology of biblical interpretation, but he used the terminology of “theological interpretation” only when citing others.21 More confusing still, one finds several leading exponents of Theological Interpretation
raked over the coals in the Journal of that name for interpreting Scripture in
ways that the writer deems “modernist” and insufficiently “theological.”22
editorial content. Theological Interpretation of the Old Testament: A Book-by-Book
Survey, ed. Kevin J.Vanhoozer, Craig G. Bartholomew, and Daniel J.Treier (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008). Theological Interpretation of the New Testament:
A Book-by-Book Survey, ed. Kevin J.Vanhoozer, Daniel J.Treier, and N.T.Wright
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008).
19 E.g.Vanhoozer, Is There Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998); First Theology:
God, Scripture, and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002); The
Drama of Doctrine:A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville,
KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 2005); see also the substantive critical appraisal
of Vanhoozer (and Fowl) on theological interpretation in Christopher D. Spinks,
The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning: Debates on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (London:T & T Clark, 2007).
20 Joel B. Green, for example, the founding editor of the eponymous new Journal of
Theological Interpretation, stresses the need for this approach in his opening editorial
and other recent publications in this area. See e.g. Green,“The Bible,Theology, and
Theological Interpretation,” SBL Forum (2004), n.p. Online at sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=308; Green,“Introducing the Journal of Theological Interpretation,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 1 (2007): i–ii; Green, Seized by Truth:
Reading the Bible as Scripture (Nashville,TN: Abingdon Press, 2007). But I can find
no reference to the term in Green’s impressively wide-ranging edited volume
Hearing the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), and the only
apparent use of the phrase in his co-authored New Testament introduction of 2001
denotes an activity of the gospel writers themselves. See Paul Achtemeier, Joel B.
Green, and Marianne Meye Thompson, Introducing the New Testament: Its Literature
and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).
21 Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation. Reading the Scriptures (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2008), 188, 190, 213, 218, 234, 240, 254, 256, etc.
22 Steven J. Koskie,“Seeking Comment:The Commentary and the Bible as Christian Scripture,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 1 (2007): 243–44, 246, and

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Daniel Treier’s Introducing Theological Interpretation
A greater hope for clarity emerges in what is undoubtedly the fullest
account to date of Theological Interpretation as a self-consciously identified school of thought: Daniel Treier’s Introducing Theological Interpretation. His work has been warmly endorsed by Joel Green, Stephen Fowl,
and others; and it provides perhaps the fullest survey to date of the major
recent writers in the general area.
Treier offers a valuable guide to the body of scholarship revolving
around the rekindled relationship between biblical study and theology.This
is a concern many of us share, and in trying to see the forest for the trees
we need all the help we can get. In this book and a related recent article in
the Scottish Journal of Theology,23 I found particularly encouraging the
explicit engagement with reader-related issues of the global church and
also with the “Biblical Theology” movement as a previous generation’s
attempt to read the Bible theologically.Treier puts his finger on some key
neuralgic points that have sometimes been neglected in the discussion,
even if his account of these and other matters tends perhaps to major on
description and analytical annotation rather than on constructive synthesis.
Here is not the place to offer a review, but two critical observations seem
particularly pertinent for the wider issues here under discussion.
First,Treier’s picture shares with Vanhoozer’s Dictionary project the flavor
of a highly hermeneuticized undertaking—deliberately and primarily
second-order in nature. For a project that bears “Theological Interpretation
of Scripture” in its title, it is disappointing how little Scripture is in fact interpreted, even in case studies.The Scripture index of this two-hundred-page
book seems remarkably bare, amounting as it does to eighteen references
to the Old Testament and twenty-three to the New.Aside from a recurring
stress on the imago Dei theme in Genesis 1:26–27, these index entries tend
to offer passing citations, often of whole chapters, rather than any specific
exegetical engagement. (Treier’s book cover illustration features a seventeenth-century Swedish painting entitled Young Man Reading by Candle
Light. I was struck by that title’s intransitive participle and lack of an object:
to what extent does self-styled Theological Interpretation concern the fact
and manner of that act of reading, at least as much as what is in fact read?)24
passim—in relation to commentaries by Stephen Fowl, Marianne Meye Thompson, and Jaroslav Pelikan.
23 “Biblical Theology and/or Theological Interpretation of Scripture?” Scottish Journal of Theology 61 (2008): 16–31.
24 Reviewing Christopher D. Spinks’s The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning: Debates on
the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (London:T & T Clark, 2007), R.W. Moberly
similarly observes (in Journal of Theological Studies 59 [2008]: 710–12, at 711),

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

41

A second feature of Treier’s account arises from his welcome clarification of what exactly is meant by the heading “Theological Interpretation.”
One might have thought of this term as a strictly functional descriptor of
diverse ways of engaging with the Bible theologically. (That was my own
assumption when I first encountered the term spelled with capital letters.)
Treier, however, repeatedly identifies Theological Interpretation as a scholarly movement, beginning in the very first sentence (“a movement that I
care about” [9]), and building momentum as the book progresses.We soon
learn that his aim is to present Theological Interpretation as a movement
that can be “mapped” and which has its own “story” and “internal arguments” (11, 14).This movement “seeks to reverse the dominance of historical criticism” and to “redefine the role of hermeneutics” in Christian
reading of Scripture (14). Eventually we do discover that the “theological
interpretation movement” does face problems of self-identification (96); it
is marked by diversity and disagreement about the hermeneutical significance of extra-biblical texts and of global reading cultures (90n, 100, 161).
But the conclusion leaves no doubt that, for all its continuing tensions,
Theological Interpretation is an identifiable movement (187, 188).
I do not presume to assess the accuracy of that view, although it does
not seem to me self-evidently shared by most theologically engaged
interpreters, some of whom even prefer to use different terminology.Yet
it raises a question for all self-understood participants in Theological
Interpretation, however defined: are we dealing with an identifiable
movement, united at least in seeking to combat various enemies including historical criticism? Or is there not a much more loosely defined
sense that the terminology may encompass any and all attempts to do
justice to the theological dimensions of the text?
Concluding Observations
Where then does all this leave our opening question about biblical studies and theology? We shall proceed not so much to formal conclusions as
to a recapitulation of the above concerns in the form of two questions
for further discussion, raised in ascending order of importance.

“Although it seems accepted practice to write books about biblical interpretation
that do not interpret the Bible, I am increasingly doubtful about the value of the
exercise. Unless I am shown how the discussions of principle help enable recognition, or even production, of good and bad readings of the biblical text in practice, I can find myself wondering what difference it all really makes.” Cf. further
R.W. Moberly,“What Is Theological Interpretation of Scripture?” Journal of Theological Interpretation 3 (2009): 161–78.

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Is Theological Interpretation’s Object
the Text or the Interpreter ?
The first is perhaps a musing rather than a proper question; indeed at one
level the question implies a false alternative. From my admittedly limited
reading in the recent secondary literature, I am not clear whether Theological Interpretation concerns, first and foremost, what the text is about,
or rather what the interpreter is about. Obviously we need to be clear on
both counts, but I wonder to what extent the second-order engagement
in this exercise is distinctly in danger of overwhelming the first order.25
But is this worry simply a New Testament scholar’s predictable resistance to what others might regard as hermeneutical hair-splitting or
complexification? On the contrary, I would insist that it is the first-order
engagement with the text that makes biblical interpretation properly
theological. Ninety years ago Karl Barth’s Römerbrief was not opposed to
historical criticism per se, but he did find that method’s application in
contemporary New Testament scholarship to be essentially trivial.26 In
Barth’s view, “the Word ought to be exposed in the words. Intelligent
comment means that I am driven on till I stand with nothing before me
but the enigma of the matter.”27 For Barth, this means in effect that the
commentator’s job is in the end to articulate not the words of the
commentators, nor even primarily the words of Paul, but rather “the
Word itself ” that is inscripturated in those words.28
Firstly, then: Is “Theological Interpretation” primarily concerned with
the text of Scripture or primarily with the identity and conduct of its
interpreter?
Is Theological Interpretation for Members Only?
My second query is more complex and probably more controversial. One
feels on the one hand reassured to discover the diversity of approaches,
methods, and conclusions that can evidently be accommodated under the
25 Cognate concerns have occasionally been raised about the lack of exegetical seri-

ousness, and hence (on the Christian side) the potentially deficient Christology,
emanating from the otherwise well-intentioned “Scriptural Reasoning” enterprise pioneered by Peter Ochs and David Ford.
26 So rightly Robin S. Barbour,“Biblical Classics, 10: Karl Barth: the Epistle to the
Romans,” Expository Times 90 (1979): 264–68 on Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd
ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1922).
27 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 8.
28 As Robin Barbour puts it (“Biblical Classics, 10: Karl Barth: the Epistle to the
Romans,” 267): “If he cannot hear the Word itself, and report it in his own
dialectical but also extremely eloquent way, Barth’s whole enterprise crashes to
the ground.”

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

43

heading “Theological Interpretation.” And yet on the other hand the
evidence to date suggests that there may be a tendency here to favor a
decidedly in-house approach, which places biblical exegesis a little too
comfortably under a confessional umbrella that names in advance both its
presuppositions and its conclusions: “necessarily theological, scriptural
and ecclesiastical,” as another recent contributor puts it.29 I do not here
wish to question the undeniable kerygmatic, pastoral, or pedagogical
advantages of such an approach. It merely seems worth noting what is
probably self-evident: to walk down this road must by definition exclude,
or at least impede, the chances of an exegetically and theologically
productive conversation about Paul’s idea of Israel with a Jew, say, or
about Johannine ideas of divine Sonship with a Muslim—let alone about
the meaning of Joshua’s victories at Jericho or Ai with a secular archaeologist.Yet don’t all of these conversations concern interpretation—and
aren’t all three of these topics by implication resolutely and inescapably
theological? We should not forget the extent to which the biblical interpretation of Origen, Jerome, and others benefited from precisely such
discussions with ecclesial outsiders.
One question I feel impelled to ask is whether an emphatically creedal
and Trinitarian hermeneutical frame advocated by several of these recent
writers is for them an absolute hermeneutical sine qua non for all biblical
interpretation, or whether it is a subject-appropriate advantage to bring
to the table.That is to say, does it pertain to Theological Interpretation’s
esse or its bene esse ? If the latter, one would deliberately leave open the
possibility that such interpretation might actually engage with benefit in
conversations involving those of other faiths or of none.That is certainly
my point of view. If, however, the specific creedal framework is the sine
qua non of all valid interpretation, then it would seem hard to escape the
danger of a narrow and potentially regressive circularity.
Readers of this journal may resonate with Roy Harrisville’s statement
more than thirty years ago, “Once faith was reckoned to be disadvantageous to the descriptive task, seven devils worse than the first assumed its
place.”30 Many have spent decades battling these demons and wishing
there were a way that intellectually serious and accountable scholarship
could once again allow the Bible to bear fruit as word of life for the
29 Steven A. Cummins,“The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recent Contri-

butions by Stephen E. Fowl, Christopher R. Seitz and Francis Watson,” Currents in
Biblical Research 2 (2004): 180.
30 R.A. Harrisville in Peter Stuhlmacher, Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Toward a Hermeneutics of Consent, trans. R. A. Harrisville
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 9.

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people of God. Instead, biblical scholarship has too often spent its time
debating how many Amalekites there were or how best in a postcolonial
world to expose subversive cultural power plays behind the coded
symbolism of the Gospel of Mark.The biblical guilds’ reluctance to articulate and engage squarely with the theological object of the biblical text
is rather like G. K. Chesterton’s image of the literary guilds of his day,
“leaving three-quarters of the poem inside the poet with the rest of it
hanging out, generally tail-foremost.”31
This secular constipation of biblical scholarship, including what Adolf
Schlatter famously called its “atheistic methodology,” has accounted for
much of its sterile, death-dealing effect on academy and church alike.
Here the “Theological Interpretation” movement rightly insists on the
need for change. But equally vital, I believe, is the need for its advocates
to go on to dispel the potential for intellectual obscurantism—not just by
issuing denials but by actively demonstrating superior critical procedures
and criteria, and by a depth of historical and theological learning that
alone can confute the errors of the day. Otherwise there is a danger that
“Theological Interpretation” becomes the methodological fig leaf for a
circular progression, from conservative Christian presuppositions to
conservative Christian conclusions, that bypasses history.32 The task of
reading the Bible is far too important theologically for this to be an
acceptable perspective. As Adolf von Harnack provocatively insisted, it is
in fact precisely the historical method (rightly handled, to be sure) that is
intrinsically conservative in the best sense, inasmuch as it undergirds an
uncompromising reverence for the facts.33
The idea of a purely in-house exercise for creedal and Bible-believing
Christians was rightly rejected several decades ago by Peter Stuhlmacher
(in many ways an explicit advocate of theological interpretation), during
the drawn-out and at times acrimonious debate of the 1970s and 1980s
with his former student Gerhard Maier. We do perhaps need rather more
than Stuhlmacher’s somewhat thinly articulated hermeneutics of “consent”
and openness to transcendence. In particular, we certainly need more of a
conversation with two millennia of critical and ecclesial engagement with
the text. But contra Maier and perhaps some of the current advocates of
31 G. K. Chesterton,“On Literary Cliques,” in Essays (London: Collins, 1939), 345.
32 In that sense it is reminiscent of Oxford’s Turl Street, famously (if ironically) said

to emulate the Church of England’s movement from the “High” (Street) to the
“Broad” (Street) while bypassing “Jesus” (College).
33 Adolf von Harnack, Reden und Aufsätze, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Giessen: Töpelmann,
1906), 2.166: “Die historische Methode ist konservativ; denn sie sichert die
Ehrfurcht—nicht vor der Überlieferung, sondern vor den Tatsachen.”

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

45

Theological Interpretation, critical openness does not require critical
detachment from the historical and theological object of the text.34
It may be that in the end Theological Interpretation is primarily a flag
of convenience under which all manner of vessels may set sail. In that case
much of what I have said by way of critique could be easily swept aside. If,
on the other hand, “Theological Interpretation” is understood in Treier’s
terms as “a movement,” then it needs to ask some acute questions about
where it positions itself vis-à-vis the classic historical disciplines, including
those that may demand a measure of critical detachment or ideological
criticism. On this front we might do well to ponder Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s
admittedly somewhat hackneyed warning about covert fundamentalists:
they include for him “those who call for a return to a ‘precritical’ mode of
interpretation, or for a return to a theological interpretation of the Bible.”35
At one level, to be sure, this judgment primarily showcases Fitzmyer’s characteristic (almost Cato-like) execration of the straw man of “fundamentalism,” in season and out of season.36 In my view he does, however, raise a
34 On a related note, it seems to me worth pondering whether the hermeneutical

passions of decidedly anti-creedal or even anti-Christian interpreters may not
sometimes be equally theological in their claims or at least in their scope. The
Dictionary’s article “Feminist Biblical Interpretation” offers a sympathetic critical
survey of diverse feminist approaches, but it does not indicate which (if any) of
them might rightly be viewed as theological. The approach of Jane Schaberg, by
contrast, a feminist who explicitly lays claim to “theological interpretation” in her
description of Jesus’s “illegitimate” birth, is cited only once in another article,
where her approach is said to be in “breathtaking” contrast to the Roman Catholic
scholarship of Raymond E. Brown. See Edith Humphrey, “Infancy Narratives,”
Dictionary of Theological Interpretation, 326; cf. Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus:
A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (Sheffield: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2006).
35 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Scripture, the Soul of Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1994) 59.
36 Patent in relation to Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Biblical Commision’s Document “The
Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”:Text and Commentary, Subsidia Biblica 18
(Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1995). Cf. Peter Williamson, Catholic Principles
for Interpreting Scripture: A Study of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Subsidia Biblica 22 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2001). See Max Turner’s review of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke the
Theologian (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989) in New Blackfriars 72 (1991):
298–300, at 299, where he notes: “Fitzmyer’s determination to avoid what he
regards as the twin pitfalls of ‘the fundamentalism of the fearful’ . . . and ‘the cynicism of the foolish’ . . . though some may feel that in avoiding the first danger he
has himself sometimes come uncomfortably close to the second.” Cato the Elder
(234–149 B.C.) in his later years famously developed the habit of ending all his
speeches on any subject with the words Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam,
which might be informally rendered “And in any case I propose that Carthage
must be destroyed.”

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vital warning about how theological interpretation will be viewed if it
becomes, either in reality or even just in perception, merely a convenient
tag for an in-house conversation among the confessionally like-minded. It
seems vital to ask, for example, to what extent this approach is either practiced or practicable in secular university departments of religion. Is Theological Interpretation for Members Only?
In what circumstances might Theological Interpretation as here
described rise to a critique of ecclesial doctrine or praxis, not only of universally accepted excesses and abuses at the margins (though that is obviously
important) but also perhaps of occasional errors or misjudgments discerned
at the very heart of the interpretative tradition?37 And perhaps the most
basic question: What role does history, and historical criticism, play for
Theological Interpretation? Is it bracketed out, or perhaps strictly ancillary
at best?
I am reminded of a favorite quotation from the patristic commentator
Theodore of Mopsuestia, objecting to the notion that the Bible must be
interpreted through an elaborate “spiritual” code intelligible only to the
initiated:
Some people, however, make everything into its opposite, wanting the
entire account (historia ) of Holy Scripture to be no different from
nightly dreams.When they turn to expounding divine Scripture ‘spiritually’—‘spiritual interpretation’ is what they would like their folly to
be called—they say Adam is not Adam, paradise is not paradise, the
serpent is not the serpent. To these people I should say that if they
distort historia, they will have no historia left.38

My suggestion here is that we will do well to insist that biblical study
must take seriously the theological object of its inquiry—but also that in
37 I have argued for one such issue in relation to the tradition’s assessment of Jesus

and Israel, in Bockmuehl,“God’s Life as a Jew: Remembering the Son of God as
Son of David,” in Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage, ed. B. R. Gaventa and
R. B. Hays (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 60–78. Also cf. Bockmuehl,
Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study, 189–228.
38 Quoted in H. B. Swete, Theodori Episcopi Mopsuerteni in Epistolas B. Pauli
Commentarii: The Latin Version with the Greek Fragments, 2 vols. (Cambridge:
University Press, 1880), 2.74–75: isti uero omnia e contrario faciunt, omnem de
diuina scriptura historiam somniorum nocturnorum nihil differre uolentes; nec
enim Adam, Adam esse dicunt, quando maxime eos de diuina scriptura ‘spiritaliter’ enarrare acciderit—spiritalem etiam interpretationem suam | uolunt uocari
desipientiam—neque paradisum, paradisum, neque colubrum, colubrum esse
dicentes. Ad quos uolebam illud dicere, ut historiam intercipientes, ultra non
habuerint historiam. Cf. also Harnack, Reden und Aufsätze, 167 (“Man bricht
nicht mit der Geschichte, ohne sie zu verdunkeln”).

The Bible and Theological Interpretation

47

doing so, it will be crucial to sustain an intellectually serious and open
conversation in which insiders and outsiders can learn from each other.
What might that look like? To tease this out would require a much
longer study. But part of my vision would include something more reminiscent of a scene I saw when I first visited Istanbul’s indescribably
fragrant spice bazaar a couple of years ago: a huge buzz of activity consisting not of franchised mall outlets selling largely the same standard goods
in the same way, but of hundreds of different original traders—all of them
faithfully re-enacting the tradition of the bazaar while pursuing many
different ways of sourcing, pricing, packaging, and display.
Why should not theologically worthwhile interpretation be seen in
any pursuit of biblical studies as theological, and theology as biblical—
and to that end open to a thousand legitimate ways of critically receiving and dispensing the riches of the East? Patristic reception history and
literary-grammatical analysis could be theological; but so could historical
questions about the text and its external reference. And what we regard
as theological would comprise not only the history of what the text
produced but also the history of what produced the text. For that reason
there is no need to trumpet the demise of historical criticism, or to seek
to exclude it from theological conversation. In that connection, any
interpretation vibrant with the theological heart of what the text is about
would inevitably thrive and rise to the top. Hawkers of genetically modified substitutes or artificial flavor enhancers might still exist, but they
would self-evidently exclude themselves from the trade in the real thing.
In principle, an open converse between authentic sellers and buyers of
every faith and nation would surely make for a more theologically interesting and truthful interpretation.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 49–74

49

Reflections on Professor Bockmuehl’s
“Bible versus Theology”
F RANCIS M ARTIN
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

I WISH to begin by citing a famous remark of George Steiner, who is
discussing the anomaly of skepticism’s use of language in order to make
its case, thus accepting the very covenant it is determined to deny: “It is
the break of the covenant between word and world which constitutes
one of the very few revolutions of spirit in Western history and which
defines modernity itself.”1 Steiner attributes the final expression of this
broken covenant to Stéphane Mallarmé, who once wrote: “I am inventing a language which must necessarily burst forth from a very new poetics, that could be defined in a couple of words: Paint, not the thing, but
the effect it produces.”2 Presumed in this statement is the Kantian principle that the subject is determinative in the act of knowledge: “the
thing” is subservient to “the effect it produces.”
It is in the light of the statement of Mallarmé that I wish now to
reflect on Professor Bockmuehl’s thoughtful article in this issue, since the
questions he raises seem to be addressed principally to the dilemma
caused by the influence of this broken covenant.The question as he poses
it is:“Can we say to what extent Scripture and Christian doctrine are or
should be related: are they entirely independent, is one dependent on the
other, or is there some sort of interdependence?” Later in his study he
makes two remarks that I consider fundamental to providing the answer
1 George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989; pbk.

reprint, 1991), 60.
to Henri Cazalis, 30 October 1864; Stéphane Mallarmé, Oeuvres
Complètes, ed. Henri Mondor and Jean-Aubry (Paris: Gallimard, 1974; originally
published in 1945), 307. Translation from Rosemary Lloyd Mallarmé: The Poet
and His Circle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 48.

2 Letter

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to his question. First, he says:“This secular constipation of biblical scholarship, including what Adolf Schlatter famously called its ‘atheistic
methodology’ has accounted for much of its sterile, death-dealing effect
in academy and church alike.” Later, on the same page Bockmuehl says:
“In particular, we certainly need more of a conversation with two
millenia of engagement with the text.” I will develop my remarks around
each of these statements.3
Atheistic Methodology
Modern atheism arose when it became evident that, while religion seemed
to need physics to establish its fundamental principle, namely the existence
of a supreme cause, physics did not need religion. Thus, the Newtonian
world was set on its head by men like Denis Diderot and Baron Paul
d’Holbach, who correctly saw that a coherent explanation of the universe
could be supplied by the use of Newtonian physics without any recourse
to a Supreme Being. In the words of Michael Buckley,“Atheism came out
of a turn in the road in the development and autonomy of physics.”4
Once the European mind became used to the idea that the universe
was endowed with an autonomous intelligibility, the challenge of demonstrating the complementary truth, namely that the universe does not have
an independent intelligibility, became more difficult. During a four-hundredyear period, from approximately 1300 to 1680, the accepted biblical view
of the cosmos and a newer view based on observation and experimentation had been slowly drifting apart.The shift in thinking that I am describing, then, is not merely a matter of applying critical norms to the biblical
text. It is rather the adopting of a radically different view of the reality
about which the Bible is speaking. For nearly two thousand years, the
Western mind had looked at the material universe through the lens of
biblical revelation and a certain use of Greek thought. The gaps and
inconsistencies in this view had been noted, particularly since the early
3 The material in the following section makes use of a previous study, Francis Martin,

“New Testament Teaching on the Imitation of Christ,” in Sacred Scripture:The Disclosure of the Word, ed. Francis Martin (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 43–71.
4 Michael Buckley, “The Newtonian Settlement and the Origins of Atheism,” in
Physics, Philosophy, and Theology:A Common Quest for Understanding, ed. R. Russell,
W. Stoeger, and G. Coyne (Vatican City:Vatican Observatory, 1988), 81–102, at
96; this article is a summary of his larger work, At the Origins of Modern Atheism
(New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1988). I am indebted in this portion of
my article to both of these studies by Buckley. It strikes me that the atheism of
a thinker like Stephen Hawking results from this thoroughgoing conviction that
questions that move beyond the realm of physics are simply nonquestions. See
Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988).

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fourteenth century, but it required nearly three hundred years of observation and experimentation to bring the data to a point of a “critical mass.”
The story of the impact on European thought of Sir Isaac Newton’s
Philosophiae Naturalis Mathematica Principia is well known and often told.5
This was the first complete paradigm providing an alternative to the Aristotelian view of mechanics offered in nearly two millenia. Because it
presented both celestial and earthly phenomena as instances of an overriding set of mathematical principles, it provided, for the first time, a vision
of what it would be like to understand all reality in terms of a single
complex of laws.6 Basically, such an ideal derives from a Christian view of
creation, one which sees that the universe as made by God can yield an
autonomous intelligibility that allows the material universe to be developed for the good of human flourishing but not, as I have said, an intelligibility that explains its origin. As Thomas Aquinas already observed,
created things have activities and causalities proper to themselves, but this
also implies that the ultimate understanding of the goal and use of this
universe depends upon understanding its origin from God.
Thus began, with the later help of the Kantian view of what is knowable, a very different approach to Scripture. This was particularly apparent in regard to the events narrated in the Bible.
The basic biblical view of event, a view that extended at least into the
Late Middle Ages, saw each event as endowed with an “aura,” what Jean
Lacroix called its “mystery” or “vertical dimension.”The basis of this view
was a grasp on the intrinsic relation of all created reality to God.7 In a
world in which most natural phenomena remained unexplained, the
“mysterious” or vertical dimension of reality seemed to be replicated on
this level as well.As the former dimension of reality yielded its intelligibility, it was not a long step for some to conclude that, at least in principle,
5 For the purposes of this aspect of our reflections, the most useful studies are those

of Michael Buckley that were mentioned in note 4. Also very useful is the study
by Peter Gay,The Enlightenment:An Interpretation, vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Norton, 1966), and ch. 9 (“The Transition to the Philosophe
Movement in the Reign of Louis XIV”) in Herbert Butterfield’s The Origins of
Modern Science, 1300–1800 (New York:The Free Press, 1957).
6 The foundationalism inspired by the Cartesian anxiety played a large part in
framing this ideal, but it need not have done so.A good analysis of this “anxiety”
is provided by Richard Bernstein in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science,
Hermeneutics and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).
7 Instructive in this regard are the remarks of Joseph Pieper in The Silence of St.
Thomas, trans. J. Murray and D. O’Connor (New York: Pantheon, 1957),
concerning the awareness of createdness implied in every judgment concerning
the things of this world. See particularly pages 57–67.

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there was no more mystery in the universe.Thus, we can trace a trajectory
in the understanding of the events recounted by the Scriptures that parallels that of the understanding of the material universe: what is explained in
terms of horizontal causality is sufficiently explained and derives nothing
from being seen in relation to the Deity.
My contention is this: as the vertical dimension of the biblical view of
events faded from consciousness, the very nature of the biblical narratives
themselves was misunderstood. This progressive misunderstanding paralleled the movement of thought in the physical sciences and in history more
generally, though this latter remained an underdeveloped discipline until a
later period.The result in our own day is well described by Louis Dupré:
Religion has been allotted a specific field of consciousness ruled by
methods of its own, but the final judgment on truth has been withdrawn from its jurisdiction and removed to the general domain of epistemic criteriology. . . . Truth, if still granted to religious affirmations, no
longer springs from within faith but is extrinsically conveyed to faith.8

From about 1750 onward, Germany became the leader in the application of historical methods to the biblical text. The newness of this
approach lay not so much in a critical investigation of the biblical text, a
thing even in its modern form as old as the work of Richard Simon
(1638–1712) and Jean Astruc (1684–1766), but rather in the particular
view of the nature of history that served as the basis of the critique.
Briefly put, this view is that history possesses an autonomous intelligibility similar to that of the physical sciences and that any understanding of
historical events is to be achieved by studying them in their chronological and “causal” context.9
The most notable achievements of the nineteenth century are to be
found in the perfecting of the historical-critical approach to the Scriptures rather than in any significant advance in philosophical and evaluative understanding of the background and basic principles governing the
approach.The interpretation of the text is done according to the meth8 Louis Dupré, “Note on the Idea of Religious Truth in the Christian Tradition,”

The Thomist 52 (1988): 499–512, at 509.
9 Giambattista Vico pointed out in 1725 the tendency of the history writing of his

day to strive for the same type of exactitude as the physical sciences. His critique,
however, which paved the way for Wilhelm Dilthey, is bound by the same fascination with horizontal causality and the exclusive search for autonomous intelligibility in the historical sciences. See Copleston, A History of Philosophy (New
York: Image Books, 1959), vol. 6, ch. 8, “Bossuet and Vico”; also, J. Bleicher,
Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 16–17.

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53

ods governing any text, but the exclusive concentration of this general
hermeneutics ignores (rather than disproves) the biblical teaching of
creation and the consequent view of all human activity as having a vertical dimension. Partial success in achieving an understanding of the intrinsic dimension of reality has obscured the biblical view of creation as lying
open to the action of God, whose imprint can be discerned as analogously realized, the prime analogue being Jesus Christ, in whose individual humanity God is uniquely present in a way that completes and gives
meaning to his presence within human history. I wish now to explicate
the consequences of this in greater detail.
What Needs Correcting by a “Theological Interpretation”
The refusal to take up the biblical teaching on creation, and the consequent ignoring of divine activity within this world, together constitute the
underlying principle in much exegesis.This was well articulated by Joseph
Ratzinger, who in this passage is discussing the rise of form criticism:
In my opinion, however, we must go a step deeper in order to understand the basic systematic option that generated the individual categories of judgment that Dibelius and Bultmann relied upon. The real
philosophical presupposition behind the whole enterprise seems to me
to lie in the Kantian turn. According to Kant, man cannot perceive the
voice of being in itself; he can hear it only indirectly, in the postulates
of practical reason, which remain so to say as the last narrow slit
through which contact with the really real, with his eternal destiny, can
still reach him. For the rest, for what the activity of his reason can
substantively grasp, man can go only so far as the categorical allows. . . .
The debate about modern exegesis is not at its core a debate among
historians, but among philosophers.10

Perhaps the single most misleading and often unrecognized presupposition of much historical study of the Bible is that there really is no transcendent cause operative in history. This was clearly articulated by the
pantheist Baruch Spinoza, who maintained that the Bible must be
approached like any other imaginative literature.11 Emile Durkheim,
10 Joseph Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretations in Conflict: On the Foundations and

the Itinerary of Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures, ed. Jose Granados,
Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2008), 1–29, at 18–19.
11 See David Laird Dungan, “Baruch Spinoza and the Political Agenda of Modern
Historical-Critical Interpretation,” in A History of the Synoptic Problem: The
Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels (The Anchor
Bible Reference Library; New York: Doubleday, 1999), 198–260. For an expres-

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who saluted the atheistic, positivist position of Auguste Comte and who
is one of the founders of the sociological method, went further and maintained that religious expressions in a culture were due to social causes,
principally the immanent, often unconscious, energy of the group.12
Durkheim, along with some others, mostly adherents of the religiohistorical approach, created an environment in which Herman Gunkel,
later one of Rudolf Bultmann’s professors, participated. Gunkel’s influence upon Bultmann is undoubted despite some later differences in their
approach.13 Thus, there has been a notion, which, knowingly or
unknowingly and often influenced by a particular understanding of society, presumed that the Gospels, for example, are the result of a progressive sociological process of transmission.14 Information about what Jesus
did and said has passed through a grid of communal interpretation, which
often prevents any certitude as to the actual agent of what is recounted.
Though some Christian commentators maintained that one could
prescind from the sociological laws developed by the religio-historical
school, it is a fact that very little genuine theology came from this type
of historical approach. A quite astute critic of this interpretive procedure
and the presuppositions upon which it was based was Pierre Benoit, who
in 1946 wrote:
By the ‘Community’ is meant the mass of earliest Christians taken all
together as a social group, and an anonymous one. An unknown quantity, and a very convenient one, which is made to endorse everything.
For eyewitnesses are an embarrassment.They have lived through the
events.We hesitate before attributing reports that are too untruthful to
them. If others ascribe to Jesus deeds and words of which he is not the
author, it is open to us to say that they do so without realizing that they
sion
of
the dilemma experienced by historians of the Jewish people when faced with a
non-transcendent understanding of historical events see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi,
Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1982; reprint, 1996), especially the last chapter, “Modern Dilemmas.”
12 See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1915; reprint, New York: Free Press, 1965); The
Rules of Sociological Method, trans. Sarah A. Solovay and John Mueller, ed. George
E. G. Catlin (New York: Free Press: 1964).
13 See Martin J. Buss, Biblical Form Criticism in Its Context (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 209–62; 294–306.
14 “In the same way the literary ‘category’ or ‘form’ through which a particular item
is classified is a sociological concept and not an aesthetic one, however much it
may be possible by its subsequent development to use such forms as aesthetic
media in some particular literary product.” Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the

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55

are deceived by popular rumour. But for eyewitnesses it is different.The
only thing that remains is to eliminate them. And that is what these
critics do.15

In the same vein, several authors have recently challenged the position
of form criticism and its consequences on a more historical level by
returning to consider the existence and role of eyewitnesses and oral
tradition. Among these are James D. G. Dunn,16 Richard Bauckham,17
Paul Rhodes Eddy, and Gregory Boyd,18 and from another perspective
Markus Bockmuehl.19 These factual studies illustrate the dictum that the
best antidote to bad history is good history.
The Example of Rudolf Bultmann
Though most of this material is familiar to biblical scholars, it will be
useful to reflect upon it once again, since the theological interpretation
school represents a reaction against the consequences of an historical
approach that relies on the philosophical outlook I have been describing.
The word “myth,” used by Joseph Ratzinger in the citation adduced
above, opens the way to a discussion of the foundation of much biblical
interpretation in the recent past. Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most
philosophically oriented of the founders of New Testament form criticism, and thus indirectly of the other forms of “criticism” that have
appeared, found himself challenged in the basic approach he took to the
biblical material, and that on two counts. First, he considered the biblical
texts, those of both Old and New Testaments, as “mythic” expressions of
the (collective) unconscious that had to be transposed into another
context. Second, that new context for Bultmann is a combination of
Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 4.
15 Pierre Benoit, “Reflections on ‘Formgeschichtliche Methode,’ ” in Benoit, Jesus

and the Gospel (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), 35.
16 James D. G. Dunn,“Altering the Default Setting: Re-Envisaging the Early Trans-

mission of the Jesus Tradition,” New Testament Studies 49 (2003): 139–75, which
challenges the concentration on written material in approaching the Synoptic
material, and A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Missed, ed. Craig A. Evans and Lee Martin McDonald (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2005), which accents the role of oral tradition.
17 Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).
18 Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007).
19 See Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), especially ch. 6,“Living Memory and Apostolic History.”

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Marburg Kantianism, radical Lutheran rejection of human “works” of any
kind (also “Marburgian” in orientation), and Heideggerian existentialism.
In regard to the first of these components, one remark of Bultmann
may suffice:
The historical method includes the presupposition that history is a
unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects in which individual
events are connected by the succession of cause and effects.The continuum of historical happenings cannot be rent by the interference of
supernatural, transcendent powers and that therefore there is no “miracle” in this sense of the word.20

In regard to “works” (I am here dependent upon the study of Roger A.
Johnson),21 Bultmann follows the thinking of his mentor, Wilhelm
Hermann, whose position is described by Johnson as a modified
Lutheranism:“[I]n faith man receives the fulfillment of his being, passively
not actively, in Erlebnis not in the Schaffen of Gestaltung.”22 The contrast
between experience and the “creation of a production” is, in Hermann’s
estimation, the difference between faith and works. Bultmann expresses
the same thought:“Real religion is available only in the moments of experience, and we alternate between believing thoughts and operational
thoughts.”23 This position seems to have had the curious effect of rendering Bultmann rather indifferent to his own thought-out proposals in
exegesis and elsewhere. Finally, as described by some of his commentators,
Bultmann’s relation to Heidegger seems to be eclectic.
I have taken some time to look at the foundations of the move from
the genuine theological interpretation practiced by the Church to the
domination of exegesis by many different approaches that, ultimately, do
not yield an understanding of the sacred text itself. I have maintained that
the primary factor that all these various methods have in common is a
Kantian epistemology variously understood and practiced, and that this
approach constitutes the thinking subject as the dominant factor in the act
of knowledge: hence the broken covenant.As an example of this thinking
I selected Rudolf Bultmann, both because of the sincerity of his desire to
20 Rudolf Bultmann, “Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?” in Existence

and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann, ed. Schubert Ogden (New York:
Meridian Books, 1960), 291–92.
21 Roger A. Johnson, The Origins of Demythologizing: Philosophy and Historiography in
the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann (Leiden: Brill, 1973).
22 Ibid., 84.
23 Rudolf Bultmann, “Religion and Culture,” in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. James Robinson (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1968), 205–20.

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make the word of God intelligible to his contemporaries and because his
approach embodies most of the influences that are still, though in different forms, operative in much modern exegesis. What protects Bultmann
personally is his peculiar type of Lutheran piety regarding “faith” and
“works” in the intellectual effort. However, most of the influences upon
his thought are inimical to the Christian faith. Form criticism depends
upon a view of community dynamics that is originally materialistic; it also
maintains that the primacy of the thinking subject is Kantian, and it
proposes the New Testament message concerning the meaning of life in
terms of Heideggerian philosophy. Others who have followed these and
similar lines of thought were often not graced with comparable intellectual endowments, nor had they as intense a faith.
Reactions against the three elements I have just outlined are: (1) A
return to a deeper understanding of oral tradition within a more adequate
understanding of the role of faith in the early Christian community. (2) A
search for a more adequate understanding of cognition. (3) An acceptance
of the Christian understanding of the meaning of life, history, and the
afterlife. Such reactions provide an example of fides quaerens intellectum, but,
at least in my opinion, they have yet to come to grips philosophically with
the central issue of our day, namely the foundation of the relation between
revelation and language.
Revelation and Language
This part of my essay will be a brief reflection on a statement found in
Dei Verbum §2:
This economy of revelation is brought about by actions and words
intrinsically connected with each other ( gestis verbisque intrinsice inter se
connexis) so that the works accomplished by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm both the teaching and the realities signified
by the words, while the words proclaim the works and bring to light the
mystery contained in them. In this revelation the intimate truth about
God and about human salvation shines forth for us in Christ who is at
one and the same time the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.

It is significant that the means of realizing the “economy of revelation” is
described in the above paragraph by beginning with divine “actions” ( gesta),
which are said to manifest and confirm what is mediated by words, while
the words proclaim the works and bring to light their mystery. The gesta
themselves are, therefore, made present to us by verbal poiesis˜ in narratives
that, by the very nature of narrative, are interpretations, in this case faith
interpretations.These gesta, mediated by narrative, are the authoritative basis

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58

for all the other words in Scripture, since the narratives provide a revealed
knowledge and interpretation of those foundational acts of God that constitute salvation history. From these acts the laws, the prayers, the prophecies,
exhortations and warnings, and even the wisdom reflections derive their
intelligibility and authority.
Hans Urs von Balthasar has accented the fact that the Old Testament
account of the events in Israel’s past is the creation of the Holy Spirit:
The gradual clothing of the events within the folds of Scripture is not
only an inevitable drawback (because the people of the Orient of that
time did not know, in fact, a historiography in the modern understanding of the term), but assuredly also this corresponds unqualifiedly
to a positive intention of the Spirit.24

An example of reading within the world mediated by Scripture is
provided by the work of Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading.25 In a subsequent article Sternberg
responds to a critique of his interpretation of the narrative relating the rape
of Dinah (Gn 34:1–31).26 He remarks that the position of his critics
“amounts to tearing the Dinah example out of the poetic system, the part
out of the whole.”27 He later on reiterates:“If anything, a reader unable or
unwilling to postulate the articles of faith (from God down) will forfeit
competence as a hopeless counter reader, where one unequal to narrative
finesse may still belong to the lower limit [of reader competence].”28
Sternberg’s whole approach, that of poetics, presupposes that the text is
a medium of communication operating within a system which it both
requires and activates in becoming intelligible. His critics, on the other
hand, isolate the text from the matrix of its faith vision of reality, and from
its author, and treat it as an object to be transported into a foreign thought
system and made to serve a particular agenda. For them, the Bible is a
neutral object lying between two value systems and moral judgments. A
reading from either context is equally “competent.” In such a situation,
24 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Il Senso Spirituale della Scrittura,” Ricerche Teologiche 5

(1994): 5–9, at 7.
25 Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama

of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
26 The critique is found in Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn,“Tipping the

Balance: Sternberg’s Reader and the Rape of Dinah,” Journal of Biblical Literature
110 (1991): 193–211.The response is found in Meir Sternberg,“Biblical Poetics
and Sexual Politics: From Reading to Counter-Reading,” Journal of Biblical Literature 111 (1992): 463–88.
27 Sternberg, “Biblical Poetics and Sexual Politics,” 465.
28 Ibid., 469.

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“the text comes to figure as a kind of glorified Rorschach ink blot on
which to project one’s ideology, among other forms of licensed desire.”29
If we return to the statement in Dei Verbum §2, we see that “words”
have a twofold role: they mediate the actions of God and, through
inspired reflection, “bring to light the mystery contained in them.” The
narrative portions of the Bible perform both these functions because they
mediate the actions of God and others in narrative which is, as is all
narrative, already an interpretation. The rest of the Scriptures perform
other functions by which, though in another manner, the mystery
contained in the narrated action is brought to light. This will be made
clearer from a brief consideration of narrative itself.
The Components of Narrative
Narrative is a literary presentation of a completed action.30 An action may
be stated in a sentence or described in a paragraph. Only, however, when it is
articulated in a plot, is it imitated.There are many types of literature: lyric
poetry expresses an interior emotion, description presents some reality, but
not as it moves through time, chronicle gives a list of happenings, but it
does not link them to form a story. Only narrative presents the whole event
with its “beginning, middle, and end” in a way that recaptures the flow of
the event and enables us to appreciate it. Good narrative presents the actor
not merely as agent but also as subject, as person.31
Consider this example. St. Catherine of Siena was a woman of deep
prayer, who had a flaming love for God and for others, who combined
firm chastity with deep compassion, and who was courageous in her
commitments. I have just given you a description of St. Catherine of
Siena. I might also write a lyric poem about this saint, mediating to you
the depth of my own admiration for her and the qualities God gave her.
I might even give a list of the principal events of her life in a way that
illustrates what I have said in my description, that is, I might give you a
chronicle of her life. Suppose, however, I tell you this story.
29 Ibid., 470.This discussion of Sternberg is an abbreviated form of some pages in

my The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in the Light of Christian Tradition
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), ch. 7, “Foundational Hermeneutics.”
30 This material is adapted from Francis Martin, “Truth in Narrative,” in The International Bible Commentary, ed. William Farmer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical
Press, 1998), 121–25.
31 An important discussion, but one that cannot occupy us here, is the specification
of “the subject” of these divine actions. Clearly, many Fathers of the Church
speak, for instance, of the visits of the Logos to the patriarchs and prophets without prejudice to the principle of the unity of the divine operations ad extra. See
Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003), 171–75.

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Catherine used to visit a young man who was in prison for murder. At
first he mocked her efforts to speak to him of God’s mercy, but then,
won over by her repeated visits and her care for him, he listened and
was reconciled to God. On the day of his execution, Catherine accompanied him through the streets to the place where he was to be decapitated. As he mounted the stage he was overcome with fear. Catherine
helped him kneel down and then held his head against her breast,
consoling and strengthening him in his desire to give up his life in reparation to God. She thus held him as he died.

Catherine’s gesture somehow reaches you through the words of my
story, my narrative, and you can see for yourself what kind of a person
she was. In that gesture you come to a direct and intuitive knowledge of
this human being who manifests herself by her action. In the words of
the Council, her deed and my words are “intrinsically connected with
each other” and combine to reveal something of what God had made of
this saint. A better storyteller might have mediated this action in more
telling words, but the same deed, perhaps in that case more vividly represented, would reach you and affect you. This is the heart of narrative: it
is, to repeat, a literary presentation of a completed action. Let us now
consider other aspects of narrative.
It should be remarked that there are four levels in a narrative.The first
is the “event,” the action itself; this may be made up by the author, taken
from the culture, or formed by the author as a means of interpreting an
actual event. In our example, the event is the action of St. Catherine in
winning the young man over, his reconciliation with God, and Catherine’s consoling and helping him at his death. On the second level, this
event must be given shape, that is, its plot must be discerned and
presented.The action had to be lifted out of the lives of both Catherine
and the young man. The narrator, myself in this case, had to determine
the beginning of the narrated event; its middle and end had to be grasped
and then made the framework of the narrative.To do this well is the art
of storytelling, as Aristotle observed long ago.
Thirdly, there is poetics,32 the more complex layer lying just below the
surface of the narrative text. Poetics refers to the whole complex of
images, allusions, resonances and associations, flow of thought and feeling
created by the words. It is at this level that the narrative interprets the
event in an important way. If event may be compared to a room, then plot
32 While this term most often refers to the study or the composition of a literary

piece, I am using it here as that level which gives a certain “character” to the
narrative. Poetics is to narrative what tone of voice is to an utterance.

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61

is the architecture of the room and poetics is its furniture, and the fourth
level, the actually existing text, is the totality of the room itself.
The understanding of layers in narrative is very important in making
out what the inspired authors are doing when they recount an event.
Every narrator is an interpreter, and those whom the Holy Spirit
instructed and inspired are no exception. In fact, the ancients, who had a
much more sophisticated understanding of this law of narrative than we
with our mechanical view of history writing, took their responsibility
very seriously. It is where we can understand the author’s theological
interpretation of the event.
First, about revelation itself. We have seen that it is accomplished
through the action of God, making known and communicating both
himself and knowledge of his plan of salvation.33 This action is transmitted to us by words; it is honored in praise, described in moral exhortation, and re-presented in narrative. The real significance of this light of
revelation can be appreciated only in the power of another light, namely,
that of faith, which is itself an act of God within us to which we yield. It
is in this sense that the medievals understood the psalm verse: “In your
light [of faith], we see light [of revelation]” (Ps 36:10).
Next, narrative, because it presents an action, is particularly revelatory,
and this is the quality that makes it the most prominent form of literature
in the Bible. Recall how St. Catherine “revealed” herself through the action
told of her, and what is made known of God through narrative—for
instance, his activity in the life of David, and so many others whose stories
are told in the Scriptures.The very thing that Aristotle thought was unimportant, that is, individual actions, turns out to be the most important
aspect of life and history. Human beings, and even God himself, communicate themselves most perfectly through individual actions and events.
The most important thing we must bear in mind about the Gospel
narratives is that, even if we agree to classify them as a variant of Bios,34
they were not written to enshrine, promote, or defend the memory of a
dead and revered master, but to put us in touch with the living Lord.
Because he is risen from the dead, stories about Jesus are different from
stories about any other person. It is true that God is present in the narratives of the Old Testament, which recount his action through the people
and events of Israel’s history. Such actions were an anticipated participation in the mystery of Christ. Now, however, the presence of God in Jesus
Christ is unique; and the fact that Jesus is alive means that he is both present to history and beyond it. All that makes his history is now part of his
33 Dei Verbum, §6.
34 Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend, ch. 8.

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glorified existence.That is why the book of Revelation speaks of him even
now as a Lamb who still bears the marks of having been slain (Rv 5:6).
Interpreting and Mediating the Gesta Dei
Theological interpretation begins, therefore, within the Bible itself, both
in narrative, as we have seen, and in the rest of the original interpretive
tradition found in the whole of the sacred text itself.35 Underlying this
approach to Scripture is the position that holds the sacred text to be the
instrument of revelation. It is the means by which God imparts knowledge “manifesting and communicating both himself and the eternal
decrees of his will concerning the salvation of humankind.”36
In his memoirs, Joseph Ratzinger describes a fundamental insight that
he derived from the study of St. Bonaventure:“Revelation now appeared
no longer simply as a communication of truths to the intellect but as a
historical action of God in which truth becomes gradually revealed.”37 The
acts of a person (even or especially when this “person” is God) are revelatory; they manifest the person, the subject who acts, and not merely the
source of the act as agent. These acts, which are intrinsically historical,
must be passed on in literature.That is, act becomes word; the word does
not merely report the act, but contains and mediates it.This is the essence
of narrative: act is transposed to the level of word and exists as word but
always exceeds it. An understanding of tradition starts here:
[R]evelation is always a concept denoting an act.The word refers to the
act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act.
And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the
concept of “revelation.” Where there is no one to perceive “revelation,”
no re–vel–ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By
definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. . . . [I]f
35 An important study in this regard is that by Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpreta-

tion in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). In this regard, too, the studies of
Christopher Seitz are valuable. One might consult Christopher R. Seitz, The
Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009). It is
quite possible that the authors of the Gospels were aware that they were writing
Scripture and proceeded in the manner of their predecessors. See Francis
Moloney,“The Gospel of John as Scripture,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67 (2005):
454–78; D. Moody Smith, “When Did the Gospels Become Scripture?” Journal
of Biblical Literature 119 (2000): 3–20. One may consult as well the Commentary
on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson
(Grand Rapids. MI: Baker Academic, 2007).
36 Dei Verbum, §6.
37 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 104.

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Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes
deposited in Scripture but it is not simply identical with it.This means
that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written
down.38

Scripture as the Model for Theological Interpretation
The primary realities to be interpreted are the acts of God themselves,
and, as mentioned previously, these are interpreted first of all in the Bible,
through narration, and then through re-writing, liturgical action, song,
poetry, and precept. The result is that many revelatory acts of God in
history that are re-written or otherwise variously presented in Scripture
itself appear to be “greater than what is merely written down,” even
though these acts continue to cause by impressing themselves on the
spirit of the listeners/readers.39 You may note that I am speaking of the
acts themselves and not merely of the text. This assertion returns us to the
“broken covenant between word and world” with which the essay began.
It would require another essay to justify adequately the position that
words are not signs of a reality but the reality itself in another mode of
existence: they do not represent, they reveal. I will, however, outline some
principles that develop the notion that words are more than signs. I will
then show that the reality mediated by narrative can also be expressed in
other forms of speech, basically what the medieval authors termed sententiae.40 Sententiae are statements theological in nature that articulate the
content and theological significance of what is transmitted in narrative
(e.g. the historical psalms) or develop their theological implications or
conclusions (e.g. St. Paul, etc.). I say this to point out that “theology,” even
as a discursive function, begins in Scripture. I will return to this.
38 Ratzinger, Milestones, 108.
39 Recent studies have shown that the copying of manuscripts at Qumran and the

composing of targums and other translations such as the Septuagint and Peshitta
continued this process of ongoing interpretation. Further, we need only consult
the examples given above of variations in the account of the failure to enter the
land or of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law to have examples of this process
represented in the sacred text itself. For examples of how a text’s presentation can
produce many different impressions in the life of the people, one may consider
the career of some of the events told in the early chapters of Genesis. See Gary
A. Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville:Westminster John Knox Press, 2001). In another vein: OlivierThomas Venard, “ ‘La Bible en ses traditions.’ The New Project of the École
Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem Presented as a ‘Fourth Generation’ Enterprise,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 142–58.
40 I refer the reader to Gilbert Dahan, L’éxegèse Chrétienne de la Bible en Occident
médiévale Xii–Xiv siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 284–96.

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Repairing the Covenant
At its origin, the breaking of the covenant between word and world was
made possible by the progressive ignoring or denying of the fact of creation.
In a remarkable passage, obviously indebted to Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatise
on the divine names,Aquinas moves from the observation of the “generosity” of all beings to an understanding of the generosity of their Source. Note
how this vision of reality follows upon the biblical teaching that God’s act
of creation is totally free and adds nothing to God:
For natural things have a natural inclination not only toward their own
proper good, to acquire it, if not possessed, and if possessed, to rest therein;
but also to diffuse their own goodness among others as far as possible. . . .
Hence if natural things, insofar as they are perfect, communicate their
goodness to others, much more does it pertain to the divine will to
communicate by likeness its own goodness to others as far as possible.41

From the side of created realities, we may conclude from what Aquinas
says elsewhere that they have the capacity to manifest themselves and thus
play an active role in being known: “From the very fact that something
exists in act, it is active.”42 Building upon his own understanding of the
Platonic principle that “good is diffusive of itself,” St.Thomas reasons that,
since the act of existence is the foundation of all other perfections, indeed
“the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections,”43 the diffusiveness of the good is rooted in the existence of a being; and it is thus that
whatever exists manifests itself in the act of its existing.44 Disclosure,
therefore, involves both the created reality manifesting itself in and
through the act of its existence, and the creative receptivity of the mind
that receives the act of the reality and gives it intelligibility, transposing it
41 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 19, a. 2. All quotations of St. Thomas in

this section are from the translation of Norris Clarke, “Person, Being, and St.
Thomas,” Communio 19 (1992): 601–18.
42 Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, 1, 43.
43 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9.Translation is from W. Norris Clarke,“Action
as the Self-Revelation of Being: A Central Theme in the Thought of St.
Thomas,” in his Explorations in Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame
University Press, 1994), 45–63.
44 Later in the same essay (page 63, note 11) Clarke cites Karl Rahner: “Our first
statement, which we put forward as the basic principle of an ontology of symbolism, is as follows: all beings are by their very nature symbolic, because they necessarily ‘express’ themselves in order to attain their own nature.” See Karl Rahner,
“Theology of the Symbol,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4 (Baltimore: Helicon
Press, 1966), 221–52.

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65

to the level of the knower.This energy, the capacity to receive and transpose, is what the ancient thinkers meant by the light of the mind.Aquinas
says of this interior light of reason that it is itself a “certain participation
in divine light” (ST I, q. 12, a. 11, ad 3); it is, in fact,“nothing else but the
imprint of the divine light in us” (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2). He also says that the
intensification and elevation of this light, which is the heart of sacra doctrina, the reception and transmission of prophetic knowledge, is also “a
certain imprint of the divine knowledge” (ST I, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2).45
Thus, to become aware once again of the unbreakable covenant
between word and world we should reflect on the fact that the very act
of existing is a communicable perfection that is bestowed on the knower
by what is known who then can give it another level of existence by a
word.This understanding of the manner in which all entities can imitate
God shows the universe to be a place characterized by relation:
“Communication follows upon the very intelligibility (ratio ) of actuality.
Hence every form is of itself communicable.”46 The original truth, the
union between the mind and what is known, is possible only because
what is known is first received from the object’s self-communication and
then “imitated” by the mind.To imitate is to transpose a reality to another
plane of existence. If, in response to a request that I imitate the chair in
my room, I make another chair, I have not imitated, I have reproduced.
To imitate the chair I must transpose it to the level of word, or line and
color, or some other mode of being. Thus, in the act of knowledge, the
energy by which being is imitated derives both from the dynamism of
the substance in relation and from that particular way in which I, as a
knower, share in the dynamic light of God, a light which, as we have seen,
even apart from faith, St. Thomas does not hesitate to call “a certain
imprint of the divine light in us.”
The Verbum Interius and Language
In this very brief section, I wish merely to point to the other dimension
of restoring the broken covenant, namely, the act of the knower in
expressing, interiorly and exteriorly, what is known. A reinstatement of
an understanding of the act of knowledge is as important as the rectification of historical investigation. The act of knowing is the echo of the
45 For a development of this notion, one could consult Francis Martin, “Sacra

Doctrina and the Authority of Its Sacra Scriptura in St. Thomas Aquinas,” Pro
Ecclesia 10 (2001): 84–102; reprinted in Martin, Sacred Scripture:The Disclosure of
the Word (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 1–20.
46 Thomas Aquinas, In 1 Sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1.

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activity by which the known imparts itself, an activity which, as we have
seen, is also understood only in the light of creation.47
Attracted perhaps by the Stoic overtones of the word Logos in John’s
Prologue, some of the early Fathers began to make a comparison
between our interior word become exterior and that of the Word of the
Father. Justin Martyr is an example.48 Athanasius opposed this comparison as dangerous and heretical: “Whosoever calls the Son of God the
mental or pronounced Word, be he anathema.49 Despite the drawbacks
of his Platonic gnoseology, Augustine, by observing his own mind in the
act of knowing, was able to cut between the Stoic articulation of the
verbum prolatum and the verbum insitum, just referred to by Athanasius, to
discern a verbum intus prolatum. Aquinas was faced with the task of freeing this crucial insight from Augustine’s Platonic understanding of the act
of knowing and completing it through an Aristotelian cognitional theory.
The key difference lies in the fact that for the Augustinian–Platonic view
knowledge lies in vision, while in the Thomistic–Aristotelian understanding, knowledge takes place through identity: intellectus in actu est
intellectum in actu (among several places, ST I, q. 87, a. 1, ad 3).50
47 In developing this necessarily schematic section I have been helped by four authors:

Robert Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 286–303. Olivier-Thomas Venard, Littérature et théologie. Une
saison en Enfer, Thomas d’Aquin poète théologien I (Geneva: Ad Solem, 2002),
373–96; idem, La langue de l’ineffable. Essai sur le fondement théologique de la métaphysique,Thomas d’Aquin poète théologien II (Geneva:Ad Solem, 2004), 344–406;
idem, Pagina Sacra (Paris: Cerf/Ad Solem, 2009), 789–852. Antoine Guggenheim,
Jésus Christ. Grand Prêtre de l’Ancien et de la Nouvelle Alliance. Étude de commentaire de
Saint Thomas d’Aquin sur l’épître aux Hébreux (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2004),
681–724. Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. Frederick E.
Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol. 2, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1998).Also Harm Goris,“Theology and Theory of the
Word in Aquinas: Understanding Augustine by Innovating Aristotle,” in Aquinas the
Augustinian, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 62–78.
48 “For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father’s will,
and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet
not by abscission, so as to lessen the word [which remains] in us, when we give it
out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened
when it has kindled [another], but remains the same.” St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue
with Trypho, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 227.
49 Athanasius, De Synodis 27, 8. For some remarks regarding Athanasius’s position
see Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 1.
50 I am indebted here to the study by Lonergan, Verbum, especially 6–9 and 84–85,
and in a particular way to Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person, ch. 18.

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In order to be brief, I will present here the sequence of acts involved
in human understanding as described by Harm Goris, who says that the
sequence is logical, not chronological.51
1. First, the agent intellect abstracts the potentially intelligible species
from the material conditions it has in the phantasmata (I would add
that these can be present as part of the living tradition, the Scriptures,
a lecture, etc.).
2. Next, the potential intellect receives the abstracted, actually intelligible species, is informed and brought into act by it.
3. Then the intellect in act brings forth an intentio.
Finally, then, a view of the work left to be done in re-entering the world
of the Word.As the timid beginnings of canonical criticism are discovering,
the entire Bible is a word composed by the Holy Spirit.This word creates
its world in the life and worship of God’s people and that world is reciprocally the primary interpretive context for understanding the word. In such
a world there is not only the intelligible relation of verbum to res, but also the
relation of res to res—itself the foundation of the spiritual sense. To quote
one of Aquinas’s preferred texts from Gregory the Great’s Moralia: “Sacred
Scripture, in its very manner of speaking, is above all other sciences and
teachings because in one and the same word, while it narrates an event, it
sets forth a mystery.” (“Sacra Scriptura omnes scientias atque doctrinas ipso
etiam locutionis suae more transcendit, quia uno eodemque sermone dum
narrat gestum, prodit mysterium.”)52 Aquinas then develops this point:
The spiritual sense of Sacred Scripture is derived from the fact that
realities, playing out their own actions (cursum suum peragentes ) signify
something else and that something is arrived at through a spiritual
understanding (sensus ). . . . Only in this Scripture whose author is the
Holy Spirit and a human being is the instrument (can there be found
a spiritual sense) as it says in Psalm 44 (45):2, “My tongue is that of a
quickly writing scribe.” (Quodlibetum 7, 2.6, a. 3)

To ignore this dimension of the biblical text is to cut oneself off from
the very basis upon which the whole text moves. It suffices to read the
work of Michael Fishbane mentioned earlier (in note 35) to understand
that the Scriptures mirror and interpret an interconnected world. This is
the foundation for all the Exodus terminology that Paul uses in mediating
51 Goris, “Theology and Theory of the Word in Aquinas,” 75.
52 Gregory the Great, Moralia 20, 1 (PL 76, 135).

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an understanding of Christ’s Passion and for the fact that the whole of the
New Testament constantly alludes to the Old Testament. It is because God
is the creator of history, the effector of Redemption and the ultimate
author of Scripture that there is a spiritual sense.53
Toward the end of his essay Professor Bockmuehl describes the environment and challenges of his “day job” and reflects on whether or not
there is a danger of a decidedly in-house tendency in the theological
interpretation school that would impede fruitful dialogue with those
who either do not accept this approach or do not share the Christian
faith. I agree that there is such a danger, though I think some distinctions
may help clarify the issue.
First, regarding historical study.At this level, the basis for dialogue with
anyone who is striving for good history is to overcome bad history, as was
discussed above. Often, however, the differences may occur because of a
basic divergence in the underlying philosophical presupposition, and this
moves the discussion to another plane. Much of my own study here dealt
with the philosophical presupposition underlying many historical
conclusions in the field of biblical studies. This work must precede any
discussion that attempts to reach agreement on historical issues.Thomas
Aquinas articulated long ago how one may proceed in the search for a
starting point with non-believers, and his principles are applicable, mutatis
mutandis, when applied to the philosophical underpinning of much
historical study.
Now just as sacred doctrine is based on the light of faith, so philosophy
is based on the natural light of reason. So it is impossible that the
contents of philosophy should be contrary to the contents of faith, but
they fall short of them.The former, however, bear certain likenesses to
the latter and also contain certain preambles to them, just as nature itself
is a preamble to grace. If anything, however, is found in the sayings of
the philosophers contrary to faith, this is not philosophy but rather an
abuse of philosophy arising from faulty reasoning.54

There is a further function of philosophy, namely that of making the
mysteries of faith more intelligible. As I pointed out earlier, the first step
in this can be found in the articulation of statements or sententiae already
53 For a more protracted treatment of this theme one may consult my article “Spir-

itual Sense” in the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, Kevin J.
Vanhoozer, general editor (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 769–72.
54 Aquinas, Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, q. 2, a. 3, reply, in Aquinas,
Faith, Reason and Theology, trans.Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1987), 48–49.

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in the Bible. The medieval abuse of this function, still not absent from
either Catholic or Protestant theology, often produced a domination of
revelation by the mind’s natural functioning without the aid of the light
of faith. Omitting here a discussion of Karl Barth’s problems with analogy, we must still consider the masterpieces of biblical interpretation. I
think especially of the elaboration of statements (sententiae ) done with
the help of philosophy by so many of the Fathers of the Church. Among
other protective formulations of the Mystery achieved by our Fathers in
the faith through the use of philosophy, we may point to the term
homoousios as of immense importance.
I wish to elaborate this point slightly in order to advance somewhat the
remarks of Bockmuehl about the need to overcome the notion that theology as often practiced today is somehow an independent discipline, a
notion completely foreign to the Fathers of the Church.Thus, in trying to
describe the process by which the person moves to different levels of selftranscendence, Bernard Lonergan avails himself of the notion of “sublation,” a concept that had been developed by Karl Rahner in attempting to
articulate the role of philosophy in theology. I give Lonergan’s description
as being particularly clear:
What sublates [revelation] goes beyond what is sublated [philosophy],
introduces something new and distinct, yet so far from interfering with
the sublated or destroying it, on the contrary needs it, includes it,
preserves all its proper features and properties, and carries them forward
to a fuller realization within a richer context.”55

In a more picturesque manner, Aquinas once remarked:“[T]hose who
use the work of the philosophers in sacred doctrine, by bringing them
into the service of faith, do not mix water with wine, but rather change
water into wine.”56 When once this insight is understood, there should
result a much greater clarity in regard to two aspects of the interpretation
of the Scriptures. First, the role of historical investigation can find its
proper place as a subordinate discipline. Second, the irreplaceable role of
personal faith and knowledge of tradition will once more be recognized
as essential components in a hermeneutical method. “Faith” is not a
norm elaborated by Church documents, it is a light given to the believer
by God. This is certainly the approach of the Fathers of the Church to
whom Professor Bockmuehl makes reference in the second of his
55 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 241.
56 Aquinas, Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5, in Faith,

Reason and Theology, 50.

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remarks I quoted above and to which I wish to address a few lines by way
of conclusion.
A Conversation with Our Predecessors
I begin with these two remarks by Yves Congar, who is speaking of the
attitude and practice of the Fathers of the Church:
The divine Scriptures are regarded as a kind of sacrament: a grace-bearing sign that effectively realizes communion with God, and salvation,
when it is used in the right conditions.These conditions are obviously
spiritual: humility, purity of heart, a true desire to seek God and a strong
love of the Gospel. . . .The Scriptures do not surrender their meaning
by the bare text; they surrender it to a mind that is living, and living in
the conditions of the Covenant. . . . [I]n a certain way, Scripture
possesses its meaning outside itself. In the categories of the Scholastic
analysis of the sacraments, it would be termed the fruit of Scripture, its
res (the spiritual reality resulting from the sacrament).

• • •
Before being a critical reference or an argument, the sacred Text is a
sort of sacrament conveying the Gospel so that we may live by it.The
Fathers say that it is a means of grace and not only of information and
knowledge. . . .The text as such is not the living Word of God, but only
its sacrament (or sign). The decisive thing is the act accomplished by
God and its actual operation within us.57 Let all sound of words cease,
cease too all visual reading of printed characters on a page, and let God
bring about the communion and presence, spiritual realities of which
the former are but the envelope and means! The Bible is no more the
reality of the religious relationship than is the Church: both of them are
no more than its setting and means of transmission. All happens, finally,
in the relationship between two living subjects: the Living God and the
human heart. . . . Jesus himself wrote nothing; he did not give his apostles the mission to leave writings, but to preach. They were to preach
and to transmit the message and reality of the Gospel.58

That this understanding of the sacramental dimension of Scripture, its
reality as more than a human word, was not restricted to the earliest
centuries is clear from the statements of the medieval saints and mystics.
St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, commenting on 2 Timothy 3:16, asks
why only the Scriptures should be considered divinely inspired since,
according to Ambrose, “anything true, by no matter whom said, is from
57 Recall the similar remarks of Ratzinger quoted previously.
58 Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition, trans.A. N.Woodrow (New York: Hawthorne

Books, 1964; reprint, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 90–91 and 102.

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the Holy Spirit.” His response is that God works in two ways, one that is
immediate and this pertains to him alone; such is the case with miracles.
The other manner is mediate, that is, through the mediation of lesser
causes, as is the case with natural operations. He then says: “And thus in
man God instructs the intellect both immediately through the sacred
letters and mediately through other writings.”59 This is not a chance
expression. St. Thomas often attributes a unique causality (auctoritas ) to
Scripture. In commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatise On the Divine
Names, he says:
Dionysius, in his teaching (doctrina) depends upon (innititur) the authority of Sacred Scripture which has strength and power (roborem habet et
virtutem) because the Apostles and Prophets were moved to speak by the
Holy Spirit who was revealing to them and speaking in them.60

Again, when commenting on Hebrews 5:12–14, where the audience is told
that they need someone to teach them again the “oracles” (logioñ/sermonum)
of God, and that they need milk, not solid food,Aquinas says:
For sacra doctrina is food and drink because it nourishes ( potat ) and satisfies the soul. The other sciences enlighten only the mind; this one,
however, enlightens the soul. . . .This is a characteristic of the teaching
of Sacred Scripture (doctrina sacrae Scripturae ), that in it not only speculative things are handed on, but also those that are to be practiced
through activity (approbanda per affectum ).61

Finally, in commenting on Ephesians 6:13–17, Aquinas remarks:
In the third place are weapons for attacking. For not only must one
defend oneself but it is also necessary to attack the enemy. Just as in
bodily warfare this is accomplished by a sword so also is this accomplished by the word of God which is, spiritually, the sword of the Spirit
which you must take up. As it says in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of
God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing through to the division between soul and spirit, joints and marrow;
discerning the purposes and thoughts of the heart.” Thus preaching is
called the sword of the Spirit because it cannot reach the human spirit
unless it be wielded by the Holy Spirit:“It will not be you speaking but
the Spirit of your Father who is speaking in you” (Matt 10:20) . . .Thus
we have weapons for fighting the demons themselves, namely the
sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.This happens frequently
59 Aquinas, In 2 Tim 3, lect. 3.
60 Aquinas, De Divinis Nominibus, ch. 1, lect. 1.
61 Aquinas, On Hebrews, ch. 5, lect. 2.

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in sermons in which the word of God, penetrating the hearts of sinners,
drives out the tangled mass of sins and demons.62

Professor Bockmuehl challenged us to take a closer look at a very
important “movement” in modern Christian biblical studies. He began
by rightly rejecting the notion that “the Bible and doctrine, like history
and revelation, can have no formal connection.” He then points out that
the alternative to this notion “emerges among those who insist au contraire
that there is, or at least there ought to be, some sort of relationship
between Bible and Christian doctrine, however imbalanced that may
turn out in practice.”
I have tried to support his position by looking more deeply at the
“broken covenant between word and world” that characterizes so much
of modern Western thinking and has as its symptom the caesura pointed
out by Bockmuehl.The roots of this split lie in the fact that there is little
understanding of the truth that, once the notion of creation is lost, words
become merely human creations given meaning by human willing.They
are no longer expressions of a participation in the generosity of God
made tangible to us in creation itself and discovered to possess a new
splendor in the economy of the Incarnation. The broken covenant
between word and world is a consequence of a deeper infidelity to
another covenant: that between the Word and his creatures. Our very
thinking is an imitative participation in the creativity of the Word:
The “light of men” can also be taken as a light in which we participate.
For we would never be able to look upon the Word and light itself
except through a participation in it; and this participation is in man and
is the superior part of our soul about which the Psalm (4:7) says:“The
light of your face, O Lord is marked upon us,” that is, of your Son who
is your face, by whom you are made known.”63

Further, I have tried to look more deeply at the “broken covenant
between word and world” that characterizes so much of modern Western thinking.The roots of this split lie in our lack of understanding of the
truth that, once the fact of creation becomes inoperative in our thinking,
words become merely human artifacts given meaning by human willing.
They are no longer expressions of a participation in the generosity of
God, the generosity made tangible to us in creation itself and discovered
62 Aquinas, On Ephesians, ch. 6, lect. 4.
63 Aquinas, on John 1:3.Translation adapted from Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on

the Gospel of John, trans. James A.Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher (Albany, NY:
Magi Books, 1980).

On Bockmuehl’s “Bible versus Theology”

73

to possess a new splendor in the economy of the Incarnation.The broken
covenant between word and world is a consequence of a deeper infidelity
to another covenant: that between the Word and his creatures.
Though there be many participated truths, there is but one absolute
Truth which by its own essence is Truth, namely the Divine Being
itself, by which Truth all words are words. In the same way there is one
absolute Wisdom, raised above all, namely the Divine Wisdom by
participation in whom all wise men are wise. And in the same way the
absolute Word by participation in whom all who have a word are said
to be speaking.This is the Divine Word, which in Himself is the Word
raised above all.64

To use the light of our reason to prove that the source of this light does
not exist is to insure our own blindness. That is why I suggest that the
integration for which Markus Bockmuehl is searching (as indeed are all
of us) must begin with a recovery of the realization of creation and transcendence.
But there is one more step in this process, one made urgent by our
need to learn from “two millennia of engagement with the text.” We
must experience what the Fathers spoke of as the “visit of the Word.”
Basing himself on Augustine,Aquinas describes the ultimate formation of
a word within: it is the action of the Holy Spirit in the full functioning
of the gift of wisdom. It is in this action that the covenant is once again
sealed. The discussion is found in the Summa theologiae I, question 43,
which treats of the missions of the divine Persons, that is, their new presence to us as promised in Jesus’ farewell message in John 14–16.65 Article 5 of that question is concerned with:“Whether both the Son and the
Spirit are sent?” It is built on the response to an objection found in the
preceding question (ST I, q. 42, a. 5, ad 2):“The move (exitus ) of the Son
from the Father is by way of an interior procession as when a word (the
verbum interius already discussed) (both) goes out from the heart and
remains in it.”
In the following question, Aquinas must respond to an objection that
gifts perfecting the intellect belong to the level of charism, and they can be
64 Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, ch. 1, lect. 33.
65 For instance: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments; and I will ask

the Father, and he will give another Paraclete to you, that he might be with you
forever; the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not
see him nor know him; you know him because he abides with you; and he will
be in you” ( Jn 14:15–17). Again,“If anyone love me, he will keep my word; and
my Father will love him, and we will come to him and we will make our abode
with him” ( Jn 14:23).

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present without sanctifying grace.The Son, however, proceeds as the word
of the intellect, and therefore “it seems unfitting for Him to be sent invisibly.” I wish to present Aquinas’s answer in full, because it sets forth for us
the “world” the Word wishes to create in, and among us, and in the power
of whom we can promote a genuine theological interpretation movement.
Grace renders man conformable to God. When one of the divine
Persons has been sent to the soul by grace, it is necessary that the soul
be conformed or assimilated to that Person through some gift of grace.
Now the Holy Spirit is Love: it is therefore the gift of charity that assimilates the soul to the Holy Spirit, because it is in terms of charity that we
speak of the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Son, for his part, is the
Word—and not just any word, but one breathing forth Love (spirans
amorem): “The Word that we try to make known, says Augustine, is a
complete understanding of love” (De Trin. IX 10:15). The Son is not
sent for just any perfecting of the intellect, but only where the intellect
is instructed in such a way that it bursts forth in an affection of love
( prorumpat in affectum amoris ) as is written in the Gospel of John (6:45):
“Whoever has heard from the Father and learned, comes to me,” and
in Psalm 38:4, “In my meditation a fire will be enkindled.” And therefore Augustine worthily says: “The Son is sent when he is known and
perceived” (De Trin. IV 20:28): the word perception means a certain experiential knowledge. This is, properly speaking, “wisdom” (sapientia ) or
“savory knowledge” (sapida scientia ) according to the words of Sirach
(6:23), “the wisdom of the teaching justifies its name.”66

The wisdom of a theological interpretation will be vindicated by what it
N&V
produces (Mt 11:19; Lk 11:49).

66 ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2; cited in Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2,

Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC:The Catholic University
of America Press, 2003), 91–92, translation slightly modified.

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75

What Makes Exegesis Theological?
R. R. R ENO
Creighton University
Omaha, Nebraska

O N THE BASIS of my experience as the editor of Brazos Theological
Commentary on the Bible series, I can report that there is no danger of a
theological method emerging to spar with the historical-critical method.
The approaches, techniques, resources, and interpretive strategies of the
commentators have been very diverse, almost maddeningly so.Yet, for all
its diversity, readers and reviewers of the Brazos series sense an interpretive unity, and rightly so. As I tried to explain in my general introduction
to the series, the basic premise of our approach in the Brazos Theological
Commentary on the Bible series is that the Nicene tradition—the raggedyedged and intrinsically controversial body of orthodox Christian dogma—
plays an indispensable role in good biblical interpretation. Just what counts
as part of the Nicene tradition is very much a matter of debate, and the
precise role dogma plays in exegesis resists definition. But the larger claim
is, I think, accessible to our understanding. Knowing and bringing the
classical Christian body of dogma to bear in the reflective processes of
textual analysis and exposition will conduce to saying something true and
helpful about the text, and “theological interpretation” has emerged as an
ersatz but nonetheless useful term to designate this approach.
Even this admittedly vague description tends to evoke pressing questions from biblical scholars, some of which are suggested by the concluding queries in Markus Bockmuehl’s ambivalent reflections on the notion
of theological exegesis.1 Why would one be so scandalous as to imagine
Christian dogma crucial for biblical interpretation? Won’t the interposition
of dogma into the exegetical project turn biblical studies into a parochial
1 See “Bible versus Theology: Is ‘Theological Interpretation’ the Answer?” in this

issue.

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enterprise teetering on the edges of a stultifying fundamentalism? Why
give up on the confessional neutrality that presently secures a place for
biblical studies in the secular university? And in any event, don’t we need
an objective approach to the Bible precisely so that we can find a reliable
scriptural basis for doctrine and theology, thus protecting the Bible from
being turned into a wax nose easily bent to serve confessional agendas?
It is with these questions in mind that I want to state and explain the
rationale for theological exegesis. There are formal and material dimensions to this rationale. The formal dimension rests on the principle of
accordance, and the material dimension is best understood as a claim
about the scripturally saturated substance of the classical Christian tradition. A discussion of both the formal and material rationales will help
illuminate the practice of theological exegesis, and if we can be somewhat
clearer about the basis for a theological approach to the Bible, then
perhaps we can formulate more precise reflections on the kinds of objections and concerns expressed by often friendly but anxious critics.
The Formal Rationale for Theological Exegesis
Let’s begin with the simple and rather obvious claim that the true
Church of Christ teaches the gospel, along with the parallel claim that
the Bible is the sacred and canonical witness to the gospel. These two
claims in conjunction lead directly to a conclusion that bears immediately on questions of theological exegesis. If the Bible teaches something
we judge integral to the gospel, then the Church’s teaching must be
substantially the same.The reverse holds true as well. If Church teaching
proclaims something as a saving truth, then we assume that the Bible does
so as well. In other words, what the Bible says is, we presume, in accord
with what the Church proclaims. Or more precisely, how we interpret
what the Bible says should line up nicely with what we take to be orthodox doctrine, and if it does not then we must conclude either that our
interpretations are wrongheaded, or that what we imagine to be orthodox doctrine is not, in fact, orthodox.
Of course, our churches often put forward teachings not found in the
Bible. The Catholic Church, for example, elaborates principles for just
war, declares life to begin at conception, and prohibits the use of artificial methods of birth control. None of these teachings are found in the
Bible, as the Catholic Church recognizes, describing them as results of
reason properly applied to moral issues rather than as revealed truths.
Furthermore, the dogmatic affirmations of the Immaculate Conception
and Bodily Assumption of Mary, as well as other dogmas, are not biblical
in a strict sense. Once again the Catholic Church recognizes this to be

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the case, relying on theories of the development of doctrine to justify
their apostolic authenticity.
Yet even here a negative exegetical constraint obtains.At a minimum, the
Church cannot teach anything that contradicts the essential truths taught in
Scripture, and more broadly, these and other teachings of the Church are
presumed to be in accord with the larger sweep and general trend of scriptural truth.This presumption should not surprise us, for no matter how we
conceptualize or articulate the authority of Scripture, no matter what sort
of ecclesiology we adopt to describe the apostolic character of the Church,
nearly all Christians presume that the supreme trustworthiness of Scripture
as the Word of God dovetails with the doctrinal teaching, liturgical formation, and moral exhortation that emanate from the Church.
This presumption of accordance is fundamental, so much so that it can
easily be found in the underlying logic of the confessional traditions of
the churches in the West. The Council of Trent, for example, juxtaposes
the evils of personal judgment to the proper path of reading guided by
the Church. For the Fathers at Trent, it was intolerable that private
persons should set about to produce interpretations contrary to those
established by the traditions of the Church. Therefore, to prevent the
possibility of any disjunction between biblical interpretation and Church
teaching, the Council provides a crucial post-Reformation definition of
magisterial authority. It is the function of the Church, we read,“to judge
the true sense and interpretation of the sacred scriptures.”2
The first and second Vatican councils reiterate this affirmation of
magisterial authority in different ways. As we read in Vatican I’s Dogmatic
Constitution on the Catholic Faith (De Fide ):
Now since the decree on the interpretation of holy scripture, profitably
made by the council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash
speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that
decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith
and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian
doctrine, that the meaning of holy scripture must be held to be the true
one, which holy mother church held and holds, since it is her right to
judge the true meaning and interpretation of holy scripture.3
2 Council of Trent, Session 4, Second Decree.
3 De Fide, Chapter 2. The restatement and clarification of Trent was motivated by

concern about two nineteenth-century opinions, both of which sought to loosen
the bond between Church teaching and scriptural interpretation. One argued that
Trent’s decree was purely disciplinary and not dogmatic in consequence. The
second argued that Trent required assent to dogmas officially derived from Scripture, but not assent to the particular interpretations. For background, see Études

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The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei
Verbum) provides a much more extensive, plastic, and complex account of
the role and interpretation of Scripture in the life of the Church, and one
can argue that Vatican II refines Tridentine teaching in an important way by
emphasizing the unique authority of the Word of God.4 Nonetheless, the
underlying unity of the teaching office and exegetical authority remains
intact:“The task of authentically interpreting the word of God . . . has been
entrusted only to those charged with the Church’s ongoing teaching function, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”5
One can mount endless objections to the Tridentine approach to biblical interpretation, judging it to be authoritarian, anti-historical, unscriptural, and so forth.Yet we need to see the formal principle at work. By very
clearly stipulating that the Church and only the Church rightly judges the
meaning of Scripture, the Catholic Church ensures by dogmatic definition
precisely what nearly all Christians presume: the principle of accordance
between what the Church teaches and what the Bible says.
For all the differences between Protestant and Catholic, on this point
they are as one.The Lutheran Formula of Concord opens with the Protestant principle of sola scriptura.“We believe, confess, and teach,” the Formula
states,“that the only rule and norm according to which all dogmas and all
doctors ought to be assessed and judged, is no other thing than the
prophetic and apostolic writings of both the Old and the New Testament.”6 In the Reformed tradition, the Westminster Confession emphasizes the necessity of the illumination of the Holy Spirit in right reading,
as well as the proper scope for natural reason in practical considerations of
Church order, but the basic principle remains the same: “The Supreme
Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all
decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and
private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest,
can be no other than the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”7 Thus we
find that the Reformation documents settle on the same formal principle
théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile de Vatican, Tome 1, Jean-Michel-Alfred
Vacant (Paris: Delhomme et Briguet, 1895), 520–21.
4 In an important contrast to the seemingly one-sided ascription of authority to
the Magisterium in earlier statements,Vatican II states,“This teaching function is
not above the word of God but stands at its service, teaching nothing but what
is handed down, accordingly as it devotedly listens, reverently preserves and faithfully transmits the word of God, by divine command and with the help of the
Holy Spirit” (Dei Verbum, §10).
5 Dei Verbum, §10.
6 Formula of Concord, Epitome, I.
7 Westminster Confession, Chapter 1.

What Makes Exegesis Theological?

79

as Trent and the two modern Vatican councils. What the Church teaches
must be substantially in accord with what the Bible says, with the two
sides of the great Reformation debate about Church and Scripture differing only in how that accordance is to be described and ensured.
So fundamental is the principle of accordance that even aggressively
non-confessional Protestants bear witness to it. They reject the instrumentalities of written confessions precisely because they think that these
man-made documents stand in the way of the complete correspondence
between scriptural interpretation and Church teaching. The two should
be one and the same ecclesial act, not two different aspects of Church life
that need to be brought into harmony.Thus, however bitter the debates
may be about Church authority, confessional documents, theories of
inerrancy, or methods of interpretation, the principle of accordance
between Church and Scripture is not itself controversial. It is instead the
great point of agreement around which ecumenical controversies swirl.
Therefore, it seems to me that theological exegesis does nothing more
than presume what nearly all Christians presume: the accordance of Church
teaching with scriptural interpretation. Something like an agenda for exegesis becomes clear when we add a further and one would think non-controversial principle of reason, which is that we should use what is clear in order
to understand what is obscure. At times, what Scripture says is opaque but
doctrine is clear.At other times, what the Church teaches is either puzzling
or undeveloped, but the plain sense of Scripture would seem perspicuous.
And at still other times, the Bible seems to blatantly contradict dogmatic
claims or to strike at oblique angles, or even to hover with perplexing irrelevance.All these circumstances provide excellent opportunities for the mind
to engage in analysis that is both theological and exegetical.
Consider the case of contradiction. In my reading of the first chapter
of Genesis, I make the forthright observation that readers face a striking
contrast between what the Bible says and what the Church teaches. In
Genesis 1:2 we read: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving
over the face of the waters.” Modern biblical scholars have given detailed
accounts of the connections between this verse and the Babylonian
creation myth, the Enuma Elish, connections that biblical scholars believe
strongly suggest that in its original context Genesis was read as teaching
that God tamed or formed a preexisting chaos. In contrast, both Jews and
Christians have long agreed that God creates out of nothing. Given the
presumption of accordance, the theological interpreter faces an obvious
problem: what the Bible seems to say and what the Church teaches are
discordant rather than harmonious.

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St. Thomas Aquinas based his pedagogy on the method of objection
and response, because he recognized that puzzling difficulties and impediments tend to create the intellectual effort necessary for discovery and
insight. Such was my situation as an interpreter. When I worked on this
verse and read some modern historical-critical analysis, I was forced to ask
a question. If Genesis 1 doesn’t provide support for the doctrine of
creation out of nothing, then why did ancient Jews and Christians formulate the doctrine in the first place? I had unthinkingly assumed that the
creation account in Genesis was the source of the classical doctrine of
creation, but an actual encounter with the text suggested otherwise.Yet,
the presumption of accordance blocked the easy conclusion that Church
teaching is unscriptural. Instead of sliding along with my unexamined
views, I turned to apply myself to the problem with redoubled effort.
The first step was to make sure I actually understood the doctrine of
creation out of nothing. This led me to Robert Sokolowski’s book The
God of Faith and Reason.8 There I discovered that the main thrust of the
doctrine is metaphysical: there is nothing other than the one true God and
all the things he has made. Put somewhat differently, the doctrine of
creation out of nothing entails an ontological parsimony, where parsimony signals the stingy way in which Christians and Jews limit reality to
God and the single and metaphysically homogeneous finite sphere of
creation, rather than the rococo Neoplatonic view that allows for all sort
of layers and degrees of reality emanating from the singular divine source.
With this ontological parsimony in mind, I returned to the Bible and
discovered that the extensive Old Testament polemic against idolatry was
the true source of the doctrine of creation out of nothing. Idols are not
weak, ineffective, or inadequate; they are empty and lifeless.“Idols are like
scarecrows,” we read in Jeremiah, and “they cannot do evil, neither is it
in them to do good” ( Jer 10:5).The New Testament carries forward the
same view. St. Paul explains the futility of idols by appealing to God’s
creative uniqueness (Acts 14:15; 17:24). Idols are futile and vacant, as they
must be, for the ontological parsimony of the doctrine of creation out of
nothing denies the existence of any intermediary, semi-divine reality to
infuse them with power.This is why he can be nonplussed about the fact
that some of the faithful are eating meat sacrificed to idols, for idols have
no malignant potency (1 Cor 8:4–6). Given this larger biblical consensus, it’s therefore natural that idolatry should be the issue at stake when
creation out of nothing is explicitly affirmed in 2 Maccabees 7:8.
8 Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, IN: University

of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

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But the central role of the biblical campaign against idolatry is not the
only thing I discovered. The ontological parsimony entailed by the
doctrine of creation out of nothing bears on a surprisingly wide array of
issues. For example, the cogency of the literalism of biblical accounts of
divine action in history seems to require the metaphysical assumptions we
find in the doctrine of creation out of nothing. The same holds for the
unexpected unity of God’s universal purposes with the particularity of
human history that begins with the calling of Abraham and reaches a
crescendo in John 1:14 (“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us”).9 Moreover, the fresh insight I had gained into the ontological parsimony entailed in the doctrine of creation out of nothing allowed me to
return to Genesis 1:2 with a more vivid sense of what is at stake in the
creation account, seeing for the first time a possible connection to the
Augustinian understanding of the dissolving, destroying, negating, and
evacuating power of evil. With this metaphysical view of evil as nihil, we
can hear the divine pronouncement,“Let there be light” (Gn 1:3) echoed
in Deuteronomy, where Moses repeatedly exhorts the Israelites to choose
life instead of death. The echo in Deuteronomy allows us to turn to the
first chapter of John, the New Testament verses most obviously relevant to
Genesis 1, and encourages us to think more deeply about the constant
conjunction of light and life that invades the realm of darkness and the
nothingness of death.The covenant—the divine initiative that secures the
triumph of light and life—is already in the deepest foundations of creation.
I could give many more examples from my exegetical efforts, as well as
from other commentaries in the Brazos series.When Genesis 17:7 stipulates that the covenant of circumcision will be everlasting, a Christian
reader immediately thinks of Galatians 5:2, where Paul says,“If you receive
circumcision, Christ will be no advantage to you.” Here we find two relatively clear scriptural passages against a background of opaque and fluid
Church teaching about covenant, law, and grace that makes it difficult to
see them in harmony.This conjunction of clarity and obscurity motivated
me to try to explain how a Pauline rejection of circumcision can be
consistent with an affirmation of its everlasting role in God’s plan of salvation.10 Or take an example from Robert Jenson’s commentary on Ezekiel.
At the end of chapter 22 of Ezekiel, we read that God is at once attacking Jerusalem and at the same time searching for a righteous man to stand
in the breach and defend the city. It seems a hopeless confusion: God is
outside the wall of the city pressing his attack, and he is at the same time
9 See Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason, 31–40.
10 R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand

Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 173–80.

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inside, seeking to save his beloved people.This double role is not so much
resolved as made clear and explicit, Jenson suggests, in the crucifixion and
Resurrection of Christ.11
My point is not to argue for the cogency of these interpretations, or
any others. Perhaps they are wrongheaded, or they stretch too far, or don’t
stretch far enough.This is for others to judge. Instead, I have been trying
to illustrate some of the ways in which the presumption of accordance
between doctrine and Scripture frames and motivates interpretive questions and thus guides exegesis.This framing and motivating strikes me as
one of the most promising features of theological exegesis, for the kinds
of questions we ask are among the most important dimensions of intellectual work, including the work of interpretation. As soon as one allows
Church teaching and biblical proclamation to share in a common claim
to truth, the obvious differences, the puzzling divergences, as well as the
unexpected harmonies will naturally compel our minds and draw us into
elaborate arguments that interweave theological and biblical analysis.
The Material Rationale for Theological Exegesis
All efforts of interpretation try to say something true about the material
under examination, whether these truths are philological, text-critical,
form-critical, historical, moral, political, or theological. In other words,
we undertake our interpretations against the background of presumed
economies of truth, some of which are very limited and particular in
scope, others of which are quite wide and universal. For example, one can
pursue philological analysis only under guiding presumptions about how
grammar works and languages evolve. It turns out, however, that these
presumptions fit nicely with a wide array of different and perhaps even
contradictory metaphysical schemes. I doubt, for example, that the arguments in the area of Hebrew philology change much if one is an ancient
Platonist, medieval Aristotelian, or modern day logical positivist.
This metaphysical agnosticism diminishes as we develop larger-scale
interpretative arguments, all of which draw upon often unspoken, even
unconscious assumptions about the ways in which human history and
culture unfold. The J and P hypothesis, for example, enjoys a great deal
of important and compelling support in the textual details of the Pentateuch, most famously in the different locutions used to refer to God.Yet,
when scholars turn from the obvious existence of J and P to a theory of
redaction that promises to help us understand the significance of the
intermingled strands of the canonical text, they draw upon a tacit theory
11 Robert Jenson, Ezekiel, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand

Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2009), 188.

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83

of tradition and historical development, and behind that theory lies an
implicit metaphysics. The role of metaphysical horizon in interpretation
becomes explicit when, for example, a New Testament scholar presupposes that miracles and prophecies cannot happen and therefore
concludes that the prophecies of the destruction of the Temple provide
decisive evidence for authorship after 70 A.D. After all, claims about what
can or cannot happen are, by definition, metaphysical statements.
It is intellectually stultifying to try to read ancient texts— indeed, any
texts— without drawing upon an implied metaphysical horizon.To interpret without recourse to presumptions about reality is like trying to walk
without legs or see without eyes. In any event, the role of an implied
metaphysical horizon presents no problem for texts we do not affirm as
privileged sources of truth.A seminar on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
for example, might undertake to discern the reasons for and methods of
its composition, as well as an assessment of its influence, and these
approaches promise interesting insights into cultural patterns of modern
anti-Semitism, to say nothing of the larger perversions of the human
heart. A good professor knows how to maximize these insights by framing questions and interpretations in light of an economy of truth. Perhaps
the professor presumes certain truths about human motivations, fears, and
fantasies, or perhaps he appeals to truths about the larger sweep of modern
history, or perhaps still other dimensions of our common humanity.
Students appreciate this sort of class, and books written in this way attract
grateful readers, because the larger horizon helps us see how a book such
as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is full of falsehoods, can
nonetheless illuminate and refine our insights into what is true.
With texts we hold dear, the dynamic begins to change, and we
become more anxious about the role of the implied metaphysical horizon. Although we may want to understand and interpret The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion, by and large we don’t want to adopt its worldview.We
want to understand it, perhaps, but not be influenced by it.Therefore, we
worry very little about whether or not our modes of interpretation
subsume or control our reading. However, in a limited but real sense we
might justly worry about our interpretations of Shakespeare. Because we
think his plays rich with insights into the human condition, we often want
our minds to be influenced by his work in a deep way.We don’t just want
to know about Shakespeare or to understand him in light of our assumptions about culture, history, and the human condition. We also want to
think about Macbeth or King Lear in a Shakespearean way. To the degree
that there are profound truths in a text, we want these truths to influence
our metaphysical horizon rather than simply be interpreted by it.

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This disposition of interpretive submission and obedience becomes acute
when a reader approaches the Bible as the Word of God. Shakespeare may
have been wise, but he was not omni-competent. In contrast, one basic
supposition at work in the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy involves
an affirmation of the supreme and comprehensive wisdom latent in the
biblical text.The Bible provides the master code for all reality, and faithful
interpreters want their presumed economy of truth to be biblical; we would
like to have some confidence that the metaphysical horizon we use to frame
our more ambitious and large-scale interpretations of the Bible is itself biblical in substance. In a very broad sense, therefore, all self-conscious Christian
interpreters operate with a desire expressed in the principle of sola scriptura.
For example, many modern biblical scholars appeal to the doctrine of the
Incarnation as a warrant for historical analysis.They stake a claim to a biblical basis for the metaphysical horizon that usually provides the background
assumptions for modern historical-critical study of the Bible.12
By and large this use of the doctrine of the Incarnation fails to persuade,
because it does not engage the full import of the union of God’s purposes
with the particularity of human history. Jesus teaches us what it means to be
human, and therefore we cannot simply assume that our usual notions of
“humanness” can determine or define his humanity. The same is true of
history. From the election of Abraham to the Incarnation of the Eternal
Word, the commerce of God with his people teaches us the truth about
human history, and this invariably alters our ordinary assumptions. Defective
as the usual appeals to the Incarnation may be, however, the impulse that
leads biblical scholars to turn to doctrine as a source for explaining and justifying their interpretive approach is nevertheless sound.As I have shown, the
ecumenical principle of accordance encourages us to have a great deal of
confidence in the biblical substance of orthodox doctrine.This confidence,
moreover, is not merely formal.There is a material rationale for turning to
doctrine when trying to interpret the Bible in a way that respects its textual
integrity.The Nicene tradition represents a remarkable intellectual effort to
rethink all aspects of reality on Old Testament and New Testament principles. Church doctrine, therefore, is biblically saturated through and through.
Consider, for example, On First Principles, the first sustained Christian
effort of speculative, systematic theology. At the outset Origen states that
his approach has “no other source but the very words and teachings of
Christ.”13 If we allow ourselves to become bewitched by narrow and
12 See, for example, Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Prob-

lem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 17–21.
13 Origen, On First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth (Gloucester, MA: Peter

Smith, 1973), Book I, pref., ¶1.

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untenable assumptions about how beliefs and ideas develop and interlock, then we can wrongly presume that “source” means directly found
in or deduced from Scripture, and as a result Origen’s assertion will seem
absurd. If we drop these assumptions, however, and instead see his grand
theology of creation, time, and embodiment, as well as evil, redemption,
and consummation, as a way of shaping a metaphysical horizon that
allows us to read the Bible biblically, then we can grasp the true meaning
of Origen’s claim. “Think of reality this way,” Origen should be read as
saying, “and you will be able to enter more fully into the wisdom of the
Scriptures, because you will be thinking scripturally, you will approach
the Bible with a biblical view of reality.” This ambition, it seems to me,
characterizes the bulk of the Nicene tradition.14
We can judge Origen mistaken at certain points, as did many in the
centuries after his death. Moreover, we can engage the very complex and
unruly body of teaching that I have been calling the Nicene tradition,
and after analysis determine it confused, ill-developed, and in need of
correction by a more thorough interpretation of Scripture. This corrective impulse was not unique to the Reformers of the sixteenth century.
To a great extent, the Nicene tradition as a whole should be understood
as an argument made across many generations about how best to account
for the truth of scriptural teaching, Church practice, and apostolic proclamation, and as is the case with all large-scale, ongoing, and communally
conducted arguments, it involves constant restatements, reconsiderations,
and revisions.Although these reconsiderations are ongoing, and although
many dimensions of Church doctrine remain points of intense dispute
(not least, the ecclesiological question of what counts as Church doctrine),
as an intellectual resource for exegesis, the relatively steady and constant
points of consensus within the Nicene tradition remain peerless. I defy
anyone to identify a way of thinking about God, history, and human
destiny that is at once more metaphysically self-conscious and more thoroughly and constantly invested with exegetical substance.15
My own interpretive efforts have made me acutely aware of the
remarkable combination of conceptual rigor and interpretive power in
14 For a winsome and sympathetic description of Origen’s systematic project, see

Rowan Williams,“Origen,” in The First Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). For an effort to show the exegetical genius of Origen’s theology, see
R. R. Reno,“Origen and Spiritual Interpretation,” Pro Ecclesia 15 (2006): 108–26.
15 On the close connection between doctrine and exegesis in the early development of the Nicene tradition, see R. R. Reno and John J. O’Keefe, Sanctified
Vision:An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2005).

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the Nicene tradition.When I grappled with the traditional view of God
and creation in relation to the beginning verse of Genesis, I came to be
impressed by the exegetical roots of the doctrine of creation out of nothing. As a metaphysical claim about God and reality the doctrine has no
basis in common sense or ancient science, emerging instead out of
sustained attempt to formulate the ontological parsimony implied in the
Old Testament polemics against idolatry.The doctrine of creation out of
nothing also has served historically as an important background assumption for subsequent discussions of divine presence and action within
history, most importantly in the person of Jesus Christ.16 I have come to
see that, without this metaphysical horizon, reading the Bible as a coherent narrative about the God of Israel who raised Jesus from the dead
becomes very difficult. The same holds for the doctrine of the Trinity,
which is metaphysically even more improbable and was even more
important for the crucial theological project of developing a conceptually disciplined account of a supremely transcendent God who remains
nonetheless capable of full identification with created particularity.
If we keep in mind the exegetical sources and pressures that spurred
the development of Nicene doctrine, then we can see more clearly the
material rationale for theological exegesis. When commentators in the
Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series use doctrine to orient
themselves, to frame their exegetical questions and draw out the significance of a biblical passage—when they are engaging in the multi-faceted
enterprise that I have been calling theological exegesis—they are relying
on intellectual resources that have been developed and refined for the
specific purpose of thinking biblically about the Bible.The formal principle of accordance between how we read the Bible and how we understand Church teaching is so primitive that there never has been a
moment in the history of Christianity when exegesis and doctrine have
not been intertwined in a single, complex intellectual practice—never,
that is, until the modern era.
The Present Situation
For many different and complex reasons, contemporary biblical scholars
have a difficult time accepting theological exegesis. Needless to say, secular scholars do not entertain the notion that the doctrines of the Church
state important truths about God, or about anything else for that matter,
and as a result the formal and material rationales for theological exegesis
16 See especially Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, Book One.The doctrine of creation

provides the main backdrop for Irenaeus’s criticisms of the cogency of gnostic
soteriology, as well as for his own theology of the Incarnation.

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can seem only unpersuasive at best and a dangerous intrusion of religious
fundamentalism at worst. Yet even biblical scholars who believe in and
trust the main lines of the Nicene tradition are uneasy about theological
exegesis, because they fear that more will be lost than gained by the introduction of doctrinal concerns into the practice of interpretation. And
what do they fear will be lost? As I have listened to and read the concerns
of men and women of faith who are committed to modern historicalcritical study, I find myself identifying two kinds of worries: the first is
political or institutional, the second textual and theological.
In The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age, John
Collins shifts the focus of modern biblical study. Our present postmodern skepticism has undermined our confidence that historical-critical
procedures can deliver conclusive answers to questions about what various biblical texts once meant for their original writers, editors, and readers. Nonetheless, because the rules for historical study are academic rather
than confessional, based on modern canons of historical analysis rather
than on classical principles of faith, Collins observes that historical criticism “has created an arena where people of different faith commitments
can work together and have meaningful conversations.”17 A Jew, a Christian, and an atheist can agree about what counts as a good argument for
determining the sources for the J writer, for example, or the Sitz im Leben
of imprecatory psalms.This agreement creates a neutral institutional space
for biblical study, allowing for conversation across confessional divides.
The range of conversations about the Bible made possible by modern
critical methods has been of great value. Not only has this method built
a culture of cooperation and mutual learning among scholars from different backgrounds and with different beliefs, it has also injected fresh
insights into old theological debates. For example, the new consensus
about Paul that developed in recent decades played a decisive role in
overcoming confessional divides in the Lutheran and Roman Catholic
Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. I can imagine a different but
equally significant consensus about covenant and Christian supersessionism emerging out of the new participation of Jewish scholars in New
Testament study.
Contemporary biblical scholars are right to cherish the shared
discourse of historical-critical inquiry, and they are right to persevere in
17 John Collins, The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 10. For an excellent discussion of Collins and the
shift toward a political justification for historical-critical method, see Michael C.
Legaspi, “What Ever Happened to Historical Criticism?” Journal of Religion and
Society 9 (2007).

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their inquiries, just as Christian scholars in other fields should carry
forward the work of their disciplines, some of which also play in important role in Christian self-understanding. The virtue of faith invites a
range of intellectual projects and conversations, allowing modern historical study to play an ongoing role in theologically motivated biblical
interpretation. However, John Collins makes the unwarranted assumption that modern biblical study is intrinsically antithetical to theological
exegesis, whereas, in fact, only the historical-critical claim to final interpretive authority contradicts a theological approach. Reviews of some of
the early volumes of the Brazos series exemplify this false assumption. In
many cases, reviewers trained as modern biblical scholars have objected
to what they take to be spurious typologies, unwarranted intrusions of
Christological claims, and a general tendency to move from the biblical
text to theological analysis. Rather than entering into these modes of
analysis to offer criticisms of their cogency, biblical scholars, when faced
with theological exegesis, have tended to assert interpretive authority,
making the inference that, if the historical-critical method would not
lead one to say x about the book of Jonah or the Gospel of Matthew, then
x should not be said.
There can be no doubt that the rationales I have given for theological
exegesis directly challenge the presumed interpretive authority of
modern historical criticism. Unless one rejects nearly all forms of classical ecclesiology, any effort by a Christian to explain what the Bible fully
and finally says will require accounting for the germane teachings of the
Church. Moreover, given the exegetical saturation of the Nicene tradition, anyone who seeks a biblical horizon for biblical interpretation will
need to reckon with classical doctrine. In this instance, as in others, theology remains the queen of the sciences. Historical study of the Bible is
certainly legitimate and perhaps necessary in the contemporary context,
but as a mode of interpretation it cannot be sufficient and satisfactory for
Christian readers, because its methods operate at a studied distance from
what men and women of faith implicitly (Protestant) or explicitly
(Catholic) regard as the most reliable guide to the truths of Scripture—
Church doctrine.
The second worry concerns attention to the Bible in its particularity.
Modern historical study cherishes a tradition of close attention to textual
detail, and this tradition rebels against the way in which the metaphysical horizon of the Nicene tradition often encourages theological readers
to import exegetical observations and lines of analysis that run toward
conceptual questions rather than textual ones. For example, my own
reading of the first verses of Genesis moves very quickly from what the

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text says to an analysis of what is entailed in the doctrine of creation out
of nothing, and I would not be surprised if contemporary biblical scholars note this shift with dismay.The same holds for Christological readings
of the Old Testament. Biblical scholars worry that this approach bounces
from the Old to the New Testament and back again without regard for
the vast differences of cultural and historical context. Even a decision to
use the final form of the canonical text can rankle, because it seems to
ignore the multi-layered reality of tradition and redaction.
I read this worry about the loss of textual particularity as a concern
about the role of the Bible as the real authority and living source for
Christian faith.The Bible does not speak to us in pithy doctrines. It is not
a catechism thrown into narrative, poetic, and legal form. On the
contrary, the Bible is thickly forested with history and culture, as well as
endless nuances of language and expression, and biblical scholars like to
view their own training as sustained immersion in the endlessly multifaceted and plural worlds of the Bible. We fail to read fully and deeply,
argues the modern biblical scholar, if we fail to enter into the almost
trackless but beautiful wilderness of the Bible.
Here I find myself in full sympathy, but I must make some cautionary
remarks.To begin, it is not the case that modern biblical study refrains from
abstractions and remains intimately engaged with the biblical text. Efforts
to reconstruct the original context for the book of Exodus or the Gospel
of John turn out to be elaborate speculative enterprises that rely on countless sociological, psychological, and theological assumptions. Redaction
criticism can be used to dismember books of the Bible, and one often finds
modern scholars using this technique to explain away rather than interpret
passages.18 The modern genre of historical-critical commentary has
become an ossified template, and the vast majority of these commentaries
read like summaries of recent scholarship rather than fresh engagements
with the biblical text. Troublesome as these tendencies may be for those
who cherish biblical particularity, there is a still greater danger. Modern
historical study provides no intellectual justification for the intensive focus
on the canonical text that has long characterized modern biblical scholarship. On the contrary, as the evolution of graduate programs indicates, the
natural subject matter for those who cleave to historical methods will not
be the Old and New Testaments but rather ancient Near Eastern culture
and Greco-Roman culture. I do not object to this evolution, for it strikes
me as proper if one wishes to pursue a purely historical approach to ancient
18 For a particularly striking example, see Gerhard von Rad’s explanation of why

one can ignore Genesis 38, in Genesis: A Commentary, trans. John H. Marks
(Philadelphia:Westminster, 1972) 356–57.

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texts. But we need to refrain from illusions.This trend will not encourage
the development of the Bible-focused mental habits that many wrongly
imagine are intrinsic to the modern historical-critical tradition.
Theological exegesis, at least as I have defined it, gives us an intellectual
justification for the development of an ever richer, ever deeper understanding of the Bible. It does not approach the Bible with pre-determined
interpretations that glide smoothly over the surfaces of the Bible. Rather,
because theological exegesis presumes that Church and Bible are on the
same page, so to speak, it interweaves rather than short-circuits a proper
concern for nuance, detail, and historical particularity. Given the principle
of accordance, judgments about how to read the Bible must invariably
influence the ways in which we interpret doctrine. And conversely, our
always-ongoing efforts to understand the Nicene tradition should leaven
our necessarily incomplete interpretations of the Bible.The overall effect,
it seems to me, will be neither wooden applications of doctrine to exegesis nor a systematic neglect of the organic diversity of the Bible.The formal
and material rationales for theological exegesis challenge our complacency.
As I have discovered in my own work, recognizing that Church teaching
bears upon exegesis has thrown a spotlight on my own ignorance of the
doctrines I imagined were familiar, as well as my ignorance of the unfathomable richness the Bible. One must enter more deeply into both in order
to find one’s way toward the truth of Christ they share.
In the end, the goal of exegesis should be the truth that the text allows
us to see.All but the most virulent intellectual ideologues hope to produce
good interpretations of the Bible rather than to write commentaries
devoted to the advancement of various labels and methodological formulae.This is why nineteenth-century pioneers of historical-critical method
such as David Friedrich Strauss and Julius Wellhausen produced exegesis
with so many interesting theological, moral, and political dimensions. Like
Origen and Bernard and Luther and Karl Barth and Adrienne von Speyr,
the great figures of the modern tradition of biblical interpretation wanted
to bring out the truth in the Bible, suggested by the Bible, pointed to and
derived from the Bible—take your pick of prepositions and their implied
epistemological metaphors.This should neither surprise nor disturb.Truth
is what we seek when we engage our minds.To be a Christian is to believe
that the truth found in the Bible is the very same truth we enter into by
way of baptism, the same truth we confess in our creeds, the same truth
we receive in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Theological exegesis,
therefore, is not a method. It is simply an approach that does not ignore
the truth of Church teaching when embarking on the difficult task of
trying to discern the truth that the Bible teaches.
N&V

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91

Faith, Finance, and Almsgiving in the Bible
G ARY A. A NDERSON
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

W HAT IS the nature of religious belief? For some of us, the first thing
we might think of is the Trinitarian structure of the Creed. But for those
outside the Church, this declaration will sound peculiar. Believing in
God may appear, as the White Queen put it in Alice in Wonderland, like
“believing six impossible things before breakfast.”
Father Gerard Manley Hopkins must have had similar worries about
the intelligibility of the Creed for a novice to the faith when he sat down
to write his dear friend Robert Bridges. In a famous passage, Hopkins
confesses his desire that Bridges come to know the truth of the Christian faith. And strikingly he does not begin with doctrine:
I have another counsel [to suggest to you] open to no objection and
yet I think it will be unexpected. I lay great stress on it. It is to give
alms. It may be either in money or in other shapes, the object for
which, with your knowledge of several hospitals, can never be wanting.
I daresay indeed you do give alms, still I should say give more: I should
be bold to say/give, up to the point of sensible inconvenience. . . . [T]he
difference of mind and being between the man who finds comfort all
round him unbroken unless by constraints which are none of his own
seeking and the man who is pinched by his own charity is too great for
forecasting, it must be felt: I do not say the difference between being
pinched and being at one’s ease, the one may easily conceive and most
people know, willy-nilly, by experience, but the difference between
paying heavily for a virtue and not paying at all. It changes the whole
man, if anything can; not his mind only but the will and everything.1
1 The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, ed. Claude Abbot (London:

Oxford University Press, 1935), 60–61.

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In a subsequent letter, Hopkins returns to the question, in light of an
objection that giving alms until it hurts is like suggesting that one put on
a hairshirt. Hopkins responds by saying there is a big difference between
being “short of money” and being “short of money for charity’s sake.” He
concludes with these words: “And I take leave to repeat and you cannot
but see, that it is a noble thing and not a miserable something or other to
give alms and help the needy and [to] stint ourselves for the sake of the
unhappy and undeserving.”2
In this essay I would like to focus on the relationship between the act
of giving alms and believing in the Gospel. This is one of the most
important arguments that I make in my book and perhaps also one of its
most Catholic aspects. It cannot be accidental that one of the most
important texts in my argument—Daniel 4:27 (v. 24 in the Masoretic Text )
“Redeem your sins by almsgiving and your iniquity by acts of kindness
toward the poor”—has proven to be a battleground between Catholics
and Protestants since the onset of the Reformation.3 For this text claims
that the act (that is, “work”) of almsgiving contributes to one’s redemption by paying down the debt we owe God for our sins.We can see that
Fr. Hopkins was well catechized (was there any doubt!), for he cites the
advice of Daniel in his followup letter.
Though my book provides a solid argument for the Catholic reading
of this text, I do not claim that we can dispense with all the worries of
Protestant exegetes.4 Rather, I try my best to show why a human “work”
need not come at the expense of God’s grace. Curiously, the way to
achieve this ecumenical end, I found, was to turn to the world of banking. And it is to this aspect that I would like to return today.
I
Let me begin by citing an ancient piece of Jewish wisdom. In a famous
work known as Pirke Avot, we see several rabbis try to characterize the
difference between good and bad paths of living.5 Rabbi Eliezer contrasts
the generous man with the miser; for Rabbi Joshua it is being a good or
2 Letters, 64.
3 See the discussion of this verse in my book Sin:A History (New Haven, CT:Yale,

2010), 137–44. The Protestant worries are well summarized by James Montgomery (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel [Edinburgh:
T & T Clark, 1927], 238) when he cites the remark of Matthew Pole in 1694:
“The papists gather from this verse their notions of satisfaction and merits.”
4 See in particular the tenth chapter of Sin:A History, which is entitled:“Salvation
by Works?”
5 Pirke Avot (“The Chapters of the Fathers”) is readily available in any translation
of the Mishnah. For the text that I shall discuss, see 2.14.

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poor friend, whereas Rabbi Yosi says it is being a good or poor neighbor.
All of these, I think we would agree, are quite clear and need no
commentary. Rabbi Shimon, however, says the good path is the ability
“to see into the future” whereas the bad path is “to borrow money and
be unable to repay the debt.”
What on earth holds these two different paths together? Well, if we
take our cue from the person who defaults on a loan, we can find an
answer. For the person who borrows money does so in the expectation
that at some future time he will secure the means to repay his creditor.
But wouldn’t this require that one know what the future holds?
Let us stop for a second and consider what takes place when we fill out
an application for a loan.We are asked to disclose where we work, what we
make, and how long we have held our job. These details provide a record
that the bank takes as evidence as to the stability of our income. Because
loans involve risk, the banker who issues a loan must believe that the
customer will be able to repay. And this is no small matter for the flourishing of society. For if enough people default, our bank will teeter on the edge
of insolvency and set in motion a run of not only that bank but even others.
James Surowiecki of The New Yorker captured this dimension of our
recent financial crisis beautifully. Like the White Queen in Alice and Wonderland, too many people had believed six impossible things before breakfast:
Fraud is a boom-time crime because it feeds on the faith of investors,
and during bubbles that faith is overflowing. So while robbing a bank
seems to be a demand-driven crime, robbing bank shareholders is all
about supply. In the classic work on investor hysteria, “Manias, Panics
and Crashes,” the economist Charles Kindleberger wrote that during
bubbles “the supply of corruption increases . . . much like the supply of
credit.” This is more than a simple analogy: corruption and credit are
stoked by the same forces. Cheap money engenders a surfeit of trust,
and vice versa. (The word “credit” comes from the Latin for “believe.”)
The same overconfidence that leads investors and lenders to underestimate the risks of legitimate investments also leads them to underestimate the likelihood of fraud. . . . But in the past few years besotted
investors were willing to believe lots of foolish things—like the idea
that housing prices would just keep going up.6

This short paragraph is quite rich in theological insights.We might begin
with the little etymological snippet in the middle: “The word “credit”
comes from the Latin for “believe.”The same thing works even better in
German. For we don’t need a Latin mediator to explain the relationship;
6 The New Yorker, Jan. 12, 2009, p. 21.

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it’s built right in. Compare these two sentences: Ich glaube an Gott den
Vater den Allmächtiger” (I believe in God the Father, Almighty), and “Der
Gläubiger glaubt dem Schuldner dass er seine Schulden zurückzahlen wird ”
(The Believer believes in the debtor that he will repay his debt).
I already mentioned that a creditor can get some control over the risk
by investigating a client’s credit history. But as Mr. Surowiecki astutely
observes, banks decided to overlook such risk on the presumption that
housing prices would continue to rise. But as Rabbi Shimon noted,
predicting the future is not easy.Whenever the public suppresses this fact
it is always to its peril. Confidence games depend on the credulity of the
public. Over the past decade investors came to believe many foolish
things, and the result was the near collapse of the banking industry and
the onset of a worldwide depression.
II
Okay, you might say: what I have said is all very well and good for the
analysis of credit markets. But what is the connection between credit
markets and Fr. Hopkin’s advice about alms?
To begin with let’s take a look at what another Jewish sage, Ben Sira,
has to say on this matter. In chapter 29, he considers the problems of
making a loan and divides his discussion into three sections.7 In the first
he ponders the simple act of loaning money and the expectations for its
return.The risks, he notes, are high:
4: Many persons regard a loan as a windfall,
and cause trouble to those who help them.
5: A man will kiss another’s hands until he gets a loan,
and will lower his voice in speaking of his neighbor’s money;
but at the time for repayment he will delay,
and will pay in words of unconcern, and will find fault with the time.
and instead of glory will repay him with dishonor. . . .
7: Because of such wickedness, therefore, many have refused to lend;
they have been afraid of being defrauded needlessly.

The picture Ben Sira draws is not a flattering one. The lender is not
assured that his risk will be rewarded. And the lack of trust that comes
from default is also considered to be catastrophic for the public good
because, as Ben Sira notes, many will refuse to lend in the future.
7 I am dependent on my student Brad Gregory’s excellent discussion of this

passage. See his recently published dissertation, Like an Everlasting Signet Ring:
Generosity in the Book of Sirach (Göttingen: de Gruyter, 2010), 181–203; also
compare his discussion of the chapter as a whole on pp. 133–63.

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The third section, which concerns going surety for a friend, strikes a
similar chord.This should not surprise, because going surety for another
carries all the risks of signing for a loan in one’s own name.
Of course, with regard to loans and surety, Ben Sira is not telling us
anything out of the ordinary. His wisdom is utterly conventional. But in
the middle section of this chapter, he proceeds in an unexpected direction.And to appreciate its radical nature, let us ponder once more the act
of issuing a loan.All loans involve risk. Good investors do everything they
can to reduce risk. With respect to the purchasing of bonds, the best
assurance one can get is a AAA credit rating. That presumes a healthy
balance sheet and a long history of making regular payments. China will
gladly purchase U.S. Treasury notes at very low interest rates but avoids
like the plague the bonds issued by General Motors.
But if this is the way our financial system works, then what about
making a loan to someone who is utterly impoverished? If Ben Sira
believes that even the average borrower presents a great risk, what about
the poor? There would seem to be no earthly reason why one would give
such a person money.Yet Ben Sira writes:
8: Nevertheless, be patient with a man in humble circumstances,
and do not make him wait for your alms.
9: Help a poor man for the commandment’s sake,
and because of his need do not send him away empty.
10: Lose your silver for the sake of a brother or a friend,
and do not let it rust under a stone and be lost.
11: Lay up your treasure according to the commandments of the Most High,
and it will profit you more than gold.
12: Store up almsgiving in your treasury,
and it will rescue you from all affliction;
13: more than a mighty shield and more than a heavy spear,
it will fight on your behalf against your enemy.

Ben Sira claims that when one makes a loan to an indigent person, all the
normal rules are put on hold. For giving money to a poor person is not
merely a business transaction conducted on a horizontal plane; rather,
charity toward the poor involves a vertical dimension as well. Giving
money to the poor does double duty. It provides for both the needy and
ourselves. Or to rephrase in very colorful anthropomorphic terms: when
we loan to the poor, God becomes the co-signer. And God, we must
believe, will make good on whatever we loan him.
All of this is brought out in a beautiful Jewish parable:

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A certain [pagan] philosopher asked a question of R. Gamliel. He said to
him, “It is written in your Torah: ‘Give to [your needy kinsman] readily and
have no regrets when you do so’ [Dt 15:10]. And do you have such a man
that can give away his property to others and his heart would not be
grieved? Such a person would eventually need to be supported himself!”
R. Gamliel replied to him, “If a man comes to borrow from you,
would you give him a loan?” He replied, “No!” “If he brought you a
deposit, would you give him a loan?” He replied, “Yes!”
“If he brought you someone that was not quite fitting to stand as
surety would you give him a loan?” He replied, “No.” “If he brought
you as surety the head of the province would you give him a loan?” He
replied, “Yes.”
“Well then,” R. Gamliel concluded, “is not the matter a piece of a
fortiori logic: If when an ordinary mortal will go surety for him, you
will issue the loan, how much the more so when he who spoke and
made the world goes surety for him. For Scripture says,‘He who is generous to the poor makes a loan to God ’ ” [Pr 19:17].8

This story captures perfectly the sort of theological message that is embedded in Ben Sira’s teaching. Lending money is always a risky business.There
is only one situation in which such worries can be suspended and that is
when one makes a gift to the poor.That is because God has agreed to stand
behind such a loan and will, in his own time, repay what you have loaned.9
III
I think we have explored enough of the Old Testament and Jewish background of this idea to wander into the New Testament for a moment and
see how all of this plays out in the teachings of Jesus. I would like to
direct our attention to an episode recorded in the Gospel of Luke
(12:16–21).
[16] And he told them a parable, saying,“The land of a rich man brought
forth plentifully; [17] and he thought to himself, `What shall I do, for I
have nowhere to store my crops?’ [18] And he said, `I will do this: I will
pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my
grain and my goods. [19] And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample
goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ [20]
But God said to him, `Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and
8 This text is taken from the collection, Midrash Tannaim zum Deuteronomium, ed.

D. Hoffman (Berlin: Ittzkowski, 1908), 84.
9 On the point that God will stand by the loans that we offer him, compare the

common patristic move to link Proverbs 19:17 to the story of the Last Judgment
in Matthew 25:31–46. For some examples of this sort of patristic exegesis, see
Sin: A History, 227 n. 6.

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the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ [21] So is he who
lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

To interpret this parable properly it is important to make sure we have
understood precisely where the error of the rich man lies.There are some
who have compared this parable to other contemporary Jewish texts
about individuals who have amassed a fortune under less than innocent
pretences. But that is decidedly not the point of this story. The narrator
is quite clear—the land returned an enormous profit on this man’s initial
investment of seed.There is nothing wrong with that. If anything, it is a
sign of divine blessing.
The problems begin when the man takes stock of his good fortune.The
harvest is so enormous his old barns cannot contain the yield. So he decides
to tear them down and build bigger ones. From this he infers that his future
is now assured; his wealth will be a bulwark against any and all adversity.
He neglected, however, to prepare for one contingency. That very
night God will take his soul. In the world to come, his material wealth
will provide no benefit whatsoever. But things could have been different
had our rich man viewed his bountiful harvest as the occasion for showing charity.As Ben Sira declared, almsgiving would “rescue [one] from all
affliction.” The Book of Proverbs puts it more succinctly: “almsgiving
delivers one from death.” In the Gospel this meant nothing other than
providing the grounds for eternal life.
IV
This parable of Jesus is very relevant to our present economic predicament. Many of us can no longer lean on the long arms of a multinational
corporations or the federal government for assurance of an income when
we grow old. That is the reason we take the time and energy to find an
investment counselor to help us run our retirement accounts. But that is
also the reason there were so many sad faces in January 2009 when individuals opened up their investment statements and saw that their holdings
had dropped by as much as 30 or 40 per cent.We had put a great deal of
stock in the notion that our future would depend on the large barns we
had built to hold the earnings we had had the good fortune to invest.
Yet the disciple of Christ could use these statements as a point of
departure for theological reflection. Do we believe that our future
depends on these figures? Or do we share the wisdom of Ben Sira and
Jesus that our future really depends on a quite different kind of investment? We may scoff at the possibility that charity would work that kind
of magic, but if we do scoff—are we truly believers in God?

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Or to return to where I began: Does not the advice of Fr. Gerard
Manley Hopkins to his friend Robert Bridges come back to haunt us? If
you wish to make the first step toward belief, he urged his dear friend, then
give alms. And not just any amount, but “give up to the point of sensible
inconvenience.” Mr. Bridges was not won over by this advice. Indeed, he
considered it downright peculiar.What end would such an inconvenience
serve? Fr. Hopkins responded that there was a big difference between being
short of money and being short of money for charity’s sake.
In Hopkins’s mind, giving away one’s money for the sake of charity
was nothing other than acting out the Christological mystery. God had
emptied himself of his divine attributes to assume a mortal human body
and to die a most ignominious death. Now it is not the case that his death
considered by itself was worthy of honor and worship. Many other persons
were crucified in the Roman world and we are not obligated to worship
any of them. But when the crucifixion is considered as part of the story
of God’s love for humanity, a self-emptying that was entered into solely
on the grounds of charity for and solidarity with the indigent human
race, then everything is different.And so it is, Hopkins argued, with alms.
It is not the pain of doing without but the pain of doing without as an
act of love for the other that will provide redemption.
By giving in this way we pump new life into the words we say in the
Creed: we believe in God the Father, Almighty. Because belief is not just
an act of intellectual assent—believing six impossible things before breakfast. Rather, belief is the presumption that God has ordered the world
according to the principle of charity, and if we want to thrive in such a
world we should mime that principle in our own lives. It is far too simplistic to label this form of piety “works-righteous” and to claim that the giver
of alms is “buying” his way into heaven. To give alms to the poor, I have
suggested, is to enact the faith we claim to possess. Just as the creditor does
not become a “believer” until the moment he offers money on loan, so the
claimant to the promises of Christ does not become a believer until he puts
his time and savings at risk for the needy.There is something peculiar about
making the donation of money to the poor a central practice of the Christian faith. But then again there is something peculiar about a God who
would empty himself of his divine glory to share in our poverty. In trying
to give an account of why we give alms, we put ourselves in a position to
enter the more daunting (yet even more awe-inspiring) metaphysical
mysteries of the Trinity. Such was the claim Fr. Hopkins made, I would
argue, in his correspondence with Mr. Bridges.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 99–108

99

Remarks on Sin and Indulgence
ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P.
St. John’s Seminary
Brighton, Massachusetts

I
I N 1473, the bishop of Norwich, James Goldwell (1472–99) obtained
from Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84)—after whom the Sistine Chapel is
named—an indulgence for pilgrims visiting Norwich Cathedral. The
bishop needed money. Restoration work was required after a fire in 1463
caused considerable damage to this venerable church building that dates
from 1096.1 According to the terms of the papal indulgence, Christians
were invited to call at Norwich Cathedral both on the Annunciation, that
is, 25 March, which was the start of the civil year in medieval England,2
and at Trinity, the patronal feast of the cathedral, which falls during
England’s springtime. As the poet reminds us, “Oh, to be in England /
Now that April’s here . . . ”3 Bishop Goldwell was an educated man of
the early renaissance, a prelate who collected rare books. He foresaw that
convenient times of the year would encourage Christians to visit his See
1 Herbert de Losinga laid the foundation stone: “I am the first to have built at

Norwich a church in the name and in the honour of the Holy and Undivided
Trinity.”
2 The change to the first of January was made only in the mid-eighteenth century.
See British Calendar Act of 1751 in “For the Year 1752, The Statutes at Large,
From the Twentieth Year of the Reign of King George the Second to the Thirtieth Year of the Reign of King George the Second,” Volume the Seventh,
London: Printed for Mark Basket, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,
and by the Assigns of Robert Basket; And by Henry Woodfall and William Strahan, Law Printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty. MDCCLXIV. Cap.
XXIII. A.D. 1751. Anno vicesimo quarto Georgii II. “An Act for Regulating the
Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use.”
3 Robert Browning, “Home Thoughts, From Abroad.”

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city in order to obtain the special papal indulgence.The Norwich bishop
was also a believer in satisfactory works. His own tomb in the cathedral
includes an altar shelf where priests would celebrate Masses for his soul.
To ensure the continuance of these suffrages for his salvation, moreover,
the bishop left a sum of 636 pounds.4
The Norwich Sixtine indulgence was an especially generous one.
Twelve years and twelve Lents were accorded to pilgrims who fulfilled
the stipulated requirements for receiving the indulgence.5 This dispensation meant that those who devoutly visited the cathedral at Norwich and
left a monetary donation to assist the repair work received the remission
of the temporal punishment due to sin that otherwise would have
required of said sinners twelve years of penitential practices and twelve
Lents of supplemental penance.The indulgence got off to a good start. In
its first year, 1474, the receipts totaled 21 pounds, two shillings, and three
& 3/4 pence. In 1474 also, more than two-thirds of this gross sum was
collected at the Annunciation (New Year’s). So Robert Browning’s
romanticism about English springtime may not have held the same
persuasive power in the late fifteenth century as it did in the nineteenth.
The above account and similar information fills the pages of a remarkably fair and balanced book, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to
Paradise? published in 2007.6 The author, R. N. Swanson, a distinguished
professor of medieval history at the University of Birmingham, exhibits a
highly refined competence for both conducting and reporting on archival
research.A glance at the richly elaborated, forty-three page bibliography of
source materials that mention indulgences in late medieval England suffices
to confirm this evaluation. The bibliography also provides the potential
reader who picks up this volume of hefty erudition a glimpse of what he
or she may expect to discover in the book’s more than 500 pages. In short,
one finds a fascinating and mainly positive account of Catholic penitential
practices from c. 1300 to 1547, when the abrogation of indulgences by the
4 Ian Atherton, Norwich Cathedral: Church, City, and Diocese, 1096–1996 (London:

The Hambledon Press, 1996), 472.
5 Aquinas, in Quodlibetal Question II, q. 8, a. 2, gives the conditions for an indul-

gence:“Ad hoc ergo quod indulgentia alicui valeat, tria requiruntur. Primo causa
pertinens ad honorem Dei, vel ad necessitatem aut utilitatem Ecclesiae. Secundo
auctoritas in eo qui facit: Papa enim potest principaliter, alii vero in quantum
potestatem ab eo accipiunt vel ordinariam, vel commissam, seu delegatam.Tertio
requiritur ut sit in statu caritatis ille qui indulgentiam percipere vult.”
6 R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise?
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 359. See my review in Medievalia
et Humanistica 36 (2010).

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reformed church of Henry VIII took final hold in England.The surviving
records indicate that, prior to the Big Tudor Upheaval, indulgences
provided a large number of Christians with a much-appreciated remedy for
sin. It is very difficult to conclude, on the other hand, that one may read
Swanson’s highly documented research as an exposé of the superstitious
delusions of religious backwoodsmen.
The practice of distributing indulgences in late medieval England
belongs to a certain historical period that, like every period, including
our own, witnessed departures from what would be considered normative. Those who recall the Pardoner’s Tale from Chaucer’s The Canterbury
Tales will find the pardoner’s self-description borne out in some of what
Swanson narrates: “Indulgences of pope and cardinal, / Of patriarch and
bishop, these I do / Show, and in Latin speak some words, a few, / To spice
therewith a bit my sermoning /And stir men to devotion, marvelling.”7
Even after Henry VIII broke with Rome, English pardoners such as
Harry Cleepulle continued, so Swanson discovers, to solicit funds for
London charitable institutions, though, for obvious reasons, without
appealing to a “papal indulgence.”8 Indulgences in Late Medieval England,
however, displays neither cynicism nor anti-Catholic affect. The author
shows that while pardoners enjoyed access to English congregations, no
evidence, for example, confirms that they were in the habit of mounting
English pulpits.9 Swanson rather demonstrates that purveyors of indulgences occupied a place in the economic and sociological structure of
English society that responded properly to the religious requirements of
English Catholics.10 The book, then, unearths a sociological snapshot of
late medieval piety, but its brave attempt to supply some of the theological background for the practices he reports falls short of recounting a
history of the Church’s theology of indulgences. I consider the shortfall
an important one to draw to the attention of readers who want to understand the Catholic theology of indulgences. Even the most careful historical research falls short of capturing sacra doctrina, “which,” as St.Thomas
reminds us,“has come to us through divine revelation beyond the discoveries of the rational sciences.”11
7 Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400) “Prologue” to the Pardoner’s Tale: “Bulles of

popes and of cardynales, / Of patriarkes and bishopes I shewe, /And in Latyn I
speke a wordes fewe, / To saffron with my predicacioun, /And for to stire hem to
devocioun.”
8 Swanson, Indulgences, 496.
9 Ibid., 190.
10 Ibid., 523.
11 Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 1.

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II
During the Year for Priests (2009–2010), for instance, good Catholics
throughout the world found themselves the beneficiaries of the same
papal largesse that motivated the people of Norwich to help Bishop
Goldwell restore his cathedral. During that special year of grace, however,
the Pope, our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, granted an indulgence to
restore the Catholic priesthood. The gift of special indulgences that
accompanied that year aimed to put into high relief the indispensable and
irreplaceable place of the Roman Catholic priest.12 The priesthood and
indulgence enjoy a mutual relationship that much of post-conciliar
Catholic theology, alas, has let pass unnoticed. Flannery O’Connor
explains why: “Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in
the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.”13 It
would be difficult to apply this same judgment to the fifteenth-century
residents of Norwich.They knew the cause in their actual lives that made
obtaining the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin something desirable. Priesthood and indulgence go together inasmuch as each
stands “at the center of the theology of a redemptive, atoning Incarnation
and of the theology of the essentially ‘cruciform’ Christian life.”14 Indulgences are ineptly tagged “passports to paradise.” They rather constitute
special instruments of entering more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s
Passion and death.What Bishop Goldwell and his Norwich flock understood, of course, is that this mystery embraces both heaven and earth.
To some persons, it may seem oddly antiquated to associate indulgences with priestly life. Surely there are other things that the priest must
do in addition to preaching indulgences. Consider, however, our present
circumstances. It is a commonplace to observe that, since the end of the
Second Vatican Council, Christian anthropology and spiritual theology
have erred on the side of promoting an unwarranted optimism about
passports to paradise. Celebration of the inevitable triumph of the human
spirit always eclipses the sanctification of the burdensome. Our generation has inherited the Enlightenment confidence in the perfectibility of
man by man. Bishop Goldwell would not have been amused. He included
twelve Lents in his Norwich Cathedral repair fund drive. He understood
12 Decree of the Apostolic Penitentiary of 25 April 2009 (Prot. N. 136/09/1).
13 This quotation is taken from Flannery O’Connor, “The Fiction Writer and His

Country” in Flannery O’Connor, Collected Works, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York:
The Library of America, 1988), 805.
14 This lapidary expression is borrowed from T. C. O’Brien, Effects of Sin, Stain and
Guilt, vol. 27 (Blackfriars edition of the Summa theologiae ), 99.

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that the evil of sin finds no remedy from within a world of sinners. Only
Christ redeems man. Lent signals the need for Christians to identify with
the suffering Christ. The weeks of Lent afford both priest and seminarian the time to embrace “the sanctification of the burdensome.” Their
sacramental ministry depends on it. For it belongs by divine institution
to the Catholic priest to mediate Christ’s satisfaction and merits to the
members of Christ’s Body. No one else can do it. Only the Catholic
priest can sacramentally sanctify the burdensome. This miracle of grace
works most startlingly, when measured by human expectations, through
the obtaining of indulgences.
Today we suffer less from burnt-out cathedrals and more from burntout sacramental practice.Today’s sacramental ministry exhibits the consequence of pursuing feverishly a burdensome-less Christianity in which
no one sees a cause for Redemption and no one imagines that the sanctification of the burdensome avails to anyone’s advantage.We behold this
deficient view of Christian satisfaction played out at Baptism, for
instance, by the nonchalant omission of meaningful instruction on the
effects of original sin.At Confirmation, by the familiar emphasis on social
do-gooding in rites of passage. At Penance, well, by the disappearance of
the very sacrament that makes a quite burdensome human action, sorrow
for sins, a sanctified and sanctifying action. At Marriage, by large-scale
retreat before the manifold threats to fidelity and fecundity, which constitute the burdens, the munera, of Matrimony.At Holy Orders, by confused
outlooks on the authentic exercise of pastoral charity, which oftentimes
result from mistaking the laity’s co-responsibility for the Church with an
erroneous view of their collaboration with the sacred ministry of
priests.15 At Holy Anointing, by the neglect of this sacrament when the
opportune time arrives, and by the gradual shift of emphasis from the
most burdensome of human activities, dying, to the provision of consolation for those who are bereaved. Even what is burdensome in the
Blessed Eucharist, namely, the remission of venial sins and the subsequent
intensification of charity, suffers eclipse when priests allow the reception
of Holy Communion to become a routine Catholic cultural practice.
III
Gary A. Anderson has provided us with another kind of historical study
than the one produced by Professor Swanson.16 Anderson’s short chapters
of biblical exegesis reveal that throughout the old dispensation God
15 See the 1997 Inter-dicasterial “Instruction on Certain Questions regarding the

collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priest.”
16 Gary A.Anderson, Sin:A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

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prepared the People of Israel for the gift of Redemption that Christ’s death
on the Cross brings.The fascinating exposition of word usage confirms the
truth of what, in his mature works at least, St. Thomas Aquinas holds on
sin. For example, recall Summa theologiae Ia, q. 48, a. 5. There Aquinas
teaches “that in human life evil is properly and exhaustively divided into the
evil of sin (malum culpae) and the evil of punishment (malum poenae).”17
Anderson reveals the continuity between the two dispensations with
respect to evil in one of its two basic meanings: the debt to undergo
punishment incurred by a sinful action. In addition, the author generously
invites a reconsideration of certain theological opinions that by the early
sixteenth century had put an end to Bishop Goldwell’s indulgence and, I
suppose, his chantry chapel too. In 1532, when the last entry in the register was made, the Norwich Sixtine indulgence raised a total of eight
shillings, six and 1/2 pence.18
At the heart of the granting of indulgences stands the liability to punishment that Anderson shows variously and variously emerges within the
pages of the Old Testament.To interpret the evidence in a manner coherent with the sacra doctrina, one needs to insert the history of sin into the
history of Christ’s saving action. (This is not the moment to initiate the
discussion, however.) The Thomist tradition helps us understand what
stands behind the reality of the indulgence and of satisfactory actions in
general. In a way that excludes all voluntaristic extrinsicism,Aquinas clarifies the nature of the punishment that befalls the sinner, what it means to
stand liable for punishment.The twentieth-century Thomist T. C. O’Brien
captures Aquinas’s point clearly: “The reatus poenae is in strict correlation
with the following most precise expression of the nature of sin, actus debito
ordine privatus, an act lacking the order it should have.”19 To the extent that
one keeps this definition of sin in mind, then it should be easy to understand the quantification of times that provided the coin of the realm for the
medieval indulgences. Twelve years and twelve Lents or “quarantines.”20
St. Thomas Aquinas in all likelihood lacked the exegesis of Anderson and
of course was already canonized by the time that Bishop Goldwell
17 O’Brien, Effects of Sin, 99.
18 Swanson, Indulgences, 359.
19 O’Brien, Effects of Sin, 99. See ST I–II, q. 72, a. 1, ad 2.
20 “ ‘Quarantines’ is an expression frequently used in the grants of indulgences, and

it signifies a strict ecclesiastical penance of forty days, performed according to the
practice of the early Church. Hence an indulgence of seven quarantines, for
instance, implies the remission of as much temporal punishment as would be
blotted out by the corresponding amount of ecclesiastical penance.” See Anthony
Maas, “Quarantines” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12 (New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1911).

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105

obtained his indulgence. Still,Aquinas remains a master of the sacra doctrina.
It is a question for another colloquium to inquire how Aquinas’s theology
illumines the full Christological significance of what Anderson recounts
and explains the practices that Swanson documents.
IV
What follows aims to supply a general account of the theological understanding that governed and continues to govern the Church’s practice of
granting indulgences.21 The Church associates indulgences with the
penitential spirit that Christian life requires. She teaches that Christ’s
redemptive sufferings—his satisfaction—can spiritually benefit those
members of his Mystical Body who are properly disposed for spiritual
renewal.To understand how an indulgence works, one should recall that
one person can share in the good deeds of another person, even as Christians are instructed both to pray for and to help their brothers and sisters.
In other words, the gift of indulgences gives concrete expression to the
communion of saints.
Charity is not produced by magic. No serious person ever imagined
that the bestowal of divine grace amounts to magical repetition of totemic
actions.Authentic instruction on how to benefit from an indulgence stipulates that one must possess true interior contrition for past sins and have
already confessed these sins to a priest. No one excluded by grave sin from
communion with God can expect to receive the total gift of his mercy. So
St. Augustine explains, in his De Trinitate, Book 15, that it is not the same
thing to remove the arrow and to heal the wound–“non est idem abstrahere telum, et sanare vulnus.” This means that it is one thing to forgive
sin—to remove the arrow—and another thing to heal the wounds caused
by sin in human nature.The practice of granting indulgences shows that
sin entails more than the infraction of a divine rule. Since it disregards the
in-built purposes of human nature, sin leaves man in a state of personal
disorder. Sinful actions affect adversely the psychology and character of
the whole person. Each sinner requires a remedial discipline that can redirect his or her human energies toward virtuous activity.
The “temporal punishment” due to sin can be explained by sin itself.
St. Augustine famously teaches that every disordered action brings about
its own punishment.22 Sin reduces the human psychological powers to
21 For further explanation, see my “St. Thomas Aquinas on Satisfaction, Indul-

gences, and Crusades,” Medieval Philosophy & Theology 2 (1992): 74–96.
22 Confessions, Bk. 1, no. 19 (The Harvard Classics, 1909–19): “For Thou hast

commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own
punishment.

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106

purposes that fall short of human flourishing. Since this sinful deformation implies disordered attachments to created goods, Christian conversion ordinarily entails the willing acceptance of satisfactory works.These
“penances” are required because of the very human need to order one’s
willed affective life toward good deeds and away from bad ones. A sinner
needs not only forgiveness but restoration, which implies a real change of
life, the gradual elimination of evil within.
Healing the wounds that sin causes in the human person exceeds our
native abilities. By his Passion, death, and Resurrection, Christ accomplished full satisfaction for human sins: “He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By
his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:24).The sovereign dignity of
Christ’s person means that his work possesses a kind of infinite value.
Christ’s work is so great that the Church announces a treasure trove—the
thesaurus ecclesiae. Indulgences draw upon this spiritual treasure chest that
contains the good works of Christ and the saints.
The personal actions of Christ and the saints make up the thesaurus ecclesiae or “the treasury of satisfactions,” as Swanson translates the expression.23
Because they form one Body in the Church, all Christians can participate
in this spiritual treasure, which is augmented throughout the ages by the
good deeds of holy men and women who themselves remain united with
the suffering Christ. By bearing evils and practicing charity, each Christian
becomes an active participant in healing the world, completing “what is
lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Col 1:24). Swanson
also refers to a “Treasury of Merits” and suggests that the concept was open
sometimes to misunderstandings both popular and theological.24
In the Church, everything exists in a communion of charity. This
belief explains the canonical rule that the one who presides over the
universal Church on earth possesses authority to distribute the treasury
of the Church.The Pope extends indulgences to those united in charity
with him.When the Successor of Peter grants an indulgence, he exercises
the “power of the keys.” In Quodlibetal Question II, q. 8, a. 2, Aquinas
provides the biblical foundation for this prerogative of the Roman
pontiff: “Therefore, dispensation of this treasure belongs to the one who
is in charge of the whole Church; hence the Lord gave to Peter the keys
of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 16:19).”25 Swanson (15) finds this element
23 Swanson, Indulgences, 8.
24 See the index in Swanson, Indulgences, 578, for the various references.
25 “Totus ergo iste thesaurus est in dispensatione eius qui praeest generali Ecclesiae;

unde Petro dominus claves regni caelorum commisit, Matth., XVI. Quando ergo
utilitas vel necessitas ipsius Ecclesiae hoc exposcit, potest ille qui praeest Ecclesiae,

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of Catholic thought difficult to interpret, and the theological argument
leaves him skeptical.26
One may inquire how an indulgence can change our psychological
dispositions. The Church teaches that Christ’s love remains powerful
enough to alter what the sinner himself did not have the occasion (or
perhaps even the will) to do for himself. Because he is the very Son of
God, the Church recognizes the exceeding value that Christ’s sufferings
communicate to every member of the Church. An indulgence provides
a concrete way to participate in his obedient love.
Christ’s heroic love can overcome even the habitual sinner’s psychological resistance to godly living. Of course indulgences do not provide
an excuse for spiritual laziness. Still, the duly pardoned sinner who
rejoices in the gift of the Father’s mercy is made ready for ultimate
communion.Accordingly, an indulgence can be obtained on behalf of the
souls of the deceased.The Church applies the indulgence to the faithful
departed because the elect who await final purification belong to the one
communion of the Church. The Incarnate Son establishes a wide
communication of divine goodness that can overcome whatsoever indisposition sin may leave in the living or the dead. Only the mystery of the
Incarnation can explain such a wondrous exchange that animated so
much of Catholic life in late medieval England. Swanson’s assessment
based on “spiritual commodity and comprehensible utility” falls short of
penetrating this important element of the sacra doctrina.27
Christ’s service of obedient love explains indulgences as much as graces
can be explained. Why is pardon for sin through an indulgence less
burdensome than ordinary efforts at reform of life? Aquinas in the aforementioned text gives the reason: “The labor of Christ’s sufferings
suffices.”28 In this mystery of a “vicarious life,” the eminent satisfaction of
de ista infinitate thesauri communicare alicui, qui per caritatem fit membrum
Ecclesiae, de praedicto thesauro quantum sibi visum fuerit opportunum, vel
usque ad totalem remissionem poenarum, vel usque ad aliquam certam quantitatem; ita scilicet quod passio Christi et aliorum sanctorum ei imputetur ac si ipse
passus esset quantum sufficeret ad remissionem sui peccati, sicut contingit cum
unus pro alio satisfacit, ut dictum est.” The translation continues: “Accordingly,
when either the well-being or absolute necessity of the Church requires it, the
one who is in charge of the Church can distribute from this unlimited treasure
to anyone who through charity belongs to the Church as much of the said treasure as shall seem to him opportune, either up to a total remission of punishment
or to some certain amount.”
26 Swanson, Indulgences, 15.
27 Swanson, Indulgences, 22.
28 Quodlibetal Question II, q. 8, a. 2.

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Christ and the superabundant satisfaction of the Virgin Mary and the
saints are communicated to the pilgrim Christian. The practices that
Professor Swanson sets forth in his massive collection of materials reveal
the vibrant piety of late medieval England.The Church continues to grant
indulgences, although the occasions for receiving them mainly center on
spiritual activities such as jubilees and pilgrimages and special occasions
like the recent Year for Priests. It is an advantage of Swanson’s research that
it makes known the devotion of English Catholics in the late medieval
period. Their Catholic devotion enjoys solid theological standing in its
attachment to eleemosynary offerings.
We can thank Professor Anderson for providing supportive argumentation on behalf of the authenticity of the indulgence practices of late
medieval England. His final essay, chapter twelve, offers a short defense of
the biblical foundations for St. Anselm’s Cur Deus homo? This archbishop
of Canterbury (1093–1109) contributed mightily to making the
performance of satisfactory actions a staple of Catholic life in the Middle
Ages. On occasion, I have explained what distinguishes St.Anselm’s view
of satisfaction from Aquinas’s mature reflections on the subject.28 For
Aquinas, satisfaction transforms rather than exacts. It was a desire for this
divinizing transformation that, I suggest, made so many persons in late
medieval England eager to participate in the awarding of indulgences. It
is the same desire for personal transformation that should make the pracN&V
tice of indulgences a staple of Catholic life in our period.

29 See my The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to

Aquinas, Studies in Historical Theology VI (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications,
1990).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 109–21

109

Salvation in the Blood of the Lamb
R AYMOND G AWRONSKI , S.J.
St. John Vianney Seminary
Denver, Colorado

Introduction: Dr. Anderson’s Book
S T. I GNATIUS would have us begin our spiritual exercises with a
profound consideration of sin, and so Dr. Anderson’s Sin: A History has
been of special interest to this Jesuit. Some years ago, I myself left the
world of university academics—and its conversation—to work more
directly with formation in the faith in a seminary context, and I too hope
to contribute from that perspective, seeking to blend intellectual with
spiritual reflection.
I would like first to offer a brief appreciation of Dr. Anderson’s work,
a few observations, and then proceed with my own reflections on sin and
redemption.
This is a very carefully written and rich book. It is an exegete’s book,
a study of “Second Temple” or “rabbinic” Judaism, and of the change in
the concept of sin from a “weight” in more ancient biblical presentation
to a “debt.” The investigation focuses on notions of debt/creditor, and
how these notions came to dominate the Semitic world. Paul Ricoeur
points to metaphor as essential (“ideas emerge from symbols”),1 and this
metaphor of debt became dominant and naturally passed into early
Christianity, along with the Aramaic culture of the time.
Most helpful is Dr. Anderson’s desire in the book to help rehabilitate
traditional Christian understandings of atonement. So, most importantly,
St. Anselm’s theory of atonement—a most generous satisfaction, not a
punishment—is shown as having its roots directly in the Bible, and those
1 I will note in passing that, helpful as this interest in metaphor is as expressed by

Ricoeur, without a grounding in ontology—here, in the Crucifixion—metaphor
becomes myth. I am indebted for this insight to my brother Jesuit Vincent Strand.

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roots were spread throughout the Aramaic-speaking world, which was
the whole Middle East at one time, Egypt to Persia. This is especially
helpful not only for rehabilitating this theory of atonement for liberal
Protestant partners in dialogue, but in general for re-opening for the spiritual heirs of Luther the traditional understanding of prayer for the dead,
indulgences, etc. This is an explicit goal of the book, and I believe the
author is admirably successful in amply demonstrating the traditional
pedigree of this understanding and of these practices.
Now, subtitles of books can be notoriously misleading, and though this
book does explore one period in the history of the understanding of sin,
this is not a history of sin, nor of concepts of sin throughout time. It is,
however, a detailed look at how the notion of sin as a debt and the
payment of that debt, and the storing of merit with God, developed in a
certain tradition. Dr. Anderson shows that this was fully developed in
rabbinic Judaism. Perhaps most interestingly, he goes on to show how the
understanding of the sacrifice of Isaac itself can be seen as virtually a
Jewish equivalent of the sacrifice of Jesus. This introduction of the note
of sacrifice, and its tie to the Mass late in the book, is provocative and very
interesting.We will return to it later in the essay.
The mercantile—or business—metaphor of contract and satisfaction
of debt naturally emerges in ancient cultures that have highly developed
economies, whether in the more highly developed areas of the ancient
Near East or those more economically developed sections of Europe
many of which eventually embraced Calvinism. Most of humanity is
more recently come to this level of development, if development it is,2
and so the more ancient—more primitive—understanding of the First
Temple, of sin as a “weight” and a “burden,” might in fact more truly
reflect the deeper feelings of the human heart, which Christ, bearing the
burden of His Cross, comes to heal.
Still, the introduction of rabbinic Judaism as an essential element in
understanding Jesus is very enriching, and part of a contemporary
retrieval of that aspect of tradition and bringing it into dialogue with
Christian theology.
While the book explicitly criticizes a strongly anti-Semitic strain in
some past Christian scholarship, most notably earlier German scholarship,
one wonders if the apparent philo-Semitism of the book is not also
perhaps unbalanced and even uncritical. To dismiss the portrayal of
Shylock by Shakespeare as “anti-Semitic” (214 n. 24), though very much
a contemporary sentiment, must strike one as name-calling that simply
2 One will recall the Catholic tradition’s ancient hostility to usury and suspicion

of capitalism in general.

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stops any conversation. Put differently, as a non–Old Testament scholar
reading the book, I found myself wondering at what point a friendly
openness to the wisdom of the Jewish tradition exposes itself to the
danger of actual judaizing.
Much depends on the people with whom we are in dialogue, of
course. Members of the academy might be surprised—and put off—by
the fact that fellow Catholics in a seminary context, trying to renew the
Faith in our time and place, are themselves instinctively put off by the
usage of “B.C.E.” and “C.E.” to replace the “B.C.” and “A.D.” as defining
marks of world history. That is, it does appear that Christ is being
removed from the center of our sense of world timing in order not to
offend others who have already taken offense at Christ. I say this to make
us aware of some different underlying assumptions among us.3
Again, an Old Testament scholar might be forgiven a certain territorial
chauvinism. I was pulled up short to read: “As New Testament scholars
have long noted, reading about Jesus of Nazareth in Greek is problematic.”
Although not such a scholar myself, consultation has led me to suspect it
might be more accurate to say “some New Testament scholars.” Balancing
this position would be that of a Martin Hengel who writes:
Any historical investigation which is to do justice to the New Testament cannot be content with stressing the tradition of the Old Testament and Judaism, important though that may be; it must also pay very
close attention to the Graeco-Roman world, where the problems
become particularly interesting at the point where Jewish and Greek
conceptions have already become fused in the pre-Christian period. By
the providence of God, the New Testament is written in Greek, and not
Hebrew or Aramaic.4

It is of note that this sense of God’s providence causing the New Testament to be formed in the Greek language and the Greek-speaking world
is strongly insisted upon as well by Pope Benedict, of course, most
notably in his now-famous Regensburg address of September 12, 2006.
The significance of this can be seen in that the very notion of “substitutory suffering,” so important to Christian soteriology, is virtually
3 Fr. Cletus Healy, S.J., is an elderly Jesuit who founded a store called “Catholic

Books and Gifts” in Milwaukee. An explicitly Catholic evangelizer, Fr. Healy
used to advertise on the classical radio station to the effect: “If your grandchild
is ashamed to hang up a holy picture or crucifix bought in our store in their
college dorm room, maybe they shouldn’t be at that college.”
4 Martin Hengel, The Atonement, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1981), 5.

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unknown in the Old Testament, apart from Second Isaiah, and although
it may well be repugnant to modern Jewish sensibilities,5 the notion is
richly attested throughout the ancient Greco-Roman world.
Apart from these perhaps professional turf disputes, Dr. Anderson’s
book offers a greatly expanded vision and represents a real contribution
in the long journey to the retrieval of traditional soteriology, especially in
academic places where those understandings have long been dismissed
out of hand. On the other hand, there is such a wealth of impressive technical expertise in what is perforce in large part a rather arcane area —the
Aramaic-speaking world—that a non-exegete is left grateful for the good
foundation laid and yet also a bit inclined to move on.
The Bloody Sacrifice
And so I would like to shift the tone a bit from the world of careful biblical studies to that of a rather impressionistic spiritual theology.
In the early 1970s, largely in response to my complaint that the religion department at Syracuse University had no Catholic on the faculty,
theologian Michael Novak was invited to lead us in a weekend retreat at
an Episcopalian retreat center called “Thornfield.” He led faculty and
graduate students in an exercise of imagining what heaven would be like.
As we went around the room, sharing our imaginary visions, I became
aware that my vision was different, because many, at least, of the saints I
saw were bloody. In fact, in this meditation I saw lots of blood in Heaven.
I was puzzled by this, because all my fellows were having such edifying,
glowing visions, and mine was—well, bloody—and I asked Dr. Novak
what he made of it. Perhaps because at the time he was very much
involved in the ethnic awareness movement, he observed: “You’re
Polish—and the history is full of blood, especially recently.”That satisfied
me in a way, though at the time I was minimally aware of that heritage.
What Dr. Novak didn’t observe was that none of the faculty, and few of
the graduate students, were Catholic.
One of the most distinctive characteristics about our Catholic Faith
that distinguishes it at least from modern Protestantism is the realism with
which we are mindful of, adore, and represent Christ’s Passion and death.
We have bloody crucifixes, saints with bloody wounds; in baroque iconography we celebrate the instruments of Christ’s Passion and death.Though
the saints have had their robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb, we
know that we are on this side of that great washing and have not yet fully
participated in it; and, no matter, we know that we need to be washed in
5 From a conversation with Mother Timothea Elliott, RSM, in which she reported

on remarks by a Rabbi Foster in Congregation Emmanuel in Denver.

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His blood, to consume His blood and His broken body. Though in the
book of Revelation the saints have washed their robes white in the blood
of the Lamb, the Lamb Himself “is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the
name by which he is called is The Word of God” (Rev 19:13).And so He
is represented in the great mosaic at the National Shrine in Washington.
We know that it is written, in the Letter to the Hebrews, “there is no
forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood” (Heb 9:22) and though
this is “under the law” it continues in the transformed and transforming
sacrifice of Christ the Lamb. And though this blood is uniquely shed in
the one perfect sacrifice of Calvary, we must balance that with the teaching in Colossians that we “make up in our own flesh what is lacking in
the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1:24).
Aidan Nichols’s title—No Bloodless Myth —for one of von Balthasar’s
works is perfect, because that which is revealed in Christ is neither myth
(at least not in the shallower sense) nor bloodless. If anything, the story
comes closer to myth than to philosophy, for it is the language of story,
but it is true story, the deepest revelation of truth, where history and
myth coincide.And it is definitely flesh and blood, and in the end, bloody.
“Have you been saved?” is a question that has colored American
speech for a long time. Catholics will answer variously as to when that
happened: either at Calvary, or, if they want to personalize it, at the day
of their baptisms. But we have perhaps been a bit distanced from just
what happened in order for us to be saved, that from which we have been
saved, and how we were saved.
For one thing, to be “saved” means not to be dissolved into nothingness or absorbed into the godhead. It means that this unique individual,
with these wounds to show, will be transformed, as this individual, but
transformed as through death, and live for eternity: saved, not lost.
For another, it means to be snatched from the fires of perdition,
snatched from the consequences of sin, to be saved from God’s wrath.
For a long time now, the notion of the bloody act of redemption has
been an embarrassment to theologians and to many Christians, who prefer
what can be called a “forensic” view of salvation. Regardless of how theologically correct the explanation of the atonement can be, there tends to
be a reduction of the actual bloody working out of salvation in favor of a
conceptual attempt at explanation. I realize that in saying this I am taking
on virtually all of theology, for theology must be conceptual and explanatory. But the concepts of theology must be rooted in something beyond
concept, and though ideas may come from symbols, we yearn for the real
beyond, or at least in and through, the symbol.When von Balthasar writes
that “the resurrection of the flesh vindicates the poets in a definitive

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sense,”6 we must remember that the Risen Body is also the Crucified
Body, transformed, but still bearing the wounds: that is, the mute, dumb,
sheer physicality of bloodied flesh.We shall return to this later in the essay.
Perhaps the most common concept at least among devout contemporary Christians is that Christ “paid the price” for our salvation. Dr.Anderson’s study brilliantly shows the ancient roots of this notion. Apart from
very traditional expressions of Catholicism—chief among them the
dramatically bloody crucifixes of the Latin cultural world, cousins to the
earlier German tradition of Gruenewald—most Christians seem to
content themselves with this notion.The scholarly world, less devout and
more prone to notions of a general absolution granted the universe by a
loving God, distances itself from notions of satisfaction, let alone atonement. It tends toward the forensic either by sheer reliance on the “general
absolution” of what is called a “loving God”—or it is forensic in the
much deeper sense which colors even St. Anselm’s theory of atonement.
Yet even that theory has long been in disfavor, certainly in most modern
theology. Theologians of the Ressourcement have been attempting to
return to it with a new respect, most notably Hans Urs von Balthasar and
also Joseph Ratzinger.
As noted, Sin offers a great help to those theologians attempting to reappropriate the tradition by contributing this abundantly documented
discovery that “paying the price” has profound roots in at least Second
Temple Judaism. And that St. Anselm of Canterbury is not just a Roman
legalist inflicting that pagan tradition onto the Gospel vision of salvation,
but that Anselm in fact is fully in harmony with the Jewish tradition
which informed the Christian in the matter of “paying the price”—and
that includes praying for the dead.
Dr. Anderson relies heavily on Paul Ricoeur to provide a contemporary intellectual structure for his observations. Ricoeur points to
metaphor as essential: the metaphor of payment of a debt became dominant in Second Temple Judaism and passed unnoticed into Christianity.
Ricoeur notes that “ideas emerge from symbols.” But no sooner did I
read this than the somewhat impish face of Flannery O’Connor showed
up, with her famous line about the Eucharist:“If it’s a symbol, to hell with
it.”7 That is to say, if Ricoeur is right, behind the idea, there is the symbol.
And, I would add, underneath, in and through the symbol, is the reality
which blossoms in the symbol, but which is pulsing with a life far richer,
deeper, that is not exhausted in the symbolic utterance.
6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, Seeing the Form, trans.

Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 155.
7 O’Connor in conversation with Mary McCarthy.

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So as I read Cur Deus homo, so needed in the Church today, as Dr.
Anderson most helpfully insists, I am yet puzzled at its own rather bloodless approach. No doubt this is characteristic of the tenor of that theology
which would be flowering in Scholasticism. It is clear, intellectual, scriptural to a great extent—but it remains curiously bloodless. And this is my
question:What does it mean that we are “saved by the blood of the Lamb”
[“we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him
from the wrath of God” (Rom 5:8)]? Again, what does it mean that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb 9:22)?
Saved from What?
Of course, how we understand salvation will flow from how we understand sin. In the Anselmian understanding, buttressed for us by Dr.Anderson’s research, sin is a debt which we could never repay.
Another way of viewing this comes from the writings of Hans Urs
von Balthasar. In a section redolent of the work of Karl Barth as well, von
Balthasar writes:
The religious ideal of man after his expulsion from paradise—to
become ‘spirit,’ ‘sage,’ mystic,’ perfect’ (to name but the purest and
worthiest ideals)—always means at the same time that this genuinely religious impulse will contain a revolt against the Creator, a disowning of
the nature in which man was placed and created: the earthly, physicalpsychic, communal, spatial-temporal existence. Man does not want to
be man but something else (as he imagines, something ‘higher’).8

In other words, one seeks that place in himself that is most “godlike”
and identifies himself with God there.The essence of sin is refusing to be
human, rejecting the analogous relation with God in which man
acknowledges that “God is always greater”: “The element of original sin
in human religiosity consists in this: that the similarity between Creator
and creature that is given with the fact of our derivation from God, is not
inscribed in the fundamental relationship of the creature’s not being God.”9
One consequence of sin is that humanity simply does not see sin where
it in fact is. If humans are striving, from a sinful orientation, to be
“godlike,” this in itself only aggravates the sinful condition: “The deepest
longing of man is to ascend to God, to become like God, indeed to
become equal to God. . . . But we know that the snake got a hold of this
8 Hans Urs von Balthasar,“Patristik, Scholastik und wir,” trans. Edward Oakes, as cited

in Edward Oakes, Pattern of Redemption (New York: Continuum, 1994), 113.
9 Ibid.

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very innermost drive of man to press on to God, and poisoned it.”10 Original sin, then, is to want to be godlike, and von Balthasar singles out the
Platonic tradition as finding this godlikeness in that “highest,” most “spiritual,” part of our beings, where, quite apart from grace, we find ourselves
identified with God: by concentrating ourselves on our highest “part”—
the spiritual, or, perhaps pari passu, the intellectual, we become divine by
nature and have no need of grace. For him, then, this attempt to selfdivinize is the very root of all sin, as it denies creatureliness and, using
human wisdom alone, would ascend to and identify with God Himself.
The salvation offered in Christ is radically different from this: so far
from denying creaturehood, there is an absolutely humiliating embrace of
creaturehood. Instead of trying to make men godlike, the revelation of
salvation will show man up for the snarling beast sin has made him, and
it is in answering these deepest, most hidden and shameful drives that the
Crucified Christ will offer salvation, a healing and redemption from that
which is least godlike in us: our bloodthirstiness.
Rooted in St. Paul, the theology of the Fathers tends to focus on the
“pro nobis” or Christ’s atoning death, and this expands into the “admirabile
commercium” which develops with the emerging Christological understanding of the Councils. That is, God became man so that man might
become God—this “admirable exchange.” But for this to happen, for this
to be effective, God must take on our sins.
We note the work of Rene Girard and Raymond Schwager, unique in
our times for pursuing this question of the Suendenbock, the scapegoat.This
invites us to look at questions of deep healing, and that which is offered
to us—from the point of view of a spiritual psychology. It is this approach
that I offer, because my own work has spilled over from theology into
spiritual direction, which really is applied theology, rightly understood.
Though true ideas are life-giving and indeed essential to our human lives,
yet we are not saved by ideas: this is perhaps the single greatest reason
behind the diminishment in effective salvific power in the Church in
recent times. Human souls are starving for the body and the blood, and
they are all too often being fed the stones of mere ideas, at best.
Put differently, in the vernacular we have the phrase: “What do you
want—blood?” The answer to this must be “yes.” Humans are a bloodthirsty race, and in this nothing has changed from the spectacles of ancient
Rome to the spectacles on our contemporary screens. Apart from the
constant bloodshed in our films and TV shows, literature bears abundant
witness to this: one thinks of the blood-smearing rituals in The Lord of the
10 Ibid., 110.

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Flies, or more powerfully, in William Faulkner’s The Bear —and countless
other such rites—and is led to conclude that something very deep, far
deeper than our rational constructs, is at work. One recalls William Butler
Yeats’s insight into the terror that obtained before we “pieced our thoughts
into philosophy.” Exactly: the healing must go much deeper than mental or
even verbal expression, to what, again Yeats, calls “the secret working mind.”
The Word—clear, pure—must become bloodied flesh, for our salvation.
As Girard might point out: the one thing that has changed is the one
“sacrificial lamb” and more to the point, the scapegoat—which is Christ,
whose death is meant to put satisfaction to our murderous instincts.This
represents an anthropological turn, of which yet we must be careful, for
Christ’s death reconciles us to God, above all: it is not primarily to satisfy
us—though it does do this, as I will point out—but if we are to be true
to the Scriptures we must somehow come to understand how His Passion
and death are effected primarily to satisfy “the wrath of God.”
And so the question arises: how are we saved? And how do we know
that salvation?
We are repeatedly told that we are saved “by the blood of the lamb.”
We are saved by the suffering, death and Resurrection of Christ.Though
the articles of the Creed pertaining to the Atonement are clearly enough
stated—“For us men and for our salvation”—just how that salvation is
effected is not explained.That we are saved is abundantly laid out, as Dr.
Anderson well notes: but how? No sooner does one begin to investigate
this than one begins seeing ideas taking the place of the symbol: we are
often told the blood is a symbol for life, and so the shedding of blood is
the symbolic expression of giving one’s life. Pouring out one’s life, literally, is to shed one’s blood. The theological mind naturally tends toward
abstraction:“this means that”—and immediately the saving reality which
should strike us mute with terror and adoration becomes a safe concept,
powerless to save. Another idea.
Yes, but why was it necessary for Christ to shed His blood? To satisfy an
angry God? This is too easily dismissed, for, as von Balthasar insists, picking
up on the concerns of Karl Barth, the Scriptures are full of the “wrath of
God”—and that wrath has to be appeased, wrath being the obverse of the
passionate love of the passionate God. Essential to the notion of a sacrifice
is the notion of appeasing the wrath of God, as Fr. Pohle reminds us in his
treatise on soteriology, faithful to and passing on the tradition, yet leaving it
untainted by attempt at deeper understanding.11 Is God then blood-thirsty,
11 Fr. Joseph Pohle wrote a series of manuals in the early twentieth century on the

various areas of dogmatic theology, including Soteriology (B. Herder: St. Louis,
1946; originally published in 1923).

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like the images one sees in some of the tankhas of Tibetan Buddhism, where
a huge black demon, bloody mouthed, is simply devouring human bodies?
Here let us pause and take a deep breath: we are eager to understand
that which must, of necessity, be beyond our understandings. We are
attempting an ascent at the highest peaks, and even if we can make it to
that most narrow, highest of places, there can be no dwelling in that thin
air. And yet, if we can find a cleft in the rock we may catch a glimpse of
the passing supreme truth. Mystery: we are groping at a mystery. A “raid
on the ineffable” as Merton might have said.
Two angles of approach suggest themselves. The first, building on the
Old Testament notion of bloody sacrifice of animals, would see this sacrifice finding its perfect expression in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus, the Son
of God. Critical authors are quick to dismiss the concept of appeasing the
wrath of God this way as a vestige of a barbarous past—and an image that
makes a monster of God the Father, who somehow feels satisfaction when
blood is shed.This criticism has obvious truth, and this is recognized both
in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which insists on a “reasonable” or
“rational” worship, and in the Latin tradition, which always insists on an
“unbloody sacrifice” of the altar. Still, with these cautions, perhaps we
should not be too quick in dismissing what appears to be essential in our
salvation. For if the prophets moved to the Word and away from the
bloody altar, in Christ the two are re-united where the Word becomes
Flesh and speaks in and through the blood poured out in sacrifice.
Perhaps it is the seminary professor in me who insists that we pause
here for a moment. Priesthood and sacrifice go together: in fact, it is
sacrifice that defines the priesthood (1 Samuel 13), as distinct from something like “ordained ministry.” We would do well to bear in mind that
even as there is the considerable overlap and profound sharing—with
equally profound transformation—with the Old Testament, which Dr.
Anderson so helpfully highlights, so the New Testament priesthood in
some essential way continues the priesthood of the Old. Though transformed, yet “the offering of gifts of Abel, of Abraham our father in faith,
and of Melchizedek” continues at our altars today.
The mystics write that there is an outpouring of love within the Trinity itself, a circulation, in which the fluid of circulation—the lifeblood—of
the Trinity itself is the Spirit (for “the Spirit gives life”; the flesh is mysteriously “of no avail”).This is a total outpouring of perfect goodness, perfect
self-giving, perfect love.The wrath of God is turned against sin, provoked
by it, elicited by it: that is, the love of God becomes wrath when confronted
with the icy coldness of sin.That which provokes must be melted down,
the obstruction removed, so that the circulation of love can freely flow.

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Come into this world of sin, the love of God is “poured out” upon the
world in Christ Jesus. And yet that which is bliss in God becomes agony
in the world, the ultimate perfect joy of outpouring love within the Trinity becomes perfect suffering, perfect pain in the flesh and blood, in the
mind, of Christ who is God become flesh. And the circulation of love
that is poured out on the Cross sinks into the earth, sinks into the depths
of creation—“ad inferos”—and is lifted up in the Resurrection, which is
no bloodless resurrection, for the wounds of Christ remain visible.
Perhaps this sacrifice “appeases” the wrath of God in that it flows over,
under, through this world, bathing, washing, feeding it and so penetrating it with God’s ever-flowing love.
What of the human beings for whom this blood is shed? I would
suggest the prayer the Anima Christi as entry point into this mystery.“Soul
of Christ sanctify me, Body of Christ save me, Blood of Christ inebriate
me, water from the side of Christ wash me, Oh Good Jesus, hear me,
within Thy wounds hide me, permit me not to be separated from Thee.”
We are to be given the intoxication of the Spirit of God by drinking
the Blood of Christ, by being bathed in it, by beholding it flowing from
His wounds; we are to be washed by the water from His side—and,
remember, it was blood and water that flowed from His side (as is seen at
the center of the image of Divine Mercy as revealed to St. Faustina).12
We are to be hidden within His wounds.
How then do we apply this sacrificial death to ourselves, how do we
know salvation in Christ? By entirely submerging ourselves in the Incarnate Body and Soul of Christ, that is, by participating—partaking—fully
in the Eucharist which He offers us.
The heart of all reality is unveiled when the blood is poured out on
the Cross: this is the central act of salvation history, and it is made present to us each time the priest offers the Holy Sacrifice that is called the
Mass. We gather at the foot of the Cross, and we must “take, eat; take,
drink” because we must accept the fact that we are sinners, that, as the
“poor banished children of Eve,” we are bloodthirsty murderers—for that
is what sinners are—and we must drink His blood if there is to be any
life, any health within us. It is at the point of the shedding of the blood
that the peak of the human drama—of any human drama—is reached,
12 The prayer of the Divine Mercy Chaplet is remarkable: “Eternal Father, I offer

you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of your dearly beloved Son Our
Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and for those of the whole world.”
Nothing could be more faithful to the priestly nature of salvation, and in God’s
Providence, this is recited by the lay faithful throughout the world, exercising
their priesthood, in union with Christ and the sacrifice of the altar.

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and it is after this shedding of blood that peace can come, but only if it
is the blood of an innocent victim, received in the spirit of redemption,
for blood is shed in an endless procession of murders from the foundation of the world—or at least from the fall of Adam and Eve, and the
murder of man’s first brother. It is at Jesus’ command that we do this, at
His command that the priest at the altar of sacrifice tears apart His body,
mingles it with His blood, and says: “This is the Lamb of God.”
It is this tear in the fabric of fleshly reality that is the opening through
which the light of Heaven pours in upon us, and through which we are
invited to ascend into the life of God Himself, a tear in the fabric that
continues in the Resurrection, for His wounds remain. The wine
becomes blood, even as analogously the blood becomes wine that we can
drink and by which we can be nourished even in these mortal bodies.
We too must eat His flesh, for we are bloodthirsty, and we are cannibals
who live off the flesh of others.Those who refused to follow Jesus further
in John 6 knew very well what they were rejecting: they were the people
who wanted to live by the word alone, who wanted to live in the safe
world of ideas—of a forensic salvation—and who would refuse the
humiliation of admitting their own basest needs and come to God for
His healing, His satisfaction of them.
This is the profound difference between what became rabbinic—that
is, book—Judaism, and the sacrificial life of the Temple, which was realized in the new temple of Christ’s body. This is startlingly depicted in
John 6, of course, where the choice between eating Christ’s Body and
Blood and finding salvation elsewhere is offered. “We are no cannibals”
say those who decide to refuse Christ,13 and yet, in the event, they will
be calling for His Blood and because they seek salvation elsewhere—
13 John 6:52–53:“The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying,‘How can this

man give us his flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them,‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;
he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him
up at the last day.” Of this, the Second Catholic Edition of the RSV says: “A
natural question to ask. Jesus answers, not by explaining it away, but by reemphasizing the reality, though not, of course, in the crude sense implied in their
question.”The editors’ comment illustrates my point. In spite of their clear intention to be faithful to the words of Jesus, it might be that the scholars are yet missing something of the scandal given by the Word Incarnate. It might be urged that
the reader not dismiss too quickly what appears to be “the crude sense”—that
is, the suggestion of cannibalism in Christ’s words. The drastic remedy of the
Cross applied to the sin of the world remains a mystery, and so is our sacramental participation in it. God’s remedy is not at all what we would have thought up,
and the wisdom of His salvation is inexhaustible to our contemplation. It
remains a scandal and a stumbling block.

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denying their own sinfulness where He reveals it to be and denying the
salvation He offers—they will have “missed the hour of their visitation.”
This rejection of both indictment—you are in fact cannibals—and healing—your only salvation is in my flesh and blood—continued throughout
the history of the Church, through the Reformation, which embraced the
Word alone while progressively rejecting the deeper mystery of the Body
and the Blood and the dark mysteries it reveals; this rejection continues to
this day in the Catholic Church itself, where one influential wing has
embraced the Reformation tradition by minimizing or even denying the
sacrifice of the Mass which alone heals, while relying on the word alone—
and the healing talk offered by much modern psychology—to heal that
which can be healed by God alone, and by means that are infinitely deeper
than our own minds can create.We are capable of approaching the mystery,
but it is a mystery too deep and dark for an immediate appropriation by
our concepts. It is a mystery known to Faith alone, faith that surrenders to
the God who acts upon us, and who commands us:“Take, eat; take, drink”
and it is His Body and His Blood that He gives us, knowing what we are
like and what we need.The priest at the altar is not a minister who merely
offers words of assurance; he is a true priest, himself purified, who is there
to offer the saving sacrifice.
A Concluding Comment
The hunger to understand—to know—is essential to the human, and it
is at the heart of the theological enterprise as well. Catholic theology
works through a text, but even more it works from a mystery, a mystery
revealed at the breaking of the Lamb on the altar. It is not our understanding that heals us; our understanding itself needs to be healed by that
which is beyond, beneath, its grasp: in this, light must come from darkness. The light shed on us is sheer gift, and it is a mystery which bathes
us in the light- and life-giving blood of the Lamb, who takes our place
as the lightning rod for God’s wrath and safely conducts it through death
into eternal life. We are safe in His wounds, nourished by the openings
created by His sufferings, and, in the words of the prayer, led to “praise
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Weight on the Lord: Sin as Burden
in the New Testament and Beyond
J EREMY H OLMES
Wyoming Catholic College
Lander,Wyoming

Introduction
T HE BIBLICAL sinner bears a multitude of images: he is guilty in
court, a trespasser, lost, in debt, enslaved, heavy burdened, stained, sick, blind,
dead. Each description bears the seed of a theological tree, or treatise, about
sin and salvation: if the sinner has trespassed, we should ask whose land he
trespassed, what land was rightfully his to use, and what the boundary was
between them; if he is enslaved, we should ask by whom, how, and by what
right; if he is dead, we want to know what it meant for him to live, how he
died, and whether these dry bones can live again. Man today may well think
of sin primarily as a sickness—this could be one reason so many find
Anselm’s debt-based argument disturbing, because he seems to portray God
as not the doctor of souls but a cosmic collection agency.
Gary Anderson’s achievement in Sin: A History is to recover the biblical
roots and theological importance of Anselm’s debt metaphor.1 The image of
sin as debt is not one metaphor among others, but is woven into the everyday language that Jews of Jesus’ day used to speak about sin when they were
not conscious of using imagery. In this respect, as Anderson shows, the debt
1 Gary Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009). I

use the term “metaphor” without meaning to adopt the philosophical positions
of Lakoff and Johnson, quoted by Anderson. These authors seem to reduce all
human language to metaphor, and they thereby seem to overlook the possibility
of analogy which is nonetheless direct speech. To borrow the terminology of
Thomas Aquinas, saying that sin incurs a “debt” is analogy, although when one
introduces bankers, ledgers, and coins then one has passed into the realm of the
species of analogy called metaphor.

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metaphor replaced the earlier image of sin as a burden, most clearly represented in the ceremony of the scapegoat, which was loaded up with the
people’s sins and sent far away to a realm imagined as beyond God’s gaze.2
The phrase “to bear a sin,” nasa awon, applied to the people in the sense that
they bore the weight of their own sins, but then the same phrase nasa awon
applied to the goat in the sense that it removed the weight of sin from the
people.3 Even though this idiom “to bear a sin” occurs six times more
frequently in the Hebrew Bible than the nearest competing metaphor, by
the time of the New Testament it had “by and large fallen out of use” except
for “those Second Temple texts which quote biblical texts that use the image
of ‘bearing one’s sin.’ ”4 Highlighting the parable of the servant who owed
his master an enormous debt,Anderson notes that “Jesus does not compare
a sinner with individuals who are struggling under a heavy burden.”5
In this essay, I want to ask about the fate of the burden metaphor. Did
an image that so dominated the Hebrew Bible bear no theological fruit?
Has it completely vanished in the New Testament except as dead weight
in quotations? Does it exercise any influence on subsequent Christian
thought? In “A Meditation on Human Redemption,”Anselm, the champion of the debt metaphor, exhorts the Christian:
Consider what your condition was and what has been done for you;
reflect upon how worthy of love is He who has done this for you. . . .
You were in darkness, on slippery footing, on the downward road to
the chaos of Hell, from which there is no return. An enormous leadlike weight hanging from your neck was causing you to stoop.A burden
too heavy for your back was pressing upon you. Invisible foes were
urging you onward with all their fury. . . . O good Lord Jesus Christ, in
this state I was neither seeking nor deliberating; but like the sun You
shined forth upon me and showed me my plight.You cast off the leaden
weight which was drawing me down;You removed the burden which
was pushing me down.6

Clearly, Christians have continued to think of sin as a burden. But, as I will
argue, the burden metaphor also survives in unexpected places, transformed
by the work of Christ, where it makes a specific contribution to theology.
2 See the discussion of this ceremony in Anderson, Sin, 22–23.
3 Ibid., 20–21.
4 Ibid., 43 and endnote 1 to that page.
5 Ibid., 33.
6 Anselm, Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury,

trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning,
2000), 424–25. See also chapter 21 of Cur Deus homo :“You have not as yet estimated the great burden of sin.”

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The Gospel of John
Anderson offers a hint about where to begin.As an example of the burden
metaphor appearing in a New Testament quotation, he points to John
1:29, “Behold the lamb of God, who bears away the sins of the world!”
Anderson suggests that this acclamation is a conflation of the scapegoat of
Leviticus 16 and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.7 Most modern interpreters agree that there is some reference to Isaiah 53: only there in the
Old Testament do we find a man compared to a “lamb” and explicitly said
to “bear away” sins.8 Most see a connection with the Passover lamb; some
do suggest a connection to the scapegoat, which carries sins away into the
desert; the lambs sacrificed daily in the Temple may also be in view.9 The
Fathers saw all of these references in John 1:29; some saw as well an allusion to Isaac, the beloved son who carried the wood for his own sacrifice,
and to the ram caught in the thicket who took Isaac’s place.10
This last point is instructive, because an overwhelming majority of the
Fathers also see the story of Isaac behind John 19:17, where Jesus goes out
“bearing his own cross.”11 In the Passion above all, Christ bore our sins as
the suffering servant, and the Cross he bore is a symbol of his entire Passion.
As Cyril of Alexandria says, “Condemned to death though innocent, he
went forward bearing on his shoulders the cross on which he was to suffer.
He did this for our sake, taking on himself the punishment for the law justly
imposed on sinners. . . . And so, Christ carried the cross, a cross that was
rightfully not his but ours, who were under the condemnation of the law.”12
7 Anderson, Sin, endnote 1 to page 43.
8 Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, trans. Kevin Smyth (New

York: Herder and Herder, 1968), I:297–301; F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 52–53; C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John
(Philadelphia:Westminster, 1978), 176–77. Although the Masoretic Text says that
the servant bore our “sorrows,” the Septuagint explicitly has “sins” as in John’s
Gospel. Schnackenburg points out that the word used in John for “bear away” is
not the same as the word used in the Septuagint of Isaiah, but this does not affect
the connections perceived by the Church Fathers of the West, where the Latin
translations have tollere in both places.
9 See the commentaries above; for the scapegoat possibility, see the comments of
Barrett.
10 See the texts in John 1–10 vol. 4A, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, ed.
Joel C. Elowsky (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 68–71.
11 This is despite the fact that the word for “bear” is not the same in John 1:29 and
19:17 in either the Greek or Latin texts. See the texts in John 11–21, vol. 4B,
Ancient Christian Commentary, ed. Joel C. Elowsky (Downers Grove: InterVarsity,
2007), 307–8, as well as the references in Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according
to John XIII–XXI, vol 29A, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 917.
12 Elowsky, John 11–21, 307–8.

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Here one might say that the burden metaphor gains in location what
it lost in frequency. If in the Hebrew Bible it was numerically strong, in
the New Testament it stands at the very center of Christian piety. No
image could burn itself more deeply onto the Christian imagination than
that of Jesus carrying his Cross—our cross.
The Synoptic Gospels
And yet at exactly this point we meet a paradox. In the synoptic gospels,
Jesus is not depicted as carrying the Cross; Simon of Cyrene is forced to
carry the Cross behind him. As both ancient and modern commentators
observe, this relates to a powerful theme of discipleship in the synoptic
tradition: Jesus turns to the multitude and says, “If any man would come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk
8:34; Mt 16:24; cf. Lk 9:23); “Whoever does not bear his own cross and
come after me, cannot be my disciple”; “He who does not take his cross
and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38).Whatever may have been
his state of mind when the Romans pressed him into service, Simon has
been pressed into service by the evangelists as an icon of the disciple who
takes up the Cross and follows Jesus on the road to calvary.
It seems absurd.The Johannine picture is of the suffering servant who
bears the Cross on the sinner’s behalf, but in the synoptic gospels the
suffering servant never carries the Cross, and in fact appears to insist that
the sinner bear it himself. If this is so, how is the sinner any better off than
before?
Of course, it is not difficult to reconcile John’s Gospel with the synoptic portrayal in historical terms. Luke’s phrasing even suggests that Jesus
carried the Cross for some while before Simon was pressed into service.
The question is not one of historical fact but of theological understanding: John chooses to picture Jesus as carrying the Cross, while the synoptics, although they may assume that he did, never put that picture in front
of us. Again, it is not a question of authorial intention but of canonical
meaning: John portrays Jesus as carrying his own Cross because it is part
of his view of Jesus’ “hour,” his death, as his glorification, and so the
Johannine Jesus is entirely in control of his own fate: he overwhelms the
soldiers, then allows himself to be taken; speaks as a master to Pilate, then
submits to his judgment; carries his own Cross, then allows himself to be
nailed to it. As Jesus says in John’s Gospel, he has the power to lay down
his life and the power to take it up again ( Jn 10:18).
But when the resulting image comes alongside the synoptic picture, it
raises questions about the meaning of the Cross.Who carries the burden,
theologically speaking? What precisely is this burden?

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The Fathers find a clue to the solution in Matthew 11:28–30: “Come
to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my
yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and
you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is
light.” Here Jesus says on the one hand that he will take our heavy burden
away, and on the other hand that he will give us a new, lighter burden.
What is the burden Jesus takes away? Most modern commentators take it
to be the burden of observing the numerous precepts of the Mosaic law,
complicated by Pharisaic additions.13 Most of the Fathers agree, but they
say further that it is the burden of sin, and that in fact the demands of the
law are burdensome precisely because of sin.14 As St. Paul says, mysteriously,“Law came in, to increase the trespass” (Rom 5:20).
What is the burden Jesus imposes on his disciples? It is, as Gregory the
Great says, to avoid every disturbing desire, to turn away from the laborious paths of the world; or as Hilary has it, to become more worthy, to
abstain from wickedness, to will the good and refuse what is evil, to love
all, hate no one, to seek eternal things, not to be taken captive by present
realities.15 To deny oneself and take up one’s cross is, Gregory says in
another place, to leave behind our sinful selves:
If we leave our very selves, where will we go outside of ourselves? Or
who is it who goes, if he leaves himself? But we are one thing inasmuch
as we are fallen through sin, and another inasmuch as we are established
by nature.Therefore we leave our very selves behind and deny ourselves
when we avoid what we were through oldness, and strive after that to
which we are called by newness.16

The burden we bear is the “old man” who lives within us even after we
have been renewed by Christ.This language of “newness” and “oldness”
shows how the Christian tradition has turned to Paul to reconcile the
Johannine and synoptic pictures of the Cross.
Paul’s Contribution
Paul does not develop the image of Christ carrying the Cross. “The
cross” in Paul’s letters always refers to the death of Christ, and the image
13 See the summary in W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew 8–18 (London:

T&T Clark, 1991), 288.
14 In addition to the discussion by Davies and Allison cited above, see the patristic

texts collated by Thomas Aquinas in the Catena aurea in quatuor evangelia (Rome:
Marietti, 1953) I:188–89.
15 See the texts in Aquinas, Catena, 188.
16 Quoted in Aquinas, Catena, 255.

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provoked is not the Stations of the Cross but a crucifix. However, he does
speak about the exchange of Matthew 11:28–30 under the images of
“life” and “death”:
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in
a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection
like his.We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the
sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to
sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. (Rom 6:4–8)

Commenting on this passage, Thomas Aquinas says that “Christ’s
passion is communicated as a remedy to each of the baptized as though
he himself had died. . . .And so the one who is baptized is freed from the
guilt of every punishment owed to him [debitae] for sins, as though he
himself had satisfied sufficiently for his own sins.”17 The sinner brings his
“old man” to Christ and receives from Christ in return a “newness,”
because the sinner has died in Christ so that Christ may live in him. Up
to this point, we see how Christ lifts our burden of sin.As Anselm says in
his “Meditation on Human Redemption,” from which I quoted above,
“The weight of original sin was dragging me down”; Anselm then says
to Jesus, “You cast aside the leaden weight, the heavy burden . . . for You
removed the sin in which I had been conceived and born.”18
But Paul goes on to say that the “old man” survives in some way.The
law of the members still wars against the law of the mind.“If Christ is in
you,” he says, “although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits
are alive because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10). In one respect the
17 ST III, q. 69, a. 2 corp.
18 Anselm, Complete

Philosophical and Theological Treatises, 426, “Meditation on
Human Redemption.” Of course, our actual sin is also part of the Cross Jesus
carried. In Newman’s meditation on the Second Station of the Cross, he says,
“[T]hat heavy Cross is the weight of our sins.As it fell upon His neck and shoulders, it came down with a shock. Alas! what a sudden heavy weight have I laid
upon Thee, O Jesus” ( John Henry Newman, Prayers, Verses, and Devotions [San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989], 221). In his meditation on the Fourth Station,
he writes,“He was now carrying the load of the world’s sins, and, all-holy though
He was, He carried the image of them on His very face” (Ibid., 223). See also
John Paul II, Jesus, Son and Savior:A Catechesis on the Creed (Boston: Daughters of
St. Paul, 1996), 427: “He who ‘knew no sin’—the Son, consubstantial with the
Father—took upon himself the terrible burden of the sin of all humanity, in
order to obtain our justification and sanctification.”

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believer lives, but in another he is still “dead because of sin.” His task now
is “by the Spirit” to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Rom 8:13).
Paul comes very close to saying that Jesus’ disciple must take up his cross
and follow him: we are coheirs of Christ, he says, “provided we suffer
with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).
While baptism frees us from the punishment due to our sins, until the
resurrection it does not take away all the damage caused by sin.
Commenting on Paul, Thomas argues that this is a good thing, because
by baptism one is incorporated into Christ as a member of his body:
It is fitting that what was done in the head be done in the incorporated
member. Now Christ from the first moment of his conception was full
of grace and truth, but he had a body liable to suffering, which through
his suffering and death was raised to glorious life. So also a Christian in
baptism obtains grace as regards his soul, yet still has a body liable to
suffering, in which he can suffer for Christ; but eventually he will be
raised up to an imperishable life.19

Here we see how Christ gives us a burden to carry. As he himself bore a
human nature liable to suffering and death, so his members must bear the
“old man,” fallen human nature with its passions and pain.As Edith Stein
puts it:
The burden of the cross that Christ assumed is that of corrupted
human nature, with all its consequences in sin and suffering to which
fallen humanity is subject. The meaning of the way of the cross is to
carry this burden out of the world. . . .The Savior is not alone on the
way of the cross. Not only are there adversaries around him who
oppress him, but also people who succor him. . . .Typical of those who
submit to the suffering inflicted on them and experience his blessing
by bearing it is Simon of Cyrene. . . .20

The Burden Transformed
In a certain respect, therefore, the burden is the same as ever: we were
subject to concupiscence and death, and we remain so now. But the
burden is only materially the same; formally, it has been wholly changed:
where before we carried this burden not only because of sin but in sin
and sinfully, as a breach between us and God, now we carry the burden
willingly, in conformity to Christ, and by the power of his indwelling.As
Paul says,“God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not
19 ST III, q. 69, a 3 corp.
20 L. Gelber and Michael Linssen, eds., The Collected Works of Edith Stein, trans.

Waltraut Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1992), IV: 91–92.

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do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he
condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law
might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:3–4), the Spirit that pours the love of God into
our hearts (Rom 5:5).Thomas Aquinas, following Augustine, captures the
same point when he says that Christ’s commandments “are not heavy to
the lover; whereas they are heavy to him who loves not.”21
The “old man” is even the occasion for our glory. Augustine captures
the tradition:
Our life in this wandering abroad cannot be without temptation, for
our progress comes about through temptation; nor does anyone come
to know himself unless he is tempted, nor can anyone be crowned
unless he has overcome, nor can anyone overcome unless he fights, nor
can anyone fight unless he has had an enemy and temptations.22

The believer’s likeness to Christ goes even further.When Paul admonishes the Galatians to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law
of Christ” (Gal 6:2),Thomas Aquinas, following an ancient tradition, links
this “law of Christ” to the figure of the suffering servant who “bore our
weaknesses and carried our sorrows.”23 By carrying our cross, we
become like Christ not only in his suffering, and not only in his triumph,
but even in his power to help others: we ourselves become the suffering
servant of Isaiah 53.
Conclusion
So we have seen that Jesus does in fact compare the sinner to individuals who are struggling under a heavy burden. In fact, what this comparison loses in frequency in the New Testament it may gain back in its
centrality of location. But when Christ carries away the sinner’s burden
he transforms the metaphor, because he carries the burden not as a freestanding, autonomous savior, a sin-laden scapegoat one sends far away
from the people, but as mystically identified with the believer; and the
same union of head and member that allows Christ to carry the sinner’s
burden requires the believer to carry Christ’s Cross. The believer passes,
in effect, from the first to the second meaning of nasa awon: apart from
21 ST I–II, q. 104, a. 4 corp.
22 Enarrationes in Psalmos LI–C (CCL 39, p. 766); in the Latin liturgy of the hours,

vol. 2, 70.
23 See his commentary on Galatians, ch. 6, lect. 2; see also Blessed Isaac of Stella,

Sermon 31 in PL 194:1292–93.

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Christ he carries a burden of sin, but united to Christ he comes to share
in carrying the burden away.
This transition is where the burden metaphor makes its specific
contribution to Christian thought. Much of what is said about the
burden of sin is easily translated into the language of debt and credit.
Where Augustine says that the believer is crowned because he is victorious, one could say that fallen nature gives him an opportunity for merit,
or credit.Thomas comments that one way we bear one another’s burdens
is by doing penance to make satisfaction for others’ sins—to pay off their
debts. But the transformation of the sinner’s burden does not translate
easily into other metaphors.Was I in debt? The debt has been paid in full.
Was I stained? I have been washed clean. Was I lost? I am found. Debt,
dirtiness, and being lost are bad in themselves, so I cannot say that Christ
imposes on me a debt, or a filth, or that he sends me away to be lost. But
to carry a burden is sometimes good; one might even argue that man was
created from the beginning to carry burdens.
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The Debt of Sin and the Sacrifice in Charity
A Thomistic Echo to Gary Anderson’s
Sin: A History
R EINHARD H ÜTTER
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

FOR A FORMER Lutheran theologian, who by divine providence and
by way of a not altogether easy theological journey, found his way into the
full communion of the Catholic Church, Gary Anderson’s Sin:A History 1 is
as salient as it is salutary. Though I frankly admit, the remnants of old
Lutheran theological habits and reflexes, very hard to jettison by unlearning,
still stirred when confronted with the idea—characterized by Anderson as
profoundly biblical—that almsgiving is one if not the principal means by
which the debt of sin may be repaid. Did not, after all, the Reformation
unmask this idea as the most pernicious, sinful attempt at “self-redemption”
(Selbsterlösung) and was not the important Lutheran Reformer Johannes
Bugenhagen (1485–1558), a close friend of and co-operator with Martin
Luther, acclaimed as social reformer precisely for the invention and broad
implementation of the “common chest” that was meant in one fell stroke to
get rid simultaneously of beggars and of almsgiving?2 To put it in different
and more conciliatory terms, Anderson’s book is of significant ecumenical
1 Gary A. Anderson, Sin:A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009).

For two discussions and engagements of the book, as informative as instructive,
see Paul J. Griffiths’s review, “In the Red,” Commonweal 137, no. 2 ( January 29,
2010): 25–26, and Bruce D. Marshall’s review essay, “Treasures in Heaven,” First
Things 199 ( January 2010): 23–26.
2 The Bugenhagen scholar Kurt K. Hendel puts the matter as succinctly as one can
wish: “The poor chest, envisioned as the community’s chief means of caring for
its poor, was a centralized, carefully administered, accountable system. Its focus was
carefully defined. For the sake of efficiency and control, Bugenhagen expected all

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relevance, and that for at least two reasons: first, the book—in light of its
argument for an undeniable grammar of sin as debt and of almsgiving as the
first and foremost means of repaying this debt—invites Protestants to reconsider whether one of their most cherished polemics against the Catholic
faith might indeed be biblically unfounded. And second—in light of some
rather peculiar developments, to say the least, in Catholic life and piety since
the 1960s—Anderson’s book invites contemporary Catholics to rediscover
the biblical warrants for not a few traditional Catholic practices of piety and
their concomitant beliefs. In order to contribute directly to the latter—the
Catholic rediscovery—and indirectly to the former—the Protestant reconsideration—I take Sin:A History as the welcome occasion for a ressourcement
in Thomas Aquinas’s theology of sin and redemption, a theology equally
relevant, I would like to submit, for contemporary Catholics and Protestants.3 That sin is first and foremost a debt in need of being repaid is, indeed,
central to Thomas’s way of understanding the Incarnation and the Passion
of Christ. And realizing this is tantamount to realizing that Thomas is a
profoundly biblical theologian who synthesized a tradition of patristic and
medieval exegesis and theology, and that his synthesis to a surprising degree
anticipates and confirms Anderson’s important exegetical rediscovery.
In the following, I would like to prepare the ground for bringing
Thomas’s theology of sin and redemption into a constructive dialogue with
Anderson’s book. However, in this brief essay, I shall be able to act merely
resources designated for the care of the poor to be deposited in and disbursed
from the poor chest. Begging was strictly opposed, and private almsgiving was discouraged. The Reformer also suggested that the poor be identified and evaluated, and
that only the worthy poor receive regular support” (“The Care of the Poor: An
Evangelical Perspective,” Currents in Theology and Mission 15 [1988]: 526–32, at
532; my emphasis). “Although love for neighbor and the service of God were
obviously not new concepts, they were now promoted as the sole impetus for the
care of the poor since the good works piety of the medieval church was rejected
by the evangelical reformers. Bugenhagen also recognized that the decentralized,
voluntary almsgiving of the Middle Ages had to be reformed both for theological and practical reasons. He maintained, therefore, that caring for the poor was
not a matter of free choice but a responsibility of the individual Christian and of
the Christian community, and he proposed the organized, centralized, and regulated system of the poor chest as a corrective for the decentralized practice of
begging and almsgiving. Indeed, begging was repeatedly forbidden in the church
orders” (“Johannes Bugenhagen:A Retrospect on His 500th Birthday,” Currents in
Theology and Mission 12 [1985]: 277–89, at 285f.).
3 For a comprehensive study of this topic, see Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Godly
Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas (Petersham,
MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1990), and more recently, idem, “Sonship, Sacrifice,
and Satisfaction:The Divine Friendship in Aquinas and the Renewal of Christian Anthropology,” Letter & Spirit 3 (2007): 71–93.

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as a tour-guide who will take the reader on one particular path through
Thomas’s mature opus magnum, his Summa theologiae, a path rarely taken in
recent years; it is to be hoped that now, emboldened by Anderson’s exegetical argument, other readers will take the path more frequently.
This tour will comprise three stations. It will commence in the prima
secundae with Thomas’s discussion of the debt of punishment consequent
upon sin. From there I will turn to Thomas’s interpretation of Christ’s
priesthood and Passion in the tertia pars. Finally, at the third station, I will
attend to the all-important but often misunderstood human participation
in Christ’s satisfactory sacrifice. Here I will turn briefly to Baptism, the
Eucharist, and alms deeds. It will become clear that the debt of punishment on account of sin is not simply cancelled through Christ’s expiation for the sins of the whole world. Rather, the debt of punishment
becomes, in and through Christ’s expiatory sacrifice in charity, the occasion for the sinner to be restored to the order of charity, a restoration in
which the sinner’s participation is indispensable, indeed, crucial. To put
the matter in simple conceptual terms: the debt of punishment—an
indispensable entailment of divine justice—is transformed by the order of
divine charity into an instrument that restores the sinner to the very
order of charity itself.
The Stain of Sin and the Debt of Punishment:
Violating the Order of Charity
Allow me first to recall briefly Thomas’s fundamentally Augustinian concept
of evil and sin. Evil is a partial privation of good and, more specifically, the
absence of a specific good that is due. Sin is either the absence of a due act,
interior or exterior, in reference to God or an act contrary to what is due
to God. Consequent upon original sin, all powers of the human soul are left
destitute of their proper order whereby they are naturally directed to virtue.
Thomas has in mind this destitution of the proper order of intellect, will,
and the sense appetites when he considers the four wounds of human
nature consequent upon sin: ignorance, malice, weakness, and concupiscence.4 Moreover, and more importantly for our concerns, sin causes a stain
4 Summa theologiae (ST ) I–II, q. 85, a. 3: “As a result of original justice, the reason

had perfect hold over the lower parts of the soul, while reason itself was perfected
by God, and was subject to Him. Now this same original justice was forfeited
through the sin of our first parent, as already stated [q. 81, a. 2]; so that all the
powers of the soul are left, as it were, destitute of their proper order, whereby they
are naturally directed to virtue; which destitution is called a wounding of nature.
“Again, there are four of the soul’s powers that can be the subject of virtue,
as stated above [q. 61, a. 2], viz. the reason, where prudence resides, the will,

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on the soul (“macula peccati”) and furthermore incurs a liability of punishment (“reatus poenae”), which is to be understood as a debt of punishment
(“debitum poenae”).
Hence, besides contributing its part to the four wounds of human
nature, every sinful act leaves two things, a stain on the sinner’s soul and
the sinner’s guilt.What does Thomas mean by “stain on the sinner’s soul”
and why should it matter? Thomas explains in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 86,
a. 1:The human soul has a twofold splendor (“nitor”): one from the natural light of reason whereby human beings are directed to their actions; the
other from the illumination of the divine light, that is, the wisdom and
grace whereby humans are perfected in order to do good and fitting
actions. “Now, when the soul cleaves to things by love, there is a kind of
contact in the soul.”5 Consequently, when human beings sin, they cleave
to certain things contrary to the light of reason and contrary to the divine
law. The loss of the splendor of the human soul is occasioned by such
contact, which “is metaphorically called a stain on the soul.”Thomas holds
that “the stain of sin remains in the soul even when the act of sin is past.”6
For the stain “denotes a blemish in the brightness of the soul, on account
of its withdrawing from the light of reason or of the divine law.”7
The second thing each actual sin leaves after the act is the sinner’s
liability for punishment, the “reatus poenae.”8 Significantly, Thomas
interprets this liability for punishment, this “reatus poenae” as a debt of
where justice is, the irascible, the subject of fortitude, and the concupiscible, the
subject of temperance. Therefore in so far as the reason is deprived of its order
to the true, there is the wound of ignorance; in so far as the will is deprived of
its order to the good, there is the wound of malice; in so far as the irascible is
deprived of its order to the arduous, there is the wound of weakness; and in so
far as the concupiscible is deprived of its order to the delectable, moderated by
reason, there is the wound of concupiscence.
“Accordingly these are the four wounds inflicted on the whole of human
nature as a result of our first parent’s sin. But since the inclination to the good of
virtue is diminished in each individual on account of actual sin, as was explained
above [aa. 1, 2], these four wounds are also the result of other sins, in so far as,
through sin, the reason is obscured, especially in practical matters, the will hardened to evil, good actions become more difficult and concupiscence more
impetuous.” (All English translations of the Summa theologiae are taken from the
1920 English Dominican Province translation, Summa Theologica [New York:
Benzinger Brothers, 1947].)
5 ST I–II, q. 86, a. 1.
6 ST I–II, q. 86, a. 2.
7 This stain of sin remains as long as the human being remains out of this light,
that is, until the human being repents and returns to the light of reason and the
Divine law.
8 De malo, q. 2, a. 2, ad 14.

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punishment, a “debitum poenae.”9 The sinner stands in the position of
debtor in relationship to divine justice.What is actually due to the sinner
is punishment. Consequently, the Fathers of the English Dominican
Province, in their translation of the Summa theologiae, render the liability
for punishment, the “reatus poenae” itself as “debt of punishment,” a
felicitous decision I will make my own in the following. Sin, being either
the absence of a due act in reference to God or an act contrary to what
is due to God, disturbs the universal order of divine governance. And
because God delights in the order of divine justice, punishment is due as
the payment that balances out the equality of justice.
It is admittedly rather strange for and even offensive to modern sensibilities that, according to Thomas, God is both merciful and just, that
justice is as much a divine perfection as is mercy, and that in the absolute
simplicity of the divine essence, mercy and justice are one.10 Hence, even
when love and mercy rule, the requirements of divine justice must be
met lest God act against justice. Unsurprisingly, when in Summa theologiae
I–II, q. 86, a. 6, Thomas addresses the question whether the debt of
punishment remains after sin, he insists in the sed contra (with reference to
2 Kings 12:13–14, the prophet Nathan communicating God’s message to
David regarding his crimes of adultery and murder) that “a man is
punished by God even after his sin is forgiven: and so the debt of punishment remains, when the sin has been removed.”11 In unfolding his own
answer to the question, Thomas considers two aspects of the sin: the
guilty act and the subsequent stain on the soul.
Since by the guilty act, the sinner has transgressed the order of divine
justice, only an act of penal compensation (“recompensatio poenae”) will
restore him or her to the equality of justice. According to the order of
divine justice, the one who has too much indulged his or her own will
and has consequently transgressed God’s commandments suffers, either
willingly or unwillingly, something contrary to what he or she would
wish. “This restoration of the equality of justice by penal compensation
9 “Ad secundam quaestionem dicendum, quod quicumque est debitor alicujus, per

hoc a debito absolvitur quod debitum solvit; et quia reatus nihil est aliud quam
debitum poenae; per hoc quod aliquis poenam sustinet quam debebat, a reatu
absolvitur” (In IV Sent., d. 21, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 2).
10 Cf. ST I, q. 3 and ST I, q. 21, esp. a. 4: “Whether in Every Work of God There
Are Mercy and Justice?” In the response to the first objection,Thomas anticipates
in a nutshell the way he conceives divine mercy and justice to be one in God, but
to be ordered in God’s works by way of love such that justice is always grounded
in mercy:“In the justification of the ungodly, justice is seen, when God remits sins
on account of love, though He Himself has mercifully infused that love.”
11 ST I–II, q. 87, a. 6 sed contra.

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is also to be observed in injuries done to one’s fellow [humans]. Consequently it is evident that when the sinful or injurious act has ceased there
still remains the debt of punishment.”12 And what removes this debt of
punishment is satisfaction.
Nota bene: the order of divine justice could surely have been accommodated differently by God. If God had somehow willed to liberate
human beings from sin without satisfaction, God could have done so, of
course, without acting against justice. In the tertia pars, where Thomas
considers Christ’s Passion, he advances an important argument why it is
most suitable for the healing of the human soul that God does not simply
forgive without satisfaction. Thomas states, “A judge, while preserving
justice, cannot pardon fault without penalty, if he must visit fault committed against another. . . . But God has no one higher than Himself, for He
is the sovereign and common good of the whole universe. Consequently,
if [God] forgive sin, which has the formality of fault in that it is committed against Himself, [God] wrongs no one: just as anyone else, overlooking a personal trespass, without satisfaction, acts mercifully and not
unjustly.”13 Thomas grants that it is not absolutely necessary for God that
satisfaction be made for human sins, but he insists that satisfaction is
indeed most suitable for the healing of the human soul.What Thomas has
in mind here has, of course, all to do with Christ who “by His Passion
made satisfaction for the sin of the human race.”14 But we do not understand Christ’s act of satisfaction fully, if we do not appreciate first in what
way the removal of the debt of punishment by way of satisfaction is indeed
most suitable for the healing of the human soul. In order to understand
this point in greater fullness, we need to return to the stain of sin on the
human soul and ask, how is the stain of sin removed? It is evident,Thomas
holds,“that the stain of sin cannot be removed from the soul, without the
soul being united to God.”15 For, after all, it was through being separated
from God that the soul suffered the loss of its splendor.
Now, how does Thomas think this removal of the stain and this union
of the soul with God is to come about? First and foremost, the will is the
faculty of the human soul by way of which the human is united to
God—in this life, I should add. And therefore the stain of sin can be
removed only if the will accepts the order of divine justice. That means
for Thomas one of two things: either the human being on her or his own
accord takes upon her- or himself the punishment of past sins, or the
12 ST I–II, q. 87, a. 6c.
13 ST III, q. 46, a. 2, ad 3.
14 ST III, q. 46, a. 1, ad 3, echoing 2 John 2:2.
15 ST I–II, q. 87, a. 6c.

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human being bears patiently the punishment God inflicts on her or
him.16 Thomas explores this satisfactory punishment with great interest.
Because a satisfactory punishment is in some way voluntary, it is transferable under one specific condition. He states in Summa theologiae I–II,
q. 87, a. 7:“[S]ince those who differ as to the debt of punishment, may be
one in will by the union of love, it happens that one who has not sinned,
bears willingly the punishment for another: thus even in human affairs
we see [people] take the debts of another upon themselves” (my emphasis). And so “one may bear another’s punishment, in so far as they are, in
some way, one.”17 It is not surprising then that already in his treatment
of the debt of punishment in the context of the wider discussion of
human sin,Thomas announces the key theme that later in the tertia pars
unites the sacraments with Christ’s Passion: “Christ bore a satisfactory
punishment, not for His, but for our sins.”18
We need one more piece in place to understand fully why Thomas
regards satisfaction to be most suitable for the healing of the human soul.
And this piece pertains to the central role of charity. What belonged to
the splendor of the human soul originally was charity. For in the state of
original righteousness, because of the gift of sanctifying grace, humans
adhered to God by charity.19 Original sin destroyed this adherence by
charity to humanity’s final end, union with God. So what is at stake in
satisfactory punishment is twofold: (1) satisfaction restores the order of
charity by way of a satisfaction accepted voluntarily in charity for the
person wronged and for the wrongdoer; (2) substitutionary satisfaction
presupposes a union of charity between the wrongdoer and the person
who makes satisfaction.20 Remember, Thomas holds that “when a soul
16 In both ways, Thomas says, “punishment avails for satisfaction . . . and although

satisfactory punishment, absolutely speaking is against the will, nevertheless in
this particular case and for this particular purpose, it is voluntary.”
17 ST I–II, q. 87, a. 8c.
18 ST I–II, q. 87, a. 7, ad 3; my emphasis.
19 ST I–II, q. 87, a. 3c: “Now in every order there is a principle whereby one takes
part in that order. Consequently if a sin destroys the principle of the order
whereby man’s will is subject to God, the disorder will be such as to be considered in itself, irreparable, although it is possible to repair it by the power of God.
Now the principle of this order is the last end, to which man adheres by charity.”
20 Eleonore Stump put this crucial point—easily missed or misunderstood in
Thomas’s theology—in a felicitously succinct way:“Because, on Aquinas’s view, the
point of making satisfaction is to return the wrongdoer’s will to conformity with
the will of the person wronged, rather than to inflict retributive punishment on
the wrongdoer or to placate the person wronged, it is possible for the satisfaction
to be made by a substitute, provided that the wrongdoer allies himself with the
substitute in willing to undo as far as possible the damage he has done. So Aquinas

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cleaves to things by love, there is a kind of contact in the soul.”21 If the
wrongdoer loves the person who makes satisfaction for him or her, there
is a kind of contact in the soul of the wrongdoer with this person. And
if this person is a divine person, there is a kind of contact in the soul of the wrongdoer with God.22 Christ’s satisfaction for human sin in charity both to the
Father and to the wrongdoer allows for, invites, and, by way of sanctifying grace, brings about a restoration of charity through which the human
adheres again to his or her final end, union with God. And adhering to
God through charity inchoately attaches the soul to God such that the
soul’s splendor is restored.
This leads us to our second station, Christ as priest and Christ as victim,
Christ who bore in his Passion a satisfactory punishment for our sins, a
punishment borne voluntarily, and more importantly, as a supreme act of
charity, which restores all humanity to the supreme divine order of charity.
Christ’s Priesthood and Passion on the Cross:
Restoring Humanity to the Order of Charity
At the outset of his consideration of Christ’s priesthood,Thomas enumerates three reasons why human beings are required to offer sacrifice—“sacrifice” meaning, most broadly, everything that is offered to God in order to
raise the human spirit of God:“First, for the remission of sin, by which [the
human] is turned away from God. . . . Secondly, that [the human] may be
preserved in a state of grace, by ever adhering to God, wherein his peace
and salvation consist. . . . Thirdly, that the [human] spirit . . . be perfectly
united to God: which will be most perfectly realized in glory.”23 Now,
precisely these effects were conferred on us by the humanity of Christ: first,
the blotting out of our sins (Rom 4:25), second, the reception of the grace
of salvation (Heb 5:9), and third, acquiring the perfection of glory (Heb
10:19).And therefore,Thomas concludes,“Christ Himself, as [human], was
not only priest, but also a perfect victim, being at the same time victim for
sin, victim for a peace-offering, and a holocaust.”24 And so Christ’s priesthood expiates human sin, and this in two respects. For two things are
required for the perfect cleansing from sins. They correspond to the two
thinks that one person can make satisfaction for another only to the extent to
which they are united, or that one person can atone for another insofar as they are
one in charity” (Aquinas [New York: Routledge, 2003], 435).
21 ST I–II, q. 86, a. 1c.
22 Thomas states:“The act of the will consists in a movement towards things themselves, so that love attaches the soul to the thing loved” (ST I–II, q. 86, a. 1, ad 2).
23 ST III, q. 22, a. 2c.
24 Ibid.

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things sin comprises—namely, the stain of sin (“macula peccati”) and the
debt of punishment (“reatus poenae”).25
The debt of punishment is entirely removed by the satisfaction that
Christ offers for all humanity to God the Father.The stain of sin is blotted out by sanctifying grace, the principle of the divine life in the human
being which the sinner receives through Baptism26 and which after its
loss through mortal sin can subsequently be restored through the sacrament of Penance.27 For by grace the sinner’s heart is turned to God.
Now, remember Thomas’s principle:“When the soul cleaves to things by
love, there is a kind of contact in the soul.”28 Since charity is a divinely
infused virtue, the originating principle of which is sanctifying grace, by
charity the soul cleaves again to God—with whom there is therefore a
kind of contact in the soul, which is the soul’s splendor.Thomas teaches
that the priesthood of Christ produces both these effects.29
Three points are crucial: First, Christ’s satisfaction comports fully with
divine mercy and divine justice:
That man should be delivered by Christ’s Passion was in keeping with
both His mercy and His justice.With His justice, because by His Passion
Christ made satisfaction for the sin of the human race; and so man was
set free by Christ’s justice: and with His mercy, for since man of himself
could not satisfy for the sin of all human nature . . . God gave him His
Son to satisfy for him. . . . And this came of more copious mercy than if He
had forgiven sins without satisfaction. Hence it is said (Eph ii.4):“God, who
is rich in mercy, for His exceeding charity wherewith He loved us, even
when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ.”30

Second, Christ’s satisfaction allows for a human participation, if the
human being is united with Christ in charity:
25 ST III, q. 22, a. 3.
26 ST III, q. 69, a. 4.Thomas expresses the effect of baptism most beautifully in his

brief response to the question “Whether the Effect of Baptism Is to Open the
Gates of the Heavenly Kingdom?” (ST III, q. 69, a. 7):“To open the gates of the
heavenly kingdom is to remove the obstacle that prevents one from entering
therein. Now this obstacle is guilt and the debt of punishment. But it has been
shown above . . . that all guilt and also all debt of punishment are taken away by
Baptism. It follows, therefore, that the effect of Baptism is to open the gates of
the heavenly kingdom.”
27 ST III, q. 89, a. 1.
28 ST I–II, q. 86, a. 1.
29 “For by its virtue grace is given to us, by which our hearts are turned to God. . . .
Moreover, He satisfied for us fully, inasmuch as ‘He hath borne our infirmities and
carried our sorrows’ (Isa liii.4) (ST III, q. 22, a. 3).”
30 ST III, q. 46, a. 1, ad 3; my emphasis.

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Christ’s Passion is applied to us even through faith, that we may share in
its fruits, according to Rom iii.25: ‘Whom God hath proposed to be a
propitiation, through faith in His blood.’ But the faith through which we
are cleansed from sin is not lifeless faith, which can exist even with sin,
but faith living through charity; that thus Christ’s Passion may be applied
to us, not only as to our minds, but also as to our hearts. And even in
this way sins are forgiven through the power of the Passion of Christ.31

Third, Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross restores humanity to the order of charity: “Christ’s Passion was the offering of a sacrifice, inasmuch as He endured
death of His own free-will out of charity.”32 Satisfaction pertains to the debt
of punishment, which refers to justice. Sacrifice, by way of which satisfaction is made, pertains to the restoration of the inchoate union between soul
and God, which refers to charity. A sacrifice in perfect charity can make
satisfaction precisely because in satisfaction the affection and devotion of the
offerer is what is measured. And Christ’s human affection and devotion,
because of their hypostatic union with the divine nature, were absolutely
perfect. It is here that Thomas’s understanding of Christ’s human nature as
the instrument of his divinity comes into full play.Thomas had inherited this
theologoumenon from patristic theology.33 Christ’s sacrifice was most efficacious for blotting out sins, because Christ’s human nature operated by
virtue of the divine.34
How do we remain continuously united with this sacrifice out of
charity through which Christ made a perfect satisfaction for the sins of
all humanity? When considering Christ the priest and Christ the victim,
Thomas anticipates the answer to this question by pointing to the
Eucharistic sacrifice: “The Sacrifice which is offered every day in the
Church is not distinct from that which Christ Himself offered, but is a
31 ST III, q. 49, a. 1, ad 5.
32 ST III, q. 47, a. 4 ad 2; my emphasis.
33 For an extensive discussion of this crucial aspect of Thomas’s Christology, see

Theophil Tschipke, O.P., Die Menschheit Christi als Heilsorgan der Gottheit unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg: Herder,
1940). Cf. now the recent French translation: L’humanité du Christ comme instrument
de salut de la divinité (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2003).
34 ST III, q. 22, a. 3, ad 1. In order to support this understanding, Thomas appeals
to a famous passage from Augustine’s De Trinitate (4, 14), a passage frequently
cited by medieval theologians: “Four things are to be observed in every sacrifice—to whom it is offered, by whom it is offered, what is offered, for whom it
is offered; the same one true Mediator reconciling us to God by the sacrifice of
peace, was one with Him to Whom it was offered, united in Himself those for
whom He offered it, at the same time offered it Himself, and was Himself that
which He offered.”

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commemoration thereof.”35 Thomas cites from Augustine’s De civitate Dei
(10, 20): “Christ Himself both is the priest who offers it and the victim:
the sacred token of which He wished to be the daily Sacrifice of the
Church.”Thus we reach our third and final station.
Being Restored to Charity by Participating
in the Sacrifice out of Charity
Thomas is very clear that there is only one explicitly revealed way to
secure the effects of Christ’s Passion. We must be configured to Christ,
and this occurs sacramentally in Baptism.Thomas appeals to Romans 6:4:
“For we are buried together with Him by baptism into death.” It is for
this reason that at Baptism, no punishment of satisfaction is imposed
upon the candidates, because they are fully delivered by Christ’s satisfaction. It is an altogether different matter, however, after Baptism. Thomas
states:“But because, as it is written (1 Pet iii.18),‘Christ died but once for
our sins,’ therefore [one] cannot a second time be likened unto Christ’s
death by the sacrament of Baptism. Hence it is necessary that those who
sin after Baptism be likened unto Christ suffering [configurentur Christo
patienti ] by some form of punishment or suffering which they endure in
their own person.”36
Thomas regards Baptism as an objective incorporation into the Passion
and death of Christ and consequently the communication of Christ’s
Passion to every baptized person “so that he is healed just as if he himself
had suffered and died.”37 And because Christ’s Passion is a sufficient satisfaction for all the sins of all human beings, the baptized person is consequently “freed from the debt of all punishment due to him for his sins,
just as if he himself had offered sufficient satisfaction for all his sins.”38
Hence Baptism is the sacrament that accounts for the first consequence
of sin, the debt of punishment.
But now we must turn to what is even more important, and what,
according to Thomas, is the true end of Christ’s Passion. Remember that
Thomas insists that the stain of sin on the soul can be removed only by
the soul’s re-attachment to God in charity. For, after all, it was through
being separated from God that the soul suffered the loss of its splendor.
Thomas thinks this re-attachment of the soul comes about by way of the
will. For the will is the faculty of the human soul by way of which the
human adheres to God:“when the soul cleaves to things by love, there is
35 ST III, q. 22, a. 3, ad 2.
36 ST III, q. 49, a. 3 ad 2.
37 ST III, q. 69, a. 2.
38 Ibid.

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a kind of contact in the soul.”39 And charity is exercised by the faculty of
the will. So when the soul cleaves to God by charity, there is a contact in
the soul, the soul is re-attached to God in charity—and that is nothing
but the incipient union of the soul with God in charity.40
And here the Eucharist comes fully into play.Thomas understands the
Eucharist in immediate correlation to and distinction from Baptism:
“Baptism is the sacrament of Christ’s death and Passion, according as
[one] is born anew in Christ in virtue of His Passion; but the Eucharist
is the sacrament of Christ’s Passion according as [one] is made perfect in
union with Christ Who suffered. Hence, as Baptism is called the sacrament of Faith, which is the foundation of the spiritual life, so the
Eucharist is termed the sacrament of Charity, which is ‘the bond of
perfection’ (Col iii.4).”41
The key word here is charity, which, according to Colossians 3:4, is the
bond of perfection. Unlike Baptism, which “is directly ordained for the
remission of punishment and guilt,”42 the Eucharist is given for those
baptized into Christ’s death to be nourished and perfected through
Christ.What does Thomas have in mind here?
As is well known, Thomas consistently considers the Eucharist in two
respects, as sacrament under the aspect of communion and as sacrifice
under the aspect of offering. Considered as a sacrament, the Eucharist has
a strengthening and perfecting power. According to the intensity of the
bond of charity between Christ and us as we devoutly receive Christ’s
sacred Body and Blood, we grow in charity, and consequently we participate with ever-growing devotion in the Eucharistic sacrifice by uniting in
charity our own spiritual self-offering with Christ’s sacrifice to the Father.
Considered as a sacrifice under the aspect of offering, the Eucharist has
a satisfactory power pertaining to post-baptismal sins. If one were to
consider only the quantity of what is being offered—the sacred Body and
Blood of Christ of the one sacrifice on Calvary—this offering suffices to
satisfy for all punishment.Yet crucially, Thomas reminds us that in satisfaction, the affection and the devotion—in short, the effects of charity—
of the offerer or the one for whom it is offered are weighed and not the
39 ST I–II, q. 86, a. 1c.
40 This incipient union of the soul with God in charity is the beginning of the mysti-

cal life to which every baptized Christian is called. See on this topic, indispensable
for Christian existence in the twenty-first century, the important work by John G.
Arintero, O.P., The Mystical Evolution in the Development and Vitality of the Church, 2
vols., trans. Jordan Aumann, O.P. (St. Louis/London: Herder, 1949).
41 ST III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 3.
42 ST III, q. 79, a. 5, ad 1.

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quantity of the offering. Hence, Thomas states, “although this offering
suffices of its own quantity to satisfy for all punishment, yet it becomes
satisfactory for them for whom it is offered, or even for the offerers,
according to the measure of their devotion, and not for the whole
punishment.”43 The measure of affection and devotion is the measure of
the union of charity between the offerer or the one for whom it is
offered and Christ. For it is by this charity that he is united with Christ’s
sacrifice. Hence the unity in distinction of sacrifice and sacrament integrates the demand of justice into an ever-intensifying circle of charity.
This is the sacramental pillar of the restored arc of the order of charity.We shall now turn to the other pillar of the restored arc of the order
of charity, the human participation by way of mercy, which is an effect of
charity. Alms deeds stand out most crucially here because they integrate
the demands of justice and satisfaction into the encompassing circle of
the sacrifice in charity. For ultimately, both pillars denote offerings out of
charity, that is, sacrifices “offered to God in order to raise the human
spirit to God in charity.”
Some, however, might want to ask whether alms should be understood
at all as acts of charity rather than exclusively as acts of justice. For Daniel
4:24 (according to the Vulgate ) says after all:“Peccata tua elemosynis redime.”
“Redeem your sins with alms.” And satisfaction is an act of justice. Now,
Thomas responds to this objection, as usual, with a distinction. Almsgiving is reckoned among the works of satisfaction and hence as an act of
justice insofar as the pity for the one in distress is directed to the satisfaction for one’s own sin. But insofar as almsgiving is directed to please
God, it has the character of a sacrifice. And an act of mercy united with
Christ in charity, that is, done for God’s sake, has the character of a sacrifice.44 So how does Thomas understand alms? In Summa theologiae II–II,
q. 32, a. 1 Thomas defines almsgiving as “a deed whereby something is
given to the needy, out of compassion and for God’s sake.” An alms deed
is motivated by mercy and, since mercy is an effect of charity, alms deeds
are acts of charity through the medium of mercy. Thomas is adamant
about this aspect of alms deeds. Whereas almsgiving can be materially
without charity, to give alms “formally,” that is, genuinely for God’s sake
with delight and readiness, is possible only with charity.45
Thomas usefully draws upon a traditional distinction of alms deeds
and regards them as suitably reflecting the various needs of our neighbor.
Seven bodily alms deeds correspond to the needs of the body: feeding the
43 ST III, q. 79, a. 5.
44 ST II–II, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2 and 3.
45 ST II–II, q. 32, a. 1, ad 1.

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hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the
harborless, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, and giving burial to
the dead. Seven spiritual alms deeds correspond to the needs of the soul:
prayer, instruction, counseling, comforting, reproving, pardoning the
injury, and bearing one another’s burdens.46
What makes the discussion of alms in Thomas’s theology so instructive
is that, in his way of thinking, alms deeds follow the logic of sacrifice and
satisfaction that already characterized the sacramental pillar of the restored
arc of charity: the demands of justice—satisfaction—are integrated in the
overarching horizon of the sacrifice in charity. The human response of
satisfaction to the demands of justice, paying the debt of punishment, is
elevated to a human participation in the sacrifice in charity.
Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to return to the beginning. The one single
bond that in Thomas’s theological synthesis holds together the debt of
punishment consequent upon sin, substitutionary satisfaction, Christ’s
sacrifice on the Cross, and our participation in that sacrifice through
Baptism, Eucharist, and alms deeds is the one bond of perfection, which
is charity. In his Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians,
Thomas comments on the bond that stood against us on account of our
debt of guilt. Colossians 2:13–14 states:“And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together
with [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the
bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (RSV). Consider Thomas’s terse but poignant
commentary on this passage:
112 But how has God forgiven us? I answer that a person incurs two

things by sinning, that is, a debt of guilt, and slavery to the devil. And
so he explains how sins are forgiven: first, our being freed from slavery
to the devil, and second, he mentions the removing of the debt of guilt.
113 He says, having canceled the bond that stood against us ; this bond or
written decree [chirographum decreti ] . . . is a warranty usually employed
in contracts. And whoever violates God’s bond is subject to a debt of
punishment. . . . Now the memory of this violation is called a bond.
And it is Christ who has forgiven all by having canceled the bond, that
is, the memory of the transgression, which stood against us. . . .The term
bond is used because its violation is not forgiven in such a way as to
bring it about that there was never any sin. Rather, such sin is not
remembered by God as something to be punished . . .
46 ST II–II, q. 32, a. 2.

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115 How did Christ cancel this bond? On the cross, for this he set
aside, nailing it to the cross. It was the custom for a bond to be torn up
once a person had fulfiled all his obligations. Now man was in sin and
Christ paid for this by his suffering. . . . And therefore, at the moment
of Christ’s death this bond was canceled and destroyed. And so he says,
this he set aside, nailing it to the cross, by which he took away our sin by
making satisfaction to God.47

This is where Lutheran theology would usually tend to stop. But as
Augustine famously and rightly stated:“God created us without us, but he
did not save us without us.”48 And, according to Thomas, the very point of
the active human participation in God’s saving activity is the restoration of
the human soul to divine charity, in virtue of which the soul cleaves to
God, such that there is a kind of contact in the soul with God, an inchoate
union between the soul and God.The very access to this inchoate union
with God in charity is our participation in Christ’s satisfactory sacrifice in
charity.The debt of punishment is not simply cancelled in Christ. Rather
it becomes the very occasion for the sinner’s restoration to the order of
charity and the sinner’s soul to the splendor that comes from cleaving to
God in charity.Active participation,“participatio actuosa,” in Christ’s sacrifice in charity is the way God chose most fittingly for sinners to become
saints.We can see now how Thomas adopts the biblical mercantile grammar of debt and payment and employs it as an instrument of charity, to the
end of restoring the sinner to the order of charity.“Quoniam Deus caritas
est.”“For God is love” (1 John 4:8).
I am grateful to Gary Anderson not only for provoking me by way of his
book Sin:A History to read Thomas’s theology of sin and salvation in a way
that proves to be ecumenically fruitful, but also for offering my old Lutheran
theological habits and reflexes a most welcome biblical escape valve. N&V

47 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Colossians, trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P., ed. Daniel

A. Keating (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 61f. (Marietti 130–32).
48 St. Augustine, Sermo 169, 11.13 (PL 38, 923).

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149

Eternal Life: A Merited Free Gift?
MATTHEW LEVERING
University of Dayton
Dayton, Ohio

BY PARTICIPATING in Jesus’ Pasch through faith and works of love,
can we merit eternal life? In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus employs the
image of a heavenly treasury: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on
earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal,
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:19–21). How do we lay up
heavenly treasures? Without describing all the elements of the Christian
life that Jesus puts forward in his Sermon on the Mount, one notes that
Jesus attaches to certain actions his promise of heavenly reward. For example, he states, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and
be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the
prophets who were before you” (Mt 5:11–12). Likewise, those who love
only their friends already have their reward, whereas those who love their
enemies will receive a heavenly reward (see Mt 5:46).Those who practice
piety so as to be seen and praised by others “will have no reward from your
Father who is in heaven” (Mt 6:1).Those who give alms, pray to God, and
fast in secret without desiring a temporal reward, can be sure that “your
Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:4, 6, 18).1
1 The

theological tradition emphasizes the glorious character of the reward.
Commenting on Matthew 19:29, where Jesus promises that those who sacrifice
earthly goods “for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal
life,” Hilary of Poitiers speaks of “heavenly joy,” Theodore of Heraclea of “spiritual joys far exceeding earthly ones,” and Cyril of Alexandria of “paradise” and the
“Jerusalem above.” See Matthew 14–28, ed. Manlio Simonetti, in the Ancient
Christian Commentary on Scripture series, ed. Thomas C. Oden (Downers

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This emphasis on reward, on storing up “treasures in heaven,” is found
also in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus warns against “all covetousness” (Lk
12:15) and tells a parable designed to encourage his hearers to seek heavenly treasure.The parable presents a wealthy farmer who loves his temporal possessions more than he loves God, and who therefore is unprepared
for eternal life: “ ‘I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid
up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’ But God said
to him:‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you
have prepared, where will they be?’ ” (Lk 12:19–20). Jesus concludes that
people should strive to be “rich toward God” (Lk 12:21) by giving alms:
“Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that
do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where
no thief approaches and no moth destroys” (Lk 12:33).
How should we understand this biblical language? N. T. Wright
comments that in reaction to the tendency of medieval theologians to see
“everything in terms of merit,” the Protestant Reformers placed lack of
merit at the heart of their theology.2 In Wright’s view, this concentration on
merit’s presence or absence distorts the message of Jesus. Wright explains
that the “logic of merit” inevitably results in an understanding of “God as a
distant bank manager, scrutinizing credit and debit sheets.”3 He considers
that Jesus, like Paul, thinks in terms of the “logic of love”—the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit—rather than in terms of the “logic of merit.”
Yet, is there perhaps a place for both the logic of merit and the logic
of love in theological accounts of how we participate in Christ’s Pasch so
as to share in his inheritance? Does Christ’s teaching on building up
“treasures in heaven” (Mt 6:20) suggest a harmony between merit and
love? Arguing that the answer is yes, I first examine the roots of the theology of merit as set forth in Gary Anderson’s Sin:A History. I then explore
Thomas Aquinas’s theological account of meriting eternal reward. In
light of the connections between love and merit made by Anderson and
Aquinas, I propose that the indwelling Holy Spirit configures us to Christ
by enabling us to merit eternal life by works of love.

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 104–5. Cf. Richard Bauckham and Trevor
Hart, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). Bauckham and Hart emphasize that Scripture’s
eschatological language must be read as symbolizing a reality far greater than can
be imagined.
2 N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2009), 188.
3 Ibid.

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Gary Anderson’s Biblical Theology of Sin and Merit
By means of historical reconstruction, Anderson identifies a shift in the
image of sin employed by biblical authors. His research suggests that prior
to the sixth century B.C. and the rise of the use of Aramaic, biblical
authors speak of sin as a weight or a burden. Later biblical authors,
however, envision Israel’s sin as a debt (in the context of debt slavery). A
careful examination of this shift in imagery, Anderson thinks, will assist
Christians in moving beyond perennial theological controversies about
redemption, grace, and merit.
Anderson pays particular attention to controversies surrounding the
theology of satisfaction and the theology of merit. As he observes,
“Almost as soon as the idea of sin as a debt appears on the scene, so does
its financial counterpart, credit.”4 Anderson draws especially on Daniel
4:27 [24], “Therefore, O King, may my advice be acceptable to you:
Redeem your sins by almsgiving and your iniquities by generosity to the
poor; then your serenity may be extended”; Proverbs 11:4, “Financial
∑ q̃âh saves from death”;
capital is of no avail on the day of wrath, but seda
Proverbs 19:17, “He who is generous to the downtrodden makes a loan
to the Lord; He will repay him his due”; Sirach 29:12, “Store up almsgiving in your treasury, and it will rescue you from all affliction”; and
Tobit 4:7–11,“Give alms from your possessions to all who live uprightly,
and do not let your eye begrudge the gift when you make it. Do not turn
your face away from any poor man, and the face of God will not be
turned away from you. If you have many possessions, make your gift from
them in proportion; if few, do not be afraid to give according to the little
you have. So you will be laying up a good treasure for yourself against the
day of necessity. For almsgiving delivers from death and keeps you from
entering the darkness; and for all who practice it, almsgiving is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High.”
Anderson notes that almsgiving functions here as does credit in an
accounting ledger. As Daniel assures King Nebuchadnezzar, credit
balances debt; almsgiving pays the debts we owe for our sins.Turning to
the New Testament, Anderson explores the notion of a “treasury” (Sir
29:12) or a “good treasure” (Tob 4:9) built up by acts of almsgiving.This
“treasury” of generous actions stands as credit against the debts of our
4 Gary A. Anderson, Sin:A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009),

135.The attempt to remove all “juridical” notions from the theology of salvation
assumes that the conceptual framework of “debt” has no place for love. This
faulty assumption shapes the approach of Francis Xavier Durrwell, C.Ss.R.,
Christ Our Passover: The Indispensable Role of Resurrection in Our Salvation, trans.
John F. Craghan (Liguori, MO: Liguori, 2004), 48–51, 55–59, 97–101.

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sins. It rescues us from God’s wrath on the day of judgment. Anderson
points to Luke 12, where Jesus warns against “all covetousness” (Lk
12:15) and tells a parable designed to encourage his hearers to seek “treasures in heaven.” In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus employs this image
of a heavenly treasury: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:19–21).
Drawing upon Ephrem the Syrian and Augustine, Anderson notes that
although God wills to reward our good works, nonetheless the reward far
exceeds the works. As Anderson puts it, in the heavenly treasury “[e]very
dollar invested in yields growth by a hundredfold. The small amount
deposited provides sufficient leverage to open the gates of immeasurable
divine generosity (so Augustine: ‘Give a little and receive on a grand scale
. . . . Give the earth and gain heaven’).”5 Furthermore, it is God who establishes the “treasury” by his promises, so that our hope for a heavenly reward
flows from our faith in God, whose grace “guarantees” the reward.6 The
treasury that we build up depends on God’s gracious promises to reward
our good actions in Christ.
Anderson treats at length the encounter of Jesus and the rich young
man.When the rich young man asks Jesus how to gain “eternal life,” Jesus
replies, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the
poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt
19:21). The rich man goes away sad. In order to avoid being “last” (Mt
19:30) in the life to come, do we need to give away all our possessions, as
Jesus requires of the rich young man?7 Anderson notes that “Jesus’s injunction to give alms was meant to turn the young man’s earthly focus heavenward through the agency of the poor.”8 Comparing Jesus’ words with
similar injunctions in rabbinic Jewish literature, Anderson distinguishes
between “heroic almsgiving” and the proportionate almsgiving that is
5 Ibid., 159–60.
6 See ibid., 157.
7 Ben Witherington III seems to suggest that the answer is yes: “In Judaism, alms-

giving was one of the three pillar virtues, but it presupposed one had assets from
which to share. What Jesus says amounts to a rejection of conventional Jewish
piety that said it was all right to be wealthy so long as one was also generous.
Jesus is clearly enunciating a new Jewish ethic here, and it is not surprising that
the young man is said to have gone away sad (v. 22).The bar had just been raised
on what amounted to being a good or godly person, much less being a disciple
of Jesus” (Witherington, Matthew [Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2006], 370).
8 Anderson, Sin, 177.

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taught elsewhere in the New Testament. Heroic almsgiving is the vocation
of Jesus’ inner group of disciples.Anderson points out that Jesus “had in his
company a band of followers who had left their families to follow him.The
radical demands of the kingdom for this inner circle precluded, at least for
a time, any involvement with family.”9 As Anderson says, later Christians
recognized heroic almsgiving as a vocation for “men and women who were
. . . leaving family behind in pursuit of the Kingdom of God.”10
In the New Testament, not all followers of Jesus are called to heroic
almsgiving. But all are called to proportionate almsgiving in imitation of
Christ’s sacrificial love. Jesus’ parable of the last judgment (Mt 25:41–43)
shows how this is so. Jesus portrays himself as sending away, at the last
judgment, those who gave him no food when he was hungry, no drink
when he was thirsty, no welcome when he was a stranger, no clothing
when he was naked, and no care when he was in prison. By contrast,
those who perform such acts of self-giving love will “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34). No
one is excused on the grounds that they did not meet Jesus, for we meet
Jesus in the poor: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of
these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).
Even so, how can God give us such an extraordinary eschatological
reward for relatively small actions? Even if “[w]e love, because he first
loved us” (1 Jn 4:19), does our love—by which God “abides” in us (1 Jn
4:16) and gives us “confidence for the day of judgment” (1 Jn 4:17)—
have any relationship to the glorious reward? Is not the reward that God
gives us better conceived as sheer gift, unrelated to our weak and faltering actions in laying “down our lives for the brethren” (1 Jn 3:16)? Can
a system of debits and credits really have anything to do with the unfathomably great eschatological reward that God promises his people?
Anderson points out that almsgiving imitates God:“In light of the character of the heavenly treasury, it is hardly fair to say that a religious system
of debits and credits stands outside the framework of a gracious and loving
God. Indeed, in giving alms to the poor one is imitating those very same
qualities that exist within God.”11 Our debts are so enormous that it would
seem that “no amount of almsgiving could ever make a dent in what was
owed.”12 But Jesus Christ does not owe the penalty of death, and his life,
as the life of the incarnate Son, has infinite value. As Anderson suggests,
9 Ibid., 180.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 187. See also Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justifi-

cation, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).
12 Anderson, Sin, 188.

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Anselm’s insight is that Christ’s charity in giving his life for us merits infinite reward. Since Christ, being God, does not need this “credit,” he shares
it with us: his heavenly treasure pays off our debts, so long as in faith and
love we follow his sacrificial path of mercy.13
Thomas Aquinas on Merit and Eschatology
It should be clear that Anderson’s work challenges the view that the “logic
of love” and the “logic of merit” need be in opposition. Nonetheless,
significant problems remain.We need more clarity regarding what it might
mean to merit eternal life. Does it mean that we actually deserve the eternal reward that God gives us? We also need more clarity regarding the
relationship of our meriting to Christ’s Cross and to the grace of the Holy
Spirit. How can we merit a glorious eternal reward, “treasure in heaven”
(Mt 19:21), especially since eternal life far exceeds what is proportionate
to human nature?14 Thomas Aquinas’s theology of merit addresses these
questions in a way that fills out the portrait provided by Anderson.
The Merited Reward of Jesus of Nazareth
At the center of Aquinas’s theology of merit stands Jesus Christ, whose
“predestination is the cause of ours” both as regards our adoptive sonship
and as regards the grace that enables our meritorious actions.15 God’s
eternal plan for our salvation has Jesus’ Paschal mystery at its center. By
his crucifixion, Jesus merited a fourfold reward: Resurrection, Ascension,
sitting at the right hand of the Father, and judiciary power. Because Jesus
“humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a
cross,” Paul says, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every
13 See ibid., 190–202.
14 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 2. See Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Nature and Grace in Thomas

Aquinas,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic
Thought, ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., trans. Robert Williams (Ave Maria, FL:
Sapientia Press, 2009), 155–88; Reinhard Hütter, “Desiderium Naturale Visionis
Dei—Est autem duplex hominis beatitudo sive felicitas: Some Observations about
Lawrence Feingold’s and John Milbank’s Recent Interventions in the Debate
over the Natural Desire to See God,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 81–131.
15 See ST III, q. 24, aa. 3–4. On Christ’s merit see Joseph P.Wawrykow, God’s Grace
and Human Action: ‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 238–47, which emphasizes that God
ordained or predestined Christ to be the Redeemer and therefore “Christ was
given grace to such a degree that Christ’s acts were meritorious not only for
himself, but even meritorious condignly for others” (247).

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tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”
(Phil 2:8–11).16 Aquinas discusses this passage in light of Romans 4,
where Paul explains that Abraham must have been justified by faith
because “to one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as
his due” (Rom 4:4). In Philippians 2, Aquinas notes, the reward of Jesus’
Passion—namely that “God has highly exalted him”—is Jesus’ “due.” In
the order of charity and justice, “he who humbles himself will be
exalted” (Lk 14:11).17
The justice of Jesus’ exaltation corresponds to the injustice of Jesus’
humiliation. Jesus certainly did not deserve to suffer and die the humiliating death of a criminal, nor did he deserve the mockery that he received
on the Cross.As Aquinas puts it,“When any man through his just will has
stripped himself of what he ought to have, he deserves that something
further be granted to him as the reward of his just will.”18 In his obedient
endurance of suffering and death for love of us, Jesus shows himself to be
the faithful “servant” of God (Phil 2:7).19 As a servant, he humbles himself
in a way that merits reward from God. Since the grace of the Holy Spirit
perfects Jesus not solely as an individual but as Head of the Church, he
merits eternal life for all his members.20 But if Jesus has satisfied and
merited for the entire human race, why speak of further satisfaction and
merit? If all is God’s gift, why confuse matters by claiming that “those who
16 Cited in ST III, q. 49, a. 6, sed contra and corpus. In his The Epistle to the Philip-

pians (London:A. & C. Black, 1998), Markus Bockmuehl states that although this
passage should not be thought of “in the sense of a reward,” nonetheless it should
be seen as “the moral counterbalance to the acceptance of suffering. Theodicy
requires that innocent suffering should be vindicated: only thus can it be meaningful, and only so can God be seen to be just. From the Christian perspective,
suffering is never an end in itself. It always stands in a necessary relationship to
God’s justice” (140–41).This relationship to God’s justice is what Aquinas has in
view when he speaks of a reward.
17 Cited in ST III, q. 49, a. 6. See also Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians, 141,
as well as Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 278–84.
18 ST III, q. 49, a. 6.
19 See ST III, q. 47, a. 2. See also I–II, q. 114, a. 1, ad 1, where Aquinas takes up
Luke 17:9–10; in this passage, Jesus asks rhetorically,“Does he [the master] thank
the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have
done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only
done what was our duty.’ ”
20 See ST III, q. 8, aa. 1 and 5; III, q. 48, a. 1; III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 1. For discussion see
Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought
from Anselm to Aquinas (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1990), 89–90,
160–66; William D. Lynn, S.J., Christ’s Redemptive Merit:The Nature of Its Causality
according to St.Thomas (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1962), especially 144–65.

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are made one with the crucified Christ” by “faith living through charity”
merit eternal life?21
In his discussion of merit, Aquinas recalls Paul’s suggestion that God’s
reward to him will correspond to what he deserves in justice. In 2 Timothy 4:7–8, Paul is near death and tells Timothy, “I have fought the good
fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is
laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all
who have loved his appearing.”22 Exercising just judgment and not
merely mercy, the Lord will award to Paul (and to all who have loved the
Lord) a “crown of righteousness.” How can Paul make such a bold claim?
Aquinas argues that Paul can make such a claim because of the transformation of the human person in Christ through the indwelling of the
Trinity and adoptive filiation. Jesus promises that “if a man loves me, he
will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to
him and make our home with him” ( Jn 14:23). In the same place he
teaches that “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth” ( Jn 14:16–17).To
the Samaritan woman at the well, he speaks of the Holy Spirit as the
“water” who fulfills our spiritual thirst and guides us to eternal life:
“whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the
water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling
up to eternal life” ( Jn 4:14). As Aquinas puts it, the indwelling “Holy
Spirit moving us to life everlasting” enables us to attain eternal life
through our actions.23 Regarding the adoptive filiation of believers, Paul
says that the Spirit of Christ bears “witness within our spirit that we are
children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs
with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be
glorified with him” (Rom 8:16–17). For those whom God has predestined in Christ to be adopted sons of God and sharers in the divine
nature, charitable actions merit the inheritance that Christ has received.
21 ST III, q. 49, a. 1, ad 5.
22 See ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3, sed contra. See George T. Montague, S.M., First and

Second Timothy,Titus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 197–98: “The
Greek word [for ‘crown’] is used for a deposit that waits to be retrieved or a
treasure that is held in keeping, waiting to be claimed.As Paul has kept the faith,
so the reward is kept for him. . . .The notion of reward implies merit on the part
of the one rewarded. In this, Paul agrees with the first-century rabbis. But for the
apostle it is the merit of a righteousness that has been attained by faith in Christ
(Rom 3:22), a faith that in Paul’s case has also been manifested by a total
commitment even unto imminent martyrdom.”
23 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3.

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Merit has its root in “grace and charity” and has its reward in “the enjoyment of God.”24
Once the indwelling Trinity makes us adopted sons of God, our actions
possess two principles, namely the grace of the Holy Spirit and the human
free will. In light of these two active principles, Aquinas distinguishes
between “congruent” and “condign” merit. A reward earned in strict
justice is earned condignly, while a reward given despite the conditions of
strict justice not being met is earned congruously. Insofar as the charitable action proceeds from the human will, the action earns the reward of
eternal life only “congruously,” that is to say, only because God fittingly
wills to give this reward to the charitable action. In this sense the charitable action merits the reward congruously, by a certain “equality of proportion,” because the graced human person does what he or she can.25 As
regards the human will, no charitable action can merit the reward of eternal life by strict justice. Ontologically speaking, God and humans “are infinitely apart, and all man’s good is from God. Hence there can be no justice
of absolute equality between man and God.”26 With respect to human
capacities, no charitable action can deserve the reward of beatific
communion in the Trinity.
Yet because of the indwelling of the Trinity and our adoptive sonship, a
human action can also be viewed with respect to “the dignity of grace” and
“the power of the Holy Spirit moving us to life everlasting.”27 The action’s
24 ST I, q. 95, a. 4. Thus “the greater the charity whence our actions proceed, the

more perfectly shall we enjoy God” (ibid.). Cf. I–II, q. 114, a. 4: “Everlasting life
consists in the enjoyment of God. Now the human mind’s movement to the
fruition of the divine good is the proper act of charity, whereby all other virtues
are ordained to this end.”
25 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3. See Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 198–99.
26 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 1; cf. I–II, q. 114, a. 3: “If it is considered as regards the
substance of the work, and inasmuch as it springs from free will, there can be no
condignity because of the very great inequality” between humans and God.
Aquinas observes that “by all the good we do, we cannot make sufficient return
to God, since yet more is his due” (I–II, q. 114, a. 1, obj. 1; cf. III, q. 49, a. 3, ad
2). He interprets Jesus’ remark about “unworthy servants” (Lk 17:10) in this light.
27 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3.Wawrykow remarks that adoptive filiation “grants to the child
new rights. The child now has the right to, or is owed (debitur), what belongs to
the parent.The adopted child becomes the parent’s heir.Thus, in terms of merit,
God’s free act of love by which the person is chosen to eternal life creates for the
recipient of God’s love new rights—rights, that is, to inherit the goal to which God
has called him.What we have here, then, is a further instance of Thomas’s reflections about the intimate relation which exists between justice and love in God’s
dealings with the world” (Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 195–96, n.
102).As Wawrykow goes on to say,“Thomas’s teaching about merit in the Summa
is clearly ‘juridical’: He explains merit to be a quality of an act by which one

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value depends on the Holy Spirit as its principle and on the dignity of habitual grace.The grace of the Holy Spirit transforms our capacities so that our
charitable action intimately relates us to the Trinity.Aquinas states that insofar as our work “proceeds from the grace of the Holy Spirit moving us to
life everlasting, it is meritorious of life everlasting condignly.”28 As the Holy
Spirit’s work, our work can truly be said to merit in strict justice the reward
of eternal life. Paul’s labors to fight “the good fight” render him justly
worthy of receiving the “crown of righteousness” at the judgment. As Paul
says,“I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard
until that Day what I have entrusted to him” (2 Tim 1:12).29
We can in no way merit the justifying grace that makes us adopted
sons. Lest there be any doubt,Aquinas states that “a man can merit nothing from God except by his gift, which the Apostle expresses aptly saying
(Rom 11:35): ‘Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be
made to him?’ ”30 He grants that “God gives grace to none but to the
worthy,” but adds “not that they were previously worthy, but that by his
grace he makes them worthy.” 31 Our works do not replace Christ’s, but
deserves, in justice, a reward from God.Yet Thomas’s ‘juridicism’ is highly nuanced,
and he is careful to focus our attention on the context in which justice can govern
divine-human relations. Most important, he argues that this justice only holds sway
when there exists a special community between God and the human person, and
this community is itself created by the gift of God.The ‘communal’ basis of justice
is disclosed by Thomas’s description of grace in terms of sonship. By grace, God
freely elevates people to God’s own level, treating them as ‘sons’ to whom what
belongs to the Father can also belong. As the term ‘sonship’ suggests, the community which lies behind merit is itself Christ-centered. It is through the action of
the Son of God that others are enable to be adopted as God’s children” (ibid.,
203–4). Cf. Lynn, Christ’s Redemptive Merit, 28.
28 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3. Joseph Wawrykow comments that “grace elevates people to
the Spirit’s own level and orients them to the Spirit’s own end, God. What
belongs ‘naturally’ to the Spirit comes into the purview of those possessed and
directed by the Spirit” (Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 194).
29 Cited in ST I–II, q. 114, a. 8, obj. 3. The RSV changes this to “what has been
entrusted to me,” but adds a note that gives the literal translation: “what I have
entrusted to him.” As Wawrykow says, “Meriting, then, is a perfection. It illustrates the greater dignity and worth of the human being” (Wawrykow, God’s
Grace and Human Action, 242). The reward of Paul’s good works must be eschatological rather than temporal, because temporal goods have to do with merit
only when they are given to help us on our way to eternal union with God: see
I–II, q. 114, a. 10; cf. III, q. 69, a. 3. With regard to God’s providence, see the
comparison of I–II, q. 114, a. 10 to Aquinas’s Commentary on Job, in Wawrykow’s
God’s Grace and Human Action, 228–32.
30 ST III, q. 24, a. 4, ad 3.
31 ST I, q. 114, a. 5, ad 2.

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instead have their value insofar as we are incorporated into Christ’s “superabundant satisfaction for the sins of the human race.”32 Paul depicts his
own incorporation into Jesus’ Passion:“I rejoice in my sufferings for your
sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for
the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). God ordains this
incorporation of believers into the crucified Christ. Describing God’s
eternal plan, Paul says that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should
walk in them” (Eph 2:10). In his teaching about merit, Aquinas underscores this eternal ordination:“God ordained human nature to attain the
end of eternal life, not by its own strength, but by the help of grace; and
in this way its act can be meritorious of eternal life.”33
When we have been justified by the grace of the Holy Spirit, our charitable actions make us worthy of progress in relationship with God.
Aquinas cites Proverbs 4:18,“The path of the righteous is like the light of
dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.”34 Charitable
actions dispose us to receive a more intimate relationship with God, an
increased participation in the Holy Spirit and configuration to Christ.35
32 ST III, q. 48, a. 2; cf. III, q. 69, a. 2. In explanation of how this superabundant

satisfaction takes effect in us, Aquinas states, “The head and members are as one
mystic person; and therefore Christ’s satisfaction belongs to all the faithful as
being his members.Also, in so far as any two men are one in charity, the one can
atone for the other” (III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 1).
33 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 2, ad 1. For Aquinas, all merit flows from God’s predestination of
Jesus as “the cause of our salvation” (III, q. 24, a. 4, ad 3). He observes that “man’s
merit with God only exists on the presupposition of the divine ordination, so that
man obtains from God, as a reward of his operation, what God gave him the power
of operation for” (I–II, q. 114, a. 1). See Rudolph Schnackenburg, The Epistle to the
Ephesians: A Commentary, trans. Helen Heron (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991),
50–56; Lynn, Christ’s Redemptive Merit, 30–34;Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human
Action, 266–76. Cf.Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, in Saint Augustine,
Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 218–70.
34 Cited in ST I–II, q. 114, a. 8. Regarding this article, Wawrykow argues that
Aquinas has especially in view “the increase of habitual grace and of the habit of
charity” (Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 224).Wawrykow goes on to
explain that “the use of the theological virtue does not directly effect the growth
of the virtue, as is the case with acquired virtue.The act of the theological virtue
does not create more of the virtue. As supernatural, it is caused and created only
by God. Rather, under the influence of God the possessor of the virtue simply
disposes himself for more of the virtue. The actual increase of the virtue, the
granting of a more intense possession of it, remains the work of God” (ibid., 225).
35 See ST II–II, q. 24, a. 6, ad 1. See Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 226,
drawing on Lynn, Christ’s Redemptive Merit, 54–60.

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Even so, if we lose grace by mortal sin, our previous charitable actions do
not merit the renewal of justifying grace in us.This renewal can only be
God’s free gift. Nor can even a lifetime of charitable actions merit the
grace of final perseverance. Our final attainment of glory, like the justification of the sinner, is utterly God’s free gift.36 Aquinas adds that only
Jesus can merit justifying grace for others, since “Christ’s soul is moved by
God through grace, not only so as to reach the glory of life everlasting,
but so as to lead others to it.”37 Yet the works and prayers of holy persons
on behalf of others can in a “congruous” fashion merit justifying grace for
others. It is “in harmony with friendship” that God fulfill his friends’ holy
desires, in accord with God’s ordination,“for the salvation of others.”38
Almsgiving and Merit
In an example that could be taken directly from Anderson’s book,
Aquinas comments upon Jesus’ words in Luke 16:9—“make friends for
yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they
may receive you into the eternal habitations”—by describing how those
who receive alms can merit in “congruous” fashion for their benefactors.
Aquinas states,“The poor who receive alms are said to receive others into
everlasting dwellings, either by impetrating their forgiveness in prayer, or
by meriting congruously by other good works, or materially speaking,
inasmuch as by these good works of mercy, exercised towards the poor,
we merit to be received into everlasting dwellings.”39 The prayers of
beneficiaries rise up to God on behalf of benefactors, and God may have
mercy on benefactors through such prayers.
As we have seen, Anderson underscores the pivotal role that almsgiving
plays in the “heavenly economy.”40 When alms are given in charity, it is the
grace of God in us that moves us to love the needy. Such acts of charity, as
Jesus makes clear, merit the reward that God ordains for those who love
him, namely eternal life:“your Father who sees in secret will reward you”
(Mt 6:4).Aquinas quotes 1 John 3:17,“If any one has the world’s goods and
36 See ST I–II, q. 114, aa. 7, 9. Wawrykow observes that “the person makes an act

of charity by which he intends that all he does will be referred to God and done
for God’s sake. As long as mortal sin does not intervene, this one act is enough
to direct all subsequent acts to God, and so to merit” (Wawrykow, God’s Grace
and Human Action, 201 n. 110). Cf. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action,
220–29.
37 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 6.
38 Ibid. See Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 216–19.
39 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 6, ad 3.
40 Anderson, Sin, 158, 160.

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sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s
love abide in him?”41 Among the Old Testament texts that Anderson highlights, Aquinas attends particularly to Daniel 4:27 and Tobit 4:8. The text
from Daniel, Aquinas recognizes, describes almsgiving as a way of making
satisfaction for sin and thus belongs to the virtue of justice, although as an
act of mercy, almsgiving belongs to charity.42 Tobit instructs his son,“If you
have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do
not be afraid to give according to the little you have. So you will be laying
up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity” (Tob 4:8–9).43
Under normal circumstances, almsgiving should be abundant but not
heroic.This teaching accords with Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians,“I
do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a
matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their
want, so that their abundance may supply your want” (2 Cor 8:13–14).44
The reward promised by Jesus goes far beyond what human actions
could deserve on their own. Paul proclaims to the Corinthians that “you
will be enriched in every way for great generosity,” and he praises “the
surpassing grace of God in you” (2 Cor 9:11, 14). Jesus warns that those
who fail to give alms will receive condemnation, while those who give
alms to the poor will “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).
Conclusion
It is commonplace to encounter criticisms of the medieval “emphasis on
human merit” and “ever more blatant clerical packaging of merits to
meet the inevitable shortfall.”45 By contrast, Gary Anderson shows that
merit is a profoundly biblical reality. As Anderson makes clear through
analysis of the Old Testament, Israel perceives God as mercifully helping
to pay the debt for Israel’s sins. In the New Testament,Anderson finds that
credit (or merit) has a function even after Christ pays the debt for all sins.
God enables his adopted children, through the grace of the Holy Spirit,
to be configured to Jesus through the dignity of free charitable actions.
Since charitable actions arise primarily from the Holy Spirit as their
principle, Aquinas describes “life everlasting” as “the reward of the works
41 ST II–II, q. 32, a. 1, sed contra.
42 See ST II–II, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3.
43 Cited in ST II–II, q. 32, a. 10, sed contra.
44 Cited in ST II–II, q. 32, a. 10, obj. 3.
45 Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the

Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1999), 164.

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162

of justice in relation to the divine motion.”46 An earthly reward would
not suffice for a graced action; nor does Jesus promise an earthly reward.
As he says,“Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and
utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be
glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Mt 5:11–12). Commenting on
the Gospel of Mark, Mary Healy highlights Jesus’ promise regarding “the
‘eternal life’ that we will gain in the end—the life the rich man so
yearned for (10:17), and that corresponds to the longing of every human
heart.”47 As Aquinas shows, the action of the Holy Spirit in us enables us
to merit this reward even in strict justice, because God rewards his own
action in us. Aquinas thereby accounts for the “treasure in heaven” (Mt
19:21) that Jesus urges his followers to seek.
In this light, Paul is not being arrogant when he supposes that because
of the works that he has performed, “there is laid up for me the crown
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me
on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his
appearing” (2 Tim 4:8). Paul recognizes that God has stored up for him
a heavenly treasure, but Paul also realizes that he has done so by the grace
of the Holy Spirit,“so that no human being might boast in the presence
of God” (1 Cor 1:29). Through faith working through charity, those
whom God adopts as sons and daughters in the Son become worthy of
“the free gift of God,” namely, “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
(Rom 6:23).This affirmation of the meritorious character of our works
of love, enabled by grace, is necessary for understanding our configuration to Jesus.48
N&V

46 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 10.
47 Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 205,

208.
48 I wish to thank Chad Raith for his helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this essay.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 163–81

163

Debt, Punishment, and Payment: A Meditation
on the Cross, in Light of St. Anselm
B RUCE D. M ARSHALL
Southern Methodist University
Dallas,Texas

N OT EVERY biblical scholar concludes his book on the Bible with a
chapter on St. Anselm. But then Gary Anderson is not just any biblical
scholar. No living theologian known to me—whether the field be Bible,
history, or systematic theology—has been so successful as he in showing
how rigorous study of ancient texts in their linguistic and cultural setting
can shed positive light on Catholic doctrine and theology. His final chapter on Anselm is a case in point. Having shown how the concepts of debt
and payment, so unpopular in contemporary theology, are utterly basic to
the idea of sin in the later Old Testament and in the New Testament, he
concludes his book by showing how Anselm, so unpopular in contemporary theology, is deeply biblical in his reliance on these ideas to understand the Incarnation and the Cross.1
Here my hope is simply to add a footnote to Anderson’s work by
reflecting further on the concepts of debt and payment and how they
help us understand the Cross.The standard term for payment in medieval
theology, at least where the payment has some bearing on the debtor’s
relationship with God, is “satisfaction.” So I will be concerned with the
Christological use of the concept of satisfaction, especially, but not only,
in St.Anselm’s Cur Deus homo, the writer (and the work) with whom the
term is perhaps most widely associated.
Closely bound up with the notions of debt and satisfaction (or
payment) is the concept of punishment. As Anderson shows, punishment
is the threat which looms before the biblical debtor who cannot make
1 Gary A. Anderson, Sin:A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009),

189–202.

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satisfaction—who cannot pay.The paradigm here is King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel, whom God will punish to the point of making
him eat grass with the oxen if he does not pay down the debt of his sin
by the giving of alms (Dn 4:25–27).The Bible,Anderson observes, sometimes clearly conceives of punishment itself as a way of paying off the
debt of sin. His main text for this view is Isaiah 40, where Israel has paid
double for all her sins by suffering the punishment of exile in Babylon.
But where the Bible conceives of sin as debt it can also, and perhaps more
usually, present punishment not as a way of making payment on the debt
of sin, but as the dark alternative which confronts those who will not, or
cannot, pay down their debt.
So it is in Daniel 4, and so it is with Anselm. For him punishment is
not a form of satisfaction, but what has to happen when satisfaction
cannot be made. In this he has an entirely sure grip on the Bible’s economy of sin, debt, payment, and punishment as Anderson convincingly
presents it. To be sure, few contemporary readers of Anselm grasp, as
Anderson does in his concluding chapter, this elementary but cardinal
point about what Anselm is doing. But I am getting ahead of myself.We
will return to Anselm’s treatment of this point in due course.
It is striking to observe that the views expressed in Anselm’s great treatise on the Incarnation were almost as unpopular in the Middle Ages as
they are today. Most scholastic theologians considered Anselm’s argument
when reflecting on the saving significance of the Cross, especially when
they commented on Peter Lombard’s Augustinian treatment of Christ’s
passion in Book III of his Sententiae (dist. 20).2 But few were willing to
accept his conclusions. In particular, medieval scholasticism is virtually
unanimous in rejecting Anselm’s argument that the Incarnation of God
is necessary for the redemption of humanity, and equally unanimous in
rejecting the idea that lies behind the necessity of Incarnation—that
2 Note that the Lombard, in Sent. III, distinction 20, never introduces the notion

of satisfaction to understand the Cross. Evidently this move is original on
Anselm’s part, while the Lombard continues to follow the patristic and early
medieval usage, where “satisfaction” has its doctrinal home only in the treatment
of the sacrament of penance (see especially Sent. IV, dd. 15–16). By the mid-thirteenth century, however, Anselm’s usage had taken hold, and commentators on
the Sentences regularly follow it where the Lombard himself had not. Giulio
Silano has done the great service of providing an English translation of Peter
Lombard’s Sententiae based on the most recent critical edition. For the passages
just mentioned, see Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3: On the Incarnation of
the Word (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008), 84–88, and
The Sentences, Book 4: On the Doctrine of Signs (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies, 2010), 77–93.

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humanity can be salvaged only if it offers satisfaction to God, a payment
adequate to the magnitude of the crime.
The widespread disregard for Anselm in current theology has quite
different motives. For many of our contemporaries, the very idea that we
could be in debt to God is the product of a debased and sub-Christian idea
of God.The Christian God is a giver of gifts, not a receiver of tribute. By
thinking of God as a creditor who demands repayment—let alone as one
who will accept payment in blood—Anselm and the Western tradition
after him have fatally parted ways with the biblical and patristic understanding of God and redemption. In the process they have bound anyone
who follows them to a God, and a theology, more pagan than Christian.3
Versions of this sweeping rejection of Anselm are to be found not only
among theologians of classic liberal Protestantism, where it seems to have
originated (e.g., Adolf von Harnack), but among traditionally minded
Catholic theologians (e.g., the Oratorian Louis Bouyer), traditionally
minded Lutherans (e.g., Gustav Aulen), contemporary theologians of “the
gift,” both Catholic and Protestant, and contemporary advocates of a “nonviolent atonement,” also both Catholic and Protestant.4 These theologians
differ greatly in their understandings of God and redemption, but they have
in common a dim view of the thought that our relationship with God can
be conceived in terms of a debt that we might—or might not—succeed in
paying off. So we can begin this meditation on the Cross secundum mentem
Anselmi by reflecting on the very idea that we might owe God a debt.
Debt Satisfied
After reading Gary Anderson’s book, the response to these modern suspicions about theological debt-language might seem quite simple. This way
3 In the most familiar version of this criticism, Anselm’s notions of satisfaction and

honor, and thereby his basic idea of God, are essentially products of the “feudal”
culture to which he is assumed to have belonged, rather than of the scriptural
witness to Jesus Christ.As Guy Mansini has shown, however,Anselm actually gets
his ideas of satisfaction and honor from the scripturally saturated Rule of St. Benedict, and thus from the already ancient monastic culture in which he lived. See
“St. Anselm, Satisfactio, and the Rule of St. Benedict,” in Guy Mansini, O.S.B.,
The Word Has Dwelt Among Us: Explorations in Theology (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia
Press, 2008), 73–92. See also the essay by David Whidden cited in the next note.
4 On the interpretation of the Cur Deus homo in modern theology, see David
Whidden, “The Alleged Feudalism of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo and the Benedictine Concepts of Obedience, Honor, and Order,” Nova et Vetera, forthcoming.
Regarding gift and non-violence as ways of understanding the Cross, see the
brief comments in Bruce D. Marshall, “Treasures in Heaven,” First Things 199
( January 2010), 23–26. Some passages of this paper in the section entitled “Debt
as Gift” are adapted from that essay.

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of thinking about sin and redemption is utterly basic to the Bible and to
early Christianity. The common suggestion that we part from the Bible
and the Fathers when we think of our relationship with God in terms of
debt and payment is therefore wholly without merit. If you don’t like to
talk theology in these terms, get over it. That’s your problem, not the
Bible’s or the tradition’s.
While there’s probably something soul-satisfying about this kind of
response, it doesn’t do much to further the intellectus fidei. Against widespread current assumptions, we need to see that debt and associated
concepts are inextricable from the biblical way of thinking about sin and
salvation. But in order to understand this basic biblical teaching, we need
to see what sense it makes to think of ourselves as debtors to God at all.
The most economical way to do this, as the scholastics rightly teach us,
is to consider objections to the idea that we can incur a debt to God.
Perhaps the most obvious objection to the thought that we can owe God
a debt is that such a notion is itself incompatible with fundamental elements
in the Bible’s depiction of God.The biblical God is immeasurably merciful
and forgiving. He abounds in steadfast love. It is incompatible with the character of such a God to count up sins, let alone to reckon these as debts to
be paid.As the psalmist asks,“If thou, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord,
who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee . . . ” (Ps 130:3–4). Even
if Anderson is right that there is a deep strain of thinking in the Bible that
sees God as marking debts and demanding compensation, so the objection goes, there is no way to reconcile this with the biblical understanding of God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness.
According to the logic of this objection, when faced with an apparent
contradiction in the way the Bible speaks of God, we have to choose
between two incompatible features of the biblical witness. We can lessen
the cognitive strain in this, as interpreters of the Bible often do, by assigning the bothersome material to a somehow less authentic layer of biblical
tradition. So we might say that the language of debt is too early, or too
late, to have the same weight as the language of mercy, that it represents
one sort of communal interest rather than another and better one, and so
forth. This effectively eliminates the contradiction that troubles us, by
seeing canonicity as a matter of degree and assigning unattractive passages
to a lower canonical status, if not a place outside the canon altogether.
Anselm, far from being indifferent to this objection, is acutely aware of
it. For him it touches on the central issue, the difficult knot which must
be untied if we are understand our faith in God’s forgiveness of our sins.
The chief project of the Cur Deus homo, in fact, is to understand the Cross
as at one and the same time God’s unfathomable mercy toward sinful

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humanity and humanity’s superabundant payment of the debt we owe to
God. He aims, in other words, to search out the deep coherence of mercy
and payment, of God as the one who both freely forgives our sins and
justly demands that all the wrong done by his creatures be set right and
the whole debt owed by us be paid.5 We will almost surely fail to see this
question clearly if we assume that the Bible regularly contradicts itself
when it speaks of God, thereby authorizing us to choose as we see fit
between forgiveness and debt, mercy and payment. Fortunately Anselm
is unburdened by this assumption and so is free to set out on the journey
of faith seeking understanding.
Before we can understand the genuine coherence of forgiveness of sin
with payment of debt, we need to understand how human beings can
stand in debt to God in the first place. For Anselm this is not mysterious.
In fact it can be derived without difficulty from our very attribution of
mercy to God. Mercy is a feature of goodness.We would not say a person
was good who consistently failed to show mercy in time of need. God is
that good than which a better cannot be conceived, so God never fails to
show mercy in time of need. Goodness, though, requires justice. No
action can be good unless it is also just, and no person can be good unless
he is also just.6 Among beings capable of justice there is no unjust goodness, as there is no genuine justice which is not also good. According to
our elemental intuitions, though, justice consists first of all in giving to
each one what is due, or owed, to that one. Being related to others justly
means knowing what one owes them and giving or paying what is owed.
To live justly is precisely to know one’s debts and to pay them.
To God, as Anselm emphasizes, each creature owes everything.All that
we are and all that we have God gives us, freely and generously. God owes
us nothing—it would be no injustice if God had not created us—while
we owe God all that we are and have. We owe this debt to God quite
apart from sin. It just goes with being a creature, an existent made by God
from nothing.
We pay this debt by “honoring” God, to use Anselm’s term. To
“honor” God is simply to obey God’s will as he has made it known to
us.The way God gives us of offering all that we are and have to him, and
so the way of paying our debt to him, is to conform our whole life to his
5 Cf., e.g., Cur Deus homo I, 24, in F. S. Schmitt, ed., Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis

Archepiscopi Opera Omnia [=Schmitt] (Edinburgh:Thomas Nelson, 1946), vol. 2,
especially, 93.13–94.18. For an English version, see Anselm of Canterbury: The
Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans [=Davies & Evans] (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 260–356, at 311–12.
6 Cf. Proslogion 9 (Schmitt, vol. 1, 108.2–20; Davies & Evans 92–93).

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will—to that good, in other words, than which a greater cannot be
conceived. God’s honor is not, as surprisingly literalistic readers of Anselm
have often supposed, an emotion in God. Nor is it a property God has of
which we could somehow deprive him, and which he would then
become jealous to get back. God’s honor is what we owe to God.When,
by complete conformity to his will, we offer up all that we are and have
to God who gave it, we creatures give God his honor.7
The debt each creature owes to God simply by existing makes it easier
to understand why sins must count as debts and why even conceiving
how the debt could be repaid turns out to be so difficult. We sin when
we fail to give God, by way of obedience to his will, what we already owe
him as creatures, namely all that we are and have. Of course our failure
in no way reduces what we owe God. We continue to owe him all that
we owed before and now have not given: everything, obediently offered.
But by our failure we have damaged God’s creation, marred its original
beauty, and introduced ugliness (deformitas ) into the world.8 So now we
owe something further. We owe it to God to make right the wrong we
have done, to repair the damage we have inflicted on his creation and
restore it to its original beauty. Now it will not suffice to pay what was
originally owed.We have to do that, of course, but justice calls for more.
There is, once again, nothing puzzling or mysterious about this.
Normally we take it as obvious that justice demands some kind of
payment or compensation for one who has been wronged, simply
because he was wronged. If I contract with you to build my house for
$250,000, you build it, and if I fail to pay what I owe, it is only just for
7 See Cur Deus homo I, 11: “Boso:What is the debt we owe to God? Anselm:The

entire will of the rational creature ought to be subject to the will of God. . . .
This is the only honor, and the entire honor, we owe to God and God requires
of us” (Schmitt, vol. 2, 68.11–12, 16–17: B. Quod est debitum quod deo debemus? A.
Omnis voluntas rationalis creaturae subiecta debet esse voluntati de. . . . Hic est solus et
totus honor, quem debemus deo et a nobis exigit deus. This and all translations are my
own; cf. Davies & Evans, 283).
8 When the rational creature conforms himself to the will of God,“he is said to obey
and honor God . . . and so far as it lies within his own power, he preserves both his
proper place in the whole of reality and the beauty of this same whole.” But when
the rational creature “does not will what he ought, he dishonors God . . . and
disturbs the order and beauty of the whole of reality, to the extent that this lies
within his own power” (Cur Deus homo I, 15: [D]eo oboedire et eum honorare dicitur
. . . et in rerum universitate ordinem suum et eiusdem universitatis pulchritudinem, quantum
in ipsa est, servat. . . . Cum vero non vult quod debet, deum, quantum ad illam pertinet,
inhonorat . . . et universitatis ordinem et pulchritudinem, quantum in se est, perturbat
[Schmitt, vol. 2, 73.1–2, 4–9; Davies & Evans, 288]). On deformitas see Schmitt, vol.
2, 73.24; Davies & Evans, 289.

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you to receive from me not merely the original sum in full, but recompense for my failure to pay it by the time on which we had agreed. And
if I will not or cannot pay, justice still calls for recompense to be made.
Elementally, justice in this circumstance takes the form of involuntary
deprivation. Something I value—in this case my house, for example—is
taken from me against my will. In other words, I suffer punishment.This,
we normally assume, is the lot justice assigns to those who cannot make
satisfaction—who cannot pay.
This helps us see why God requires satisfaction for the sins of his creatures, and why he will punish his creatures if they cannot make satisfaction. A truly merciful God, modern readers of Anselm often suppose,
would simply overlook the failure of his creatures to pay the full obedience they owe him simply in virtue of being his creatures. Even more, a
merciful God would not require an additional offering—a kind of celestial balloon payment—in order to set their failure right. Here more than
anywhere, the typical objection runs, we can see how defective Anselm’s
understanding of God’s mercy really is.
God, however, is himself that justice than which a greater, a more just,
cannot be conceived. Being justice qua maior cogitari nequit, God cannot
simply ignore even the smallest wrong done by a creature, the smallest
failure of creatures to pay what they owe. Even less can God ignore the
need for creatures to make some recompense beyond their original debt,
so as to right the wrong they have done and thereby restore the beauty,
order, and goodness of God’s creation. To overlook either the creature’s
debt of obedience or the sinner’s debt of satisfaction would be unjust.To
forgive sin without satisfaction—that is, to handle sin by simply ignoring
or overlooking it—would be to treat creation unjustly, to leave creation
in a ruined and deformed state.
But I’ve said, one might object, that God owes us nothing. God has no
debt to creation and could therefore leave creation ruined—which is to
say, overlook our sins—without any injustice. For God to overlook the
satisfaction the sinful creature owes him, though, would be for God to
treat himself unjustly. That’s the real problem. For God to leave creation
ruined would be for God to act as though he were not the one who
creates freely out of nothing, the generous giver of all good gifts whose
creatures, simply by existing, already owe him everything. But there is no
injustice with God. For precisely this reason God will not overlook the
obedience we owe him as creatures, or the satisfaction we owe him as
sinners. No offense to God’s honor can stand—not because God likes to
be flattered, but because God is just. In fact, to remit sins without satisfaction would not even be merciful. By pitting mercy against satisfaction,

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and so against justice, the standard modern objection loses sight of divine
mercy altogether.There is no unjust mercy, as there is no merciless justice.
So for God to demand satisfaction from sinners is not only supremely
just, it is supremely merciful.As justice qua maior cogitari nequit, it must also
be mercy qua maior cogitari nequit.
The punishment due to sin—or more precisely, to the sinner who
cannot make satisfaction—is not bodily torment. About bodily suffering
Anselm says very little in the Cur Deus homo, and what he does say
concerns only what happens on the Cross. It is something immeasurably
worse: the loss of eternal beatitude.This would be punishment not only
because we would lose the good we most desire, but because we would
do so against our will. Loss of a good is not punishment, Anselm seems
to hold (as also Aquinas later would), unless it is contrary to the will of
the one who loses it. If God inflicts this punishment, it is not out of
anger, or a desire for vengeance, or to cool his wrath. It is out of justice.
In justice, everything in the universe must be subject to God, it must take
its place in the beautiful and harmonious order God has established by
bringing it into being in the first place. If the creature fails to honor this
order by paying God the obedience he is owed, justice requires that one
of two things must happen. Either the creature will restore the right order
of things voluntarily, by making satisfaction to God, or God will restore
the creature’s subjection to himself in a different way—by depriving the
creature involuntarily of the good the creature desires.9
Here it is quite evident, as Gary Anderson rightly points out, that for
Anselm punishment and satisfaction are mutually exclusive alternatives.
Punishment is imposed by God not as a form of satisfaction offered to
him, but as the alternative required when the sinner fails to offer satisfaction to him.The idea that God must see the sinner suffer in order for
the debt of sin to be paid in full, and so for God to forgive sins, is utterly
foreign to Anselm. He writes: “Either voluntary satisfaction for our
perversity or the exaction of punishment if we do not make satisfaction
has a place in the universe and the order of its beauty. . . . It is necessary
9 See Cur Deus homo I, 14:“It is impossible that God lose his honor. Either the sinner

willingly pays what he owes, or God receives it from him against his will. For either
man exhibits the subjection he owes to God with a ready will—whether by not
sinning or by paying for his sin—or God subjects man to himself by torment,
against man’s will, and in this way shows that he is man’s Lord, which man declined
to confess voluntarily” (A. Deum impossibile est honorem suum perdere.Aut enim peccator sponte solvit quod debet, aut deus ab invito accipit. Nam aut homo debitam subiectionem
deo sive non peccando sive quod peccat solvendo, voluntate spontanea exhibit, aut deus eum
invitum sibi torquendo subicit et sic se dominum eius esse ostendit, quod ipse homo voluntate fateri recusat [Schmitt, vol. 2, 72.8–12; Davies & Evans 287]).

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that either satisfaction or punishment follow every sin.”10 To be sure,
Catholic tradition does not always employ this rigorously disjunctive
syntax for “satisfaction” and “punishment.” Motivated, for example, by
Isaiah 53:4 (“He has truly borne our diseases”), Thomas Aquinas sometimes speaks of punishment or penalty as itself an aspect of satisfaction,
both in the case of Christ and in the case of the post-baptismal penitent.11 But in Anselm’s understanding of the Cross, the two are strict
opposites.This is basic to an appreciation of the Cur Deus homo.
Just because Jesus Christ makes more than sufficient satisfaction for the
sins of the world on the Cross, the suffering of the Cross cannot be
understood as a punishment imposed upon Jesus by the Father.To call it
a punishment would be precisely to say, as Anselm works out the logic of
the matter, that Christ had not succeeded in making satisfaction for sin
by his Cross.The Cross is not a punishment but an offering. Jesus offers
the whole of his life to the Father in perfect obedience, which as man he
owes. And he offers his death to the Father, which as God incarnate and
sinless man he does not owe. He offers this death precisely in order to
honor the Father fully, to give the Father what creation owes him and the
sinner cannot give. In death, he offers his life, a measureless good beyond
what was owed, in order to restore the beauty and order of things, that
10 Cur Deus homo I, 15: “Ipsa namque perversitatis spontanea satisfactio vel a non

satisfaciente poenae exactio—excepto hoc quia deus de malis multis modis bona
facit—in eadem universitate suum tenent locum et ordinis pulchritudinem . . .
necesse est ut omne peccatum satisfactio aut poena sequatur” (Schmitt, vol. 2,
73.19–22, 74.1–2, my emphasis; Davies & Evans, 289).
11 So ST III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 1: “Satisfaction for the sin of another has, as a kind of
matter, the punishments which one person undergoes for the sin of another,
though it has as its source that disposition of the soul which inclines a person to
will to make satisfaction for another, and which makes satisfaction effective—for
satisfaction would not be effective unless it sprang from charity” ([S]atisfactio pro
peccato alterius habet quidem quasi materiam poenas quas aliquis pro peccato alterius
sustinet, sed pro principio habet habitum animae ex quo inclinatur ad volendum satisfacere
pro alio, et ex quo satisfactio efficaciam habet; non enim esset satisfactio efficax nisi ex caritate procederet ). On the interrelation of love (charity) and suffering in the satisfaction Christ makes by his Passion, see also III, 48, 2, c. Similarly In Gal. 3, 5 (no.
149), on Gal. 3:13:“Christus liberavit nos a poena, sustinendo poenam et mortem
nostrum, quae quidem in nos provenit ex ipsa maledictione peccati” (S. Thomae
Aquinatis Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, ed. Raphael Cai, O.P., vol. 1 [8th ed.,Turin:
Marietti, 1953], 599a). “[I]psa poena est maledictio, scilicet quod sic mortuus est.
Et est hoc modo exponendo vere maledictus a Deo, quia Deus ordinavit quod
hanc poenam sustineret, ut nos liberaret” (no. 150, 599b).Thus in general:“[S]atisfactio debet esse poenalis; et ideo, ut pro nobis satisfaceret, oportuit quod in hoc
mundo poenas sustineret” (In III Sent. d. 20, q. 1, a. 4, qla. ii, ad 4 [Scriptum super
Sententiis, vol. 3, ed. M. F. Moos, O.P. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1933), 624, §79]).

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is, to make satisfaction for sin. God does not delight in the suffering and
death of Jesus as such. But he delights in the offering, and above all in
what moved him to make it.12
Thus Anselm bids to understand, in the Cur Deus homo, what had at
least in part eluded him in the Proslogion (9–11): the perfect harmony of
God’s mercy and God’s justice. Satisfaction—the payment of debt—links
the two. Only God has the currency to make satisfaction for sin, Anselm
famously reasons, and only man is the debtor obliged to make it. If there
is to be satisfaction for sin, a God-man must make it. And so it happens.
The Cross of God incarnate is humanity’s super-abundant payment of
the debt we have incurred by sin, which otherwise would stand forever
as a bond against us.With that we have reached, not a rationalistic deduction of the Incarnation and the Cross, as Anselm’s critics have sometimes
supposed, but an understanding of the faith we already have in both.We
have attained some understanding of the wisdom of the Cross. For once
sin enters the picture, only on the Cross do God’s justice and his mercy
adequately coincide. Only there do we find at once the justice that
requires us to give God what is due to him and the mercy which enables
us to do exactly that. Given sin, we understand the Cross of God incarnate in a strong sense. We apprehend its necessity, for just this—the
12 Cur Deus homo I, 10: “When we see someone who is willing to suffer affliction

courageously in order to accomplish the good that he wills, we have to admit that
we want him to undergo that affliction, yet we do not want or love his pain itself,
but his will. . . .Therefore, since the will of the Son was pleasing to the Father, he
did not prevent the Son from willing [to restore the beauty of the universe], or
from fulfilling what he willed [on the Cross].Therefore it is correct to say that the
Father willed for the Son to undergo such a dutiful and fruitful death—but not
to say that he loved the suffering of the Son” (Ut cum videmus aliquem fortiter pati
velle molestiam, ut perficiat quod bene vult: quamvis fateamur nos velle ut illam poenam
sustineat, non tamen volumus aut amamus poenam eius, sed voluntatem. . . . Quoniam ergo
patri filii voluntas placuit, nec prohibuit eum velle aut implere quod volebat: recte voluisse
ut filius mortem tam pie, tam utiliter sustineret—quamvis poenam eius non amaret—affirmatur. Schmitt, vol. 2, 65.23–5, 27–9, Davies & Evans, 280–81; “poena” here
means “pain” or “suffering,” not “punishment” imposed by another; cf. note 10.).
However we understand the Cross, therefore, we cannot say or imply that “God
delights in, or needs, the blood of the innocent,” or that he has “condemned the
innocent in order to free the guilty” (I, 10 [Schmitt, vol. 2, 66.24–25, Davies &
Evans, 282: Mirum enim est, si deus sic delectatur aut eget sanguine innocentis]; I, 8
[Schmitt, vol. 2, 60.6–7, Davies & Evans, 275: Quis homo, si innocentem damnaret ut
nocentem liberaret, damnandus non iudicaretur?]).An axiom on which the whole treatise depends rules this out from the start: “To God we must not attribute that
which is even the least unfitting” (I, 10 [Schmitt, vol. 2, 67.2–3, Davies & Evans,
282: nullum vel minimum inconveniens in deo a nobis accipiatur]).

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Cross—is what the mercy and justice than which a greater cannot be
conceived require.13
Debt as Gift
At this point we need to confront a different objection to Anselm’s appreciation of the wisdom of the Cross, namely, the medieval one to which I
alluded earlier. Anselm roots the necessity of the Incarnation in the
necessity of satisfaction, as the sole adequate response to sin (roots it, that
is, in the necessity of the Cross); satisfaction is necessary in order to
uphold both the mercy and the justice of God. Most scholastic theologians after Anselm—Aquinas and Scotus, to name but two—deliberately
reverse this inference. God could deal with sin (or could have dealt with
it) in many ways; he is not bound to the Anselmian alternative of satisfaction for sin or punishment of the sinner. A God-man, therefore, is not
necessary for God to deal with sin justly and mercifully. A text from
Augustine’s De Trinitate is very often cited at this point. “For God, to
whose power all things are equally subject, a different way of healing our
misery was not lacking, but possible,” although, as Augustine goes on to
say, “there was no more beautifully fitting way” than the one on which
God has in fact decided, his own Incarnation and Cross.14
It became a commonplace of later medieval reflection on this point
that God could in fact forgive sins by simple fiat or declaration (or could
have forgiven them in this way), without requiring any sort of compensation from humanity, and that he would not act against justice in so
doing. A judge acting under the law of the land, Aquinas argues, cannot
let a guilty offender go free without recompense, even if he desires to do
so, because he serves a good higher than himself, the good of a whole
people or nation. But God, of course, is himself the highest good of all
13 Several of Michel Corbin’s many writings on Anselm helpfully identify the way

in which the Cur Deus homo puts to rest the question about the harmony of
justice and mercy with which the Proslogion had wrestled less satisfactorily. See,
e.g., “Étude I: Justice et miséricorde,” in La Pâque de Dieu: Quatre études sur S.
Anselme de Cantorbéry (Paris: Cerf, 1997), 15–102, especially 80–102. Corbin’s
interpretation of Thomas Aquinas in these papers, it may be noted, is less helpful than his reading of Anselm.
14 See De Trinitate XIII.x.13: “[U]erum etiam ut ostendamus non alium modum
possibilem deo defuisse cuius potestati cuncta aequaliter subiacent, sed sanandae
nostrae miseriae conuenientiorem modum alium non fuisse nec esse oportuisse”
(CCL 50A, 399–400.8–11). Note, e.g., Aquinas’s citation of this passage in ST
III, q. 1, a. 2 c, discussing the sense in which the Incarnation is, and is not, necessary, and Scotus’s, in a discussion of the same point, Lectura III, dist. 20, q. un. (no.
27) (B. Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia, vol. 21 [Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis
Vaticanis, 2004], 48.197–200).

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things, and as such is subject to no superior good. God is therefore free
to forgive wrongs done against him without requiring satisfaction or any
other recompense. God is perfectly entitled, in other words, not to treat
our sins as debts and not to treat us as debtors. Unlike the victim of
worldly crime, God has no superior whose responsibility it is to look out
for his welfare by following laws to which all are subject. He is free to
look out for his own interests as he sees fit. Similarly, if I do some wrong
to you that affects no one else, you are free to overlook it—free not to
press charges, as it were.15
To contemporary ears this may sound even more troubling, indeed
perverse, than Anselm. For Aquinas and many others, God does not have
to demand satisfaction from sinners.There is no requirement of justice at
work here. God, moreover, does not stand to gain anything from the satisfaction he requires humanity to offer. He cannot benefit from it; his
blessedness (qua maior cogitari nequit ) cannot be bettered or improved by
it. It cannot be that he requires recompense from us out of some sort of
self-interest (jealousy for his own honor, for example). For what possible
reason, consonant with his mercy, does he demand satisfaction anyway?
Although God cannot possibly benefit from treating our wrongs against
him as debts or from the satisfaction he freely requires us to make, we can
benefit both from being in debt and from making satisfaction. It is for our
own good, the good of those whom he treats as debtors even though he is
under no obligation to do so, that God requires satisfaction from sinful
humanity.This way of salvation,Aquinas surprisingly observes, is more merciful than salvation by simple divine fiat would be. In fact it is supremely
merciful.And so, following Augustine’s suggestion, it is a more beautiful and
suitable way for God, who is mercy itself, to act.“Since no human being was
able to make satisfaction, God gave us his own Son to make satisfaction for
15 God acts justly when he requires satisfaction for sin,“but this justice also depends

upon the divine will, which requires satisfaction for sin from the human race. For
if [God] had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, he would not
have acted against justice. . . . God has no superior; rather he himself is the supreme
and common good of the whole universe.Therefore, if he forgives sin—which has
the character of guilt precisely because it is committed against him—he injures no
one, just as a human being acts mercifully, and not unjustly, when he forgives without satisfaction an offense committed against himself ” ([H ]aec etiam iustitia dependet ex voluntate divina, ab humano genere satisfactionem exigente pro peccato. Nam si
voluisset absque omni satisfactione hominem a peccato liberare, contra iustitiam non fecisset. .
. . Sed Deus non habet aliquem superiorem, sed ipse est supremum et commune bonum totius
universi. Et ideo, si dimittat peccatum, quod habet rationem culpae ex eo quod contra ipsum
committitur, nulli facit iniuriam, sicut quicumque homo remittit offensam in se commissam
absque satisfactione, misericorditer et non iniuste agit ). ST III, q. 46, a. 2, ad 3.

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the sin of all human nature, as Scripture teaches: ‘We are justified by his
grace, as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God
put forward as our propitiator through faith in his blood’ (Rom 3:24–25).
And this,”Aquinas continues,“was a greater mercy than it would have been
had God forgiven sins without any recompense.”16
We are apt to find this puzzling, since it may seem obvious to us that
requiring satisfaction is less merciful and more demanding than sheer
forgiveness would be. But the great good that God gives us by treating
us as debtors, even though he has no need of our payment, is a share in
the salvation God himself brings about for us. God requires satisfaction
from us so that we can have a human, creaturely part in God’s own
victory over human sin.
If God had remitted our sins by sheer forgiveness—sent them away or
simply declared them non-existent—then our sins would indeed be gone,
and we would no longer be sinners. But we would be mere spectators to
our own salvation, observers who simply noted this fact about ourselves,
without any involvement of our hearts and wills. By treating our sins as a
debt for which he will accept payment, God gives humanity a genuine
share in its own salvation. As any child knows whose father has given her
money to buy him a Christmas gift, there is joy in this that can come in
no other way, even though—or better, precisely because—we know well
that we are simply giving back what we have freely received.
This happens first of all in Jesus Christ, who makes to God, in the
upper room and on the Cross, that offering than which a greater cannot
be conceived. Jesus’ offering to the Father in love is a more-than-sufficient, a superabundant, satisfaction or payment for the entire debt owed
by all human beings on account of their sin. More than that: Jesus’ total
gift of himself to the Father on the Cross is also the creature’s perfect
glorification of the creator. “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work which you gave me to do” ( Jn 17:4). Jesus makes the
definitive thank-offering of the creature to God for all his gifts, an offering whose value reaches even beyond satisfaction for sin.17
16 “[C]um homo per se satisfacere non posset pro peccato totius humanae naturae

. . . . Deus ei satisfactorem dedit Filium suum, secundum illud, ‘Iustificati gratis
per gratiam ipsius, per redemptionem quae est in Christo Iesu, quem proposuit
Deus propitiatorem per fidem in sanguine ipsius’ [Rom. 3:24]: et hoc fuit abundantioris misericordiae quam si peccata absque satisfactione dimisisset” (ST III,
q. 46, a. 1, ad 3).
17 Since the one who gives glory to another is greater than the one who can only
receive it, the Arians might have a point, Thomas observes, were it not equally
the case that the incarnate Son glorifies the Father: “[A]pparentiam quidem
haberet argumentum, nisi inveniretur e converso quod Filius glorificet Patrem:

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But this return of gift is our doing too. In Christ’s Church and through
his sacraments—not least through the giving of alms as a penitential satisfaction—we come to share in our own small way in the one great
redemptive act accomplished by Jesus Christ.This is no zero-sum game,
as though our offering were added to Christ’s own in order to reach the
needed quantity. Rather we are generously taken up into Christ’s own
once-for-all payment of our debt, and made participants in his own fully
satisfactory offering to the Father.
When Christ joins our modest efforts to his own supreme gift, he
graciously allows the salvation he has accomplished for us to come, in
some small way, from us as well. Because we are united to him our salvation is not simply an event which happens to us, but is also our own act.
It includes our own grateful gift of self—our merit. As Aquinas observes,
speaking first of the satisfaction rendered by Christ but, by implication,
also of our own,“it is more glorious for man that he fully purify himself
of the sin he has committed by making satisfaction than it would be if
dicit enim Filius . . . [Jn 17:4] ‘Ego te clarificavi super terram.’ ” Super Ioannem 8,
8 (no. 1278); cf. 13, 6 (no. 1828); 17, 1 (no. 2190). For an English version see
Daniel Keating and Matthew Levering, eds., Commentary on the Gospel of John, 3
vols., trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P. and James A. Weisheipl, O.P. (Washington, DC:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), vol. 2, 151; vol. 3, 37, 172.
Matthias Joseph Scheeben is among the Catholic theologians who, picking up
John’s (and Thomas’s) insistence on this point, sees in Jesus’ glorification of the
Father the accomplishment of a supernatural good which exceeds repair of the
damage wrought by sin, even if one grants (as Scheeben does) that without sin
there would have been no Incarnation. “As mediator of creatures with God,
[Jesus Christ] can and will offer to God the hymn of praise and exaltation which
corresponds to God’s glory. He can and will bring it about that the creature, in
him and with him, pays to God a tribute of honor and satisfaction which is
adequate to God’s infinitely exalted greatness, and outweighs the wrong done to
him by sin. Finally, he can and will subject the creature to the lordship of God
in a way so wonderful that in him and with him creatures serve their Lord
royally, and their homage is no longer that of a slave, but of a queen called to
share in this lordship” (So kann er und soll er als Mittler der Kreaturen an Gott diesem
den Hymnus einer seiner Herrlichkeit entsprechenden Anerkennung und Lobpreisung
darbringen. So kann er und soll er es vermitteln, daß die Kreatur in ihm und mit ihm
Gott einen Tribut der Anbetung und Genugtuung zolle, welcher die Größe der
unendlichen Erhabenheit Gottes und der ihr durch die Sünde zugefügten Unbill aufwiegt.
So kann und soll er endlich die Kreatur in einer so wunderbaren Weise der Herrschaft
Gottes unterwerfen, daß sie in ihm und mit ihm königlich ihrem Herrn dient, und ihre
Huldigungen nicht mehr die einer Sklavin, sondern die einer zur Mitherrschaft berufenen
Königin sind.). Die Mysterien des Christentums, §62 (Matthias Joseph Scheeben,
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, ed. Joseph Höfer [3rd ed., Freiburg: Herder, 1958],
340); in English as The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis:
B. Herder, 1946), 411–12 (though the translation here is my own).

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sin were remitted without satisfaction . . . because what someone merits,
he has in a sense from himself, to the extent that he merits it. Similarly
satisfaction brings it about that the one making it is in a sense the cause
of his own cleansing from sin.” For just this reason, Aquinas goes on to
say,“the fact that God has chosen (voluit ) to restore humanity by satisfaction manifests his mercy to the highest possible degree.”18 Recall also the
18 In III Sent., d. 20, a. 1, qla. ii, sol., which responds to the suggestion that it would

have been more in keeping with God’s nature, including his mercy, to forgive sins
without any payment than to require satisfaction from us: “[M]agis est homini
gloriosum ut peccatum commissum satisfaciendo plenarie expurget, quam si sine
satisfactione dimitteretur . . . quia quod quis meretur, quodammodo ex se habet,
inquantum illud meretur. Similiter satisfactio facit ut satisfaciens sit
quodammodo causa suae purgationis” (ed. Moos, 614, §23). For this reason, “in
hoc quod Deus per satisfactionem hominem reparari voluit, maxime manifestatur
eius misericordia” (ad 2, my emphasis [614, §25]).
Scheeben makes a kindred argument, characteristically insisting that God, by
deciding to deliver humanity from sin through an infinite satisfaction offered by
the incarnate Son, has willed to raise us to an immeasurably higher condition
than that in which we were originally created. Even supposing the Incarnation
of the Word,“God did not necessarily have to require an adequate satisfaction for
our guilt. He could have forgiven that guilt on the basis of the mere intercession
of the Redeemer. . . . But in this case the renewed elevation of the human race
would have had no real ground in humanity itself. The human race would not
rise by its own act, as it had fallen by its own act. If it is to rise by its own act,
the human race will, through its new head [= Christ], not simply have to petition for release from the guilt of its old head [= Adam], but pay for it; not simply
allow the grace lost in the old Adam to be restored, but through its new head
merit that grace and acquire it once more. And that can only happen because its
new head is a person of infinite dignity, who can pay for an infinite guilt and
purchase a good of infinite value. . . . Through union with its new head, the
human race acquires an infinite dignity, and is thereby capable not only of
making full payment to God for its guilt, but also of offering to God an infinite
glorification” (my translation).
( [B ]raucht Gott nicht notwendig eine adäquate Genugtuung für die Schuld zu verlangen; er könnte die Schuld nachlassen auf die bloße Interzession des Erlösers hin . . .Aber in
diesem Falle hätte die Wiedererhebung des Geschlechtes ihren eigentlichen Grund nicht in ihm
selbst; das Geschlecht würde sich nicht durch sich selbst erheben, wie es durch sich selbst
gefallen. Soll es sich durch sich selbst erheben, dann muß es durch sein neues Haupt die Schuld
des alten nicht bloß abbitten, sondern bezahlen, die im alten Adam verlorene Gnade nicht bloß
sich wiedergeben lassen, sondern durch sein neues Haupt sie verdienen und wiedererwerben.
Und das kann in der Tat nur dadurch geschehen, daß sein neues Haupt eine Person von
unendlicher Würde ist, um eine unendliche Schuld zu bezahlen und ein Gut von unendlichem
Werte zu erkaufen. . . . Durch die Verbindung mit seinem neuen Haupte erlangt es eine
unendliche Würde und wird dadurch befähigt, nicht nur seine Schuld vollzählig an Gott abzutragen, sondern auch überhaupt demselben eine unendliche Verherrlichung darzubringen.)
Mysterien, §54 (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, 293–94; trans.Vollert, 354).

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Council of Trent’s teaching on penitential satisfaction, which depends
wholly on the saving work of Christ:“Man has nothing in which he may
glory. All our glory is in Christ, in whom we live, in whom we merit, in
whom we make satisfaction, bringing forth ‘fruits worthy of repentance’
(Mt 3:8). From him these fruits have power, by him they are offered to
the Father, and through him the Father accepts them.”19
In Christ, then, none of us is a spectator to our salvation, but we are all,
painfully and joyfully, full participants in it. God’s willingness to accept
payment for our sins is a sheer gift to us, an act of greater mercy and
generosity than any forgiveness by fiat would be. For God allows each of
us to claim nothing less than a place of our own in his salvation of the
world in Christ.
Intellectus fidei
Here, it seems, we have two quite different ways of thinking about the
debt we sinners owe to God, its payment by Christ, and our share in that
payment. The two are not only different, but in important ways incompatible.
The obvious merit of the majority view, for which I have taken
Aquinas as my example (though I could equally well have taken Scotus),
is that by lowering the bar for the understanding faith seeks from (logical)
necessity to convenientia (suitability or appropriateness), it maximizes our
apprehension of the freedom of God. In contrast to Anselm’s account, the
majority view clearly upholds the deep Augustinian intuition that God,
consistently with his mercy and justice, not only could have redeemed or
not redeemed us: he could also have delivered us in a different way than,
in fact, he has.The majority view achieves this Augustinian aim while still
offering a clear and telling reason why God acted in this way rather than
in some other way also open to him. He did so for the good of his fallen
creatures, to give us a share in our own redemption. By acting in this way,
God chooses the course which, while not necessary for him, is more
merciful, beautiful, and fitting than any alternative.
The majority approach thus offers a genuine, though limited, intellectus fidei. God’s saving response to sin—his act of salvation in Christ—
while wholly free as to both the fact that it occurs and the manner in
19 “[N]on habet homo, unde glorietur; sed omnis gloriatio nostra in Christo est, in

quo vivimus, in quo meremur, in quo satisfacimus, facientes ‘fructus dignos paenitentiae’ [Mt 3:8, Lk 3:8], qui ex illo vim habent, ab illo offeruntur Patri, et per illum
acceptantur a Patre” (DH 1691; Session XIV, Decree on the Sacrament of Penance,
ch. 8 [=Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed.
Heinrich Denzinger & Peter Hünermann, 40th edn (Freiburg: Herder, 2005)]).

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which it occurs, is nonetheless not arbitrary. Given the irreducible
contingency of the perfect satisfaction offered to the Father by his incarnate Son, this approach provides an understanding, short of necessity, as
to why God chose to deal with sin in just this way.
The merit of Anselm’s account (which locates, conversely, the weakness of the majority view) is to maximize the intellectus fidei —if we can
attain it—by settling for nothing less than necessary reasons. For Anselm,
we haven’t attained the understanding we seek unless we can specify
something about God, and not simply something about ourselves, which
fully explains why he chooses to deal with sin in one way (by the death
of his incarnate Son) rather than another. Locating the need for satisfaction, and thus for the Cross, in the suitability of our being made partakers in our own salvation is fine as far as it goes. But the understanding we
seek requires more, a deep truth about God. This Anselm thinks he has
located in the consonance of God’s mercy and justice.
Here we should emphasize that Anselm’s stringent search for necessary
reasons leads him to question, at least implicitly, his own apparent insistence that for God punishment of the sinner is a genuine alternative to
satisfaction for sin. If punishment is to be a real alternative for God, it
must be a way of setting right the order of creation which succeeds in
exhibiting the perfect harmony of God’s mercy and justice. Especially in
Book I of the Cur Deus homo, Anselm seems to say clearly that punishment is just such an alternative.20 But as the argument develops into
Book II, this becomes less clear. Not only would it be unfitting for God
to leave creation in a state of disorder by failing to subject the sinful creature, in one way or another, to himself. It would be unfitting for God to
leave human nature, which he created for glory, in its lost condition.
Since God does not do the unfitting, “it is necessary that he complete
what he began with human nature. As we have said, this cannot happen
except by a complete satisfaction for sin, which no sinner can make.”21
From this follows the penultimate climax of the Cur Deus homo’s
whole argument: “So if it is necessary, as is certain, that the celestial city
be completed by human beings, and this cannot happen unless the previously discussed satisfaction has been made, which no one is able to make
except God, and no one owes except man, then it is necessary that the
20 See the passages cited above, notes 9 and 10.
21 Cur Deus homo II, 4: “A. Necesse est ergo, ut de humana natura quod incepit

perficiat. Hoc autem fieri, sicut diximus, nequit, nisi per integram peccati satisfactionem, quam nullus peccator facere potest” (Schmitt, vol. 2, 99.9–11; Davies
& Evans, 317).

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God-man make it.”22 This, I take it, means not only that if there is to be
satisfaction, the God-man must offer it, but that satisfaction (made by the
God-man) is necessary for God to achieve his creative purpose in a way
compatible with his nature. If satisfaction is necessary to this end, and the
end itself cannot fail to be achieved, then punishment is impossible.
So if, as Anselm sees it, punishment is for God a real alternative to satisfaction in setting right the order of creation, then there are no necessary
reasons for the fact of redemption, but there are necessary reasons for the
manner in which it takes place: if God saves his sinful creatures, he saves
in just this way. If, conversely, punishment is not a real alternative for
God, then there are necessary reasons for the fact of redemption, as well
as for the manner in which it takes place. For the majority view, here
exemplified by Thomas, the mode of redemption as well as the fact of it
are alike contingent. As a result we can offer no necessary reasons for
either of these teachings of the faith.
For Anselm, I think, the majority view signals a premature retreat from
the intellectus fidei. We can see why by calling to mind a question St.
Anselm might pose to St. Thomas. The majority view grants that it is
more merciful, and so more fitting, for God to act in one way rather than
another.When it comes to our redemption, God acts more mercifully by
requiring satisfaction for sin than by forgiving sins through mere declaration or fiat.At least with regard to the manner of our redemption, if not
to the fact of it, the majority view concedes—indeed insists—that requiring satisfaction is the most fitting way we can conceive of God as acting.
How then can we deny that it is (logically, not causally) necessary for
God to act in this way? After all, God is that mercy and beauty than
which greater cannot be conceived. If so, it is deeply inconsistent to
suppose that God can be conceived of as acting in a less merciful way
than that of which we rightly believe him to be capable.
I will not here try to resolve this complex, difficult—and, I think,
profoundly beautiful—debate within the Catholic tradition. In conclusion it may simply be observed that Anselm has, at the very least, identified the high standard any successful resolution ought to meet. Famously,
Anselm characterizes God as id quo maius cogitari nequit—that than which
a greater cannot be conceived. In the fallen universe we actually inhabit,
though, that than which a greater cannot be conceived—and so God
himself—is the Crucified. Any way of thinking about the Cross that
22 Cur Deus homo II, 6:“A. Si ergo, sicut constat, necesse est ut de hominibus perfi-

ciatur illa superna civitas, nec hoc esse valet, nisi fiat praedicta satisfactio, quam
nec potest facere nisi deus nec debet nisi homo: necesse est ut eam faciat deushomo. B. ‘Benedictus deus’ ” (Schmitt, vol. 2, 101.16–19; Davies & Evans, 320).

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leaves room for thought of a greater justice, or a greater mercy, than the
Son of God crucified has not yet understood the Church’s faith in him.
Concluding the Cur Deus homo, Anselm writes:23
When we were considering God’s justice and man’s sin, God’s mercy
seemed to vanish. But we have found how great it really is, and how it
is in such harmony with his justice that it [mercy] cannot be conceived
to be greater or more just. For, indeed, what greater mercy could be
imagined, than for God the Father to say to the sinner, condemned to
eternal torments, and without any power of redeeming himself from
them, ‘Receive my only-begotten Son, and give him for yourself,’ and
N&V
for the Son himself to say ‘Take me, and redeem yourself.’ ”

23 Cur Deus homo II, 20: “Misericordiam vero dei quae tibi perire videbatur, cum

iustitiam dei et peccatum hominis considerabamus, tam magnam tamque
concordem iustitiae invenimus, ut nec maior nec iustior cogitari possit. Nempe
quid misericordius intelligi valet, quam cum peccatori tormentis aeternis
damnato et unde se redimat non habenti deus pater dicit: accipe unigenitum
meum et da pro te; et ipse filius: tolle me et redime te?” (Schmitt, vol. 2,
131.27–132.3; Davies & Evans, 354). Note the striking Rabbinic parallel,
prompted by reflection on Genesis 22, that Anderson adduces in Sin, 199–202.

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Release from the Debt of Sin:
Jesus’ Jubilee Mission in the Gospel of Luke
E DWARD S RI
Augustine Institute
Denver, Colorado

D URING THIS present era, when the distance between the specialized
fields of biblical scholarship and dogmatic theology has seen much widening, Joseph Ratzinger has often recommended the twofold approach to
Scripture outlined in Dei Verbum 12—an approach that synthesizes a historical reading of the Bible with a theological one.1 On the one hand, since
God speaks to men in a human fashion, the interpreter of Scripture must
“carefully search out the meaning which the sacred writers really had in
mind” (Dei Verbum 12). This involves a close consideration of the literary
forms, the historical context, and the modes of narration and expression
common in the time of the sacred writer.2 But on the other hand, since
Scripture also has a divine author, it must be interpreted in light of the
same Spirit by whom it was written—the same Holy Spirit who inspires
the rest of Scripture and animates the Church’s sacred Tradition throughout the ages.Thus, Dei Verbum 12 affirms that the interpretation of Scripture must consider the content and unity of the Bible, the living Tradition
of the Church, and the analogy of faith.3
Along these lines, Gary Anderson’s work Sin:A History is quite encouraging, for it offers some positive examples of how a thorough, historical
reading of Scripture can be at the service of a theological interpretation
1 Joseph Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict” in Joseph Ratzinger, God’s

Word (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 96–97; Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xv–xxiii; Pope Benedict XVI, Address during the 14th General
Congregation of the Synod of Bishops (October 14, 2008).
2 See Ratzinger,“Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 96; Jesus of Nazareth, xv.
3 See Ratzinger,“Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 97; Jesus of Nazareth, xiii–xx.

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that considers the Church’s Tradition.4 In particular, Anderson shows how
“debt” as a biblical metaphor for sin can shed light on later developments
in Catholic atonement theology. In this article, I will apply this chief insight
from Anderson to the third Gospel in order to demonstrate how Luke sets
up, not just individual passages, but Jesus’ entire redemptive mission as a
ministry of release from the debt that is most problematic from a biblical
standpoint—the debt of sin.
To accomplish this task, we will begin by focusing on Jesus’ Sabbath-day
teaching in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4:16–30 and we will show how
this foundational scene defines, to a large extent, the nature of Jesus’ ministry
in the third Gospel.Then we will consider how in this programmatic scene,
Jesus describes his mission in terms of the hopes surrounding the Jubilee
year. In this section, we will, first, briefly explore how the prophet Isaiah,
whom Jesus quotes in the Nazareth synagogue (Lk 4:18–19), used Jubilee
year imagery to express eschatological hopes. The Jubilee legislation itself
(see Lv 25; Dt 15) brought release from debt and slavery and restoration of
family land to those individuals who fell into financial trouble; Isaiah drew
upon and expanded these themes to express hopes that God would liberate
his people from the nations, freeing them from oppression and restoring the
Promised Land to Israel (as seen most clearly in Isaiah 61:1–2). Second, we
will see that, at least in some later Jewish texts such as Daniel 9 and
11QMelchizedek from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the expected Jubilary release
from debt was spiritualized to be understood as a release from the debt of
sin—a point at the heart of Anderson’s overall project.
Indeed, this is a key background for understanding the way Jesus, in his
foundational teaching in the Nazareth synagogue, frames his own ministry
with Jubilee year imagery. In particular, we will see that Jesus depicts his
ministry against the backdrop of the Jubilee year “release” (aphesis)—a
technical word describing the Jubilary release from debt and a word used
twice in Luke 4:18. Significantly, everywhere else this key word is used in
Luke-Acts, it denotes release from sin.Thus, in light of Luke’s overall narrative strategy, Jesus’ mission as announced in Luke 4 is one which involves
release from the debt of sin in a manner reminiscent of the Jubilee release
from debt and slavery.
Luke 4:18–19: Part of a Programmatic Text for Luke-Acts
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ allusions to the Jubilee year begin in his
Sabbath-day sermon in a Nazareth synagogue (Lk 4:16–30)—a passage that
is commonly recognized as having central importance for the third Gospel.
4 Gary Anderson, Sin:A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009).

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In 1960 Hans Conzelleman called 4:18 in particular “one of the programmatic passages which describes the ministry of Jesus.”5 Similarly, in that same
year, Gunther Bornkamm wrote that in this passage, which presents Christ
drawing from the prophet Isaiah (Is 61:1–2), Luke “expressly set down the
relevant word of the prophet as the governing text of all Jesus’ works.”6
Insights from more recent scholarship have confirmed and deepened
our understanding of the foundational character of this passage for Luke’s
Gospel. First, this passage serves as the first episode Luke narrates in detail
from the public ministry of Jesus, and its importance on that account has
often been noted.7 Second, it is placed right on the heels of the summary
statement in 4:14–15—and so further indicates the importance of our
passage for Luke’s Gospel.The summary statement provides the following
synopsis of Jesus’ overall ministry in Galilee: “And Jesus returned in the
power of the Spirit into Galilee, and a report concerning him went out
throughout all the surrounding country.And he taught in their synagogues,
being glorified by all” (Lk 4:14–15).What is significant for our purposes is
how the summary highlights that Jesus “taught in the synagogues.”This is
important because in the very next verse—the verse that introduces our
scene of Jesus’ Sabbath-day teaching in Nazareth—Luke reports that Jesus
“went to the synagogue” (Lk 4:16). Immediately following the summary
statement about Jesus teaching in synagogues, Luke sets up the Nazareth
episode by noting that Jesus was giving instruction in a synagogue. This
indicates that the account of Jesus’ teaching in Nazareth is intended to serve
as a “snapshot” of Christ’s overall synagogue ministry or as what Tannehill
calls “the primary illustration of what Jesus was saying when teaching in
the synagogues.”8

5 Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of Luke, trans. G. Buswell (New York: Harper and

Brothers, 1960), 221.
6 Gunther Bornkhamm, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. I. and F. McLuskey and J. M. Robin-

son (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 75.
7 For example, Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Garden City, NY:

Doubleday, 1981), 526; Robert Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1996), 61; Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 207; Patrick Miller, “An Exposition of Luke
4:16–21,” Interpretation 29 (1975): 417–21.
8 Tannehill, Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 61.Tannehill also notes how Luke reports a
ministry in the synagogue which was repeated over a period of time, as seen in the
imperfect tense used in 4:15:“he was teaching in their synagogues.” He concludes
that this might indicate that “Jesus has been saying such things for some time”
(60–61). If so, this would further underscore how Luke 4:18–19 serves as the key
example of Jesus’ regular synagogue teaching.

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Moreover, the third Gospel often notes Christ’s ministry in the synagogues (4:15, 31–37, 44; 6:6; 13:10–17), but in no passage except 4:17–18
does Luke narrate the content of that teaching. “Hence, here we have an
exemplar of the sort of message Jesus proclaimed in synagogues throughout his public ministry.”9 This may be further supported by the phrase “as
his custom was” in 4:16, which refers back to Jesus’ regular practice of
teaching in the synagogues in 4:15 and “makes the Nazareth scene into a
concrete exemplification of Jesus’ Galilean synagogue teaching ministry.”10
Finally, the scene itself embodies key features of Jesus’ entire public
ministry.The Nazareth episode contains a general statement about Jesus’
mission which points to the kinds of actions he will perform in his public
ministry: preaching good news (4:43–44), preaching good news to the
poor (7:22; cf. 6:20), giving sight to the blind (7:22; 18:35), releasing
people from various forms of captivity (political, social, demoniac—
discussed below). Later summary statements about Jesus’ ministry point
back to this episode (Lk 7:21–22; Acts 10:38), showing that “Jesus is
continually doing what he was sent to do, according to his declaration in
the Nazareth synagogue.”11 Moreover, Jesus’ general statement about his
mission is followed by an initial acceptance (“All spoke well of him”—
4:22) and an eventual rejection (4:28–29).This two-part response anticipates how Jesus will be received in his ministry. Many will initially accept
him, but he ultimately will be rejected in Jerusalem.12

9 Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, 207.
10 John Nolland, Luke (Dallas:Word Books, 1989), 195. Luke indicates that not only

was it Jesus’ custom to attend the synagogue on the Sabbath, but also it was his
common practice to teach there—to be the one who “stood up and read” (4:16).
Green notes,“The reference in v. 15 to Jesus’ teaching in their synagogues points in
this direction.” Joel Green, “Proclaiming Repentance and Forgiveness to all the
Nations,” in The Mission of the Church in Methodist Perspective, ed. Alan Padgett
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 24 n. 26.This would underscore “the
paradigmatic quality of this episode, both in regard to his Sabbath practices, and
with regard to the content of his proclamation.” Green, The Gospel of Luke, 209.
11 Tannehill, Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 63.
12 “Luke has deliberately put this story at the beginning of the public ministry to
encapsulate the entire ministry of Jesus and the reaction to it.The fulfillment story
stresses the success of his teaching under the guidance of the Spirit, but the rejection story symbolizes the opposition that his ministry will evoke among his own.
The rejection of him by the people of his hometown is a miniature of the rejection of him by the people of his own patris in the larger sense.” Fitzmyer, The Gospel
According to Luke, 529.

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Jesus and the Jubilee
In this paradigmatic passage, Jesus presents his ministry against the backdrop
of some prophetic hopes associated with the year of Jubilee. In this section
we will see that Jesus picks up on a tradition of using Jubilee imagery to
express eschatological hopes—hopes that, at least in some cases, involve
release from a debt understood in a moral or spiritual way.13
Jubilee Themes in Isaiah
The foundational legislation for the Jubilee in Leviticus 25 addresses the
problem of an Israelite who falls into various degrees of financial debt,
ranging from having to sell his land to becoming a debt slave.14 The Jubilee
year called for the release of slaves, cancellation of debts, the fallowing of
the land, and the returning of the land to its original owner or family every
fifty years. This legislation particularly helped those who never recovered
financially and did not have a kinsman redeemer who could pay their debt
to redeem their land for them.
More important, however, for understanding Jesus’ announcement in
Nazareth is the metaphoric way later Jewish writers used Jubilee year
imagery. Prophetic and other texts in the post-exilic period move “away
from more literal applications of the Jubilee legislation to the employment
of jubilary themes to signify the eschatological deliverance of God.”15 One
theme that developed was that of the indebted man envisioned in Leviticus 25 becoming a symbol for the whole people of Israel, who are spiritually in debt to the Lord for transgressing the covenant.This is seen in the
latter part of Isaiah (Is 40–66), which often depicts Israel as a debt slave, the
exile as a period of slavery, the end of the exile as an act of redemption and
the Lord as the kinsman redeemer.16 Isaiah 50:1, for example, explicitly
uses the debt metaphor to describe Israel’s sin:
Thus says the Lord. . . .
“which of my creditors is it
to whom I have sold you?
Behold, for your iniquities you were sold.”
13 For an excellent, thorough study of the Jubilee throughout the Old Testament and

into the Second Temple period, see John Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to
Qumran:A History of Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
14 For other references to the Jubilee in the Pentateuch, see also Leviticus 27:16–25
and the “year of release” in Deuteronomy 15 as well as Numbers 27:1–11; 36:1–12.
15 Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, 212.
16 The root “to redeem” is used twenty-two times in Isaiah 40–66; thirteen of those
are occurrences as a divine title,“Redeemer.” John Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran, 192.

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Similarly, Isaiah 49:7–9 portrays the Lord as acting as redeemer, carrying out
a Jubilee on behalf of Israel, who is envisioned as a slave under the nations:
Thus says the Lord,
the redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
the servant of rulers. . . .
“[I]n a day of salvation I have helped you;
I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,
to establish [restore] the land,
to apportion the desolate heritages;
saying to the prisoners,‘Come forth,’
to those who are in darkness,‘Appear.’ ”

Finally, Isaiah 61 stands as the text that represents “the most widely recognized biblical allusion to the jubilee outside of the Pentateuch.”17 Whereas
in Isaiah 49:7–9 the Lord is the one enacting the Jubilee provisions, in Isaiah
61:1–3 it is the Lord’s representative: the one anointed with the Spirit:18
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good tidings to the afflicted;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour;
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn.

Here, the anointed one of Isaiah 61 is envisioned as personally enacting the
Jubilee.The work he will accomplish is certainly reminiscent of Jubilee year
themes. First, he comes “to proclaim liberty.”This exact phrase is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Old Testament only in Leviticus 25 (which gives the
Jubilee legislation) and Jeremiah 34 (which narrates King Zedekiah’s
release of the Jerusalemite slaves by alluding to the Jubilee imagery of
Leviticus 25).19 The future anointed one also comes “to proclaim the year
of the Lord’s favor”—another allusion to the Jubilee year, which brought
17 Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran, 198.
18 The one anointed with the Spirit in Isaiah 61 should be identified as the promi-

nent Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42–66, since the servant in Isaiah 42 is introduced as the one upon whom God has put his Spirit (Is 42:1).
19 Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran, 201 n. 80; see also John Watts, Isaiah
(Dallas:Word Books, 1987), 303.

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favor to those in debt and slavery.20 Finally, though a redeemer figure is not
explicitly mentioned in this passage, the Lord is called “redeemer” in Isaiah
in the two immediately surrounding passages (Is 60:16; 62:12) and in other
passages with clear references to Isaiah 61 (Is 49:7–13; 52:7–10).21 From
this, one could deduce that the favor and liberty being proclaimed in Isaiah
61 ultimately come from the redeemer Lord. In conclusion, Isaiah once
again symbolically depicts Israel’s condition in exile as a form of debt-slavery and the future end of the exile as the release from debt-slavery associated with the Jubilee year.
The Eschatological Jubilee in Later Jewish Writings
The eschatological restoration of Israel continues to be depicted with
Jubilee year themes in the corpus known as the Second Temple writings.
In some of these texts, the restoration might be enacted by a royal messianic
figure (as in Daniel 9) or by a messianic priestly character (as in T. Levi 18:2)
or, in the case of the Essenes, by a royal-priestly figure (11QMelch). Most
significantly, the kind of release envisioned in these writings for the eschatological Jubilee is not release from financial debt (as in the actual Jubilee
legislation) or release only from exile (as in Isaiah), but release from moralspiritual debt. In Daniel 9:24, a royal anointed figure is associated with the
end of the exile and the restoration of Jerusalem that will come at the end
of a period cryptically described as “seventy weeks of years.” The other
most explicit reference in the Old Testament to “weeks of years” is found
in Leviticus 25:8, where the expression is used to calculate the Jubilee year.
In that passage,“seven weeks of years” adds up to the forty-nine years that
must pass before the arrival of a new Jubilee every fifty years.22 Daniel’s
timetable for the restoration of God’s people, therefore, draws on this
Jubilee imagery.23 Furthermore, Daniel envisions a restoration of Israel that
does not focus on eliminating financial debt, but one that will “put an end
to sin” and “atone for iniquity” (Dn 9:24).24
Another pre-Christian text that draws on Jubilee themes to describe the
eschatological restoration of Israel is 11QMelchizedek from the Dead Sea
Scrolls. This document tells of a royal-priestly figure named Melchizedek
20 Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40–66 (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press,

1998), 214.
21 Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran, 201.
22 See, for example, John Collins, Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 352; Norman

Porteous, Daniel (Philadelphia:Westminster Press, 1965), 140.
23 See Collins, Daniel, 352.
24 This mention of iniquity being atoned for might recall the Day of Atonement (Lv

16), which itself was linked with the Jubilee year, since the Jubilee was announced
on this particular feast (Lv 25:9–10).

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who will come in the tenth of a series of Jubilees to proclaim liberty to the
captives.25 The fragmentary text opens midstream with a partial quotation
from Leviticus 25:13 about the Jubilee year call for property to be
returned. According to Joseph Fitzmyer, Leviticus 25 as a whole serves in
11QMelchizedek as the “thread which apparently runs through the whole
text and ties together its various elements.”26 The document’s connection
with Old Testament texts related to the Jubilee year also can be seen in the
proclamation of liberty in line 6 of 11QMelchizedek (“He will proclaim
liberty for them”), which recalls the announcement of the Jubilee in
Leviticus 25:10. Similarly, line 4 (“To proclaim liberty to the captives”)
clearly draws from the language of Isaiah 61:1—a prophetic text that we
saw employed Jubilee themes to depict Israel’s future release from exile.27
Moreover, the ten Jubilees timetable in 11QMelchizedek is likely an allusion to the “seventy weeks of years” in Daniel 9:24. Daniel itself, as we saw,
seems to draw on the Jubilee “weeks of years” language (Lv 25:8), and the
time envisioned in both texts amounts to a similar period (seventy weeks
of years in Daniel 9 = 490 years; ten Jubilees in 11QMelchizedek = 10 x
50 years = 500 years). Finally, and most significantly, 11QMelchizedek spiritualizes the significance of the Jubilee by envisioning a release from moral
or spiritual debt. The priestly, kingly Melchizedek figure is expected to
come “to free them from [the debt of] all their iniquities.”28
In summary, the kind of release envisioned in these texts for the eschatological Jubilee is not release from a financial debt but release from a
moral-spiritual one.This is implied in Daniel 9:24 [and T. Levi 17:10–11;
18:9], and made explicit in 11QMelchizedek, where the liberty
proclaimed is one that frees the people from the debt of their sins.29
Anderson notes the importance of this latter text:“It is on this point that
11QMelchizedek is so interesting. The author of this document is
supremely confident that the formulas of debt release found in
Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25 have a different purpose.‘Liberty will
be proclaimed for [the inheritance of Melchizedek] to free them from
[the debt of] all their iniquities.’30 These developments in thought about
the eschatological Jubilee will serve as an important background for
understanding Luke’s use of the Jubliee theme in his Gospel.
25 11QMelchizedek.
26 Joseph Fitzmyer, “Further Light on Melchizedek from Qumran Cave 11,” Journal

of Biblical Literature 86 (1967): 29.
27 Merrill Miller,“The Function of Isa 61:1–2 in 11Q Melchizedek,” Journal of Bibli-

cal Literature 88 (1969): 467–69.
28 11QMelchizedek, line 6.
29 Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran, 304.
30 Anderson, Sin, 36–37.

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Luke 4:18–19: Jesus’ Use of Jubilee Themes from Isaiah 61
Luke reports that Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61:1–2, a passage which we saw
has been called one of the clearest biblical allusions to the Jubilee year
outside the Pentateuch.While drawing from this passage, Jesus picks up on
the tradition of the eschatological Jubilee already developing in the Old
Testament and in the Second Temple period.
Although most of Luke 4:18–19 comes from Isaiah 61:1–2, two divergences are noteworthy. First, the phrase “the day of vengeance of our God”
(Is 61:2b) has been dropped,31 and second, a phrase from Isaiah 58:6 has
been inserted: “to send forth prisoners in release.” This latter addition is
important for our specific purposes, because it draws attention to the word
release (aphesis), which is used twice in 4:18:“to proclaim release (aphesin)
to prisoners” from Isaiah 61:1 and “to send forth the captives in release
(aphesei)” from Isaiah 58:6. Thus, aphesis is a key word uniting these two
prophetic texts in 4:18.
Why does Jesus in Luke draw our attention to the word aphesis? The
word means “release” and is a technical expression that refers to the Jubilee
year release of Hebrew slaves and property every fifty years.32 In fact,
twenty-two of the approximately fifty uses of aphesis in the Septuagint are
found in the Jubilee passages of Leviticus 25 and 27; there, it most often
translates the Hebrew word yobel—a word which is roughly transliterated
“Jubilee” and means “ram’s horn” (Ex 19:13; Jos 6:5).33 The word aphesis
also translates the Hebrew term deror (meaning “release” or “emancipation”), which was used by the prophets to refer to the Jubilee year ( Jer
34:8, 15, 17; Ezek 46:17; Is 61:1) and most significantly was used in the
Jubilee year legislation of Leviticus 25 to announce that every 50 years
Israel is “to proclaim release” (deror) of property and slaves (Lv 25:10).
This seems to be in the background of Jesus’ use of Isaiah 61 and 58 to
describe his mission “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Lk
4:19). In light of Luke’s double emphasis on “release” in 4:18 and the basic
Jubilee themes contained in the two Isaian passages quoted, Jesus’
announcement of this “acceptable year of the Lord” in 4:19 recalls the Jubilary year of release (Lv 25:10).Therefore, Jesus, in this foundational passage
31 This was done probably to avoid drawing attention to this negative aspect of Isaiah

61:1–2 in a passage that goes on to highlight how the blessings of Christ’s ministry
will go out to the Gentiles (Lk 4:24–27).
32 R. Harris, G. Archer, and B. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), I, 455.
33 The name for this feast may have been derived from the ram’s horn that was blown
at the start of the Jubilee (Lv 25:9). See Robert Sloan, The Favorable Year of the Lord:
A Study of Jubilary Theology in the Gospel of Luke (Austin: Schola Press, 1997), 15;
Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 319.

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for Luke’s Gospel, introduces his ministry against the backdrop of the
Jewish hopes surrounding the Jubilee year release.
But what kind of Jubilee is Jesus announcing in Luke 4:18–19? Was it
an immediate execution of the Jubilee laws of Leviticus 25, as John Howard
Yoder has claimed?34 Jesus’ Jubilee mission in Luke 4 does relate to some
concrete aspects of his social ministry. For example,“to preach good news
to the poor” (4:18) points ahead to a summary statement Jesus later makes
about his ministry. In response to a question from John the Baptist’s disciples, Jesus says, “the poor have good news preached to them” (Lk 7:22).
Similarly, the mention of “recovering of sight to the blind” (4:18) anticipates Jesus’ healing of a blind man in 18:35 and his summary response to
John the Baptist “the blind receive their sight” in 7:22. Finally, the phrase,
“to send forth in release those who are oppressed” might foreshadow the
release Jesus will grant to people suffering from various kinds of oppression, whether physical, political, or demonic.35
However, whatever concrete social aspects of Jesus’ ministry to which
4:18–19 may point, the passage primarily relates to the eschatological
Jubilee described in the Second Temple writings; in these, the Jubilary
release brought the restoration of Israel and was, at least in some cases, envisioned as releasing people from moral-spiritual debt.This is seen in the way
Luke-Acts uses the key Jubilee word aphesis, which is more prominent in
Luke-Acts than anywhere else in the New Testament. It is used seventeen
times in the New Testament, and ten of those occurrences appear in LukeActs (five in Luke and five in Acts);36 by contrast, Mark uses the word only
twice, Matthew only once, and John not at all.
Most significant is the way Luke-Acts employs this term in association
with forgiveness of sin.At each of its other occurrences in Luke-Acts, aphesis is used in the combination “release from sin.”37 Moreover, the entire
sweep of the literary diptych Luke-Acts is bound up with this theological
motif of release from sin.The phrase appears in passages of strong theological importance: In the Benedictus early in Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah fore34 John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972),

34–40, 64–77.
35 For examples of phsical oppression, see Luke 4:39, 5:12 and 18, 6:6, 7:2; also see

Rebecca Denova, “The Things Accomplished among Us: Prophetic Tradition in
the Structural Pattern of Luke-Acts,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 141
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 134–36. For political oppression, see
Denova, 137. For oppression by demons, see Luke 8:36, 9:1, 10:17; also see
Denova, 137.
36 Luke 1:77, 3:3, 4:18 (2x), 24:47; Acts 2:38, 5:31, 10:43, 13:38, 26:18.
37 Tannehill Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 65–66; B. J. Koet, Five Studies on Interpretation of Scripture in Luke-Acts (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989), 34.

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tells how John the Baptist will “give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness (aphesei) of their sins” (Lk 1:77). John the Baptist is
described as preaching a baptism of repentance “for the forgiveness
(aphesin) of sins” (Lk 3:3).The word appears twice in the passage recounting Jesus’ teaching in the Nazareth synagogue. Jesus’ mission is “to proclaim
release” (aphesin) to the captives and “to set at liberty (en aphesei) those who
are oppressed” (Lk 4:18). In the commissioning at the end of Luke, Jesus
says “forgiveness (aphesin) of sins should be preached in his name to the
nations” (Lk 24:47). Furthermore, this theme in Luke crosses the threshold
into Acts of the Apostles, showing Acts to be the ecclesial and sacramental
continuation of Christ’s ministry of release. In the account of Pentecost, a
programmatic passage for Acts of the Apostles, Peter tells the crowd they
must “repent and be baptized for the forgiveness (aphesin) of sins” (Acts
2:38). The various speeches in Acts which sum up the Christian story of
salvation also employ the technical term “release” in association with
forgiveness of sins (see Acts 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18).38
There are no exceptions to the rule. Everywhere else in Luke-Acts, aphesis is employed with the meaning “release from sin.” It should be understood
in the same way in the Nazareth scene in Luke 4:18–19.39 Some further
support for this conclusion may be found in the fact that the verbal form of
aphesis (aphiemi) is prominently used in Luke in relation to forgiveness of sin,
understood as release from sin. For example, Jesus tells the paralyzed man
“your sins are forgiven (apheontai)” (5:20), and he tells the woman kissing
his feet the same thing: “Your sins are forgiven (apheontai)” (7:48). Luke’s
account of the Our Father prayer uses aphiemi twice in the petition “forgive
(aphes) us our sins, for we ourselves forgive (aphiomen) everyone who is
indebted to us” (11:4). Jesus’ prayer on the cross also uses this verb,“Father,
forgive (aphes) them; for they know not what they do” (23:34).
Thus, while Jesus’ redemptive mission in Luke, as introduced in this
foundational scene in the Nazareth synagogue, is cast in the categories of
Jubilee release, the liberation primarily envisioned in Luke-Acts is release
from the most significant debt strapping the human family: the debt of sin.
As Patrick Miller notes,“The oppression from which Jesus sets people free
is the tyranny of the evil one. The chains that Jesus breaks are the bonds
that enslave them to sin in all its forms.” While Jesus certainly releases
people from various concrete forms of physical, social, and economic
38 Tannehill, Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 66.
39 With

every other use of aphesis in Luke-Acts occurring with the meaning
“forgiveness,” Koet notes,“It is almost impossible that Luke by means of this term
does not allude to this important element of Jesus’ proclamation of salvation in
Luke 4,18–19.” Koet, Five Studies, 34.

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oppressions, “Luke will not allow us to assume that those things which
oppress the souls and minds and lives of people are wholly tied to their
physical situation. The Gospel reminds us that the freedom God intends
through Christ is at root release from the entanglement and dominance of
sin in our lives.”40
Conclusion
In conclusion, on a most basic level, the Jubilee character of Jesus’ ministry
in Luke can serve as an example of how the later development of medieval
atonement theology—and in particular, its understanding of sin as debt and
of Christ freeing people from the debt of sin—has clear lines of consistency
with the biblical view of sin and redemption. But this theme of Jubilee
release in Luke also does much more. It shows how the later Christian
understanding of sin as debt not only has foundations in various individual
passages of the New Testament but flows from the very heart of the
redemptive mission of Jesus as revealed in the third Gospel. In the foundational episode at the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4, Jesus casts his entire
ministry in terms of the prophetic hopes surrounding the Jubilee year—
hopes which, at least in some Second Temple writings, included release
from moral-spiritual debt and hopes that are clearly developed in this
direction throughout the rest of Luke-Acts.Therefore, careful attention to
the way Luke’s Gospel itself presents Jesus’ ministry can be at the service of
theologians exploring the topic of sin and redemption in Anselm’s atonement theology, for that presentation suggests that the redemptive mission
of Christ is indeed meant to be understood, in large part, as a mission of
N&V
release from the debt of sin.

40 Patrick Miller, “An Exposition of Luke 4:16:21,” Interpretation 29 (1975): 417–21.

Emphasis mine.

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195

Sin as an Offense against God: Aquinas
on the Relation of Sin and Religion
R. J ARED S TAUDT
Augustine Institute
Denver, Colorado

G ARY A NDERSON ’ S Sin: A History provides us with two key
biblical conceptions of sin: burden and debt.1 He argues that debt gradually surpassed burden as the primary biblical concept for sin. Anderson
does an excellent job demonstrating the presence and implications of the
debt concept in the Old and New Testaments. I would like to pursue the
question further by asking why it is that the notion of debt is so applicable in our relation to God. I propose that in order to fully understand sin
as debt, it is necessary also to recognize sin as personal offense.This recognition is related to the notion of debt in so far as it entails not fulfilling
a fundamental obligation or debt that we owe to God. Sin creates a debt
because in the act of sin one refuses to fulfill the personal obligation of
recognizing and honoring God as Creator and governor of the world.
That the Church thinks of sin in such a manner can been seen from this
quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Sin is an offense against God: “Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done that which is evil in your sight.” [Ps 51:4] Sin sets itself against
God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it
is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become “like
gods,” [Gen 3:5] knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus
“love of oneself even to contempt of God.” [Augustine, De civ. Dei 14,
28] In this proud self-exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the
obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation. [Phil 2:6–9]2
1 Gary Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009).
2 CCC §1850.

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Sin is a personal offense against God, an act of disobedience, revolt, and
contempt, which can be seen as the opposite of virtuous obedience, the
obedience manifested by Christ.
While the Bible may not use the words “personal offense” to name sin,
this reality is clearly implied.3 Thomas Aquinas supports such a view of
sin, not only through the principles of his moral theology, but also through
his biblical exegesis both within the Summa theologiae and in his scriptural
commentaries. He lays out the foundation for sin as a personal offense by
recognizing the fundamental need to honor God through particular religious actions and through a general obedience to his moral law. Failure to
do so is an irreligious act, even an act of idolatry.4 In fact, Aquinas recognizes idolatry as the origin of all sin, which characterizes sin in its
contempt for God. In sin one turns away from God and toward a created
good. This is the essence of idolatry and also the essence of sin. Aquinas
grounds this teaching particularly on two passages of Scripture: the Decalogue (Exodus 20) and Wisdom (of Solomon) 13–14. His interpretation
of these passages reveals that the debt accrued by sin arises from the fact
that one does not render a prior debt to God to honor and obey him.To
be just, one must be in a right relationship with God. Furthermore, if one
does not give God the proper honor due to him, this honor will become
idolatrously translated to a created object through sin. Sin is a personal and
religious offense, and one that was corrected by another personal and religious act: the honor and obedience of Christ on the Cross.
In order to understand sin, it is necessary first to understand the order
of justice that God has instilled within creation. Creatures have a twofold
dependence upon Him. First, they depend on God for their very existence. Secondly, they depend on him for the perfection of their being,
especially in the case of human beings, whose final end exceeds the

3 There are certain passages where this understanding is brought out more clearly

through honor. Malachi 1:6 is one example: “A son honors his father, and a
servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master,
where is my fear?” (RSV, Second Catholic Edition). Another from the New
Testament is John 8:49: “Jesus answered, ‘I have not a demon; but I honor my
Father, and you dishonor me.’ ”
4 In his commentary on Romans, N.T.Wright makes clear that this notion of sin
has Jewish origins. “Paul saw no reason to dissent from the Jewish insight that
regarded ‘sin’—living in a less-than-fully-human fashion, missing the mark as
regards God’s intention for his human creatures—as the result of worshipping
something other than the creator” (Letter to the Romans: Introduction, Commentary,
and Reflections, vol. 10, The New Interpreter’s Bible [Nashville: Abingdon Press,
2002], 430).

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proportion of their nature. In both cases this dependence creates a debt.
In fact, Aquinas sees this relation to God as the origin of all debt. He
makes this clear when speaking about gratitude, where he states: “The
nature of the debt to be paid must vary according to various causes giving
rise to the debt, yet so that the greater always includes the lesser. Now the
cause of debt is found primarily and chiefly in God, in that He is the first
principle of all our goods.”5 Everything that we have and everything we
are depend on God, and so in return we owe him everything.
There are two main responses to one’s debt to God. One is a direct
response, the other more indirect.The direct response is worship, which
Aquinas describes in the following terms while commenting on Hebrews
7:“the main reason for rendering worship to God is to signify that whatever a man has, he received from God and that he depends on Him for
his entire perfection.”6 The twofold debt must first be recognized in
order to thank God for the gifts received and to acknowledge the need
for yet greater assistance in gaining perfection. Worship brings dependence upon God to the forefront of the mind by producing signs and acts
that should order one toward Him. This worshipful recognition must
however be followed by further action. Aquinas therefore points to a
more indirect way of rendering the debt to God. He states that “in order
that a man will some particular good with a right will, he must will that
particular good materially, and the Divine and universal good, formally.”7
Every act must be directed toward God, recognizing him as origin and
end, thus giving him due honor. The virtue which characterizes this
disposition is obedience, which “proceeds from reverence,” and “whereby
we contemn our own will for God’s sake.”8 Aquinas describes the crucial
role of obedience when speaking of Christ’s subjection to the Father:
“Human nature is especially subject to God through its proper act, inasmuch as by its own will it obeys His command.”9 The fact that obedience is man’s proper act signifies that life is meant to be lived in conformity
5 Summa theologiae [ST ] II–II, q. 106, a. 1, corpus. English translation from the 1920

English Dominican Province translation (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947).
6 Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, trans. Fabian R. Larcher, O.P., ca. 7, lec. 1

(unpublished translation available at the Nova et Vetera website [www.nvjournal.net]
under Resources).
7 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 10, corpus. In the reply to the second objection in question 100
of the same part, article 10, he further states:“The precept of charity contains the
injunction that God should be loved from our whole heart, which means that all
things would be referred to God. Consequently man cannot fulfill the precept of
charity, unless he also refer all things to God.”
8 ST II–II, q. 104, a. 3, ad 1, corpus.
9 ST III, q. 20, a. 1, corpus.

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with God’s will. Our will must become aligned to his. Therefore, both
worship and obedience are the just responses we make to God for the
debt we owe him.
The first response is explicitly religious, whereas the second is only
implicitly so. Nevertheless, Aquinas makes clear the relation between the
two types of responses through the pivotal role of the virtue of religion.
Religion, which is a potential part of the virtue of justice, actually holds
the place as the highest moral virtue for Aquinas. Although it is subordinate to the theological virtues, it directs all other moral virtues so that
their proper acts become offerings of reverence to God. He describes this
as follows:
Religion has two kinds of acts. Some are its proper and immediate acts,
which it elicits, and by which man is directed to God alone, for instance,
sacrifice, adoration and the like. But it has other acts, which it produces
through the medium of the virtues which it commands, directing them
to the honor of God, because the virtue which is concerned with the
end, commands the virtues which are concerned with the means.10

Religion does not solely offer acts of worship, but as a general virtue it
is meant to direct other virtues so that their proper acts become religious.
Through the mediation of the virtue of religion, all of one’s acts are
meant to honor God, fulfilling the debt toward him through direct
worship and obedience.
These two come together in the chief act of religion, which is sacrifice. Through the act of sacrifice, something is offered to God as a sign
that He is the origin and end of all things. Aquinas says that this outward
act serves as a sign that “represents the inward spiritual sacrifice, whereby
the soul offers itself to God.”11 Worship seeks to acknowledge dependence upon God and obedience seeks to conform the will to Him.These
two elements come together most perfectly in the religious life. Aquinas
says this is the purest form of religion, because one actually makes a sacrifice of one’s very life or what he calls an immolation of the will.12 He
describes this in his defense of the mendicant life in De perfectione :
The vow which, of all the three religious vows, belongs most peculiarly
to the religious life, is that of obedience.This is clear for several reasons.
10 ST II–II, q. 81, a.1, ad 1.
11 ST II–II, q. 85, a. 2, corpus.
12 “Against Those Who Attack the Religious State and Profession,” in St. Thomas

and the Mendicant Controversies: Three Translations, trans. John Proctor, O.P., ed.
Mark Johnson (Leesburg,VA: Alethes Press, 2007), 1.

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First, because, by obedience man sacrifices to God his own will. . . .
Secondly, because it is by his own will that a man makes use either of
his body or his goods: therefore, he who sacrifices his own will, sacrifices everything else that he has. Again, the vow of obedience is more
universal than is that of either poverty or chastity, and hence it includes
them both.13

The vow of obedience is the height of religion in that one’s will is
completely given over to the service of God, and one thereby renders to
him all that one has and does. This is the model of ordering the will to
God, even if not all attain it.
Rendering one’s debt to God has positive effects on the soul. First of
all, when speaking of religion,Aquinas states that “we pay God honor and
reverence, not for His sake (because He is of Himself full of glory to
which no creature can add anything), but for our own sake, because by
the very fact that we revere and honor God, our mind is subjected to
Him; wherein its perfection consists, since a thing is perfected by being
subjected to its superior.”14 Religion, by relating us properly to God,
opens us up to our very perfection. Further, when speaking of obedience,
he relates this perfection in more detail: “[The] virtue and rectitude of
[the] human will consist chiefly in conformity with God’s will and
obedience to His command.”15 Through obedience the will conforms to
God, which makes it just: possessing the rectitude and virtue intended for
it through God’s ordering. Worship and obedience together bring this
rectitude of interior justice by giving what is due to the One to whom
the greatest and most important debt is owed.This is not a cold transaction but occurs within the context of a personal relationship.Therefore,
Aquinas explains, obedience to God, particularly as a response to His
divine law, seeks “to establish man in friendship with God.”16 To summarize: God has created us and ordered us to himself, and a debt has thereby
been created that is repaid by worship and obedience, which in turn
foster an intimate relationship with God.
It is important to remember, as we move to a discussion of sin, how
God revealed this order to humanity.The nature of one’s debt to God has
the force of law, the breach of which constitutes sin. Therefore, the key
scriptural passage that Aquinas turns to in order to make clear the just
ordering to him can be seen in his commentary on the Decalogue.There
are two main places where he treats the Ten Commandments: first, prima
13 “On Perfection,” in St.Thomas and the Mendicant Controversies, 11.
14 ST II–II, q. 81, a. 7, corpus.
15 ST II–II, q. 104, a. 4, ad 2.
16 ST I–II, q. 99, a. 2, corpus.

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secundae partis question 100 on the moral precepts of the Law and
secondly, secunda secundae partis question 122 on the precepts of justice. In
the latter question, Aquinas makes clear that “religion . . . is the chief part
of justice,” and so the Decalogue begins with this most fundamental point:
“the first thing necessary was, as it were, to lay the foundation of religion,
whereby man is duly directed to God,Who is the last end of man’s will.”17
The Decalogue manifests God’s just order for human action. The ordering of the precepts points to the foundational role of honoring God.18 All
other precepts follow from the initial establishment of a right relationship
with God.Without a just relationship to God, no true justice is possible.
Aquinas explains in question 100 of the prima secundae partis the
enumeration of the first three precepts that relate directly to God. He
does so by comparing God, who is governor of Creation, to the head of
a political community: “Now man owes three things to the head of the
community: first, fidelity; secondly, reverence; thirdly, service.”19 The first
two precepts prescribe fidelity and reverence respectively by forbidding
actions contrary to them.They seek to prohibit the soul from offending
God by acting in a manner contrary to his honor.The third commandment concerns service by specifying how to worship God by setting time
aside for his honor on the Sabbath.
The first precept, however, is the most foundational.Aquinas describes
it as follows: “Fidelity to his master consists in his not giving sovereign
honor to another.”20 It prohibits the sin most contrary to God: idolatry.
If religion is the key moral virtue, which orders us to God as the source
of our perfection, then idolatry presents the key stumbling block to
achieving moral perfection. Aquinas describes one of the primary
purposes of the Decalogue through its role in removing this detrimental
sin:“Hence it behooved man, first of all to be instructed in religion, so as
to remove the obstacles to true religion. Now the chief obstacle to religion is for man to adhere to a false god.”21 Adhering to a false god entails
putting one’s end in a created object instead of justly turning to God. If
17 ST II–II, q. 122, a. 1, corpus; a. 2, corpus.
18 Aquinas explains this as follows:“Now the end of human life and society is God.

Consequently it was necessary for the precepts of the decalogue, first of all, to
direct man to God; since the contrary to this is most grievous. Thus also, in an
army, which is ordained to the commander as to its end, it is requisite first that
the soldier should be subject to the commander, and the opposite of this is most
grievous; and secondly it is requisite that he should be in coordination with the
other soldiers” (ST I–II, q. 100, a. 6, corpus).
19 ST I–II, q. 100, a. 5, corpus.
20 Ibid.
21 ST II–II, q. 122, a. 2, corpus.

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religion is meant to honor God, idolatry offends the God who is the
source and perfection of human life.
This leads us to the second major scriptural passage: Wisdom 13–14.
In explicating the detrimental role of idolatry in the moral life, Aquinas
turns particularly to Wisdom 14:27, which reads: “For the worship of
idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.”
It is a crucial passage because it specifies idolatry as the most devastating
and contagious sin. Aquinas uses this passage in his commentary on First
Corinthians, in which he writes:
[Paul] makes special mention of the sin of idolatry . . . first, because it is a
very grave sin to introduce another God, just as one would sin very
gravely against a king by introducing another king into his kingdom. . . .
Secondly, because from the sin of idolatry all other sins arise, according to
Wisdom (14:27):“For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.”22

In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas takes up Wisdom 13 and 14 in article
four of the question on idolatry (II–II, q. 94). He explicates the meaning
of Wisdom 14:27 in particular as follows: “Again, idolatry is stated to be
the cause, beginning and end of all sin, because there is no kind of sin
that idolatry does not produce at some time, either through leading
expressly to that sin by causing it, or through being an occasion
thereof.”23 Sin occurs when one’s will turns from God and toward a
created object, which one honors by directing one’s will inordinately
toward it.Thus, idolatry can be taken as symbol of sin itself. It is the most
grievous sin because it most directly offends God (just as religion is the
highest moral virtue because it directly honors God).
When idolatry is understood simply as sin, it can be seen to rupture
the moral life, by placing one at enmity with the only One who can lead
us to perfection. Such enmity can be contrasted with the friendship
created by obedience. Aquinas vividly explains this:
On the part of the sin itself . . . idolatry is the most grievous sin. For
just as the most heinous crime in an earthly commonwealth would
seem to be for a man to give royal honor to another than the true king,
since, so far as he is concerned, he disturbs the whole order of the
commonwealth, so, in sins that are committed against God, which
22 Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P., ca.

12, lec. 1 (unpublished translation available at the Nova et Vetera website
[www.nvjournal.net] under Resources).
23 ST II–II, q. 94, a. 4, ad 1.

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indeed are the greater sins, the greatest of all seems to be for a man to
give God’s honor to a creature, since, so far as he is concerned, he sets
up another God in the world, and lessens the divine sovereignty.24

His use of the words, “disturbing order” and even “lessening the divine
sovereignty” should be seen in the context of God’s just order of the
world to which obedience must respond.“Giving God’s honor to a creature” directly contradicts the religious response to our debt to honor
God. Thus, we see idolatry as the perfect contrast to religion: offense
versus honor and rebellion against God’s order rather than obedience.
We also see a similarity between religion and idolatry in that idolatry
contains both direct offenses and indirect ones. Commenting on Second
Corinthians, Aquinas speaks of idolatry in a direct sense by contrasting
the believer and unbeliever:“In you it is the habit of justice; in them it is
the habit of iniquity. But the higher justice is to render to God what is
his, and this is to worship him. Hence, since you worship God, the habit
of justice is in you. But the greatest iniquity is to take from God what is
his and give it to the devil.”25 Idolatry is characterized by the choice of
earthly goods above God.This is characteristic of all sin, yet idolatry more
directly bestows divine honor upon this earthly good. Idolatry is the
greatest iniquity because the act of idolatry deprives God of the honor
that is justly His and gives it to something or someone undeserving of it.
24 ST II–II, q. 94, a. 3, corpus. Here Aquinas sees idolatry as the gravest sin of all,

because it directly disdains God. However, just as a connection between religion
and obedience was recognized above, so could a connection between idolatry
and pride be posited. One worships God out of obedience to Him and this act
creates greater affection and thus make one obey more willingly. Similarly, one
refuses to worship and obey God out of pride, which leads to idolatry and sin,
and this contempt in turn creates an even greater prideful independence. This
close relation between idolatry and pride can be seen from the fact that pride is
also categorized as the most grave and contagious of all sins. Concerning pride,
Aquinas states that “pride denotes aversion from God simply through being
unwilling to be subject to God and His rule.” He continues: “Wherefore aversion from God and His commandments, which is a consequence as it were in
other sins, belongs to pride by its very nature, for its act is the contempt of God.
And since that which belongs to a thing by its nature is always of greater weight
than that which belongs to it through something else, it follows that pride is the
most grievous of sins by its genus, because it exceeds in aversion which is the
formal complement of sin” (ST II–II, q. 162, a. 6, corpus). Recall that both pride
and idolatry are the essence of all sin, as one turns one’s will in pride away from
God and idolatrously toward a created object.
25 Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P., ca.
6, lec. 3 (unpublished translation available at the Nova et Vetera website
[www.nvjournal.net] under Resources).

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It shows contempt for the one to whom thanks, worship, service, and
obedience are due. The severity of the sin is based on the principle laid
out by Aquinas that “the greater the good the graver the sin. From this
point of view a sin that is against God is most grievous.”26 Idolatry helps
us to understand sin in general, because it is sin’s most extreme form.
Idolatry scorns God by turning to a creature.This is in essence the nature
of sin itself.
Let us now turn to a more indirect understanding of idolatry. Just as
obedience is an indirect form of religion, by which all actions are directed
to God’s honor, so disobedience to God’s law is an indirect form of idolatry.Aquinas states that “to sin against God is common to all sins, in so far
as the order to God includes every human order.”27 Every sin is an offense
against God, even if it is not intentionally so. By turning away from God
and choosing one’s own will above His, one places either the object of
sinful action or even one’s own will in the place of God.Whereas obedience is essentially religious in nature, sin is essentially idolatrous in nature.
Speaking of the cause of sin, Aquinas states: “Accordingly then, the will
lacking the direction of the rule of reason and of the Divine law, and
intent on some mutable good, causes the act of sin directly, and the inordinateness of the act, indirectly, and beside the intention: for the lack of
order in the act results from the lack of direction in the will.”28 Sin stems
from the will’s lack of direction, which results in a lack of order.This helps
us to understand Aquinas’s point, discussed above, concerning how sins
follow from idolatry and how idolatry brings about a loss of God’s sovereignty. First, the primary cause of sin is a lack of order in the will. The
proper order of the will entails willing God in every action, which honors
him as the origin and end of human life.When the will lacks this direction to God, it is not in conformity with its origin. It is not following the
just order that God instilled within it. It is also turning from its end, the
source of its perfection. It turns to a mutable good in preference to Godthe very essence of idolatry. It makes that mutable good the measure and
purpose of its action, thus destroying the order of justice in the soul.When
the will turns from God and the soul thereby becomes disordered, God’s
sovereignty is diminished, because his rightful claim of dominion over the
soul is not recognized. Sin seeks to break God’s rule over life: it rejects him
as father, benefactor, and governor. It attempts to replace his just order
with the chaos of one’s earthly desires. It sets up an idol, an image of one’s
disorder, to rule over the life of the soul.
26 ST II–II, q. 118, a. 5, corpus.
27 ST I–II, q. 72, a. 4, ad 1.
28 ST I–II, q. 75, a. 1, corpus.

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We said above that the primary act of religion consists in sacrifice.
Similarly, the primary act of idolatry is a sacrifice made to an idol.
Aquinas states: “Now just as this divine worship was given to sensible
creatures by means of sensible signs, such as sacrifices . . . so too was
[worship] given to a creature represented by some sensible form or shape,
which is called an ‘idol.’ ”29 Sacrifice to an idol is a visible sign that one’s
will has been cut off from the proper ordering of the will to God. Rather
than offering back to their Maker the visible things that were received as
a gift, in idolatry one elevates the visible to the level of the divine. The
epitome of a true sacrifice is a religious vow of obedience, by which one’s
whole self is offered God in an attempt to hand over oneself completely
to him. We might be able to see a negative parallel in Aquinas’s exposition of the sin against the Holy Spirit. Although one does not, by a vow,
explicitly give oneself over to idolatry, one’s will is hardened against the
work of the Holy Spirit,Who orders the soul to God. Aquinas speaks of
the sin in this way:“One may sin through certain malice, by contemptuously rejecting the things whereby a man is withdrawn from sin.This is,
properly speaking, to sin against the Holy Ghost.”30 Thus it is possible to
see how an inordinate attachment to the things of the world could close
one’s will to God and His work within the soul.The sin against the Holy
Spirit is the most extreme form of idolatry and sin, the most extreme
rejection of one’s true origin and end in God.
Just as we saw the effects of religion in the soul, so we can see the
effects of idolatry. First, turning from God causes disorder. It causes disorder in the soul because through idolatry the soul is cut off from the
source of justice.When the soul becomes thus cut off from God, a more
general disorder results. If one does not have a just relationship with God,
it is not possible to have justice with others.Aquinas explicates this while
commenting on Job: “Moreover, men acting against the piety of divine
religion not only despise divine judgments, but also deny them or assert
that they are unjust.”31 Idolatry leads to an inversion of justice. It perverts
the soul, so that one begins to think that what is just is actually unjust,
and one begins to despise God and one’s duties toward neighbor. This
state of being cut off from God wreaks havoc on the soul. Commenting
on Romans 1, Aquinas explicates this state as he describes the character
of idolatry:
29 ST II–II, q. 94, a. 1, corpus.
30 ST II–II, q. 14, a. 4, corpus.
31 Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Brian Mullady, Thomas Aquinas’ Works in

English, dhspriory.org/thomas/, ca. 34, lec. 1.

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The human mind is free of futility, only when it leans on God. But when
God is rejected and the mind rests in creatures, it incurs futility. . . . [Paul]
mentions the ignorance which followed, when he says, were darkened, i.e.,
by the fact that it was darkened their mind became senseless, i.e., deprived of
the light of wisdom, through which man truly knows God. For just as a
person who turns his bodily eyes from the sun is put in darkness, so one
who turns from God, presuming on himself and not on God, is put in
spiritual darkness.32

The soul cut off from God by idolatry becomes futile and dark. It cannot
see where it has come from or where it is going and consequently cannot
move in the right direction, toward God as end.This is the most serious
consequence of idolatry, which Aquinas describes in book four of the
Summa contra Gentiles. He states: “For, since the perfect beatitude of man
consists in the enjoyment of God alone, as shown above, necessarily every
man is kept from participation in the true beatitude who cleaves as to an
end to these things which are less than God.”33 Those who turn their
back on God and refuse to recognize Him as origin and end through
worship and obedience cannot share His life.This is the just response of
God to the debt of sin.
Fortunately this is not the end of the story. Continuing in the same
chapter from the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas recognizes the Incarnation as God’s definitive response to idolatry. After describing man’s
descent into idolatry, he juxtaposes this descent with the effects of the
Incarnation: as a “consequence of God’s Incarnation” we see “a large part
of mankind passing from the cult of angels, of demons, and all creatures
whatsoever, spurning, indeed, the pleasures of the flesh and all things
bodily, and dedicating itself to the worship of God alone, and in Him
looking only for the fulfillment of this beatitude.”34 God has not simply
placed the order of His justice within human nature through the natural
law, nor has he simply written it on stone, but he has manifested it by his
very presence. He has given us the ultimate example of honor and obedience by offering himself to the Father on behalf of mankind on the
Cross. This has merited righteousness or justice for all of mankind,
pulling it out of both direct and indirect idolatry.
32 Lectures on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Fabian Lacher, O.P., ed. Jeremy Holmes,

cap. 1, lec. 7 (unpublished translation available at the Nova et Vetera website
[www.nvjournal.net] under Resources).
33 Summa contra Gentiles, trans. J. F. Anderson,Vernon J. Bourke, Charles J. O’Neil,
and A. C. Pegis (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), lib. 4,
cap. 54, n. 3.
34 Ibid.Translation slightly altered.

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The turn from the idolatry of sin back to a right relationship with
God through worship and obedience happens in two main ways.The first
is through penance, the second through the Eucharist. In the fourth book
of his Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas links penance to worship,
seeing them both through the lens of justice:
Anyone who has been created by God is a debtor through the fact that
he receives anything from Him.And for this reason one renders a debt of
honor to God by latria or religion. In another way man is a debtor from
the fact that he has sinned against God.And thus one renders the debt of
penance to God.Therefore, just as religion is placed as a part of justice by
Cicero . . . so even penance must be placed as a part of justice.35

When through contrition we recognize that we have fallen short of
justice, then through penance we pledge ourselves to make amends for
this failure.36 Thus, even when we fail to give God the proper honor and
obedience that we owe Him, God allows us, through the merits of
Christ, to render the debt of penance.37
Even more wonderfully, God has enabled us to share directly in the
most perfect act of justice, that of Christ on the Cross. He does so
through the Eucharist. Matthew Levering summarizes this point in
Aquinas very aptly: “We can love as Christ loved because the Eucharist
inflames our charity and enables us radically to offer our lives to God in
Christ, thereby sharing in Christ’s (cultic) justice.”38 Christ is the only
one who could ever render God his due. We ourselves are incapable of
this act on our own, but by sharing in Christ’s own cultic justice we can
render God fitting worship and obedience. Christ has performed the
greatest act of worship through His sacrifice on the Cross, which simul35 Scriptum super Sententiis Magistri Petri Lombardi, ed. R. P. Maria Faianus Moos, O.P.

(Paris: Lethielleux, 1933), lib. 4, d. 14, q. 1, a. 1, qc 5. In his defense of the mendicant life, Aquinas also links worship and penance, as seen in De perfectione, 11,
where he states:“Since, then, a holocaust is a perfect sacrifice, a man who makes
the religious vows (thereby offering, of his own will, a holocaust to God), makes
perfect satisfaction for his sins.”Those who are most dedicated to religion (in the
religious life), and thus render the debt of honor owed to God, also render the
debt of penance most fully.
36 Gary Anderson looks at one particular way in which one atones for sin in chapter 9 of Sin, entitled “Redeem Your Sins with Alms,” 135–51.
37 Aquinas emphasizes that it is “by faith” that “Christ’s power is united to us. . . .
Therefore the power of the sacraments which is ordained to the remission of sins
is derived principally from faith in Christ’s Passion” (ST III, q. 62, a. 5, ad 2).
38 Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 102.

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taneously is the great act of obedience, in which He immolated His will
out of love for the Father.39 In doing so, God has provided the fitting
remedy to sin, which by its very nature pulls us away from him and
toward a creature in his place.
Sin is a personal offense to God, directly contrary to the just rendering of the debt that we owe him as God. However, God’s power in directing us toward himself as end is manifested in Christ, who draws us
beyond our attachment to passing creation and into the life to come.This
religious view of sin and redemption in Aquinas largely supports the view
taken by Gary Anderson, though Aquinas provides a broader context
within which to understand them. As Anderson makes clear, debt is a
crucial way of understanding sin. However, the debt of sin should not be
seen solely through the lens of punishment for breaking a commandment. Rather, debt should be understood as something more positive: our
very lives are owed in debt to God. We fulfill our very purpose of existence by responding obediently to that debt with acts of worship and
other virtuous acts. Failing to fulfill this prior debt creates a new, negative debt of punishment, for which atonement must be made through
penance, which finds its efficacy in the redemption of Christ.40 Even
though all fall short of perfectly rendering the debt owed to God, the life
of Christ dwelling in the soul through grace enables the soul to act justly
before God. It is the worship and obedience of Christ that both models
and enables the proper response to the debt that all owe to God.
N&V

39 Cf. ST III, q. 81, a. 1; q. 48, a. 3.
40 The sacraments communicate Christ’s grace to enable a proper moral response

and worship of God.Aquinas states: “The sacraments of the New Law . . . contain
in themselves a power flowing from Christ . . . incarnate and crucified” (ST I–II,
q. 102, a. 3, corpus). And further: “The Passion is communicated to every
baptized person, so that he is healed just as if he himself had suffered and died”
(ST III, q. 69, a. 2, corpus).

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209

The Priesthood Makes the Church:
Ecclesial Communion and
the Power of the Keys
T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

Introduction: The Ecclesial Nature
of the Forgiveness of Sins
“YOU ARE P ETER and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of
the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound
in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”
(Mt 16:18–19). Scholastic commentators on Matthew 16 classically see
two promises being made here: one to the Petrine office of the bishop of
Rome—that he will be a principle of ecclesial unity and a touchstone
that preserves doctrinal truth in the Church—the other a reference to the
power of the keys, which is a juridical power for the forgiveness of sins
as such, given to the apostles and their successors.1 Dr. Gary Anderson has
written a very fine book, Sin: A History, exploring in impressive fashion
1 For an example of this sort of division, see Thomas Aquinas, In Matt. XVI, lec.

II, n. 1379–1395, especially n. 1386. Counter-reformation writers sometimes see
the power of the keys extending to the first set of promises as well. See, for example, Francisco Suárez, De Poenit., disp. xvi.The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic
Church, however, follows the classical, medieval tradition of seeing the “keys” as
related directly to the power to forgive sins: paragraph 981.The text cites Augustine (Serm. 214, 11: PL 38, 1071–72):“[The Church] has received the keys of the
kingdom of heaven so that, in her, sins may be forgiven through Christ’s blood
and the Holy Spirit’s action. In this Church, the soul dead through sin comes
back to life in order to live with Christ, whose grace has saved us.” References
to the apostolic jurisdiction to forgive sins are also found in Matthew 18:15–18
and John 20:22–23.

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the developments in Old and New Testament literature regarding the
conceptual terminology for sinfulness in human beings and the reparations owed to God and neighbor.2 One of the central themes of his book
concerns the study of a change of preferred metaphors in ancient Israel
used to denote sin, from metaphors of weight to those of payment.3 For
it is one thing to carry the burden of sin or to bear it, and it is yet another
to be indebted to God against whom one has sinned. Both metaphors are
in some way quantitative (weight/debt), but the latter permits the articulation of reciprocity in the order of justice.4 For sins weigh upon us, but
debts are owed to God and our neighbor and must be atoned for.And so
the payment metaphor was employed by ancient Israelites, and eventually
by early Christians, to discuss the moral meaning of such diverse topics
as the mystery of human sinfulness under God’s judgment, the meaning
of retribution or restitution, and finally the atonement of Christ in his
obedience to God for our sakes.5
In what amounts to a theological footnote to Dr. Anderson’s study,
then, I would like to focus on a distinct but related issue, that of the
2 Gary A. Anderson, Sin.A History (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009).
3 Ibid., 15–39.
4 As noted by Bruce D. Marshall in his book review “Treasures in Heaven,” First

Things 199 ( January 2010): 23–26.
5 Employing the debt metaphor in pp. 135–51, 157–60, 164–67, Anderson shows

the compatibility of biblical thought with classical philosophical notions of
virtue.To use quantitative metaphors to express qualitative degrees of fault, virtue,
merit or guilt is something Aquinas analyses at length. See for example Summa
theologiae I–II, q. 52, aa. 1–2; q. 66, aa. 1–2; q. 112, a. 4, corp.; In Eth. X, lec. 3,
1983, sq. In doing so, he notes Aristotle’s own relevant statements on the subject
(Metaphysics VIII, 3 [1043b33, 1044a9]). Q. 52, a. 1: “[I]n two ways intensity and
remission may be observed in habits and dispositions. First, in respect of the habit
itself: thus, for instance, we speak of greater or less health; greater or less science,
which extends to more or fewer things. Secondly, in respect of participation in
the subject: insofar as equal science of health is participated more in one than in
another, according to a diverse aptitude arising either from nature, or from
custom.”We can easily apply this analysis to sinful acts. An act of theft implies an
intrinsically less grave degree of evil than an act of murder, because the object in
question is distinct in accord with a hierarchy of goods. Possessions mean less
than human life as such. But there is also the distinction of degrees that comes
from one’s participation in the act. The master ringleader of the robbery might
not have planned on one of his accomplices killing the teller at the bank. He is
complicit in the murder to a lesser degree, but complicit in the robbery to a
greater degree.To speak of weight and payment, we might say that he is morally
indebted for the robbery and the murder, but the murder weighs upon him less
deeply than the robbery.All English translations of the Summa theologiae are taken
from the 1920 English Dominican Province translation, Summa Theologica (New
York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947).

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211

power of the keys. For this power relates directly to sin and is said by Jesus
to be a power of the Church “to bind and loose.” It is therefore expressed
by means of a biblical metaphor that is itself also physical and quantitative (like the figures of weight and payment), referring to a juridical
action that frees someone from the debt of sin (“unbinding” him or her)
to allow “entrance” into the Church and the eschatological kingdom of
God.6 The figure touches immediately upon the mystery of redemption
and the nature of the Church. My question is, then, what does it mean
to bind and loose? Or more precisely, how is Christ’s delegation of juridical power, especially in this most important subset of jurisdiction which
is the power of the keys, intrinsic to the very mystery of the life of the
Church? How, in this sense, does the priesthood make the Church?
I will proceed in three parts: First, I will consider briefly the classic
dispute between Luther and Cajetan on the power of the keys, with the
goal of clarifying the ecclesiological nature of the sacrament of penance.
Second, I will discuss a widespread modern Catholic consideration of the
sacrament that misunderstands the nature of the juridical power of absolution by making it something virtually accessory to our reconciliation
with God. Third, I will consider Aquinas’s teaching on the ecclesial
dimension of the sacrament of reconciliation as a way of thinking about
the relation between the priesthood and the Church. My basic argument
is the following: The intrinsic form that all grace takes in the Christian
economy of salvation is not only Christological but inherently sacramental and ecclesial. In the sacrament of penance, this grace provides
entry into the communion of the Church and therefore renders Christ’s
6 See the historical discussion of the term “keys” in Matthew 16 as related to

“binding and loosing” in “Kleis,” Joachim Jeremias, Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. Gerhard W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1965), 744–53. P. 751:“In rabbinic literature binding and loosing
are almost always used in respect of halakhic decisions.The scribe binds (declares
to be forbidden) and looses (declares to be permitted). But this . . . should not
cause us to overlook the fact that originally they are used of the authority of the
judge to imprison or to release, to impose or to withhold the ban, and that they
then take on the figurative sense of executing the divine judgment or averting it
(by intercession). . . . In Mt. 16:19, then, we are to regard the authority to bind
and loose as judicial. It is the authority to pronounce judgment on unbelievers
and to promise forgiveness to believers. In sum we may say that the power of the
keys is authority in the dispensing of the word of grace and judgment.”Although
Jeremias introduces a kind of sacramental occasionalism into his reading of this
passage (the Church has authority to declare what God has done and is doing
through faith), his exegesis of the text conducted against the backdrop of
rabbinic language provides broad warrant for a classical Catholic sacramental
interpretation of the passage.

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salvific action in the world effective in an irreplaceable way. Such juridical agency endures eschatologically, because reception of the sacrament
of forgiveness from a rightly delegated minister entails an inchoate
participation in the final judgment of Christ in his glory, and Christ’s
judgment of mercy has everlasting ecclesial effects upon which we will
be eternally dependent.
Luther and Cajetan on the Ecclesial Nature of Absolution
“In saying this, you are constructing a new Church,” “Hoc enim est
novam ecclesiam construere.”These are the words of Thomas de Vio Cajetan, spoken in Augsburg, on the 26th of September, 1518, in the course of
that Dominican’s famous public debate with the young Augustinian
canon, Martin Luther.The subject under scrutiny that day was the power
of the keys, the Church’s episcopal and priestly power to absolve sins, and
the point under contention was the nature of sacramental forgiveness.7
During the debate Luther espoused the view that sacramental confession,
contrition, and satisfaction for sins do not accomplish their intended task
and are not sufficient for forgiveness, unless these are accompanied by an
inner act of faith and certitude that the sins which are being confessed
have definitely been forgiven by the grace of Christ.This is an echo of his
developing idea that justification comes from faith alone, as distinct from
works righteousness. In fact, Luther goes so far as to suggest that, absent
this certitude of faith in my particular salvation by Christ for these sins,
the sacrament of penance can lead not to my salvation but to my damnation.8 It seems possible to defend what Luther is saying here, at least in
part, from a Catholic point of view: without the certitude of faith and
hope that are proper to these two theological virtues, the reception of
7 See the text in Charles Morerod, O.P., Cajetan et Luther en 1518. Edition, traduc-

tion et commentaire des opuscules d’Augsbourg de Cajetan, tomes I–II (Fribourg:
Éditions Universitaires, 1994), I, 337.The treatise in question (Questio X of Cajetan in the dispute with Luther) is concerned with the subject De fide ad fructuosam absolutionem sacramentalem necessaria.
8 Cf. Luther, Sermo de penitentia, vol. 1, Weimarer Ausgabe (WA ) ed. J. K. F. Knaake
(Weimar: H. Böhlaus, 1883), 324, ll. 8–15:“Ruit ergo hic error illorum qui dicunt,
quod sacramenta novae legis sic sunt efficatia gratiae signa, quod si quis etiam non
sit contritus sed attritus, modo non ponat obicem actualis peccati vel propositi
mali, gratiam consequatur. Ego autem dico tibi, quod, si etiam contritus accesseris
et non credideris in absolutionem, sunt tibi sacramenta in mortem et damnationem: fides enim necessaria est, quantominus attritio vel non positio obicis
sufficit! Denique talis nullus est in mundo qui non ponat obicem, nisi solus is qui
credit, Cum sola fides iustificet et accedentem ad deum oporteat credere.” See the
citation of this text, and the commentary of Morerod, Cajetan et Luther en 1518,
I, 320 n. 297, which notes other places Luther makes such claims.

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sacraments is only unbelieving or despairing and therefore inefficacious.
Faith and hope, meanwhile, as supernatural virtues, imply a divinely
inspired certitude.9 Nor is it clear that Luther is evacuating from the sacrament of confession all of its efficacy as a unique occasion of grace.10
We should note, however, that Luther claimed something else in addition, simultaneously. Quoting Augustine (“Abluit sacramentum, non quia
fit, sed quia creditur”),11 he introduces a kind of bifurcation between the
act of justification by faith and the rite of the sacrament of penance as
such.The inner act of faith justifies, while the outward rite does not, but
allows the inner act to express itself.12 What we are seeing emerge here
already is the doctrine Luther will articulate more clearly in the Babylonian Captivity, two years later.There he affirms that the confession of secret
sins is laudable insofar as it permits a person who sins to hear consoling
words of faith from the minister, reinforcing the faith of the penitent.Yet
this sacrament is not strictly necessary as a matter of recourse in ordinary
ecclesial life in order to receive the forgiveness of Christ. More radically,
Luther categorically denies in this text the reality and necessity of a
juridical delegation on the part of an ordained minister who absolves for
the validity of the act (the classical Catholic understanding of the power
of the keys).13 This viewpoint in turn foreshadows the mature doctrine
of the Large Catechism (in 1529), where the Reformer claims that
penance is not to be considered a sacrament in the strict sense (and
certainly not an instrument of grace). Rather, sacramental confession can
act as a merely external (we might say “symbolic”) testimony in the
ecclesial realm of what is already, always happening interiorly by the work
of faith, in strict dependence upon the words of forgiveness of Christ in
the Gospel.14 The traditional “sacrament of penance” is in fact not as
such a sacramental cause of grace.
9 Compare Aquinas, In III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 4, sc 3; ST II–II, q. 18, a. 4.
10 See the argument to the contrary by David V. N. Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Oppo-

nents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–1525 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991),
38–40, though the texts of the Ninety Five Theses that Bagchi cites and the
interpretation he gives them might seem ambiguous to Catholic theologians.
11 St. Augustine, Tractatus in Johannis Evangelium 80, 3 (CCSL 36, 529).
12 Luther, Sermo de penitentia, WA 1, 324, ll. 16–19: “Verissimum est enim dictum
illud commune:‘non sacramentum sed fides sacramenti iustificat,’ et B.Augustini:
‘Abluit sacramentum, non quia fit, sed quia creditur.’ Quod si sacramentum non
iustificat sed fides sacramenti, quantominus contritio aut non positio obicis iustificat, sed fides! etc.”
13 Luther, Babylonian Captivity, part III.
14 Luther, Large Catechism, VI (“A Brief Admonition to Confession”), especially
para. 13.

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In the debate of 1518, Cajetan claimed in his response to Luther that
the Augustinian friar was not distinguishing sufficiently between the
infused faith of the theological virtues, which gives the certitude that
Christ forgives sins by means of this sacrament that he has instituted, and
the acquired faith, or psychological confidence, that one has approached
the sacrament with sufficient interior dispositions to receive grace
therein.15 We can after all have firm trust in the power of the sacrament (as
a divinely instituted cause of grace), while being uncertain about the
perfection of our interior inclinations or motives, or the quality of our
contrition.16 Against Luther, Cajetan claims that we know that we need to
be contrite (faith alone is not sufficient without love). But we cannot be
speculatively certain before God that we have true contrition.This lack of
perfect certitude cannot be avoided, however, and accordingly it obliges
each Christian to live prudently in faith and hope, by habitual recourse to
the sacraments, praying for the graces of progressive conversion and growth
in love.17 True, he says, we can all claim rightly that the theological virtues
of faith and hope imply a form of certitude as such, and it is true that the
grace of the sacraments cannot be operative within us without such grace.
In addition we can be sure that the sacraments will work in us by grace
insofar as they are divinely instituted. But this certitude touches only upon
the mysteries of faith as such, and does not yield the contingent certitude
15 Cajetan, Questio X, 10–11: “Novam autem hanc inventionem alienam esse ab

ecclesiastica doctrina, facile patet distinguendo de duplici fide, quam habere
possumus: scilicet vel acquisita, vel infusa. Nam si sermo est de fide infusa (que
est una de theologalibus virtutibus . . . ) constat quod illa est necessaria ad sacramentum penitentie. . . . Sed huiusmodi fides, licet ad sacramenta se extendat (ut
patet in symbolo), non tamen extendit se ad hec singularia: puta quod hoc sit
sacramentum, et quod in hoc sit effectus sacramenti. . . . Si autem dicta opinio
intelligatur de fide acquisita, erronea quoque invenitur: nam licet acquisita fides
circa huiusmodi particularia versetur . . . nec potest fides ista de hoc obiecto (scilicet me esse absolutum etiam per absolutionem in effectu coram deo) esse certa
infallibiliter: quia quilibet homo dubius in hac vita: secundum commune legem
nescit, an sit in gratia dei. Nec aliquis est qui certus sit se esse sufficienter dispositum pro gratia dei, que per absolutionem conceditur.” See Cajetan et Luther en
1518, I, 322–28.
16 Luther makes a similar affirmation in thesis 30 of the Ninety Five Theses, but he
then moves from this presupposition not to the certitude of indulgences or of
the power of the keys, but to the certitude of faith alone, independently of ecclesial mediations of forgiveness. Cf. Explanations of the Ninety Five Theses, numbers
30 and 36.
17 Cajetan, Questio X, 20: “Nec obstat, quod contritio sit incerta: iussit enim deus
ipse, ut cum nostra hac incertitudine accedamus ad sacramenta” (Cajetan et Luther
en 1518, I, 332).

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that “this sacrament here was performed correctly,” or “I have a sufficient
disposition to know that I have received grace in this sacrament.”18
It is significant to note that Luther and Cajetan seemingly agree on
two points, despite their differences or potential mutual miscomprehensions: (1) faith and hope have a dimension that is certain vis-à-vis revealed
truths, but (2) the quality of one’s act of contrition in the sacrament of
penance is uncertain. It is equally important to note, however, where they
differ in light of the problematic just mentioned. While both admit the
certitude of faith and hope as supernatural virtues, they disagree about
how this same certitude of faith should lead us to position our lives
concretely with regard to the sacraments, the Church, and the practices
that lead effectively to salvation. Luther is developing a position that will
in effect lead him away from the necessary recourse to the sacramental
“shape” of the grace of forgiveness in the Church and toward practical
recourse to the inner forum of conscience, where one can confide in
God through the inner exercise of the theological virtue of faith alone.
Cajetan, meanwhile, is pointing out the reasons that the ecclesial faith in
the sacraments is objectively certain, but also leads us for that very reason
to a prudent habitual recourse to penance, a recourse that gives us only
prudential certitude of our own good actions before God, not speculative certitude in our own salvation. Whereas one of them resolves the
dilemma of incertitude by recourse to a habitual dependence upon the
visible means of grace instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, the
other has recourse to an invisible contact with Christ in the internal
forum of the act of faith.
Whatever the real—as opposed to imagined—differences between
Luther and Cajetan concerning the character of faith and its certitude, the
deeper issue in the debate, then, concerns the ecclesial and sacramental
nature of grace itself: do the invisible graces of the theological virtues tend
inherently toward a visible, sacramental participation in the life of the
Church, and is the grace of the sacraments itself a sine qua non condition
for our participation in the saving communion of the Church? This is the
issue expressed in Cajetan’s fundamentally ecclesiological intuition: “you
are constructing a new Church.” Charles Morerod, in his analysis of Cajetan’s famous retort to Luther, concludes that the core issue for Cajetan
concerns the relationship between the divine intention of Christ regarding how we are to receive saving forgiveness and the structure of the
18 Cajetan, Questio X, 20: “Et quum subditur, quod fides Christi est verissima et

certissima et sufficientissima, respondetur quod talis est de rebus subiectis fidei
infuse, sed non de impertinentibus ad ipsam, ut sunt ex parte nostri singulares
singulorum effectus sacramentorum” (Cajetan et Luther en 1518, I, 332).

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Catholic Church as such.19 The issue the dispute raises is: Does the
Church rightly understand the concrete provisions of the Gospel for the
forgiveness of sins as they were instituted by Christ, and as she therefore
depends upon him for her being? Would God permit the Church to err
in so great a matter? What Cajetan is indicating is that there are ecclesiological presuppositions of the mystery of reconciliation that also touch
upon Christology. For the Dominican, Christ’s salvation is given to us in
grace in a distinctly sacramental form, and it incorporates us into the very
life of the visible Church.Therefore, if one tries to make the grounds of
forgiveness rest on something other than the objective structures of
forgiveness that the Catholic Church believes to be instituted by Christ,
then one in fact advocates for an alternative understanding of the relation
between Christ, the Church, and salvation. Stated yet more strongly,
according to Luther’s understanding, if somebody does what the Church
requires, he can be damned because he does not do the right thing.That
means the Church does not really transmit salvation, but endangers it.20
Or to frame the same idea positively: the communion of the Church that
is made possible by the forgiveness of sins in the sacrament of penance is,
in some real sense, dependent for its being upon the exercise of the power
of the keys joined to the sacrament of holy orders and upon Christ working through this ministerial priesthood. Christ, in this sense, makes the
Church through the priesthood, and this activity of Christ is part of the
very structure of the Church. This is important to recall, because the
mystery of the power of the keys has often been eclipsed or forgotten in
modern Catholic theology, for reasons we should now consider.

19 Morerod, Cajetan et Luther en 1518, II, 465–66; 472–76.
20 Morerod comments on this matter: “After having rejected faith as the founda-

tion of the certitude of forgiveness received by this or that particular penitent,
Cajetan insists upon the necessity of contrition. In order to attain to forgiveness,
this is the necessary and sufficient condition posited by the Church.To reject this
condition as insufficient in order to posit another which seemingly is sufficient
is to maintain effectively that those who accede to the sacrament according to
the conditions identified by the Church are in error themselves, and have been
misled. To posit this new kind of condition of efficacy and eliminate the classical understanding as insufficient basically implies the establishment of a new
sacrament, and therefore a new Church all the while accusing the Church of
having failed in her fundamental mission to transmit Christ’s salvation.The ultimate consequence that Cajetan discerns to be present in the novelty introduced
by Luther is a rupture in the transmission [of the ecclesiastical means] of salvation.” Morerod, Cajetan et Luther en 1518, II, 476.Translations from French in this
essay are my own unless otherwise stated.

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The Modern Problematic: Juridicism
or Spiritual Communion
The problematic understanding of the juridical nature of the Church in
modern Catholic theology that I am referring to has a complex history
with various stages, and it functions in a kind of dialectical movement. It
can be seen to arise from three distinct but interrelated ideas. Idea one:
Modern Catholic theologians such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac
react against what they take to be an excessively external and juridical
understanding of the Church inherited from Cardinal Robert Bellarmine
and a prominent manualist ecclesiology to which Bellarmine’s thought
gave rise—prevalent from the Counter-reformation until the nineteenth
century.21 Congar will argue that the Bellarminian paradigm conceived of
21 See the historical analysis of Bellarmine’s influence by Yves Congar, O.P., in his

L’Église: de saint Augustin à l’époque moderne, coll.“Histoire des dogmes,” n. 20 (Paris:
Éditions du Cerf, 1970), 369–96, 413–58, and his own alternative construal of the
Church in Chrétiens désunis. Principes d’un oecuménisme catholique, Unam Sanctam
(Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1937). Similarly, see Henri de Lubac, S.J., Catholicisme. Les
aspects sociaux du dogme, Unam Sanctam (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1938), esp. chap. XI;
idem, Méditation sur l’Église (Paris: Éditions Montaigne, 1953), esp. chap. III. An
excellent analysis of Bellarmine’s ecclesiology, its influence well into the early twentieth century, and its modern criticism, is offered by Benoît-Dominique de La
Soujeole, O.P., Le sacrement de la communion. Essai d’ecclésiologie fondamentale (Paris:
Cerf/Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1998), 12–47. De La Soujeole shows,
in effect (14–19), how Bellarmine’s formulation of ecclesiology is a reaction to
Luther’s that forms a kind of contrary in the same genre. Luther’s Treatise on the
Papacy (May 1520) distinguishes between the “body” and the “soul” of the Church.
“The first [reality] which is essentially, fundamentally, and truly the Church, we
name spiritual and interior Christianity.The other, which is a human creation and
an exterior phenomenon, we shall call corporeal and exterior Christianity. . . .This
Christianity is governed by canon law, and by the established prelates . . . popes,
cardinals, bishops . . . priests, monks, nuns, and all those who in the exterior state of
things are taken to be Christians, whether they are authentic and firm Christians or
not. In effect, even if this community does not contain a single true Christian since
all these aforementioned states can exist without faith, nevertheless at least it does
not remain without some who are also authentic Christians, just as the body does
not make the soul live but the soul assuredly lives in the body and also assuredly,
without the body.” In his De Controversiis Christianae Fidei (1586–93), Bellarmine
responds in turn by also distinguishing the “soul” of the Church from the “body,”
but, in response to the Reform, he emphasizes the necessity of membership in the
visible Church for unity with the invisible communion of the elect. Consequently
the visible indications of ecclesial unity become normative for determining the
identity of the Church as a visible body. De Controversiis, chap. II (“De definitione
Ecclesiae”): “Our definition underscores that the Church is one, not twofold, and
this unique and true Church is the community of men assembled by the profession
of the Christian faith, the communion in the sacraments under the governance of

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the nature of the Church in a one-sidedly juridical and statist way, making
instruments of Church unity such as papal jurisdiction, episcopal office,
public recitation of the Creed and the reception of the sacraments, and the
applications of canon laws into the formal constituents of ecclesial unity.
This is to displace emphasis away from the mystery of ecclesial life considered in itself toward the divinely established means or instruments of that
life.22 However necessary these instruments are as means of communion,
they should not be seen as the formal essence of the life of the Church as
such, or as the inner ontological ground of Church unity.
Idea two: This more decidedly juridical and exterior, authoritycentered paradigm is typically challenged in the twentieth century by a
renewed emphasis on the inner mystery of communion; legitimate accent
is placed on the grace of Christ and the theological virtues of faith, hope,
and love as the shared center or intrinsic form of the Church.23 The
legitimate pastors, principally the unique Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff. By this
definition one can easily see who belongs to the Church and who does not.This
definition, in effect, implies three things: the profession of the true faith, communion in the sacraments, and subjection to the legitimate pastor who is the Roman
Pontiff. . . .The Church is, in effect, a community of men as visible and palpable as
the community of the Roman populace, or the kingdom of France, or the republic of Venice.” [Translation mine.] In reaction to the legacy of both Luther and
Bellarmine, Congar and de Lubac sought to evict the “soul/body” distinction from
usage in Catholic ecclesiology so as to emphasize the unity of the visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal.
22 Congar, L’Église: de saint Augustin à l’époque moderne, 381–84:“This type of theology is a product of Scholasticism . . . particularly adapted to develop a consideration of the Church as a society, . . . a Catholic and Roman system, that is dynamic
and conquering toward what is on the outside, but closed in on itself, in a state of
siege mentality. . . .The ecclesiology which communicates and justifies this system
is that of a society organized as a State, having at the summit of the pyramid the
Pope assisted by the Roman congregations, made up of cardinals and offices.The
idea that monarchy is the best form of government is found with almost all such
authors. . . .The Church is seen and defined not as an organism animated by the
Holy Spirit but as a society or rather as an organization where Christ intervenes at
the origins, as founder, and the Holy Spirit guarantees its authority. . . . It seems
that, having given once and for all to the institution its supra-terrestrial quality, they
need no longer intervene. . . .The term ‘Church’ itself often (and more as time goes
on) has the real meaning not congregatio fidelium—the human beings who are disciples of Christ—but either the juridical person or the institution as a collection of
means of salvation and rules of conduct. . . .The eschatological dimension or sense
is lacking in this ecclesiology, which never accommodates the tension and distance
between the sacramentum and the res, between the visible institution and the final
term, which will depend upon a new intervention of the Lord.”
23 De La Soujeole, Le sacrement de la communion, 59:“The research of contemporary
ecclesiology is strongly marked by the concern to bring balance to the

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Church lives by her created grace received from Christ, and especially by
the truth of divine revelation and the mystery of divine love in which she
participates.This shared life is what binds the mystical body of the Church
together in supernatural unity, and orders it toward a final end that is
distinctly divine. Such a viewpoint is the central theme in Congar’s early
work Chrétiens désunis.24 De Lubac gives impetus to such views with his
emphasis on the Eucharistic communion as the heart of the Church, for
“the Eucharist makes the Church.”25 This mystery is most densely realized
in the liturgy of Eucharistic worship and communion.The ecclesial mediations or instruments of communion, such as the sacraments and the hierarchy of the ordained, are ordered to the service of this more fundamental
communion of all the faithful.26 This communion is first and foremost
Bellarminian current of thought.This intention is explicit in most authors. It has
to do, above all, with a reintroduction of the study of the final end of the economy of grace in the wake of an epoch in which, in response to Protestant dissidence, accent was placed above all on how this economy functions.Whether one
speaks of the ‘soul of the Church,’ ‘Mystical Body,’ ‘organism,’ ‘life,’ or ‘communion,’ this always has to do with expressing ecclesiologically the effect of the grace
received—which is the participation in divine life, union by grace with God and
with one’s brethren.”
24 Yves Congar, O.P., Chrétiens désunis, Unam Sanctam (Paris: Cerf, 1937); see for
instance 108–9: “[T]he unity of the Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic is
that of a very unique reality composed of human beings who are united by a
supernatural life proceeding from God and from Christ, in a form of social life
by which this same supernatural life is itself procured and motivated. In its
earthly existence, the Church is like a great sacrament where everything both
signifies sensibly and procures an interior unity of grace. There are not two
Churches . . . but one unique Church that is the Body of Jesus Christ, and is
simultaneously both heavenly and human, substantially divine but in human
beings and by the means of a human form of life, composed both of rights and
of love, society and community of life, at the same time and without separation,
Societas fidei et Spiritus Sancti in cordibus, et Societas externarum rerum ac ritum: a reality both incarnate and pneumatic. Of her it is equally true to say: Ubi Christus,
ibi Ecclesia, because where there is the communication of the Spirit of Christ, the
Church exists, and Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia, because the interior community of life
is realized by human means, and an apostolic ministry which finds in Peter its
visible criteria of unity.”
25 Cf. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Corpus Mysticum: L’Eucharistie et l’Église au moyen âge
(Paris: Aubier, 1944), trans. Gemma Simmonds with Richard Price and Christopher Stephens as Corpus Mysticum:The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), where the phrase is
found on p. 88.
26 Yves Congar, O.P., Vrai et fausse réforme dans l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1950), 92–103.
P. 96:“These means which build up and structure the Church are the deposit of
faith . . . , the sacraments of the faith instituted by Jesus Christ as means for us to

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based upon the supernatural truth about who God is, and upon love of
charity, which is love of God and of neighbor, in Christ, and in communion in the Holy Spirit.27
Idea three, however, can be seen to emerge as this focus on interior
communion in love is simultaneously juxtaposed with a vision of juridical authority as “merely extrinsic” or external to the life of the Church,
and as not touching directly upon the communion in grace as such.We
find a viewpoint, for instance, in Congar’s Vrai et fausse réforme dans
l’Église.There he distinguishes between the “structures” of the Church as
such (which include Church offices and juridical political organization)
and the “life” of the Church: her inner communion.28 The life will
perdure eschatologically but the structures will cease. Although they can
contribute to the life of the Church, the structures are not themselves
intrinsically part of the vitality of grace in the living members.
It is important and illuminating to introduce a distinction between two
aspects of the Church: the institutional aspect and that of the community . . . (Congregatio fidelium ). . . . The Church exists ‘prior’ to the
community of the faithful in two ways, as a mystery [in Christ himself
and his grace] and as an institution, and in this respect has something
real and complete in itself. On the one hand: predestination, divinehuman union, the inclusion of human beings into the life of Christ; on
the other hand: the deposit of faith, and the sacraments, the apostolic
powers . . . what could be more real than all these? And yet, all of this
has still to be effectuated and to effectuate itself in having its fruitfulness in the community of the faithful. In the end, everything is accomplished in this community which, when realized, is the true temple, the
true spouse, the integral body Christ. In comparison with this reality of
the work of God bearing fruit in human beings, all the rest [doctrines,
sacraments, hierarchy] is nothing but a sacrament, in the patristic sense
of the word, as underscored so felicitously by Fr. de Lubac in his Corpus
mysticum. Eschatologically, when all will be effectuated—predestination
and man’s espousal to God, faith and the sacraments—then there will
be nothing but the Church as a communion.29

What is important to note in respect to our inquiry here is that the
perspective Congar adopts (and in which he is followed by many)
presupposes the uniquely economic or interim character of the sacramenbe united to him in his passage toward his Father, and finally the ministries or
apostolic powers.”
27 See the similar views of the Church inVatican II, Lumen Gentium, §§7–8.
28 Congar, Vrai et fausse réforme dans l’Église, 8–10.
29 Congar, Vrai et fausse réforme dans l’Église, 94, 97.

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tal and juridical mysteries of the Church’s life.This viewpoint entails two
problems. First, it does not envisage sufficiently that the visible communion in the means of salvation might be itself the very common good of
the communion of the faithful. Not only are the means of communion
(such as the Eucharist, or the application of the power of the keys in
confession) and the personal good of communion in grace inseparable.
They are also in some real way identical. For the good of living in
community in grace, joined by these means, is itself the concrete external and internal good of Christian persons in grace.
Second, the eschatological teleology of the sacraments is not sufficiently underscored in this way. For it is true that the invisible grace that
these structures communicate to us, or for which they are the occasion
of our reception, will perdure even after they cease. However, in a sense,
just the inverse is true as well: invisible grace moves us toward the sacraments not as mere historically contingent means, but also as precursors to
a more profound eschatological form of dependence upon mediation: the
mediation of the sacred humanity of Christ, which will perdure eternally.
The sacraments are imperfect instrumental applications ‘already’ of what
we will experience more perfectly for eternity: dependence upon the
mediating grace of Jesus Christ as man. In this sense, the visible and
juridical form of grace in this world is in essence Christological and
eschatological in nature, and far from being a merely external or passing
instrumental aid, it is indicative of something that is beginning and yet is
still to come to a complete realization.30
We can observe a certain concentration of the problem under consideration if we turn to the treatment of the sacrament of penance as it is
understood in the theology of Karl Rahner. Rahner’s studies of the sacrament of penance are many, and there was some degree of development
of his thought on the subject through the course of his career.31
30 This idea is developed helpfully by de La Soujeole, Le sacrement de la communion,

248–57.
31 See in particular “Forgotten Truths concerning the Sacrament of Penance,” and

“Remarks on the Theology of Indulgences,” in Theological Investigations II, trans.
Karl H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963), 135–202; The Church
and the Sacraments, trans.W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963); the
entire volume of Theological Investigations XV: Penance in the Early Church, trans.
Lionel Swain (New York: Crossroad, 1982), originally published in German in
1973, and which is a series of historical studies; Foundations of Christian Faith,
trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), originally published in
German in 1976, and “The Status of the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” trans.
Joseph Donceel, S.J., in Theological Investigations XXIII (New York: Crossroad,
1994), originally published in German in 1984.

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However, in the main positions that emerge both in his works immediately prior to Vatican II, and as they were developed in the post-conciliar period, we can identify some consistent features.
First, we find in Rahner’s more general theology a consistent acceptance of the “inverted Bellarminian” tendencies of Congar (with an
emphasis upon the essentially spiritual inner reality of the Church in
view of which sacraments and juridical life are seen as pure means).32
This perspective is intensified by Rahner’s emblematic use of the distinction between “transcendental” graces that are offered to all human beings
invisibly as acting historical subjects, and the “categorical” manifestations
of these graces in the visible Church, as well as in the sacraments.33 The
32 See, for example, Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 366; 389, 400–401, 411ff.

P. 366:“The Catholic understanding of faith and of the church in no ways denies
that within Evangelical [Lutheran/Protestant] Christianity there is grace and
justification and the Holy Spirit, and hence there exists that reality as the event
and power of God’s grace for which everything institutional, all words and sacraments,
everything juridical and organizational, and all the techniques of administration are only
the preparation and the historical manifestation, and except for this they are nothing.”
[Emphasis added.] Tellingly, Rahner has recourse in his ecclesiology to the same
division of body and soul duality which both Luther and Bellarmine employed
(in contending with each other) and which Congar sought (perhaps not entirely
successfully) to transcend: P. 389: “Obviously a Christian is a Christian in the
innermost depths of his divinized essence. Nor would he ever be or ever become
a Christian if he were not to live from out of the innermost center of his essence
as divinized by grace. But the very thing which he is in his innermost depths and
in the origins of his most individual existence, and is by the grace of God whose
domain he cannot leave, this very thing comes from the concrete history of
salvation to meet him in the concrete as his very own: it comes in the profession
of faith of Christians, in the cult of Christians, in the community life of Christians, in a word, it comes in the church. An absolutely individual Christianity in
the most personal experience of grace and ecclesial Chrisitanity are no more
radically opposed than are the body and soul, than are man’s transcendental
essence and his historical constitution.” The point, however, is not whether the
common good of the Church and the good of the individual Christian are not
opposed, but whether they are in many respects identical.
33 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 411–12:“[T]he official history of salvation
is nothing else but the process in which there becomes explicit and historically
tangible the history of salvation and grace which pervades all of man’s dimensions and extends throughout the whole of his history. The history of salvation
and grace has its roots in the essence of man which has been divinized by God’s
self-communication.We are not people who have nothing to do with God, who
do not receive grace and in whom the event of God’s self-communication does
not take place until we receive the sacraments.Wherever a person accepts his life
and opens himself to God’s incomprehensibility and lets himself fall into it, and
hence wherever he appropriates his supernatural transcendentality in interpersonal communication, in love, in fidelity, and in a task which opens him even to

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sacraments are efficacious signs of what is always, already happening by
grace in the transcendental domain to all persons.34
Second, Rahner’s theology follows the influential work of the twentieth-century Spanish Carmelite Bartomeu Xiberta (1897–1967) in arguing
that the res et sacramentum (the formal essence) of the sacrament of penance
is reconciliation with the Church, and that this event terminates (res
tantum) in reconciliation with God.35 The traditional scholastic position,
meanwhile, considers the res et sacramentum of the sacrament the grace of
true contrition and the res tantum the grace of the forgiveness of sins, the
latter implying inward restoration of charity and incorporation into the
Church.36 Rahner adopts Xiberta’s idea of the res et sacramentum of the
sacrament of penance as the act of reconciliation with the Church. Nevertheless, he alters the relation between this element of the sacrament and the
reconciliation of the penitent with God. For Xiberta they are causal: reconciliation with the Church leads to reconciliation with God. For Rahner, by
contrast, reconciliation with the Church is a kind of culmination (seemingly non-essential for salvation?) of a mystery of reconciliation with God
that has already been in process.37 This view becomes more specific in his
the inner-worldly future of man and the human race, there is taking place the
history of . . . salvation. . . . What we call church and what we call the explicit
and official history of salvation, and hence also what we call the sacraments, are
only especially prominent, historically manifest and clearly tangible events in a
history of salvation which is identical with the life of man as a whole.”
34 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 412. See likewise, The Church and the Sacraments, 24–34, an earlier text where Rahner is developing his mature position.
35 See Bartomeu M. Xiberta, Clavis Ecclesiae: De ordine absolutionis sacramentalis ad
reconciliationem cum Ecclesia (Rome: Pontifica Università Gregoriana, 1922). On
Xiberta’s thesis and its influence in twentieth-century Catholic theology, see the
instructive analysis of Szabó Sándor Bertalan, O.P., La réconciliation sacramentelle et ses
enjeux ecclésiologiques (Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2010).
36 Xiberta wished to defend the centrality of the juridical and ecclesial act of
forgiveness against “modernist” critiques of his epoch. Nevertheless, his theory is
arguably too determined by a juridical perspective in that it does not account
sufficiently for the inward work of charity in the penitent as a constituent
element of the mystery of reconciliation (res et sacramentum ), and the way this
inward work is caused principally by God (not the Church) and through the instrumental mediation of the minister, and results in the communion with the
Church. I return to this subject below.
37 In 1963, in The Church and the Sacraments, 93–95, Rahner is still quite close to
Xiberta’s position and advocates for it. However, by 1976, in Foundations of Christian Faith, he has developed his own view. P. 429: “Opus operantis [the graced
forgiveness of the human subject] and opus operatum [the celebration of the sacrament as an occasion of grace] . . . are not distinguished as an act of God upon man
in grace and a merely human act. Rather they are distinguished as the official and

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later writings: it is because one is already reconciled with God that he or she
seeks reconciliation with the Church. The reconciliation of penance is in
effect a kind of “categorical” sign, or visible manifestation of an invisible
grace that is already always being received in a “transcendental fashion.”38
Therefore the sign of confession consoles the penitent who may naturally
stand in need of a visible manifestation of what is already being given by
God in the transcendental structure of grace (as a kind of consolation or
anthropological exigency).39 In other words, the juridical and sacramental
explicit history of man’s salvation becoming manifest in an ecclesial way in the
sacraments, and a merely existentiell salvific act of man in God’s grace. Just as we
distinguished earlier between an anonymous and universal history of salvation
which is coexistent with the history of man’s spirit, and the official and explicit
history of man’s salvation, the same thing is true in an analogous way of the relationship between the opus operatum and opus operantis. Both belong to the salvation history of God and his grace and to the history of man’s salvation.They are
distinguished in the same way as elsewhere in human history explicit and social
acts which are also juridically present in the social sphere are distinguished from
acts which take place in the realm of one’s own personal and intimate self.”
38 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 421–23:“God’s word of forgiveness is not
only the consequence, but is also and ultimately the presupposition of the
conversion in which a guilty person turns to God and surrenders himself in faith,
trust and contrition, and it can be heard in the depths of conscience. . . .
Throughout the length and breadth of the history of the human race this quiet
word of forgiveness often has to be enough by itself. But what usually occurs in
such a hidden and inarticulated way in the history of human conscience, namely,
the grace of God which offers everyone salvation and forgiveness, has its own
history in time and space. . . . The word of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ, in
whom the unconditional nature of this word has also become historically irrevocable, remains present in the community of those who believe in this forgiveness, in the church. The church is the basic sacrament of this word of God’s
forgiveness. . . . Insofar as this efficacious word . . . is addressed precisely to an
already baptized member of the church upon his confession of sin, it has a definite characteristic: by his serious or ‘small’ sins the baptized Christian as a
member of the church has also placed himself in contradiction to the essence of
the holy community to which he belongs . . . whose existence and life is
supposed to be a sign of the fact that God’s grace as love for God and man is
victorious in the world. Hence by its word of forgiveness the church also forgives
the injustice which a person’s sin does to the church. . . . Indeed we may say that
by the word of God’s forgiveness which is entrusted to it the church forgives sin
by forgiving a person the injustice done to itself.”
39 Rahner, “The Status of the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” 213–15: “First, for
many centuries Christians have had the impression that their sins were more
certainly and clearly forgiven when they submitted them to the sacramental judgment of the church and heard God’s forgiving word expressly from the mouth of
the Church. If we are honest and use sober theological reflection, this conviction
is not so obvious, for it is obviously true that, apart from grave sins, such sins can

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element of the Church seems to ratify or render official what is already
happening invisibly in the person in question, but this ratification is seemingly extrinsic and symbolic, rather than causal. Despite their differences,
one can observe here a proximity of Rahner’s thought to that of Luther.
The German Jesuit’s viewpoint no doubt has ecumenical overtones.
However, by the character of its formulation it clearly risks divorcing the
inwardly spiritual and mystical dimensions of reconciliation from the
external ecclesial rite, the latter being considered as something outward and
juridical, even if emotionally helpful and natural. The sacrament is the
occasion (or event) that confirms or signifies the inward existence of
forgiveness through faith, but it is not the instrumental cause of the grace
of inward contrition and the forgiveness of sins.
What has become commonplace in the Church today de facto is a view
or a practical attitude that the reconciliation of the penitent is above all
invisible (that is, gnostic and non-sacramental) and that the juridical and
sacramental dimension of reconciliation is a kind of optional rite meant
primarily to fulfill a subjective need of (some) penitents for psychological
also be forgiven by God if we are truly sorry for them and refrain from them.
Without such an inner disposition, which basically already brings about the
forgiveness of such sins, the sacrament of reconciliation too would not have any
effect. For those who admit their imperfections and sins without at the same time
being sincerely sorry and resolved to avoid them, sacramental confession is
perfectly meaningless and useless. It was obvious to Saint Thomas Aquinas that
whoever receives the sacrament of reconciliation must normally come to it in a
state of mind that by itself, before reception of the sacrament, already brings about
the forgiveness of sins for which one is truly sorry. From this point of view it is
not so obvious why ordinary Christians feel that they may have more confidence
in the remission of their sins when they receive sacramental absolution. . . . [W]e
should not consider the inner process and its outer sacramental embodiment to
be two processes lying next to each other without any connection. . . .The sacramental sign must be the ecclesial incarnation of that which happens in the innermost center of a person’s existence. . . . In other words, the sacramental
embodiment of contrition and forgiveness between God and humanity serves not
only to express the fact of forgiveness in a human incarnational way, it also has
the purpose of arousing that inner attitude of which it is a sign and an expression.
This is the remarkable thing in human beings that the body shapes the soul and
the soul shapes the body.The inner and outer life are intimately connected, hence
that mutual relation between that which in our body expresses our feelings and
that which induces them.” Notice that Rahner here has based the fittingness of
confession uniquely upon natural anthropological reasons, without recourse to
any notion of sacramental causality. He is advocating a move away from a position like that of Cajetan and toward a view closer to that of Luther while at the
same time invoking the teaching of Aquinas. However, as we will see below, his
interpretation of Aquinas on this point is not sustainable.

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comfort.40 The Eucharist is considered central to the identity of the
Church, but communion in the Eucharist has been so misappropriated by
the subjective sincerities of an uncatechized populace that there is little
awareness that the juridical exercise of sacramental forgiveness is essential
to procure fruitful communion in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and that
sacramental forgiveness is part of the normal structure of the sacramental
organism as instituted by Christ and intended by God.41 Likewise, there is
a diminished awareness that authentic supernatural communion in the
body of Christ is necessarily conditioned by a right juridical intention of
submission to and acceptance of the teachings of sacred truth elaborated by
the Church in order for the grace of the sacrament to be effective.
Coming back to the focus of this essay, then, the key question is: to
what extent is the mystery of Christ’s delegation of juridical power, and
especially this most important instance of the juridical power of the keys,
intrinsic to the very mystery of the life of grace by which the Church
lives? Is the priest’s juridical denomination of a penitent as one unbound
or loosed by the sacrament of penance—or as one bound by sin who
cannot be absolved—directly related to the mystical life of the Church in
charity? And if so how?
40 Rahner, “The Status of the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” 217–18: “There have

been and there still are, of course, pastors who see in the greatest possible number
of absolutions on Saturdays a triumph for their pastoral activity. . . . Such practices that make no real sense for the life of the soul should be dropped. Ultimately the number of times we receive a sacrament does not matter.”
41 Problematic forms of sincerity do not afflict laypersons only. Consider the
following from Rahner (“The Status of the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” 210):
“The purely numerical decrease in the number of confessions does not allow us
to conclude with certitude that today’s Catholics transgress an important divine
command. This might be said only if, on the one hand, people rarely went to
confession and, on the other hand, if really subjectively grave sins occurred not
rarely, but frequently. But since the latter statement cannot be made with
certainty, and since we may certainly hope that such sins which render human
beings worthy of eternal damnation do not, at least in a normal Christian life,
occur frequently, or even at all, we may not, from the lower frequency of confessions, conclude with certainty that Catholics do not in fact comply with an obligation to confess that is objectively binding for them. True, there are also
Catholics who infringe such an obligation, while committing really serious sins,
sins that are both objectively and subjectively grave.When a mother, who might
very well have another child, who economically and personally would be quite
capable of it, who is not living in cramped external conditions, but who merely
out of laziness or for other shabby reasons, accepts an abortion, there is a real
possibility that we are dealing not only with an objectively but also with a
subjectively serious transgression of the fifth commandment.”

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Thomistic Sacramentology and the Power of the Keys
In considering Aquinas’s views on the sacrament of penance, it is important first to underscore a characteristic difference in his theology of the
grace of the sacraments as it differs from the later understanding of Karl
Rahner. For Aquinas, the grace of the sacraments has a distinctly Christological and indeed cruciform shape, since all grace is stamped with the
form of Christ’s Passion, whence it flows.42 Furthermore, all grace flowing from the Passion is ordered to the sacraments and, through the sacraments, toward the visible ecclesial communion of the Church (a point to
which I will return below).Therefore, in contrast to Rahner’s view, sacramental grace for Aquinas is not simply the visible manifestation of what is
always, already happening invisibly outside the Church. Nor does extrasacramental grace drive us toward the sacraments simply because of a
general human need for categorical mediation. Rather, such grace
“outside the Church” is only a diminished form and anticipation of what
comes to full reality uniquely in the sacraments of the Church. Quite in
opposition, then, to Rahner’s view, sacraments cannot appear as visual aids
to what we already possess, but they are instruments that incorporate us
into a higher form of life with God than that which we previously possessed when
we were not yet incorporated into the fullness of sacramental life.43
A second general comment about Aquinas’s views is necessary, by
which we might qualify the views of Congar that were discussed above.
Like Congar, St.Thomas certainly holds that the sacraments are the means
of grace that produce an inward spiritual communion and that they give
way eventually to the eschatological life of the kingdom of God. He also
makes clear, however, that these same sacraments are part of the inherent
common good of social communion into which the invisible workings
of grace invite us, and by which those same workings are inwardly main-

42 ST III, q. 62, a. 5: “Now the principal efficient cause of grace is God himself, in

comparison with whom Christ’s humanity is as a united instrument, whereas the
sacrament is as a separate instrument. Consequently, the saving power must needs
be derived by the sacraments from Christ’s Godhead through his humanity. . . .
Christ delivered us from our sins principally through his passion. . . .Wherefore
it is manifest that the sacraments of the Church derive their power specially from
Christ’s passion, the virtue of which is in a manner united to us by our receiving the sacraments.” Aquinas mentions the exemplary character of the passion in
the order of grace received from the Cross in ad 1, such that the grace of the
sacraments conforms us to the Paschal mystery of the Lord.
43 I am grateful for discussions with Dr. Bruce D. Marshall through which some of
the ideas in this paragraph were formulated.

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tained.44 Nor does this corporate body cease to be eschatologically.45
When these sacramental means cease to exist, they do so in order to give
way not to a non-sacramental, invisible reality, but to a superior communal life that is itself also visible and invisible. This is the life of the Resurrection, in which we will live in everlasting dependency upon the
“sacramental” mediation of Christ himself : the human mediation of the
Savior as High Priest. His humanity will remain the everlasting instrument and sign of the communication of divine life, such that we will be
dependent upon Jesus as both God and human for eternity.46 Already in
the life of the Church in this world, then, sacramental communion is part
of the very form of the saving life of grace, since we are saved in an ecclesial body that is inseparably visible and invisible.
With this background in mind, let us turn then to what Aquinas says
about the ecclesial dimension of the sacrament of confession, in particular, as it regards the incorporation of the faithful into the saving communion of the Church, a Christological communion with both God and
man. Here I would like to underscore four points that are central to
Aquinas’s theology of the sacrament of penance as it is expressed in the
Summa theologiae —in fact, in the treatise he was writing at the very end
of his life.
The first point concerns the intrinsic efficacy of the sacrament of
penance and the unique grace that it alone communicates. As mentioned
44 Gilles Emery, O.P., states it thus:“There is not on the one side an ecclesial effect

of the sacrament [of the Eucharist,] and on the other side a personal and individual effect. It is clearly the same reality of grace, incorporation into Christ given
to the person, which is both the food of spiritual rebuilding and at the same time,
by its very nature, the building up of the Church, whose unity is strengthened
and achieved through charity.” Emery goes on to cite from Cajetan’s commentary on ST III, q. 73, a. 1:“When we hear that the fruit (res tantum ) of the sacrament [of the Eucharist] is grace, and that what is to be received is the unity of
the Church or the Mystical Body of Christ, we do not understand by that that
there are two diverse realities since all that is nothing else but God’s grace in his
faithful.” See “Reconciliation with the Church and Interior Penance: The
Contribution of Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Res et Sacramentum of
Penance,” in Trinity, Church and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL:
Sapientia Press, 2007), 173–92, here 181–82. I am gratefully indebted to Emery
for many of the textual citations from Aquinas that follow, as well as some of the
analysis of Aquinas’s views on the sacrament of penance.
45 ST III, q. 79, a. 2, c. and ad 1.
46 ST III, q. 22, a. 5, c. and ad 1. Ad 1: “The saints who will be in heaven will not
need any further expiation by the priesthood of Christ, but having expiated, they
will need consummation through Christ himself, on whom their glory depends,
as is written (Apoc. 21:23):‘the glory of God has enlightened it,’—that is the city
of the saints—‘and the Lamb is the lamp thereof.’ ”

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above, the grace communicated in sacramental penance has, according to
Aquinas, an intrinsically sacramental and ecclesial shape.We can understand
this clearly if we consider his treatment of absolution as the cause of a
unique grace. St.Thomas takes the form of the sacrament to be the words
of absolution, while the matter is the sin confessed by the penitent.47
Accordingly, the form of the sacrament does not act upon the matter in a
way that is simply extrinsic to the grace that is communicated in the sacrament (like a minister recalling to mind in one who has faith the transcendental act of pardon that is already, always given). Rather, the minister
who absolves acts as an instrument of the grace of Christ in a way that is
intrinsic to the very working of the grace of the sacrament.48 The distinct
grace communicated by this sacrament is one of inner conversion in the
penitent through true contrition (the restoration to a state of charity), and
the forgiveness of sins by God, particularly mortal sins.49
Does God not work outside of the sacraments, however? Can God not
communicate the graces of contrition and charity to people who are
deprived of the use of the sacrament of penance? A second point to consider
is St.Thomas’s teaching concerning the trajectory of inward graces in relation to sacramental mysteries, and the way the truth of this teaching
touches upon the inseparability of grace from penance and the Eucharistic
communion of the Church. Here we should begin by noting that, according to St.Thomas, faith, hope, and love in historical human beings tend as
graces toward a sacramental encounter with Christ.50 To state things thus does
47 ST III, q. 84, aa. 2–3.
48 ST III, q. 82, a. 3, ad 3: “God alones absolves from sin and forgives sins authori-

tatively; yet priests do both ministerially, because the words of the priest in this
sacrament work as instruments of the divine power, as in the other sacraments:
because it is the divine power that works inwardly in all sacramental signs, be
they things or words. Wherefore our Lord expressed both: for he said to Peter
(Matt. 16:19): ‘whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, etc.’ and to his disciples
( John 20:23):‘whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.’Yet the priest
says, ‘I absolve thee,’ rather than ‘I forgive thee thy sins,’ because it is more in
keeping with the words of our Lord, by expressing the power of the keys
whereby priests absolve.”
49 ST III, q. 82, a. 5:“[I]t is necessary for the sinner’s salvation that sin be taken away
from him; which cannot be done without the sacrament of penance, wherein the
power of Christ’s passion operates through the priest’s absolution and the acts of
the penitent, who co-operates with grace unto the destruction of his sin. . . .
Therefore it is evident that after sin the sacrament of penance is necessary for
salvation, even as bodily medicine after man has contracted a dangerous disease.”
50 Aquinas envisages a sacramental dynamic working from within human history
by means of grace.There are three ‘levels’ to such sacraments, however: those of
the natural law, which were instituted by man under the movement of inner

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not mean that graces cannot be given outside of the sacraments, as they
most certainly are.51 Rather, all graces of Christ whatsoever (including all
invisible graces or those that are manifest outside the visible ecclesial economy) are intrinsically ordered toward communion in the one true mystical body of Christ.52 This communion is embodied concretely not only in
Christ himself crucified and resurrected, but also, Aquinas says, in the
Eucharistic communion of the Catholic Church. All those who will be
saved, by invisible grace and by whatever visible means throughout history,
will eventually come to rest in heaven in that same communion of grace
that is present concretely, corporeally in the Eucharistic body of Christ as
it is received by the Catholic faithful.53 The only saving communion in
truth, grace, and charity is that found in the Catholic Church.
grace, those of the Mosaic law, instituted by God as signs of the grace of Christ
that was to come, and those of the New Covenant, which are instituted by God
as both signs and causes of grace. On the sacraments of the natural law, see for
instance: In IV Sent. d. 1, q. 2, a. 6, sol. 3:“Illa sacramenta legis naturae non erant
ex praecepto divino obligantia, sed ex voto celebrabantur, secundum quod
unicuique dictabat sua mens, ut fidem suam aliis exteriori signo profiteretur ad
honorem Dei, secundum quod habitus caritatis inclinabat ad exteriores actus; et
sic dicimus de caritate, quod sufficit motus interior; quando autem tempus habet
operandi, requiruntur etiam exteriores actus.” See likewise, ST I–II, q. 103, a. 1,
c. and ad 1–4; aa. 2 and 3; III, q. 61, a. 3, c. and ad 1–2; q. 62, aa. 1, 3, 4, and 6.
51 Cf. ST II–II, q. 2, aa. 6, 7 c. and ad 3, a. 8, c. and ad 1.
52 It is significant that in ST II–II, q. 2, a. 7 Aquinas argues that invisible graces in
gentile peoples before the coming of Christ were inherently ordered by faith
toward the reality of the Incarnation and that this was expressed imperfectly in
the ritual practices of sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins (“sacraments of the
natural law”). See likewise, ST III, q. 61, a. 3, ad 2.
53 ST III, q. 73, a. 3: “[T]he reality (res tantum ) of the sacrament [of the Eucharist]
is the unity of the mystical body, without which there can be no salvation; for
there is no entering into salvation outside the Church, just as in the time of the
deluge there was none outside the Ark, which denotes the Church, according to
1 Pet. 3:20–21. And it has been said above (q. 68, a. 2), that before receiving a
sacrament, the reality of the sacrament (res tantum ) can be had through the very
desire of receiving the sacrament. Accordingly, before actual reception of this
sacrament, a man can obtain salvation through the desire of receiving it, just as
he can before Baptism through the desire of Baptism.” It seems to follow unambiguously from what Aquinas is saying here that all who are saved outside of the
sacraments not only tend by grace toward the sacramental and eucharistic
communion of the Church but also desire that communion, at least implicitly.
The ecclesiological dimensions of Aquinas’s Eucharistic theology are studied
very helpfully by Gilles Emery, “The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist in St.
Thomas Aquinas,” in Trinity, Church and the Human Person, 155–72. See also the
informative study of Aquinas on this issue in J. M. R. Tillard, O.P., L’Eucharistie
Pâque de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1964).

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This centrality of the Eucharist does not diminish the importance of the
sacraments of baptism and penance, however—quite the contrary. Because
all communion is ultimately centered in Christ, so all communion is
Eucharistic. But since the Eucharist is the summit of a sevenfold order of
sacraments, so also the grace that tends toward this communion of the
faithful also tends toward the seven sacraments in their organic and inseparable unity.54 Not only are the unbaptized who receive grace mysteriously
drawn toward baptism (typically, at least), and through baptism toward the
Eucharist, but also those who sin after baptism are drawn by the very structure of the inward graces themselves of faith, hope, and love toward the sacrament
of penance in view of restoration to authentic communion.55
One place Aquinas makes this most clear is in his consideration of
Catholics who die without the physical possibility of sacramental
penance; the person who dies, for instance, caught in a snow storm in the
Alps, separated from any priest.According to Aquinas, such a person, if he
is conscious of serious sin, can be forgiven by asking God for forgiveness
if he is moved inwardly by grace to an act of true contrition and he does
not place any obstacle to this grace.56 But part of this act of knowing
contrition in a Catholic penitent, Aquinas specifies, implies the desire
were it possible to confess to a priestly minister of Christ.57 The desire itself is
intrinsically ordered to the appeal to the power of the keys, to the juridical and sacramental power to absolve of the Catholic Church.

54 Cf. ST III, q. 65, a. 3, and q. 63, a. 6; q. 65, aa. 1–2.
55 ST III, q. 84, a. 5, ad 2: “As soon as a man falls into sin, charity, faith and mercy

do not deliver him from sin, without [the sacrament of] penance. Because charity demands that a man should grieve for the offence committed against his
friend, and that he should be anxious to make satisfaction to his friend; faith
requires that he should seek to be justified from his sins through the power of
Christ’s passion which operates in the sacraments of the Church; and wellordered pity necessitates that man should succor himself by repenting of the pitiful condition into which sin has brought him.” Aquinas envisages an implicit
desire for the sacrament of penance among graced gentiles under the natural law,
as well as in the Old Covenant. See ST III, q. 84, a. 7, ad 2. On the implicit desire
for baptism present in all who receive grace, see III, q. 68, aa. 1, c. and 2, ad 3.
56 In IV Sent., d. 17, a. 3, qla. 2, ad 1. See also ST III, q. 86, a. 6, ad 3, and the analysis of Emery, “Reconciliation with the Church and Interior Penance,” 187.
57 Cf. Quodlibet IV, q. 7, a. 1; ScG IV, c. 72, para. 13: “And thus the keys of the
Church have effectiveness in one before he actually submits himself to them,
provided that he has the purpose of submitting himself to them; nevertheless, he
achieves fuller grace and forgiveness when he actually submits himself to the keys
by confession and receiving absolution” (trans. Charles J. O’Neil, Summa contra
Gentiles IV [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975]).

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Given the ecclesial-teleological character of all participation in grace
and the sacraments, we can underscore a third point concerning right
intention in the penitent in the act of sacramental penance, as it relates to
the juridical power of the keys.The sacrament of penance is first and foremost an act not of exterior juridical declaration but of inward conversion
in grace. Aquinas specifies that the grace of the sacrament of penance
consists formally (res et sacramentum) in contrition for sins, an inward
change of heart in the penitent.The sacrament is also teleologically ordered
(res tantum) toward the forgiveness of sins.58 By this same measure, the final
end of the sacrament is the restoration of the penitent into full participation in the communion of the Church, by means of the Eucharist. The
sacrament of penance leads the penitent into the communion of the charity of Christ.
If this is the case, however, then the penitent’s reception of the sacrament is also necessarily qualified by an authentic intention toward true
ecclesial unity, implying an inward acceptance of the juridical authority
of the bishops and the bishop of Rome as a supernatural mystery. The
juridical character of the sacrament must enter into the penitent’s intention in two ways. First, the reception of absolution presupposes a prior
faith on the part of the penitent in the power of the minister to absolve
by virtue of his juridical delegation. Therefore the intention to receive
absolution from a juridically delegated minister of the power of the keys
is a sine qua non condition for the right reception of the grace of the
sacrament. Second, participation in the sacraments (and even grace stemming from the desire of the sacraments prior to their reception) requires
that one is rightly ordered in intention by a desire for communion in the
unity of the Church. But this unity is itself instantiated both socially and
mystically on earth by virtue of the juridical authority of the episcopacy
in communion with the bishop of Rome.59 Therefore, it follows that a
Catholic Christian’s acceptance or rejection of the juridical character of
the communion of the Church affects the fruitfulness of all the sacraments,
including both penance and the reception of the Eucharist. Desire for
forgiveness from God and reconciliation with the Church entails the
desire to enter into the communion of the Church that is maintained in
and through the nexus of the juridical power delegated by Christ to the
Apostles and their successors, the bishops.This is why schismatic confessions cannot be presumed to be valid.60 It is also why those who dissent
58 ST III, q. 84, a. 1, ad 3.
59 ST II–II, q. 1, a. 10, c.; III, q. 84, a. 7, c.
60 In IV Sent., d. 17, q. 3, a. 3, qla. 5; d. 19, q. 1, a. 2, qla. 3; Contra Impugnantes Relig.,

c. 4.

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from the Church’s teaching culpably (by affected ignorance) will sterilize
the graces they might have received in penance.61 Likewise, schismatic
Masses and communions may well be a source of spiritual death, rather
than spiritual life, even when the body of Christ is truly present, since the
sacrament is not necessarily consumed in view of its authentic supernatural end.62 So the final end of communion (what Charles Journet calls a
rightly “oriented” intention of communion) is also part of how the
Eucharist makes the Church.63 There must be an intention touching
upon the juridical character of the Church as a unified polity, as an invisible and visible mystery of communion with God.
The last point to consider concerns the way the priest’s application of
the power of the keys to a penitent is itself a participation in the transcendent judgment of Christ. Aquinas insists that the instrumentality of the
priest and the penitent in the act of repentance and absolution must
always be related to the transcendent instrumentality of the sacred
humanity of Jesus.64 The Church does not produce the graces of
penance, but is herself—in her inward life of communion—produced by
the graces of penance, in direct dependence upon Christ. It follows from
this, however, that the priest is called upon to act responsibly in the light
of Christ and in subordination to his juridical action.65 Here we need to
recall three dimensions of this subordination. First, as has already been
mentioned, there is the fact that the priest’s jurisdictional delegation from
a bishop in communion with Rome is not something accidental to the
validity of the sacrament of penance but something essential to the validity of the sacrament.66 This delegation works in tandem with the sacramental character of the priesthood and presupposes it but is not identical
61 ST III, q. 80, a. 4: Aquinas is speaking here of the Eucharist, but his comments

could be employed analogically as applicable to penance.
62 ST III, q. 82, a. 7: “And since the consecration of the Eucharist is an act which

follows the power of Order, such persons as are separated from the Church by
heresy, schism or excommunication [in valid orders] can indeed consecrate the
Eucharist, which on being consecrated by them contains Christ’s true body and
blood; but they act wrongly, and sin by doing so; and in consequence they do
not receive the fruit of the sacrifice [the res tantum of ecclesial communion]
which is a spiritual sacrifice.” See also III, q. 83, a. 9.
63 See Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. III, part II (St Just La Pendue:
Éditions Saint-Augustin, 2000), 1135–52. Journet offers a helpful reflection on the
validity and potential fruitfulness of Eastern Orthodox sacraments on pp. 1148–52.
64 In IV Sent., d. 18, a. 1, qla. 1; ScG IV, c. 72, para. 11.
65 Aquinas says as much explicitly in In IV Sent., d. 18, q. 1, a. 3, qla. 4. He died
before he could treat the question of the priestly judgment of the minister in the
Summa theologiae.
66 In IV Sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 2, qla. 1; d. 19, q. 1, a. 3, qla. 1; ScG IV, c. 72, para. 10.

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

with it, for one can be ordained but unable to remit sins by deficit of a
jurisdictional delegation. Second, the sacrament is not considered something of merely ecclesial rite (instituted by early bishops), nor even of
apostolic institution, but of divine institution, by Christ, and according to
his power of excellence (the power he alone had to institute the sacraments).67 Third, then, delegation to absolve communicates a power that
is genuinely supernatural and mysterious and that allows the priest to
forgive sins in the name of Christ, so that this juridical act of forgiveness
is truly an act of Jesus himself, incorporating a person into his mystical body
by grace.68 The priest then is only ever truly responsible in confession
when he acts knowingly in subordination to the intentions of Jesus
Christ, as clarified by the Church’s teaching and intentions. If the priest
does not do this well and rightly, instructing the conscience of the person
in an ecclesial way, with regard to the norms and prudence of the
Church, but also her profound mercy and compassion, then he does not
fulfill sufficiently his role as a minister of Christ. If he does, however, act
in this way to the best of his ability, he colludes instrumentally with
Christ to be at the source of renewed life in Christ for others. He is an
irreplaceable and absolutely essential touchstone of grace and mercy by
which the presence of Christ is continually brought anew into the world
today. His ministerial priesthood, in Christ, makes the Church.
What then is the enduring effect of the agency of the priest in the
sacrament of penance? Does his office not cease to function in the eschaton and is it not true that there are no sacraments in the world of the
Resurrection of Christ? Assuredly. However, as has been stated above, the
sacramental communion of the Church (with its dependencies upon
sensate mediations) itself foreshadows an even more concrete dependence upon the sacerdotal, visible and invisible mediation of the humanity of Christ that is to come in the eschaton. Is this true in a particular
way of the application of the power of the keys in the sacrament of
penance? Indeed it must be. For precisely insofar as the priest acts not
according to his own private judgment but according to the judgments
of the Gospel and the Church, so also he acts in light of the saving judgments of Christ. The principal agent who works in and through this
application of the power to bind and to loose the soul of the penitent is
the God-human, Jesus Christ. In this way, the sacrament is itself an anticipation of the eschaton: of one’s own personal judgment at death, as well
as of the final judgment.The Christ upon whom we depend through the
sacramental agency of confession is the same Savior whose judgment of
67 ST III, q. 84, a. 5, ad 3; q. 64, a. 3.
68 ST III, q. 84, a. 2, c.

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truth and mercy we will depend upon increasingly in this life as we
cooperate with sanctifying grace, and ever more so in the eschatological
world to come.69 The sacrament then is not simply a temporal encounter
with a provisional means in this world. It is a way of becoming ever more
closely united with that which is truly permanent: the mercy of the Lord.
The ecclesial communion into which the power of the keys looses us is
ultimately that of the kingdom of heaven. Eschatologically, the priesthood of Christ will continue to make the Church for all eternity.70
Conclusion
Let us conclude with the challenging words of St. John Vianney concerning the priesthood:
Saint Bernard tells us that everything has come to us through Mary; and
we may also say that everything has come to us through the priest; all
happiness, all graces, all heavenly gifts. If we did not have the Sacrament
of Orders, we would not have Our Lord.Who placed Him there, in that
tabernacle? It was the priest.Who was it that received your soul, on its
entrance into life? The priest.Who nourishes it, to give it the strength
to make its pilgrimage? The priest.Who will prepare it to appear before
God, by washing that soul, for the last time, in the blood of Jesus Christ?
The priest—always the priest. And if that soul undergoes spiritual
death, who will raise it up, who will restore it to calmness and peace?
Again the priest.You cannot recall one single blessing from God without finding, side by side with this recollection, the image of the priest.
Go to confession to the Blessed Virgin, or to an angel; will they
absolve you? No.Will they give you the Body and Blood of Our Lord?
No.The Holy Virgin cannot make her divine Son descend into the host.
You might have two hundred angels there, but they could not absolve
you. A priest can do it; he can say to you, “Go in peace; I pardon you.”
Oh, how great is a priest! The priest will not understand the greatness
69 See Aquinas’s remarks to this effect in In Heb.VII, lec. 4, 368–69;VIII, lec. 1, 380;

IX, lec. 5, 478; X, lec. 1, 499.
70 In Heb. VII, lec. 4, 368–69:“And just as in natural things which are signs of spir-

itual things, we see that incorruptible things are not multiplied under the same
species; wherefore, there is only one sun; so in spiritual things, in the Old Testament, which was imperfect, priests were multiplied. And this was a sign that the
priesthood was corruptible, since incorruptible things are not multiplied in the
same species, as we said; but this priest, namely Christ, is immortal. For he
remains for all eternity, as the eternal Word of the Father, from whose eternity,
eternity also redounds upon his body. And therefore, ‘He continues forever,
having an everlasting priesthood’ (Heb. 7:24).And therefore, only Christ is a true
priest. . . . And therefore he is able also to save forever” (Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, trans. Chrysostom Baer, O. Praem. [South Bend, IN: St.Augustine’s Press, 2006]).

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.
of his office until he is in Heaven. If he understood it on earth, he would
die, not of fear, but of love.The other benefits of God would be of no
service to us without the priest.What would be the use of a house filled
with gold, if you had nobody to open you the door! The priest has the
key of the heavenly treasures; it is he who opens the door; he is the steward of the good God, the distributor of His wealth.Without the priest,
the death and passion of Our Lord would be of no avail.71

These words seem excessive to us today, even offensive.We would immediately retort:“Well, what about the possibility of salvation outside of the
ordinary means of the sacraments?” or “What about the lay vocation to
holiness?” We might at least wish to recriminate with various kinds of
qualifications, and no doubt such qualifications are possible. But the saint
has placed us here firmly before a single unqualified truth. He is not
speaking of the absolute power of God by which God could do things as
he so liked in any number of ways, but rather of God’s ordered power, of
God’s action according to his wisdom. In the actual world in which we
live, God in his wisdom has seen fit to distribute sacred gifts to humanity through the ministry of imperfect human beings. He has bound
forgiveness not only to the Cross of Christ, but also to the Church and
to the sacramental agency of mere priests, with faults, in whom the work
of God’s mercy becomes transparent at certain moments, instrumentally
and sacramentally, by the exercise of their priesthood.
Ultimately, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cajetan, and Jean Marie
Vianney are making an identical claim: there are graces of forgiveness that
are communicated by the sacrament of penance alone and that stand at
the origins of the Church’s life of communion in Christ. God working
in Jesus Christ to reconcile the world to himself has so willed it, and
consequently the divine wisdom inscribed in this sacramental economy
can act on behalf of all as a source of salvation, liberation, and peace. For
each Christian—whether ordained or lay—depends upon the reception
of this sacrament for his or her spiritual life, sanctification, and full participation in the mystery of the Church. Today this truth is commonly
hidden from view, or partially eclipsed. No doubt theologians need to
consider anew ways to communicate a sense of the precious value of the
sacrament of penance, as well as the way that this unique exercise of the
priesthood is essential to the life of the Church. For what is at stake is
nothing less than eternal salvation.
N&V

71 Cf. St. Jean Marie Vianney, Esprit du Curé d’Ars (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 2007), 86–88.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 1 (2011): 237–56

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Book Reviews
Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment
of God’s Saving Promises by Scott W. Hahn. Anchor Bible Reference
Library (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009), xiv + 589.
AT LEAST since the time of the Council of Jerusalem in A.D. 49, Christians have wrestled with the question: What is the relationship between
the Old Covenant and the New? Specifically, why are certain aspects of
the Old Covenant economy—such as circumcision, food laws, and ritual
purity—no longer binding on Christians, whereas other aspects of the
Old Covenant—such as the Decalogue—remain in force?
These are questions of no little weight. Long before the problem of
the two natures was taken up at Chalcedon, the problem of the two
covenants had to be dealt with at Jerusalem. During that first council, the
apostles and elders provided the Church with clear and authoritative
teaching: contrary to the opinion of some believers, circumcision, though
mandated by the Law, was not necessary “to be saved” (Acts 15:1–11).
However, what the Council of Jerusalem did not provide—or, at least, the
book of Acts does not record—was a detailed exegetical justification for
how this change was even possible. Did not the Bible itself refer to
circumcision as an “everlasting” covenant (Gn 17:13)? How then could
the early Church dispense with it? Was this mere pragmatism, motivated
by the need to make the gospel palatable to Gentile converts? Or is there
any biblical ratio—from Jewish Scripture itself—for the passing away of
certain aspects of the Old Covenant?
In this ground-breaking contribution to the prestigious Anchor Bible
Reference Library, Scott W. Hahn provides what may well be one of the
most ambitious exegetical attempts to answer the question of the relationship between the Old and New Covenants ever penned. His object is
twofold.At the level of exegesis, the first goal is to offer a “covenantal interpretation” of three key New Testament texts: Luke 22 (the institution
narrative), Galatians 3–4 (Paul’s diatribe against the circumcision party), and
Hebrews 1–9.The overall aim of the book is to base the interpretation of

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these New Testament passages on an extensive analysis of the multiple
covenants of the Old Testament.At the level of theology, the second goal is
to answer certain perennial questions, such as:“How legitimate is the New
Testament authors’ reading of the Old Testament? Can their methods be
justified in modern context? Do their interpretations find a basis in, and
arise out of, the older Scriptures? Or are they imposed on them?” (22).
As these questions might suggest, Kinship by Covenant is a remarkably
wide-ranging work, so much so that it is difficult in a short review to
select which findings merit attention. The volume is brimming with
exegetical arguments and theological insights, spanning both testaments
and covering numerous primary texts.Therefore, it seems best to briefly
introduce the format and methodology of the book, and then examine
some of its most significant theses.
The study is bipartite: Part 1 explores the nature and history of covenant
in the Old Testament, focusing both on the various types of covenants—
kinship, treaty, and grant—as well as specific examples from the canonical
narrative: for example, the Abrahamic, Sinaitic, Levitical, and Davidic
covenants. Part 2 builds directly on the results of this analysis of the
covenants of the Old Testament and applies the results of Part 1 to key New
Testament texts that correlate the language of kinship with covenant (22).
The book begins, as one might expect, with a detailed overview of
modern research on the covenant (Chapter 1), including a brief but
important discussion of methodology. In this section, Hahn builds directly
on the foundation of scholars who have emphasized a familial understanding of covenant relations, and the centrality of the sworn oath for the
sealing of such covenants (e.g., D. J. McCarthy, M. G. Kline, F. M. Cross).
He then goes on to describe his approach as consisting of both “narrative
analysis,” which focuses on the biblical texts in their final form, and
“canonical criticism,” which interprets texts in light of Scripture in its
entirety (23).Although Kinship by Covenant draws extensively on the findings of historical criticism—some 140 pages of endnotes consist in large
part of references to modern historical-critical works—Hahn’s primary
goal is to “illuminate the logic of the text as we now have it” (102). As
such, he has frequent recourse not only to modern exegesis but also to
ancient Jewish and Christian interpretations, and he gives a normative
place to the theological exegesis of the inspired New Testament authors
(26–27).The result is a work that is at once historically, linguistically, and
exegetically grounded and at the same time theologically oriented.
With that said, there are several major theses that can be singled out as
meriting the attention of exegetes and theologians interested in the question of the relationship between the Old and New Covenants.

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239

1. Before moving into in-depth analysis of particular texts, Hahn first
makes the case that not all covenants are created equal. As modern
research has shown, in the ancient Near East in general and in the
Old Testament in particular, three basic types of covenants can be
identified (28–31). First, there is the kinship covenant, in which familial bonds are extended to unite two (usually) equal parties under the
divine sanction of an oath and/or sacrifice. This kind of covenant
emphasizes the mutual nature of the relationship, which is often
signified by a shared meal. A second type is the treaty covenant, in
which covenant obligations are imposed on an inferior by a superior.
This form of covenant is often sealed by self-curses on the inferior
party, who invokes or symbolically enacts some punishment or curse
as a penalty for breaking the oath. Significantly, the treaty covenant
often emphasizes the servitude of the inferior party. The third and
final type is the grant covenant, in which the covenant initiative and
obligations rest primarily with the superior, who freely offers them
to the inferior, usually in response to the latter’s virtue or fidelity.This
threefold typology is foundational to the overall argument of the
book: for Hahn, in order to understand the internal logic of the
covenant development in the Bible, one must be able to delineate the
significant differences between various kinds of covenant relations.
2. Despite the rather common tendency to speak of “the Mosaic
covenant” as a monolithic entity, the covenant sealed at Sinai and the book
of Deuteronomy are not one single covenant. Through a detailed exegesis
of multiple texts, Hahn mounts a powerful argument for distinguishing between the Sinai covenant—ratified in Exodus 24 and embodied in the Decalogue—and the Deuteronomic covenant—delivered
on the plains of Moab and embodied in the book of Deuteronomy.
Building on his earlier taxonomy, Hahn identifies Sinai as a kinship
covenant and Deuteronomy as a treaty covenant. In support of this,
he points out that the Old Testament itself refers to Deuteronomy as
“another covenant” (Dt 29:1), explicitly distinct from that which was
sealed at Mount Sinai. Moreover, within the canonical narrative there
are also important differences between the Sinai and Deuteronomic
covenants. For example, whereas the Sinai covenant law is kept inside
the ark of the covenant, suggesting its permanence, the “book of the
law” of Deuteronomy is kept outside the ark, suggesting its impermanence and its secondary status (cf. Dt 10:1–5; 31:25–26). Likewise,
whereas God speaks directly to Israel at Mount Sinai, the covenant of
Deuteronomy is established through the mouth of Moses on the

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plains of Moab without any direct speech—that is, it is delivered
solely through Moses’ words (contrast, for example, Exodus 20). “At
Sinai, God had appeared to the people of Israel in a theophany of fire
and smoke with a voice like thunder; on the plains of Moab he is
silent and absent” (69).
Finally, Hahn makes the remarkable observation that some of the
most morally difficult texts of the Old Testament—for example, the
texts on herem warfare (Dt 20:16–17), the permission of divorce and
remarriage (Dt 24:1–4), and the allowance to take usury from
Gentiles (Dt 15:3; 23:20)—are “unique to Deuteronomy,” suggesting
that they are covenant concessions made by God “in light of Israel’s
sinfulness” (73). In support of this conclusion, Hahn shows that this
stark difference between the Sinai and Deuteronomic covenants is
already present in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, who describes
the laws of Deuteronomy as “statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life” (Ezek 20:25). Ezekiel’s
highly negative estimation of the Deuteronomic legislation is inexplicable, unless there is an awareness within the Old Testament canon
itself of the secondary status of this deutero-nomos, this “second law.”
The distinction between the Sinai and Deuteronomic covenants is
critical to Part 2 of the book, which takes up Paul’s treatment of the
covenant in Galatians 3–4 (Chapter 9). In this chapter, Hahn argues
that that Paul sees the Mosaic covenant as taking its definitive shape,
not on Mount Sinai, but in the book of Deuteronomy, where it is
ratified by the self-curses indicative of a treaty covenant (238).This is
important, in part because it explains why Paul chooses to describe
Jesus’ cross in the rather strange manner of a curse-bearing death (Gal
3:10). Paul sees Jesus’ dying on a tree—which manner of death is
described by Deuteronomy 21:23 as a curse—as both bearing and
expiating the covenant curses that figure so prominently in the
Deuteronomic treaty covenant (Dt 27–30). Even more critically, the
recognition that Deuteronomy is another covenant than Sinai
provides a powerful and coherent explanation for Paul’s otherwise
bafflingly negative statements about “the law.” For example, when
Paul says that “the law” was “added because of transgressions” (Gal
3:9–22), he is referring, not to the Decalogue given in Exodus 20,
but to the later laws, like Deuteronomy and its covenant concessions,
which were given to Israel as a result of Israel’s idolatrous actions
with the golden calf and at Beth-peor (see below for further discussion of the golden calf episode). In short, Paul’s sometimes negative
estimations of the Law are rooted not in caprice but in his recogni-

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241

tion of Deuteronomy as a “self-retiring” covenant, which looks
beyond itself to a covenant in which God will circumcise the “heart”
of Israel (270; cf. Dt 30).
3. Not only are there different types of covenants in the Old Testament,
but within a single given covenant, there can be multiple stages of development.The most prominent example is the Abrahamic covenant. Hahn
points out: “Scholars frequently speak of the Abrahamic covenant, as
if there were just one” (102). However, from a narrative perspective,
there are in fact multiple covenant-making episodes in the canonical
account of Abraham, and it is critical to distinguish them.
In an exegetically masterful section, Hahn correlates God’s famous
threefold promise to Abraham of (1) nationhood, (2) a great name,
and (3) blessing for “all the families of the earth” (Gn 12:1–3) with
three successive and cumulative covenants: (1) Abraham’s sleep, the
animal sacrifices, and the “covenant” regarding his descendants (Gn
15); (2) the institution of the “covenant” of circumcision (Gn 17); and
(3) the sacrifice of Isaac, and God’s sworn oath to Abraham to bless
“all the nations of the earth” (Gn 22). This threefold correlation
highlights the essential difference between a promise, which does not
involve a sworn oath, and a covenant, in which the promise is sealed
and elevated by means of an oath and/or sacrifice (Gn 15, sacrificial
animals; Gn 17, circumcision; Gn 22, Abraham’s only beloved son).
Hahn does not stop there, but goes on to argue that, from a canonical perspective, these three stages of the Abrahamic covenant can
themselves be further correlated in significant ways to three later
covenants in salvation history: (1) the Sinai covenant, (2) the
Deuteronomic covenant, and (3) the Davidic covenant, the last of
which constitutes the covenantal climax of the Old Testament (112).
Once again, the delineation of the Abrahamic covenants is essential to Part 2, both to the discussion of Galatians (Chapter 9) and to
the analysis of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Chapter 10). For one
thing, a clear delineation of these covenant stages enables one to
grasp the logic of Paul’s arguments against the Judaizers’ insistence on
the necessity of circumcision for salvation (Gal 3–4). For example,
Paul’s appeal to the fact that Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as
righteousness (Gn 15) long before circumcision was required of him
by God (Gn 17) is not merely an argument from chronology. Rather,
Paul recognizes that in Genesis itself, circumcision is not part of
God’s original requirement of Abraham but is a remedial and penitential response to his illicit relations with Hagar (cf. Gn 16).This is

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why Paul can regard circumcision as unnecessary for Gentiles who
wish to become children of Abraham (117; cf. Gal 4:21–31). Paul
apparently recognizes the development of the covenant within the
Abrahamic narrative, in which God’s promise to bless “the families of
the earth” is tied, not to the covenant of circumcision (Gn 17), but
rather to the covenantal “sacrifice” of Isaac and the sworn oath made
by the LORD in response to Abraham’s fidelity (Gn 22:18). Paul sees
the universal blessings of this covenant sacrifice as being fulfilled and
released by the sacrificial death of Christ, the true beloved Son of the
Father (239; cf. Gal 3:16).
This close reading of Galatians leads to one of Hahn’s most
intriguing conclusions: for Paul, “the old and new covenants are not
distinguished so much by chronology as by faith or the lack thereof.
Temporally speaking, the two covenants (old and new) interpenetrate” (246). In support of this, Hahn’s analysis of Abraham in the
Epistle to the Hebrews comes to a similar result: “The author of
Hebrews has no simplistic understanding of the relationship between
the Old and New Covenants, whereby the two are neatly divided by
the arrival of Christ in history. Rather, on the one hand, figures of
the old era”—chief among them, Abraham—“participated proleptically in the New Covenant by faith” (280; see Hebrews 11). This
single thesis alone merits closer attention for a whole host of
ecumenical, ecclesiological, and soteriological reasons. Whatever the
ultimate verdict about it, Hahn clearly shows that a focus on the existence of covenant stages has the potential to shed intriguing light on
the internal logic of the New Testament authors’ interpretations of
Jewish Scripture.
4. When Christians today think of the Old Testament priesthood, they
are likely to think first—if not only—of the Levites, who dominate
much of the Pentateuch and who exercised exclusive priestly prerogatives throughout the first millennium down to the time of Jesus.
However, according to the Pentateuchal narrative, the Levitical priesthood is
not the original priesthood. Rather, it is a late development and a remedial
response to Israel’s idolatrous worship of the golden calf. Indeed, as Hahn
shows, both modern biblical scholarship and ancient Jewish tradition
recognize the existence in Scripture of a “pre-Levitical” priesthood—a “primordial” priesthood of fathers and firstborn sons (136,
279). Think here of the book of Genesis, in which the patriarchs—
not a professional class of priests—perform the priestly actions of
building altars, dispensing blessings, and offering blood sacrifice (for

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example, Gn 15, 22, 28). During the patriarchal period, the preLevitical form of the priesthood was “rooted in the patriarchal
family, particularly in the idealized relationship of the father and his
firstborn sons” (298). In fact, it was precisely this “primordial priesthood of the firstborn son” to which God calls Israel in the Exodus,
when he describes them as the divine “firstborn son” and hence “a
kingdom of priests” (279; cf. Ex 4:22; 19:5–6).
However, with the tragic incident of Israel’s idolatrous worship of
the golden calf, eleven of the twelve tribes lose the priestly privileges
of the firstborn son, which are from that point forward given to the
tribe of Levites alone (Ex 32). Hence, according to the biblical narrative, the original covenantal arrangement of God was royal priestly
primogeniture for all twelve tribes of Israel, not the exclusively Levitical priesthood of a single tribe. In other words—and this is significant—the Old Testament itself describes the Levitical covenant and
the corresponding priesthood as “a remedial response” to Israel’s sin
and a corrective measure that “naturally retains something of a provisional character” (167). That is why a number of prophetic texts in
Isaiah appear to envision a future in which the privileges of the
Levitical priesthood will be open to all twelve tribes, and even to
Gentiles (for example, Is 56, 61, 66).
It is difficult to overestimate the explanatory power of this
covenantal approach to the Levitical priesthood for Hebrews 1–9 in
Part 2 (Chapter 10). One of the great mysteries of New Testament
theology is how the Epistle to the Hebrews can be arguably the most
Jewish document in the New Testament and at the same time contain
what may be the most negative evaluation of the Old Covenant
priesthood, sacrifices, and cult in the canon. Hahn’s analysis of the
Levitical covenant as a secondary and remedial covenant provides a
brilliant solution. In a memorable line, he writes that the author of
Hebrews “is not anti-Semitic but post–Levitical” (327). In other
words, in the epistle to the Hebrews, Christ’s identity as firstborn Son
(Heb 1:2–6) and high priest (Heb 7) represents “the restoration of an
original and superior form of covenant mediation that had been lost
since the institution of the Levitical priesthood in response to Israel’s
covenant infidelity” (278, emphasis added). That is why
Melchizedek—the first man to be called “priest” in the Bible and
thus a representative of the pre-Levitical priesthood—figures so
prominently the christology of this epistle (Heb 7; cf. Gn 14:18). In
short, once one grasps the covenantal stages of the canonical narrative, it becomes apparent that, in order to be a priest, Christ need not

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be a Levitical priest at all. In the biblical story of salvation history,
there were priests long before the Levites ever existed. Hence,
Christ’s status as firstborn son of God truly marks him out as “a high
priest after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 5:10; cf. Ps 110:4).
5. Finally, in what is perhaps the most original section in the book, Hahn
argues that the Davidic covenant is the essential bridge between the Old and
New covenants (Chapters 7 and 8). He begins by building on the virtual
consensus among scholars that the covenant with David is a grant
covenant, in which God swears to bless David’s descendants as a
response to David’s loyalty and virtue (176; cf. 2 Sm 7; Ps 89). Hahn
then proceeds to show how the Old Testament itself depicts the
Davidic covenant as a bridge: it both points back to previous covenants
and points beyond itself to a future covenant, which will both restore and
transform the Davidic covenant kingdom in the messianic age of salvation. For example, the building of the Temple by the Davidic heir on
Mount Moriah seems to recapitulate the climactic sacrifice of Isaac on
Moriah in the Abrahamic covenant, while the international nature of
David’s kingdom appears to fulfill the Abrahamic promise to bless “all
nations” (see Gn 22; 2 Chr 3:1). Likewise, the prominence of divine
sonship in the Davidic covenant texts appears to point back to the
corporate divine sonship lost by Israel at Sinai and Beth-peor, which is
now transferred to the individual Davidic monarch (197; see 2 Sm 7;
Ps 89). In addition, David’s otherwise baffling (not to mention illicit)
priestly activities—such as offering sacrifice and wearing a linen
ephod—are explained as his aspiration “to be a new Melchizedek”
(193; see 2 Sm 6; Ps 110). Last, but certainly not least, Hahn shows how
throughout the prophetic corpus,“the goal of the New Exodus”—that
is, the messianic restoration of Israel—“is not Sinai. . . . Instead, the New
Exodus ends at Zion, ‘David’ is restored, and the people are reconstituted as a kingdom centered around the Zion Temple, ruling over the
nations” (205; cf. Is 55; Jer 23, 30–31; Ezek 36–37, etc.).
The consequences of this focus on the Davidic covenant for
understanding the New Testament are manifold. For one thing, it
sheds important light on the remarkable continuity between the
Davidic covenant and the New Testament accounts of Jesus and the
early Church. In two striking sections, Hahn outlines what he refers
to as the Davidic “covenant constellation”: eight characteristic
features of the Davidic covenant in the Old Testament. He then
shows how these distinctively Davidic features explicitly undergird
the presentation of Jesus as Messiah in Luke and Acts:

Book Reviews
Davidic Covenant Constellation
(200–201)
1. Davidic kingdom is founded on
a divine covenant.
2. Davidic king is the son of God, by
covenant relation.
3. Davidic king is the Messiah
(“anointed one”).
4. Davidic king is bound to Jerusalem,
particularly Mount Zion.
5. Davidic kingdom bound to the
Temple.
6. Davidic king monarch ruled over
the united twelve tribes.
7. Davidic king rules over an
international empire.
8. Davidic kingdom is everlasting.
(see 2 Sm 7; Ps 2, 89, etc.)

245

New Covenant in Luke-Acts
(218–19)
1. Jesus’ kingdom founded on a
new covenant.
2. Jesus is the natural (not merely
adopted) son of God.
3. Jesus is the Messiah.
4. Jesus’ royal mission is bound up
with Jerusalem.
5. Jesus’ royal mission is bound up
with the Temple.
6. Jesus restores the twelve tribes in the
twelve apostles.
7. Jesus’ kinship includes all nations.
8. Jesus’ reign is everlasting. (see
Lk 1–2, 22; Acts 1–2, 10, etc.)

In light of such parallels, Hahn comes to the significant conclusion that
for Luke,“the new covenant is not a complete novum, it is the renewal of
the Davidic covenant” (226). This provides a solid exegetical bulwark
against the idea—going back at least as far as Marcion—that the New
Covenant is a kind of divine ‘plan-B’, in which God dispenses with the
earlier economy in a way devoid of virtually any continuity.
On the other hand, Hahn’s treatment is balanced by an equally important recognition of discontinuity between David and Jesus. As he goes on
to argue, in the work of Luke, Jesus’ kingdom is not simply the kingdom
of David returned. Rather, it is “the kingdom of David restored and transformed” (218 [emphasis mine]).This transformation occurs in at least two
spheres. First, in the account of the Last Supper, the Davidic kingdom is
restored to the twelve tribes in the figures of the apostles, but it is reconfigured around the celebration of the Eucharist when Jesus says to the
Twelve: “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; and I
covenant to you, as my Father covenanted to me, a kingdom, that you may
eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the
twelve tribes of Israel” (Lk 22:28–30). Hahn makes the point that,
contrary to some recent scholarship pitting kingdom and covenant against
one another, “kingdom” and “covenant” are inextricably tied to each
other by Jesus in Luke’s account of the Last Supper (cf. S. McKnight).The
new covenant is, at its core, a eucharistic covenant. Second, by beginning

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the Book of Acts with an account of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, Luke
shows that the New Covenant, unlike the former grant to David, is not
focused on the earthly Jerusalem. Rather, in the ascension of Jesus, “the
kingdom has been transposed from earth to heaven, even though it continues
to manifest itself on earth as the ekklesia. This ecclesial kingdom exists
simultaneously on earth and in heaven” (233). In contrast to many
modern discussions of the kingdom of God—which often leave one more
bewildered than one was before beginning to study the topic—Hahn’s
focus on a kingdom ecclesiology provides an intriguingly clear picture of how
Luke understands the fulfillment of the covenants in Christ.
In light of such theses—and these are really just a sampling—it should
go without saying that Scott Hahn has succeeding in producing a major
work of biblical scholarship, characterized by many significant strengths.
There are, however, also several drawbacks. For one thing, the quotations
from scholarly sources in the main text are sometimes so frequent that they
threaten to drown out Hahn’s voice.This makes for demanding reading at
points. Thankfully, this is a problem primarily in Chapter 1; Hahn’s own
voice, which is quite lucid and engaging, emerges more and more clearly
in each subsequent chapter. In addition, the choice to use endnotes was, to
say the least, infelicitous. As stated above, one of the strengths of the book
is the remarkable breadth of research that undergirds it. Indeed, many of its
various exegetical conclusions—some of which at first blush may seem
rather novel—are in fact deeply rooted in the works of major modern
exegetes and commentators. Much of this is lost on any reader who does
not take the time to study the endnotes. Finally, it is odd that in a work of
canonical-criticism, the chapters dealing with the Old Testament in the first
half of the book do not follow the canonical order of the covenants, but
rather the threefold covenant taxonomy. For example, Deuteronomy is
treated before Leviticus, which, canonically, is the previous covenant.This
order of treatment can be quite difficult to follow at times, especially for
those interested in the narrative development of the various covenants, and
it puts upon the shoulders of the reader the rather heavy burden of integrating the results into an overarching salvation-historical framework.
Nevertheless, it would be tragic if any of these weaknesses overshadowed the outstanding contribution to biblical theology that has been
made in Kinship by Covenant. If this review is somewhat longer than
normal, then that is because this book is worth the space. For one thing,
in these days of radical overspecialization, it is rare, very rare, to find an
author whose grasp of both primary and secondary literature covers such
a broad spectrum of the biblical canon: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Deuteronomy, the books of Samuel and Kings, the Prophets, Luke, Acts,

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247

Galatians, and Hebrews.This is no small feat; the breadth and depth of the
book are simply extraordinary and a model of close biblical exegesis.
Moreover, Hahn displays a remarkable ability to integrate detailed
exegetical insights into an overarching theological synthesis. As anyone
familiar with the history of research in the last century is well aware, the
divide between exegesis and theology has grown into a gaping chasm that
threatens to separate the two permanently. Kinship by Covenant not only
successfully bridges this divide but does so in a way that promises to pay
high dividends in more than one area of theological study. For example,
Hahn’s erudite analysis of oath-swearing and ritualized kinship has numerous points of contact with sacramental theology. Likewise, his penetrating
exploration of the kingdom of God as the Davidic kingdom restored and
transformed represents an important contribution to a neglected aspect of
ecclesiology. Finally, his illumination of the covenant thinking of New
Testament authors like Paul and the author of Hebrews could have manifold positive implications for Jewish-Christian dialogue, especially regarding the pressing questions of anti-Semitism and supersessionism in the
New Testament (see 332–38,“Concluding Theological Reflections”).
Finally, for this reviewer, the greatest strength of the book is its remarkable amount of exegetical and theological explanatory power. Over and over
again, Hahn convincingly shows the concept of the covenant to be a sine
qua non for unlocking the internal logic of the biblical narrative of salvation history. Especially noteworthy is the exposition of the fact that the Old
Testament itself depicts Deuteronomy as a secondary and self-retiring
covenant filled with concessions to Israel’s sinfulness, a covenant
unabashedly containing “statutes that were not good” (Ezek 20:25).
Contemporary theologians troubled by what Pope Benedict has recently
referred to as “the ‘dark’ passages in the Bible” (Verbum Domini, §42)—many
of which are contained in or based on Deuteronomy—may find in Kinship
by Covenant a ground-breaking exegetical contribution to the pressing
theological problems presented by such passages.At the very least, this study
calls for further exploration of the canonical distinctions between the original Sinai covenant and later laws which—in the words of Jesus—were
“allowed” by God because of Israel’s “hardness of heart” (Mt 19:8).
In sum, it is hoped that biblical scholars and systematic theologians
alike will take the time and effort to digest the exegetical and theological feast that Hahn has so ably served up in this truly great contribution
N&V
to the study of the divine economy in sacred Scripture.
Brant Pitre
Notre Dame Seminary
New Orleans, LA

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Embracing Purpose: Essays on God, the World and the Church
by Geoffrey Wainwright (Peterborough: Epworth, 2007 ), x + 370 pp.
THERE IS a Russian proverb that responds to ecclesial disunity thus:“The
walls of separation do not reach up to heaven” (222).That proverb aptly
captures the ecumenically minded discontent and the eschatological
confidence that mark all these essays, which apply Wainwright’s liturgical
and integrative theological perspective while ranging over doctrine, over
Scripture and tradition, over church and world.
The image Wainwright gives for the thematic unity of these fourteen
essays, which date from 1995 to 2007, is the image of Christ’s outstretched
arms on the cross.That image, as Christian Scripture and liturgical practice remind us, signifies God’s cosmic purposes, working through Christ
in the Spirit to gather all things in one loving embrace. It is a fitting image
for the scope and depth of God’s redemptive activity, which is in various
ways gauged and plumbed in each essay. But Wainwright’s purposes as an
author are also “embracing.” Indeed, they must be since the theologian’s
task is to trace the embracing purposes of God. So Wainwright seeks
“embracing” perspectives, both through the thematic ambition of the
essays and through his determination to do theology ecumenically.
The thematic comprehensiveness of the essays to some extent reflects
the occasions for which they were crafted. Many of them stem from the
author’s distinguished list of lectureships and presentations. So we see
Wainwright addressing the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian
Unity on the fortieth anniversary of Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism,
Unitatis Redintegratio. We see him giving the presidential address for the
American Theological Society.We see him addressing the Oxford International Newman Conference or the Societas Liturgica. These settings
invite systematic reflection and wide-angle vision, and Wainwright takes
full advantage of the opportunities.
Something of the reach of God’s purposes and of the vision of the
theologian who attempts to articulate them can be seen in the sweeping
and overlapping aims of the second and the last essay. Both rehearse salvation history as a liturgical progression through which God is bringing the
cultures of the nations into harmony with the forms of true worship in
anticipation of the culmination of God’s purposes in the eschatological
Kingdom. Both undertake this journey in order to revisit questions about
the inculturation of the gospel and about how to respond to the West’s
modern crisis of faith. Chapter 2, “Babel, Barbary, and Blessing,” reflects
the concerns of the linguistic turn in philosophy but traces the problems
through the lens of salvation history, unfolding a scriptural metanarrative

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for thinking liturgically through questions of language, culture, and truth.
Chapter 14, “A Remedy for Relativism,” peers through Joseph
Ratzinger’s book The Spirit of the Liturgy to envision God’s ever-extending communion of worshippers as a leavening agent anticipating history’s
liturgical consummation in the face of the subjectivism and nihilism of
contemporary culture.These complementary essays convey the scope of
God’s purposes and exemplify Wainwright’s thematic ambitions. Part of
his achievement is to have the audacity to attempt to develop such
encompassing perspectives.
On the whole, in my estimation, he achieves those lofty goals.The reader
must be prepared to see gathered up in a small space many topics each of
which could merit volumes. These essays stand on mountains of learning
but allow the reader to see only the peaks. Detailed argumentation takes a
back seat to the synthetic skill and mature judgment of a seasoned scholar
and churchman.The writing can be deceptively simple precisely because the
judgments are so sure, as in this proposition from the opening essay, “The
True, the Good, and the Beautiful”: “Truth is found when created reality
appears in light of its Creator and his disposition of it” (2).
Wainwright seeks an embracing perspective not only in the individual
essays, but also in the structure by which they are linked. Only one of the
essays has not appeared in print before (chapter 10, “Dynamics of
Dialogue”), and their scattered provenance means they can be read with
profit independently. But by collecting and organizing them in a single
volume, Wainwright invites us to see the connections among them.
Indeed, it may not be too much to claim that he has built these occasional pieces into a sort of culminating systematic theology to complement his great achievement nearly three decades earlier in Doxology:The
Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life (1980).Wainwright reveals in an
Epilogue how that earlier work provides the underlying rubric by which
these essays are organized. So the order of these chapters roughly corresponds to the three-part structural scheme of Doxology, beginning with
“substiantial matters” or the substance of Christian faith, moving on to
“traditional means” or the instruments by which faith is handed on, and
finishing with “contextual questions” or the human and cultural contexts
in which faith is lived out. In the Epilogue, Wainwright also charts his
career to reveal how these essays reflect its scope; one suspects the author
sees the present book as a “capstone” text on a remarkable pilgrimage.
Wainwright’s perspectives are “embracing” not only in their thematic
ambition, but also in their ecumenical spirit.This collection fully demonstrates Wainwright’s habit of doing theology ecumenically, which means for
him at least three things: in dialogue with the documentary achievements

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of official ecumenical commissions, with patience not to say what the
current state of dialogue does not allow us yet to say, and in touch with the
commonalities that link all ecumenically minded orthodox Christians.
Wainwright has been actively engaged in official ecumenical dialogue
throughout his career, and his commitment to thinking with the
Ecumenical Movement never wavers. So in chapter 4, “The Trinity
Rediscovered,” for example, Wainwright steers clear of evaluating the
Trinitarian proposals of specific theologians, and instead argues for the
general influence of the Ecumenical Movement on Trinitarian renewal,
as well as showing the ecumenical benefits of that renewal.
His most sustained reflection on the progress of the Ecumenical
Movement is found in chapters 8 to 10, where he considers ground
gained on ecclesiology (“Unitatis Redintegratio in a Protestant Perspective”) and on doctrine (“Does Doctrine Still Divide?”) and submits as an
object lesson the Methodist-Catholic international dialogue, which he
has chaired from the Methodist side since 1986.These pages offer expert
judgments about the fruit of the Ecumenical Movement. Wainwright is
positive but also provisional. He notes progress on topics such as Christology, the filioque, authority, justification, and grace. He sees a shared
desire for “ecumenism in time,” such that churches are beginning to
recognize common saints, and for shared expositions of the ancient faith.
The role of the World Council of Churches is, in Wainwright’s view,
clearly waning, displaced somewhat by bilateral dialogues, especially those
involving the Vatican, although the reader learns little of his analysis of
this shift. He insists that the best ecumenical thinking understands that
unity cannot be merely “federal”; a ministry of unity such as is represented by the papacy is crucial. But he is not satisfied with any mere
“come home to Rome” model of ecumenism. He calls for continued
work toward a mutual exchange of gifts between traditions, in recognition that reunion requires repentance and the willingness of each side to
conceive a future different from each church’s separate existence.
The often overlapping material can make these three chapters occasionally tedious. Wainwright’s favored events in the history of the Ecumenical
Movement receive repeated attention throughout the book, but especially
here.Wainwright was one of the principal architects of the Baptism, Eucharist
and Ministry document produced in 1982 by the WCC’s Faith and Order
Commission, and here the reader becomes very familiar with certain
passages from it. Also repeatedly commended are the WCC’s 1961 New
Delhi statement that defined unity as an organic connection of “all in each
place” and John Paul II’s proposal in Ut Unum Sint for a “fraternal dialogue”
on the universal ministry of unity as represented in the Petrine office. The

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latter proposal, we are reminded a number of times, prompted Wainwright
to respond by suggesting not a cooperative statement on the office itself, but
a cooperative exercise of the authority it represents through a joint statement on what is to be believed and preached today.
These repetitions are not so much weaknesses of the book as necessary redundancies for which the reader who hopes to work straight
through must be prepared. Wainwright does prepare the reader in the
Preface, where he explains, “Occasionally, brief overlaps in material have
been retained across chapters for the sake of the integrity of the argument
in each context, and the repetitions may be benignly taken as indicating
the importance I attach to those matters” (viii).
The book can exercise on the attentive reader a sort of discipline of
patience, of learning to think with the churches without prematurely
declaring what should be dialogue’s result.This patience is another aspect
of how Wainwright does theology ecumenically. In chapter 5, “Reading
Scripture Together,” for example, he refuses the temptation unilaterally to
construct the one hermeneutic that will resolve all the ecumenical
impasses. Instead, he sets a few minimal guidelines for exegesis rooted in
ecumenical confessions about Scripture and then directs our attention to
the possibilities for further agreement embodied in specific examples of
ecumenical ventures in shared reading.
Despite this provisionality,Wainwright writes with confidence that the
Christian tradition is in some sense already one, with a unity encapsulated
in the Nicene Creed. So, though many dogmas Nicene or otherwise are
questioned today, for Wainwright writing ecumenically means confessing
without apology the ancient faith on which all orthodox Christians agree.
At a number of points in the book,Wainwright himself seems to fade from
the page, as an essay attempts to speak on behalf of all orthodox, ecumenically minded Christians, in dialogue with ecumenical documents. The
writing in those places can seem less engaging. But this is another way in
which he seeks to be “embracing,” by offering not the views of one idiosyncratic theologian, but those of the wide and deep tradition of orthodox
Trinitarian Christianity. He recalls with some relish “the disappointment
[he] caused when, in (his) inaugural lecture at the Union Theological
Seminary in New York, [he] expressed the hope that [he] would teach
‘nothing new’ ” (259). But don’t be fooled into expecting dry formulae.
Instead,Wainwright’s liturgically steeped Trinitarian orthodoxy in conversation with modern trends lends these essays fresh dynamism.The fruitfulness of this approach is on particular display in chapters 6 and 7, which
provide Trinitarian readings of Psalm 33 and the Lord’s Prayer, respectively.
Especially noteworthy is Wainwright’s argument for the legitimacy of

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Trinitarian readings of the Psalms on the grounds that the church’s history
of Trinitarian readings is “part of the Trinitarian conception of God’s
history with the world to which the scriptures bear witness and of which
they are a part” (121).
The weakest parts of the book are Wainwright’s attempts to identify
the threats to Christianity from an increasingly post-Christian world.
One surmises that the author’s impatience with nonsense keeps him from
knowing his enemy. He paints with excessively broad brushstrokes against
ill-defined “postmodernists,” New Age types, materialists, and others. I
found myself agreeing with many of Wainwright’s judgments about the
barbarism of contemporary culture, but disappointed with his lack of
specificity. His acquaintance with the barbarism he hopes to ward off is
broader than it is deep, which is especially unfortunate since it undermines our ability to recognize the degree to which the enemy is us.
If his diagnosis of our ills is vague and sometimes flimsy, his grasp of
the cure is certain and exact. Our hope is God’s embracing purpose for
the entire cosmos. Wainwright’s embracing essays trace those purposes
most transparently when they give way to the ejaculations of hymnic
praise readers of Wainwright have come to expect. Wainwright is at his
best when he plumbs the depths of liturgical history and gauges the
breadth of ecumenical dialogue to lead us toward wonder and praise at
the liturgical ends God has in view and the liturgical means by which
N&V
they are being reached.
Christopher A. Franks
High Point University
High Point, North Carolina

The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum
Analogia by Joshua P. Hochschild (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2010 ), xx + 248 pp.
RE-READING this classic text required hermeneutical skills akin to untangling a knot tightened by generations of misreading, so readers engaging
in the task with the author can only admire his deft hand. Best rendered
as “on the analogy of terms [expressions],” the title launches us into a
semantic inquiry which many commentators had overlooked; Hochschild
sets out to restore the logical-grammatical perspective of the original text.
But how could generations of readers miss the point when the title was
so clear? The Dominican Tomas de Vio Cajetan had composed commentaries on key works of Thomas Aquinas before being elected mastergeneral of the Order in 1508, and in 1518 he was sent to Germany as

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papal-legate to debate Martin Luther. His work explicitly treating “analogy of terms” was naturally considered part of his commentary oeuvre,
and it was presumed to explicate celebrated analogical strategies which
Aquinas had deftly employed yet cared little to clarify or justify. As studies of Aquinas’s conceptual strategies began to accumulate in the twentieth-century, scholars would inevitably ask, how helpful was Cajetan’s little
work in illuminating Aquinas’s judicious use of analogous terms? Joshua
Hochschild, however, found the treatise interesting in its own right and
began to ask whether it was even intended to explicate Aquinas’s use of
analogy, despite the author’s distinguished record as a commentator. Moreover, in the intervening three centuries, other voices had claimed attention, notably that of John Duns Scotus.What if this treatise belonged to a
genre other than commentary and in fact had set out to answer questions
about analogy posed by Scotus? Using this heuristic hypothesis, the author
leads us in quite another direction, yet in the process is constrained to
address the considerable secondary literature addressing Aquinas’s use of
analogy, which had inevitably taken positions pro- and con-Cajetan.
After an illuminating analysis of Aristotle on analogical usage and a
brief resumé of key figures between Aristotle and Aquinas (notably
Boethius), Hochschild executes a hermeneutical tour-de-force, using
Collingwood, Gadamer, and Thomas Kuhn to initiate a “new paradigm,”
one based on identifying the questions Cajetan actually faced rather than
reading in the expectations later Thomists brought to the text. (Bernard
Lonergan regularly led students to appreciate the dialectics at work in
early Church councils by noting: If these documents are presented as
offering answers, we can grasp them properly only if we understand the
questions they were supposed to answer.) This lapidary sense of
hermeneutics guides Hothschild’s inquiry. For Scotus’s trenchant question—“If analogy is really a form of equivocation, how does it avoid the
fallacy of equivocation?” (42)—makes it imperative to answer “the fundamental semantic question about analogy that arises within the framework
of Aristotelian logic . . . : how is it possible to have a mean between univocation and equivocation?” (39). So “if one wants to maintain traditional
semantics and preserve analogy, one cannot ignore Scotus’s challenge.
One must characterize the unity of the analogical concept” (43). That
defines Cajetan’s principal concern.
Only after having liberated the work from the genre of commentary
on Aquinas, and clarified “the semantic intent of de Nominum Analogia”
(33), does Hochschild address the bevy of critiques addressed to Cajetan’s
treatment of the issue. Most of these follow Etienne Gilson’s insistence in
his 1952 book on Scotus that “the Thomist doctrine of analogy is above

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all a doctrine of the judgment of analogy. It is in fact thanks to judgment
of proportion that, without a change of nature, one can make of the
concept a usage sometimes equivocal, sometimes analogical, sometimes
univocal” (52, citing Gilson, 1–102). Cajetan’s search for an “analogical
concept” leads these critics to associate Cajetan with Scotus’s preoccupations, thereby diverting readers from Aquinas’s principal strategy. But
what if Cajetan’s aim was not to elaborate a “Thomist doctrine of analogy”? Hochschild’s “new paradigm” for parsing Cajetan makes this
observation redundant, of course, yet we shall see how the concern of
Gilson (and others) to highlight the role of judgment will re-emerge in
Cajetan’s semantic analysis in use, as Hochschild elaborates it. Ralph
McInerny’s recurrent studies (1968, 1986, 1996) on analogy prove to be
at the root of the bulk of criticism of Cajetan, as he “argues that Cajetan
allowed metaphysical considerations to intrude on his analysis of analogy” (39), yet Hochschild reminds us that such criticism “still assumes
that Cajetan in fact intended, but only failed to execute, a logical analysis of analogy” (38). After forty years, I can trace my own lack of sympathy for Cajetan’s mode of analysis to an antipathy to baroque
commentary, as well as a lack of patience with abstract semantic analysis,
which only enhances my appreciation of Hochschild’s careful re-reading
of this and other extensive works of Cajetan, to elicit their original
intent. Moreover, anyone who has struggled with baroque Latin texts will
second my accolade. But let us move forward along the pathways of the
author’s “new paradigm.”
In four dense expository chapters constituting half of the work, we
are presented with Cajetan’s tortuous route to articulating a concept with
sufficient unity to respond to Scotus’s challenge. Part of what makes it
tortuous is the Scotist penchant for concepts, which guides Cajetan’s
semantic analysis, “insofar as a concept seems to be, by its nature, univocal.”Yet such “worries about the limits of semantic analysis [allow us to]
discern two distinct conditions of any acceptable analysis of analogy: [that
it] should not dissolve analogy into univocity, nor should it be circular (or
lead to an infinite regress)” (134). The second is obvious, while the first
identifies that penchant for univocity which invariably leads contemporary philosophers to seek a “univocal core” in disparate analogical uses—
reflecting their Scotist concerns. Cajetan’s analysis meets both conditions,
we are told, by introducing the “notion of proportional unity to explain
the semantics of a mean between univocation and equivocation” (136).
At this point Hochschild employs Cajetan’s technical language to endorse
the statement that this notion of proportional unity “explain[s] how two
concepts can be the same secundum quid in some way other than occurs

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in the pros hen equivocation that is the analogy of attribution” (136). For
the judgment which Gilson identified (and others have endorsed) as axial
to analogical uses of language is indispensable if analogies that involve
recourse to a paradigmatic sense ( pros hen equivocation ) are to have any
bite. Yet by way of showing judgment to be indispensible to proportional
unity as well, Hochschild insists “that Cajetan was not attempting to give
an account of proportional unity; indeed, it is quite clear that he assumes
our ability to recognize proportional unity.” For “even if proportional
unity is a respectable object of metaphysical attention, it is still difficult to
give conditions for recognizing it” (137). Yet if we can recognize it,
proportional unity cannot simply be denied. If the absence of an account
makes “it reasonable at this point to ask what extent Cajetan’s theory
could be expected to satisfy a Scotist” (138), “Cajetan’s response . . .
confirms [that] the Scotist simply refuses to recognize something that is,
in fact, real: proportional sameness, analogical unity” (139).
So use will be the test, as the author delineates what Cajetan calls
“resolution”: “the mind’s capacity to give attention to the proportional
unity of necessarily diverse rationes . . . [yet] this attention must be accompanied by awareness of the necessary diversity of the analogates—otherwise, the analogue would collapse into a univocal ratio, absolutely one.
And since the analogous ratio so ‘resolved’ is not absolutely one, it necessarily includes an order of priority” (159). It seems that using Cajetan’s
concepts involving “proportional unity” will require some mode of
“analogy of attribution.” Again, “although a term analogous by proportionality can, like a univocal term, serve in scientific reasoning without
causing the fallacy of equivocation, still its proportionality must be kept
in mind, and it must not be treated as if it were a univocal term” (165).
What can so acute an awareness or keeping in mind be but an exercise of
judgment? Hochschild concludes that “rationes proportionally one are
unified enough to preserve the validity of inferences” and so satisfy
Scotus’s demand, yet as we have seen, their use will require astute judgment, thereby corroborating the author’s reminder that a semantic analysis of analogy is necessary yet not sufficient; more is required for actual
use, including especially that “priority and posteriority” associated with
analogy of attribution (170).This is further emphasized in the conclusion
of this remarkable study:
Cajetan’s analysis of what a proportionally unified concept entails for
the rest of logic confirms the importance of context, and the necessary
role of judgment, in the use and interpretation of analogical terms.
Cajetan, apparently unlike some of his contemporaries, does not hold

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that words have fixed semantic properties independently of their role
in sentences; rather they must understood and analyzed in light of
propositional and inferential context (175).

What better response to Scotus and Scotists? Is this not how we always use
analogous terms (which are unavoidable) in reasoning? We are aware of
the sense in which this term is being employed in this context, and so
make adjustment for it.That is, we conclude only what we can; univocity
seems to be the exception in most argumentation other than the strictly
formal. Judgment will be called for throughout ordinary discourse.
Finally, however Cajetan may relate to Aquinas, Hochschild seems
utterly in line with his use of analogy, given these reflections. A test case
may be found in Aquinas’s last article “on naming God” in the Summa
theologiae, where he poses the decisive question: whether “affirmative
propositions can be formed about God?” (ST I, q. 13, a. 12). In his
concluding response, we read:
as considered in Himself, God is altogether one and simple, yet our
intellect knows Him by different conceptions because it cannot see
Him as He is in Himself. Nevertheless, although it understands Him
under different conceptions, it knows that one and the same simple
object corresponds to its conceptions.Therefore the plurality of predicate and subject represents the plurality of ideas; and the intellect represents the unity by composition.

Not easy reading, and presupposing much unsaid, but the gist of it is that
we can realize when our terms do not match their subject, and in that realization sense the gap between our statement and what it states, for as
Aquinas notes, we can at best imperfectly signify divine things.That means
we will get it wrong much of the time, which is where self-correcting
judgment will ever be called for. Cajetan’s “proportionally unified concept”
gestures in that direction, but the test will always be our use of them.As the
author nicely puts it, Cajetan’s deft analysis “has the advantage of respecting and confirming the limits of semantic analysis” (174).
N&V
David B. Burrell, C.S.C.
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana