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Homily Given at the Basilica of the National Shrine
of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C.,
on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, January 27, 2011
A RCHBISHOP AUGUSTINE D I N OIA , O.P.
Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
The Vatican

I N HIS premiere biography of St. Thomas, Gugliemo di Tocco wrote
of the saint that “he celebrated Mass every day, his health permitting, and
afterward attended a second Mass celebrated by one of the friars or some
other priest, and very often served at the altar. Frequently during the
Mass, he was literally overcome by an emotion so powerful that he was
reduced to tears, for he was consumed by the holy mysteries of this great
sacrament and strengthened by their offering.”
“Consumed by the holy mysteries of this great sacrament.”The Italian
term here is divorato—devoured, eaten up, consumed—by the mysteries.
Surely Tocco’s vivid description of Aquinas’s devotion at Mass stops us
dead in our tracks—we, whose celebration of or participation in the Holy
Mass is frequently distracted or routinized or just bored.We’re tempted to
excuse ourselves with observations like “well, of course, Aquinas was a
saint, and this is typically saintly behavior,” or “as a very smart theologian,
Aquinas had a more penetrating grasp of things than we do.” But instead
of these evasions, what we should do is ask ourselves: what I am missing?
Rare indeed are the mysteries that consume or devour our jaded sensibilities. Perhaps a really good thriller might do so on occasion. But we
assume that holy mysteries will be something very different from murder
mysteries or natural mysteries.
But we shouldn’t exaggerate the contrast between holy mysteries and
other sorts of mysteries. In ordinary usage, the word “mystery” refers to
something that remains as yet unexplained or something that is basically
inexplicable.We expect the mystery to be resolved in the final pages of a

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Augustine Di Noia, O.P.

thriller, but at the same time scientists speak of the enduring mysteries of
the universe. These kinds of mysteries are not unlike holy mysteries in
that, in both cases, our capacity to understand or penetrate a particular
reality is challenged in a significant way.
The crucial difference between the Catholic and common uses of the
word “mystery” lies here.When the term is applied to divine realities, the
mystery involved is by definition without end.This is not to say (as nominalists, in contrast to Aquinas, seemed to want to say) that the things of God
are permanently or radically incomprehensible and ineffable, but that they
are endlessly comprehensible and expressible. Not darkness, but too much
light is what we encounter here.That irritating conversation stopper,“it’s a
mystery,” doesn’t mean that we have nothing further to say but that we can’t
say enough about the matter in hand.The mysteries of faith are so far-reaching in their meaning and so breathtaking in their beauty that they possess a
limitless—that is to say, literally an unending and inexhaustible—power to
attract and transform the minds and hearts, the individual and communal
lives, in which they are pondered, digested, and, ultimately, loved and adored.
Not for nothing can we use the word in the singular and in the plural,
mystery and mysteries.The all-encompassing mystery—in the singular—
is nothing less than and nothing else but God Himself, and the mysteries—plural—are its many facets as we come to know them.
St. Thomas insistently taught that the mystery of faith is radically
singular because the triune God who is at its center is one in being and
in activity, and comprehends in one act of omniscience the fullness of his
truth and wisdom.Through the infused gift of faith—thus called a theological virtue—the believer is rendered capable of a participation in this
divine vision, but always and only according to human ways of knowing.
We truly know God, but not in the way that He knows Himself.According to Aquinas, the human comprehension of the singular mystery of
divine truth is necessarily plural in its structure.
In this sense, we can speak both of the mystery of faith—referring to
the reality of the one triune God who is known through the act of
faith—and of the mysteries of faith—referring to our way of knowing in
the Church the various elements of the singular mystery of God. All the
mysteries of our faith point us to the single mystery at their center, nothing else but God Himself, one and three.
Coming to the center of this mystery, we affirm with astonished
delight the divine desire to share the communion of Trinitarian life with
human beings, with us. No one has ever desired anything more. God
Himself has revealed to us (how else could we have known it?) that this
divine desire—properly speaking, intention and plan—is at the basis of

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259

everything else: creation itself, the incarnation of the Word, our redemption through the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, our sanctification and glory through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus St. Paul
speaks to us today of the grace he received precisely “to bring to light for
all what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who
created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be
made known through the Church” (Eph 3:9–10).
Amazingly, then, it turns out that the divine mystery is the key to all
other mysteries. Far from being opaque, it throws light on everything
else. To see everything with the eyes of faith—to adopt, as it were, a
“God’s eye view”—is to see and to understand everything in the light of
this divine plan,“to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery.”
Glory, bliss, beatitude—these wonderful terms refer to the consummation of our participation in the communion of Trinitarian life already
begun in Baptism, nothing less than seeing God face to face.At the heart
of the mystery and the mysteries, finally, is the mystery of divine love.The
Catholic tradition has not hesitated to call this participation in the divine
life a true friendship with God.
Given all this, was it not fitting that God should be moved to send His
own Son into the world and, in the exquisite divine condescension of the
Incarnation, to take on a human nature so that He could be known and
loved by us as Jesus of Nazareth, Christ and Lord? Was it not fitting that
the Son of Man should offer His life to the Father on the Cross in a sacrifice of love for our reconciliation? Was it not fitting that Christ should
remain with us in the Eucharist?
Aquinas teaches us to regard these mysteries in the light of the overarching mystery of the divine love. This is very clear in what he wrote
about the final question:“It is a law of friendship that friends should want
to be together. . . . Christ does not leave us without His physical presence
on our pilgrimage, but He unites us to Himself in the sacrament in the
reality of His body and His blood” (ST III, q. 75, a. 1).
At the start we asked ourselves: what are we missing? what does it
mean to be “consumed by the holy mysteries of this great sacrament”?
The answer is really very simple. It means: to be consumed by the love
they embody and reveal. Is it any wonder that Aquinas wept in the
contemplation of these holy mysteries?
May this great saint, who experienced such rapture whenever he celebrated the Eucharist, help us not to miss being consumed by the love of
our divine friends who give themselves to us in this great sacrament, to
their eternal glory and to our unending benefit, the Father, the Son, and
N&V
the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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261

Blessed John Henry Newman (1801–1890)
Sermon Preached at the Toronto Oratory
October 3, 2010
ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P.
St. John’s Seminary
Brighton, MA

I T PLEASES ME greatly to return to the Toronto Oratory to celebrate
the beatification of John Henry Newman. In 2004, at the invitation of the
Provost, I preached on the feast day of Saint Philip Neri.Today I come to
honor the latest of his sons to attain the honors of the altar. John Henry
Newman now joins the company of those other Oratorians whose sanctity the Church recognizes: Saint Luigi Scrosoppi (1804–1884), herald of
divine Providence and father of the poor; Blessed Juvenal Ancina
(1545–1604), self-sacrificing bishop and defender of truth; Blessed Anthony
Grassi (1592–1671), angel of peace and hidden hero of the confessional;
Blessed Sebastian Valfrè (1629–1710), dedicated catechist and patron of
military chaplains; and Blessed Joseph Vaz (1651–1711), the apostle of Sri
Lanka, whose ministry fell during a period of anti-Catholic sentiment in
what was then Dutch Ceylon, although “his heroic charity, shown in a
particular way in his selfless devotion to the victims of [an] epidemic in
1697, earned him,” so declared Pope John Paul II, “the respect of everyone.”1 All in all, an impressive list.
John Henry Newman of course died in 1890.According to my count,
each century since the death in 1595 of Saint Philip Neri has produced
a saint or blessed from the Oratory. Some from the twentieth century
admittedly remain to emerge. But, as T. S. Eliot assures us,“There will be
1 Homily of the Holy Father John Paul II at the Eucharistic Celebration for the

Beatification of Father Joseph Vaz, Galle Face Green, Colombo, Saturday, 21
January 1995, no. 4.

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Romanus Cessario, O.P.

time, there will be time.”2 For when Pope Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal Newman, he also displayed before the Church the perennial grace of
the Oratory.The Pope affirmed tacitly that the vocation of Philip Neri,
when embraced authentically, produces saints. Who are these sons of
Saint Philip Neri? They are priests, first of all, who give themselves over
to the things that Catholic clerics have been doing for ages: prayer, study,
preaching, and the sacraments. What theological gene distinguishes
Oratorians from other forms of clerical life? Allow a Dominican to
answer this question.The Oratory creates a unique environment wherein
the Catholic priest can discover his primordial vocation. In a word, I refer
to the priest’s specific vocation to holiness, a vocation based on the sacrament of Holy Orders.3 The Oratory’s close-knit community centered
around silent meditations in common sustains a life of specifically priestly
holiness and, as Newman and the others demonstrate, can shape a man to
practice even heroic priestly virtue.
Within the daily horarium of the Oratory, time passes according to the
rhythms of divine Providence and in the exercise of Godly charity. This
consecration explains why so many of the Oratory’s recognized holy ones
distinguish themselves both for trusting a wise and loving Father and for
“speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).The followers of Philip Neri waste
no time preparing faces for the faces that they meet.They rather spend their
days practicing headship, shepherding, and enacting the bridal love that
caused the heart of their spiritual father to burst, ecstatically. No wonder
Blessed Anthony Grassi exclaimed upon entering the Oratory, “Oh, what,
what can make us worthy of the honour of being sons of St. Philip?”4
•••
Newman chose the Oratory on account of the unique place Filippone’s
arrangement holds among priestly fraternities, “a middle way between a
religious order and the diocesan priesthood.”5 On their way to study at the
College of the Propaganda in Rome and during their sojourn there,
Newman and Ambrose St. John inquired about the religious Orders.The
recent converts from the Church of England concluded that these familiar
2 T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” The Complete Poems and Plays

of T. S. Eliot (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), 14.
3 See the 1992 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope John Paul II, “I Will

Give You Shepherds,” Pastores Dabo Vobis, no. 20.
4 Lady Amabel Kerr, A Saint of the Oratory:The Life of Blessed Antony Grassi, of the

Fermo Congregation (London: Burns & Oates, 1901), 20. For the original Italian,
“Oh quando ci rende degni d’onore e riverenza l’esser figliuoli di S. Filippo!” see
Cristofaro Antici, Vita del Beato Padre Antonio Grassi della Congregazione dell’Oratorio di Fermo (Rome:Tipografia Vaticana, 1900).
5 Ian Kerr, John Henry Newman:A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 328.

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Roman Catholic institutions would not enable them to achieve their aspirations, namely, to live and work together as Catholic priests in England.
While in Italy, these Englishmen even cast a furtive glance at the Dominicans, who effectively had disappeared from England after the Reformation.
They were, I regret to inform you, not impressed. In an 1846 letter to his
younger friend, J. D. Dalgairns, Newman wrote: “We hear no good whatever of the Dominicans.”6 Newman then went on to explain: “We have
been asking Ghianda about the Dominicans, and whether they had
preserved their traditions any where. He said he thought they had at
Florence, and some where else. We asked him what he meant—why that
they were still Thomists etc. However, on further inquiry we found that the
said Dominicans of Florence were manufacturers of scented water, etc and
had very choice wines in their cellar. He [Ghianda] considered La Cordaire
quite a new beginning, a sort of knight errant, and not a monk.”7 Don
Giovanni Ghianda was a Milanese priest on whom Newman and St. John
relied for counsel during their brief sojourn in the Lombardic capital.8
Today historians agree that Jean-Baptiste-Henri-Dominique Lacordaire
was about much more than knight-errantry. He restored the Dominicans
in post-Revolutionary France, and so defended the liberty of religious
orders to exist there alongside the diocesan clergy.9 It remains one of those
mysteries of divine Providence that, during their time on earth, Newman
and Lacordaire neither met nor corresponded.10 In the mid-nineteenth
century however, God directed both Newman and Lacordaire to Italy so
that each of them would accomplish what Nietzsche later in the same
century ascribed only to the Übermensch, namely, “insatiably calling out
6 John Dobree Dalgairns was born in the island of Guernsey, 21 October 1818, and

died 6 April 1876, at St. George’s Retreat, Burgess Hill, near Brighton, England.
7 From a letter to J. D. Dalgairns, dated Milan, Oct. 18/46, in Charles Stephen

Dessain, ed., The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman,Volume XI: Littlemore
to Rome, October 1845 to December 1846 (London: Nelson, 1961), 263.
8 Giovanni Battista Ghianda (1803–70), Milanese priest, ordained in1827. He was
Alessandro Manzoni’s chaplain, and from 1840 to 1846 acted as a confessor at the
Church of San Fedele. In 1847 he became Rector of the Church of San
Bernardo and of a college, but was removed, probably by the Austrians, in1848.
From 1858 until his death he was Prefect of the Basilica of Santa Maria presso
San Celso. See Dessain, Letters and Diaries, Index, 341.
9 For further information, see Lacordaire, son pays, ses amis et la liberté des ordres
religieux en France, ed. Guy Bedouelle (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1991).
10 Newman, however, knew of Lacordaire. In a letter to Emily Bowles, dated The
Oy Bm, March 31/65, he wrote:“Yet observe, Lacordaire, with whom I so much
sympathize, was a fiery orator and a restless originator—yet he failed, as I have
failed.” See Dessain, Letters and Diaries,Volume XXI:The Apologia, January 1864
to June 1865 (London: Nelson, 1971), 440.

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264

da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play.”11 The “piece
and play” that both Newman and Lacordaire confronted differed greatly
from what the author of Beyond Good and Evil would describe.These giants
of Catholic renewal took up their challenges before a daunting secularization that threatened to subordinate both God and religion to the cultural
forces and political realities that dominated England and the Continent.
Both Dominican and Oratorian wearied not of saying Da capo! “Take it
from the top.” Lacordaire effectively restored the worldwide Dominican
Order, while Cardinal Newman took up in an exemplary fashion the work
of the Oratory so as to become its second founder.
In his illuminating study, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy,
Michael Broers describes what he calls “the war against God,” the Enlightenment campaign that Napoleon conducted in Northern Italy starting in
1801, the year of Newman’s birth.12 We learn that the French imperialist
occupation gave the regular clergy, among them the Dominicans, a very
hard time. Napoleon was swift to use confiscation and strong-arm tactics
that overnight left the Dominicans homeless and without support. No
surprise that the Friars Preachers had grown lukewarm. It takes more time
to recover from a programmatic suppression than it does to replenish a
wine cellar.The French regime in Northern Italy caused the Dominicans
and other religious institutes great harm. Before Napoleon’s arrival, there
were 750 Dominican houses in Italy; afterwards, there remained 105.13 In
any event, Newman’s short-lived interest in a Dominican vocation may be
ascribed to the designs of a divine Providence that orders all things
sweetly.14 The Dominicans were not ready to receive Newman, and so he
fell into the arms of Saint Philip Neri, into the three-hundred-year tradition of sanctity that, by then, the Oratory had enshrined.
•• •
At the Mass in Cofton Park, Pope Benedict began his list of Newman’s
virtues with reference to what Oratorians do best.As their name suggests,
the sons of Philip Neri pray and pray together. “He [Newman] reminds
us,” the Pope said,“that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into
the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons,‘a habit
11 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. H. Zimmern (New York: The

Macmillan Company, 1907), no. 56, p. 74.
12 Michael Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War against God,

1801–1814 (London: Routledge, 2002).
13 W.A. Hinnebusch, O.P.,“Dominicans,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967) 4:974–82,

at 980.
14 When he had ruled out the Dominicans, Newman wrote in 1846 to Archbishop

Wiseman to ask “what he would think of the third order of St Dominic.” See
Dessain, Letters and Diaries, XI, 305.

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265

of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every
season, in every place, in every emergency—prayer, I say, has what may
be called a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is
no longer what he was before; gradually . . . he has imbibed a new set of
ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles’ (Parochial and Plain
Sermons, iv, 230–231).”15 The Pope draws our attention to Newman’s
view of the connaturalizing effects of prayer. The Dominican Thomas
Aquinas explains this transformation that personal prayer works in us by
reference to the conversation that especially characterizes friendship.
“Now, the conversation of man with God is by contemplation of Him,”
Aquinas wrote, “just as the Apostle used to say: ‘Our conversation is in
heaven’ (Phil 3:20).”16 Blessed Newman supplies one model for maintaining a prayerful, contemplative spirit.
The Pope, in the same homily, described the active life of Birmingham’s
best-known Oratorian: “Newman helps us to understand what [service to
God] means for our daily lives: he tells us that our divine Master has assigned
a specific task to each one of us, a ‘definite service,’ committed uniquely to
every single person:‘I have my mission,’ he wrote,‘I am a link in a chain, a
bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I
shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of
truth in my own place . . . if I do but keep his commandments and serve
him in my calling’ (Meditations and Devotions, 301–2).”17 The Pope went on
to draw our attention to the divine Providence that guides the devout
Christian along the path of beatific fulfillment,“to rest forever after earthly
strife/In the calm light of everlasting life.”18 Blessed John Henry’s “Lead,
Kindly Light” suggests that our newly beatified Oratorian stood much
closer to the authentic Dominican spirit than to certain of its nineteenthcentury manifestations from which he shied away. No question about what
he thought, however. Newman found us—the Dominicans—foreign to his
ethos. On 31 December 1846, he again wrote to his friend Dalgairns, “I
think that it would be impossible for me ever to be a Dominican.”19
Today we commemorate a newly beatified priest of the Oratory. To
remark on the similarities between the Dominican ideal and Blessed John
Henry Newman illustrates the common vision that the Church holds up
15 Mass with the Beatification of Venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman, Homily

of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Cofton Park of Rednal–Birmingham, Sunday, 19
September 2010.
16 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. IV, trans. C. J. O’Neil (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), chap. 22. 2, p. 125.
17 Benedict XVI, Beatification Homily.
18 John Henry Newman, “Lead, Kindly Light” (1833).
19 Dessain, Letters and Diaries, XI, 305.

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for holy priests. The Dominican motto expresses it well: contemplare et
contemplata aliis tradere. To contemplate, and to give to others the fruit of
one’s contemplation. Newman prayed, and he worked. While his biography contains countless examples of his charity, no one doubts that the
Church best remembers John Henry Newman, as Pope Benedict XVI said
on 19 September 2010, for “applying his keen intellect and his prolific pen
to many of the most pressing ‘subjects of the day.’ ”20 If his major works
and treatises do not suffice, then let the thirty-two published volumes of his
letters and diaries confirm that Newman unceasingly devoted himself to
the sanctification of the intellect.A man of Newman’s magnitude can never
escape the scrutiny of critics. During his life and in the twelve decades since
his death, one aspect or another of his life and work has grasped the attention of those who judge only from a purely human viewpoint. To critics
such as these, our reply can only follow that of Christ to the Pharisees:“You
judge according to the flesh, I judge no one” ( Jn 8:15).
•• •
The Holy Father closed his homily at the beatification Mass with words
that Newman assigns to the “First Choir of Angelicals.”Allow me to close
by quoting also from The Dream of Gerontius. Now, however, citing words
that Newman places on the lips of one Angel:
How, even now, the consummated Saints
See God in heaven, I may not explicate;
Meanwhile, let it suffice thee to possess
Such means of converse as are granted thee,
Though, till that Beatific Vision, thou art blind;
For e’en thy purgatory, which comes like fire,
Is fire without its light.21

At Rednal’s Cofton Park, Pope Benedict declared that John Henry
Newman now lives beyond the fire without light. Now he lives by the
lumen gloriae, the divinizing light of glory that the citizens of heaven
enjoy. Now he lives with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Philip Neri and
the other saints and blesseds of the Oratory, and with the whole company
of holy ones who enjoy the Beatific Vision to which we pray—Blessed
John Henry Newman interceding—we all one day may attain.22 For ever
and ever. Amen.
N&V
20 Benedict XVI, Beatification Homily.
21 Newman, The Dream of Gerontius, §4. Soul.
22 See St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 12, a. 5, ad 3:“Unde lumen gloriae

non potest esse naturale creaturae, nisi creatura esset naturae divinae; quod est
impossible. Per hoc enim lumen fit creatura rationalis deiformis, ut dictum est.”

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Engaging Thomist Interlocutors
S TEVEN A. L ONG
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

Introduction
T HE FOLLOWING work is divided into a response to Fr. Lawrence
Dewan on the question of defense, and a response chiefly to Kevin
Keiser, but also implicitly to others holding cognate views,1 regarding the
relation between the species derived from the object, and that derived
from the end, in the case of per se order between object and end. Because
these arguments are not unrelated, it has seemed best to present them
under the ratio of a response to intra-Thomist analyses.2
1 E.g., Steven Jensen, in The Good and Evil Actions: A Journey through St. Thomas

Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010).
2 There is one Thomist interlocutor with whose observations I can now only

partially engage. Fr. Kevin Flannery, in his penetrating and insightful review of my
book, The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act in The Thomist 72 (2008), argues
regarding ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7 that “when at the beginning of that article Thomas
speaks of an act’s receiving its species from what is intended and not what is per
accidens, he is concerned with the way we determine the species of types of acts
and not directly with the analysis of individual acts.” It has occurred to me that
to this argument there is a general epistemic response, along the lines of St.
Thomas’s analysis of essence considered as a whole, which implicitly and indistinctly includes the designation of matter, but does not include it explicitly and
distinctly, such that it can be both predicated of the individual—“Socrates is a
man”—and considered simply according to the absolute meaning of the nature—
“man is a rational animal.” In short, from the vantage of Thomistic epistemology,
it is possible that distinguishing “types” of acts too strongly from individual acts—
and so distinguishing too strongly the way we determine the species of types of
acts versus the way we analyze individual acts—may fail adequately to take stock
of the nature of the act abstracted as a whole. Similarly, the species of a “type” of
act is also implicitly and indistinctly the species of an individual act of that nature.
However, this is but the nod of the head to one of several considerations—all of

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Steven A. Long

It should be added, however, that the differences here entertained are
among scholars none of whom could reasonably be presented as embracing the intentionalism that has recently come to the fore in many high
profile moral questions, from prophylactic condom use, to craniotomy, to
possible dismemberment of the fetus.3 The questions here pursued regard
matters that scholars in the Thomistic tradition have differed about—as,
for example, Vitoria and Cajetan hold different accounts of defense by
private citizens.They are significant questions of moral importance.Thus
the present work engages morally significant disputes that should not be
confused with the differences dividing mainline Catholic moral philosophers and theologians from intentionalist theories. Accordingly it is with
a certain measure of gratitude to those whose work is here engaged that
the author of the present response turns from disputing the unfortunate
implications of intentionalist error to more nuanced, interesting, and
intriguing problems—and indeed, arguably mistakes—the consideration
of which helps to reveal more profoundly the bracing intelligibility of the
teaching of St.Thomas.
A Reply to Fr. Lawrence Dewan on
St. Thomas Aquinas and private Defense,
or: A Defense of Choosing one’s Defense
Fr. Lawrence Dewan, O.P., has recently taken up the analysis of my treatment of the case of self-defense as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in

which promise to be fruitful in furthering inquiry into Thomas’s thought—that
will at some juncture require a more extensive and weighty consideration.
3 In a 24-page defense of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, in a case not
all the facts of which have been made public—available on the web at
www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/St.Josephs-Hospital-Analysis.pdf—Professor Lysaught argues that whether an act is
such as by nature to terminate in the body of a fetus and dismember it is irrelevant to the moral evaluation of the act, provided that the fetus is dying and one
intends simply to save whoever may be saved, in this case intending good to the
mother. Since all the clinical facts are not available in this case, it is difficult to
judge—it is not clear precisely what was done, nor whether Prof. Lysaught’s
descriptions obtain. She cites the thought of Rhonheimer and Grisez (e.g., see
pp. 11–12) as supporting her account.Yet it is not yet clear to what degree she
has applied their thought in a way that they would recognize; both of these
thinkers do seem to this author to render “direct” and “indirect” as simple functions of what the agent intends rather than of the nature of the object of choice.
In any case, the theory that “direct” and “indirect” are functions of intention,
such that one may put aside the integral nature and per se effects of whatever act
is chosen, seems by its nature to fall prey to intentionalism.

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ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7.4 His analysis is conspicuous for highlighting the most
formal elements articulated in St.Thomas’s account of human action. For
this reason, it seems important to me to identify the points in his account
where I believe that his reading departs from the text of Aquinas. I undertake this with proportionate trepidation, because Fr. Dewan has taught
me a very great deal about the mind of Aquinas. Further, his argument
articulates the pertinent points with a lucid clarity. Accordingly, and
precisely for these reasons, it seems to me that there can be no better or
clearer occasion to indicate, with respect to these points, the difficulties
that I find. It also seems important to address these points precisely
because, with respect to what may be done, it seems to me that almost
invariably I would find myself in agreement with Fr. Dewan, and so with
respect to our common conclusions it matters which analysis more realistically supports those conclusions. Further, although at Fr. Dewan’s
hands certain implications would never be drawn from the principles he
sets out, I am concerned that those implications nonetheless exist to be
drawn, especially with respect to the seeming denial that the integral
nature and per se effects of actions are always included in the object of
the external act or what I have called “the object of the moral act.” Lastly,
if I were to hold an account different from the one I do hold, Fr. Dewan’s
would be first on my list, and given this degree of regard, I naturally wish
all the more to indicate the reasons for my differences.
First Point
My first point of disagreement regards intention. Fr. Dewan notes
Aquinas’s clear affirmation that one may intend the end without any
determination of the means. In response Fr. Dewan rightly points out
that, in the article in which St.Thomas affirms that one may intend the
end without consideration of the means (i.e., in ST I–II, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3),
the causal role of the end with respect to the deliberation and choice of
means is prominent. Further, when we intend an end, clearly we do so as
at least prospectively implying a consideration of means. Fr. Dewan puts
it this way:
The intending will is the mover of the choosing will. Accordingly, we
must expect that in the beginning the intention will aim at means
which are still indeterminate. However, with the conclusion of its
servant, deliberating reason, the intention is perfect, and intends the
means which are the matter of choice. No wonder, then, that Thomas,
4 Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “St. Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense,”

Nova et Vetera 8 (2010): 191–205.

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in presenting the difference between intention and choice, includes the
willing of end and means in both, but in a different order. (195)

Yet an “indeterminate” consideration of means is not a consideration
but at best mere potentia. One ought not confuse the datum that intention is the ground and cause of deliberation and choice, with the quite
different proposition that therefore it is impossible to intend an end without thereby actually considering means; this latter proposition is simply
contrary both to fact and to Thomas’s express text.To say that when one
intends an end one also necessarily indeterminately intends means confuses
the potential for intention to move one to actual deliberation and choice
with the very acts of deliberation and choice. Intention is an act of the
mind, and one that can exist prior to any consideration of means.To say
“Oh no: there is an indeterminate consideration of means” is, it seems to
me, equivalent to saying “Oh no: there is no consideration of means,”
because consideration of means is precisely not indeterminate but determinate.To intend an end is potentially to consider means in regard to the
end, but not necessarily actually to do so. Moreover, the term “intention”
itself principally refers to the end, and only by extension does it pertain
to the means.
Intention of the end is the very cause of the deliberation of the means
and of choice.That it is the cause does not mean that it cannot be willed
distinctly from the means: precisely because it is by nature prior to the
means, it can be willed distinctly from the means. Intention is a mental
act, and, precisely as mental act, it can occur apart from the mental acts
known respectively as the deliberation of means or the choice of means.
That intention of the end is the cause of these latter acts does not in the
least alter the fact that it may occur separately from them, and that by
causal priority the term chiefly pertains to the end. And in the primary
sense of intention it does occur separate from them, for the primary sense
is that which makes clear its priority vis-à-vis the means, which derive
from it and not the other way around.
Thus it seems to me that Fr. Dewan’s reading contradicts Thomas’s affirmation that the intention of the end is by nature prior to, and can exist
separate from, any consideration of means.This teaching is not altered or
diminished, but rather is enhanced, by the causal role of intention; this is
precisely because there is more in cause than in effect, and the end is not
derived from choice, but rather deliberation and choice are derived from
the intention of the end. It is altogether befitting with regard to the primacy of
the end that it be susceptible of being intended apart from deliberation and choice,
for it is the cause of these. Intention of the end can exist without deliberation and

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choice, but deliberation and choice can never be save as caused by intention of the
end. As such, this sense of intention is the primary sense—because it is the
cause of the rest—and this is how Thomas uses it:“Just as intention regards
the end, choice regards the means.”5 Fr. Dewan argues:
The will is a self-mover. As willing the end, it moves itself to will the
means. It is intention precisely inasmuch as the order to the means is
introduced, no matter how indeterminately.

However, according to the ipssisma verba of Thomas noted by Fr. Dewan
himself (cf. 192), intention is precisely not intention “precisely inasmuch
as the order to means is introduced”—because intention qua intention
can exist prior to any determination of the means whatsoever and as such
it is still intention.Were Fr. Dewan’s claim true, it would necessarily follow
that intention as such could not exist prior to any determination of the
means, which is contrary to St.Thomas’s express affirmation that it can.
It is not an interpretation of Aquinas but rather the express language of
Aquinas that logically contradicts the proposition that intention is intention precisely inasmuch as the order to the means is introduced, because
intention of the end cannot be limited merely to this effect of intention:
there is more in cause than in effect. Granted that intention is the cause of
that consideration of means when it occurs, and that this is indeed proper
and natural, it is also proper and natural that intention, which is prior by
nature, can by nature exist apart from consideration of the means even
while implying the need for such consideration. And indeed, as there is
more in cause than in effect (and as the final cause is the noblest cause), it is
hardly unintelligible that one may intend an end without having considered means. Nothing in this detracts from Fr. Dewan’s correct insistence
that intention is ordered to deliberation and choice, which are causally
derived from it, nor from the view that intention is an act of the will with
respect to the end such as to imply the need for the determination of
means. Intention is distinct from voluntas precisely in that the former
implies the need for the determination of means, whereas the second is
simply an absolute will for some end. But while intending an end means
that we will have it by means of something else, it does not mean that
that “something else” has been determined but only that intention
requires the determination of means. It is because of the causal superiority of intention both that deliberation and choice are derived from it and
that intention can exist prior to any determination or consideration of
5 ST I–II, q. 13, a. 4:“Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut intentio est finis, ita elec-

tio est eorum quae sunt ad finem.”

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means. But precisely for this reason, the primary sense of intention regards
the end.
Even if the end should be willed only simultaneously with the choice
of means, so that from the beginning one wills to achieve this end in this
way, that is, through this means, nonetheless it is the end which is the cause of
the motion. Hence the intention of the end simpliciter, as causally superior
to the rest which derives from it, is the primary sense of “intend”—
whereas “choice” regards the means. In a secondary and extended sense,
the means are “intended” inasmuch as one intends the end through the
means. But the primary sense of intention simply concerns the end, and,
speaking most formally, this is necessary because of the clear causal
primacy of the end, which can indeed, as Thomas notes, be intended
apart from any determination of means whatsoever. Again: there is more in
cause than in effect.
Thomas makes this point again in ST I–II, q. 19, a. 7, resp.:“The intention precedes the act of the will causally, when we will something because
we intend a certain end.”6 But whatever deliberation we undergo, we will
to undergo owing to the intention of an end; and whatever choice we
make, we make for the sake of an end. It is clear that intention precedes
the act of the will with respect to deliberation and choice causally, and
that it may do so even temporally: we will to deliberate and choose owing
to our intending of an end, and we may intend the end even prior to any
deliberation or choice whatsoever. This pertains to the causal primacy
and precedence of the end, and it is precisely for this reason that the
primary sense of intention is of the end simpliciter.7 Far from proceeding
from a denial of the order of intention to deliberation and choice, it is
precisely because this order proceeds from the causal primacy and fecundity of the intention of the end that the intention of the end can be
found even apart from determination of the means.
But supposing someone should say: “You cannot simply intend the
end once you choose the means.” Of course, the response is: If I am not
simply intending the end, then there never will be any means, and in some
sense even whilst intending the end through the means, I am with a priority of
6 “Praecedit quidem causaliter intentio voluntatem, quando aliquid volumus propter

intentionem alicuius finis.”
7 It should also be clear that the intention of the end in question is the finis oper-

antis, because what the agent seeks may be in some way defective, whereas the
normative hierarchy of ends is normative and insusceptible of defect. Thus the
hierarchy of ends, the finis operantis, and the teleological relation of the object to
the finis operantis and further to the normative hierarchy of ends, all need to be
properly understood.

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nature and of causality intending the end simpliciter. But it is impossible to choose
or to deliberate apart from an end. Hence the primary sense of intention is the
intention of the end, whereas the means are spoken of as intended only by way of
causal extension, but properly are said to be chosen.
Second Point
The second point of difference concerns the specific analysis of the case
of lethal defense by a private party. On Fr. Dewan’s analysis, one may
never choose to kill. But yet he does wish to say that one may kill in selfdefense, and that this may be conscious and premeditated. To my mind,
St. Thomas teaches that the primary sense of intention is of the end
simpliciter, owing to the causal priority and precedence of the intention
of the end; and further, he teaches that in a secondary and derived sense
one may speak of intention of the end through the means. This sense is
“secondary” because intention of the end is primary in the sense of
having necessary causal precedence—without it there will be no
means—and indeed it may even temporally precede deliberation and
choice. It is “derived” because the end is the cause of the deliberation and
choice of means which flow from the causality of intention and thus are
derived from it. Hence, the per se and principal sense of intention is of
the end, simpliciter, from whose causal fecundity derive both deliberation
and choice. Fr. Dewan, considering not the causal superiority of intention, but the perfection of the human act, considers intention in ST II–II,
q. 64, a. 7 to be of the end through the means rather than simply of the end.
For all the reasons thus far discussed, as far as I am privileged to follow
his reasoning, I cannot follow him in this conclusion.
Given that any intending of the means is a causal effect of the intending of the end which is by nature prior, it seems to me far more intelligible to read Thomas as referring to the end simpliciter by his use in article
7 of question 64 of “intention.” Further, the bulk of the article does, I
believe, support such a reading. But quite apart from the further reading
of the article, it is important to see how this view—namely, the view that
by “intention” Thomas refers both to end and to means—affects Fr.
Dewan’s interpretation of ST II–II, q. 64., a. 7.The effect of this view is
to require Fr. Dewan’s conclusion that killing cannot be “intended”—
that is, neither intended simply qua end nor chosen as means—because
it cannot be included in our intention of the end through the means.
In ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7,Thomas makes clear that the effect of killing is
praeter intentionem. So, if by intention we mean to designate both the object
and the end, then, of course, killing can be neither end nor chosen means.
Hence Fr. Dewan’s conclusion: killing cannot morally be chosen by a

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private person.Yet I have the impression that he does not wish to deny
that one can do what any normal observer would call choosing to kill: for
example, the felon’s ax hand is about to descend on someone’s daughter,
and the mother or father has a magnum .45 handgun and aims for the
head, to stop all neurological activity so that the ax hand will not descend.
Or: a felon with an ax assails someone who has only one practical move
to avoid being slain by the assailant—a lethal thrust with a pointed or
edged object—and so chooses the lethal thrust under this ratio of defense.
Rather than denying that this may be a good act, it seems to me that Fr.
Dewan wishes to allow it as moral but to describe it in such a way that
the will in no way moves toward the killing as a means. It must, he is
saying, not be viewed as killing under a defensive ratio, but merely as not
sparing oneself in defense even though the assailant may be killed. Hence a
neutral defense somehow accidentally even if forseeably kills, but the
lethality is neither intended nor chosen.This is not an uncommon reading, but I believe it is deeply confused and indeed, taken as an account of
some uncontrovertibly moral defensive killings, simply contrary to fact.
Third Point
Here we come to the third problem I have with Fr. Dewan’s reading. I do
not see how it can be said that the killing in such acts as are described
above—and which can be replicated with illustrations of lethal private acts
that the courts of St. Thomas’s day would have held as legal acts of
defense—can rightly be said not to be chosen insofar as it is the lethality
of the act that constitutes the chosen means of defense.To be sure, there are
“defenses” from which lethality follows only quasi-accidentally. But there
are defenses in which the very nature of the defensive act is knowably lethal
and where it is precisely the lethality of the act that enables the act to be
defensive. (Fr. Dewan’s example of cutting the rope bridge at least approximates this but does not seem to be the strongest illustration [205].)8 To say
8 I say “approximates” because it is not as strong an illustration as those defenses

which are made by essentially lethal acts. Is the cutting of the rope bridge essentially or necessarily lethal? Might not the assailant hold onto the bridge and
climb back up the other side? Or fall, and catch a branch rather than plummet
to his death? The defense would still be made. But if a defense needs to be made
by a lethal sword thrust to the jugular, or by firing a large caliber round into the
cranium, the defense is made through an essentially lethal act. Nor is this merely
a function of technology, as the instance of the sword thrust indicates; perhaps
there is but one chance to avert being killed with the ax, and that is to lunge
through the heart or jugular of the opponent with one’s sword before the
motion of the assailing blow can be completed. Such a defense, for instance, is
clearly by its nature and per se ordering a specifically lethal defense.

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the contrary is to say that the will of the defender does not move toward
the lethality of an act under the motion toward defense when the defense
can be made only through a lethal act. It is also to suggest that lethal acts
do not naturally tend to suppress assault by suppressing the assailant. I
believe this strains credulity and is contrary to fact. It might remain to say
that where innocent assailed persons cannot protect themselves or those in
their care without deliberately choosing to use lethal means, they must
instead be willing to die at the hands of attackers. But I see no ground in
question 64, article 7 for supposing that St.Thomas thought in this way. In
fact, the sed contra of that article suggests otherwise:
It is written (Exodus 22:2): “If a thief be found breaking into a house
or undermining it, and be wounded so as to die; he that slew him shall
not be guilty of blood.” Now it is much more lawful to defend one’s
life than one’s house.Therefore neither is a man guilty of murder if he
kill another in defense of his own life.9

Of course, one might also note that in his general approval of “lawful
slaying”Thomas knew the practice of the courts of his day that permitted the deliberate choice of lethal defense where no other means were
proportionate to the end of defense.
Ought one to say that the mother or father must, to be moral, observe
the decapitation of their child rather than shoot for the head of the felon
attempting to lower the ax? Insofar as this is not Fr. Dewan’s position, he
seemingly has on his account of the nature of intention, only two
options: either the lethal act is chosen as such (in which case according to
his interpretation of “intention” in article 7, it is intended and so wrongful );
or the lethal act is not chosen at all.
If, then, on Fr. Dewan’s account one wishes to affirm that such
defenses are licit, it seems that one must say, contrary to the evidence, that
defenses that occur precisely by way of lethal means are such that the
agent does not choose to kill as part of a defensive ratio. But, sed contra,
the one who chooses a lethal stroke because otherwise the game is up is
choosing to kill in defense. Not even every defense from which a death
predictably follows is one that has been made by essentially lethal means
(for these may be accidentally lethal in such a way that the agent need
not have had certain reason to think of them as necessarily lethal). But
some defenses require the choice of an essentially lethal means.To say the
9 “Sed contra est quod Exod. XXII dicitur, si effringens fur domum sive suffodiens fuerit

inventus, et, accepto vulnere, mortuus fuerit, percussor non erit reus sanguinis. Sed multo
magis licitum est defendere propriam vitam quam propriam domum. Ergo etiam
si aliquis occidat aliquem pro defensione vitae suae, non erit reus homicidii.”

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contrary—that when such means are employed in defense they are not
chosen—is, to my mind, a simple re-description of the act which could
risk certain of the implications of intentionalism to which Fr. Dewan’s
analysis is on the whole opposed.
Why, for instance, ought not the HIV spouses using condoms to say:
We do not intend to contracept, but only to protect a spouse from viral
contamination without sparing the material occurrence of contraception? Just as one might say: We do not intend to kill, but only to defend
ourselves without sparing the material occurrence of killing? But, sed
contra: the integral nature of the act and its per se effects are included in
the object. The undifferentiated use of the secondary and derived sense
of intention will prove a poor compensation for failing to affirm that the
integral nature and per se effects of action are always included in the
object of the act. The spouses using condoms to avoid transmission of
HIV are contracepting; and those choosing to kill in defense are committing a defensive homicide. Killing as such is not a sin, murder is a sin; and
killing in justified defense is not murder. Similarly, the married woman
who uses a contraceptive to regulate her cycle, and also in a distinct act
pursues marital relations with her husband, is not said to be contracepting precisely because the medical treatment was chosen without reference to any conjugal act, whereas contraception always involves the
intention or choice of a venereal act.This distance of this from the AIDS
case is conspicuous: for the spouses who contracept in order to avoid
transmitting AIDS, choose to use the condom precisely with respect to
the intention of a particular venereal act.
It seems to me that for St. Thomas, the matter of the act—its integral
nature and per se effects—are always included in the object of the moral
act. Hence, some defensive acts are defensive homicides, and some of these
homicides are purely accidental, and some are actually chosen under the
ratio of defense. These defenses do not happen without choice: that is
certainly in the order of fact.And it is also, I believe, incontrovertible that
some defenses can be made only through lethal means. Since these lethal
means do not apply themselves to act, they must be chosen. The ratio of
the choice is defense, but the lethal act is chosen.This does not mean that
it is intended, but then the principal and primary and underived sense of
“intention” concerns the end as such, and only by causal extension does
“intention” pertain to the means. Fr. Dewan writes in a note:
Long, at page 52, note 8, introduces the views of Vitoria, who contends
that one can “will to kill” [licet velle occidere] since the “willing” so
described is choice, not intention; I see no room in Thomas’s presenta-

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tion for such a “will to kill” on the part of the private self-defender. Of
course, one can use the harquebus if it is the only life-saving means one
has, and one wills, chooses, to do so. (202, note 33)

But the “use” of the harquebus, about which he admits that one “wills,
chooses, to do so,” is a use with a nature and with per se effects. For
example, let us hypothesize that only a firing of the harquebus directly to
the head is such as to terminate a deadly assault. Now, to choose this is
to choose to kill; the only question is under what ratio. Since killing tends
to suppress the assault by suppressing the assailant, and since the act is
chosen under that defensive ratio and not as a function of simple intention of the death of the person as an end sought independently from the
purpose of defense, it is a licit act to choose it. Fr. Dewan wants to say
that the killing is physically but not morally present. I would say that the
killing is physically and morally present, but purely as a defensive homicide, precisely qua defensive. It is a serious moral choice to make a lethal
defense, and I do not see how the choice of the essentially lethal means
precisely qua means can be removed from the object of the act in the case
when it is chosen precisely under the ratio of its proportion to defense.
This is consistent with the answer Thomas gives to the morally significant question that indicates the subject of article 7 of question 64 of the
secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae. That question is: “Whether it is
licit to kill a man in self-defense,” and the answer is “yes.” The question
is morally significant: that is, the killing is chosen (if the killing were accidental, neither deliberated nor voluntary, the question would not be morally
significant ). Hence the subject of the question is not:“whether it is licit to
kill a man in self-defense by accident”—which would deprive the question
of any moral significance or gravitas. Rather, the issue concerns choice, and
his answer is every bit as significant: yes. The question is about morally
significant imputable conduct and Thomas answers the question.
Only the firm belief that double effect must name a departure from
Thomas’s customary mode of analysis of moral action can, it seems to me,
account for the failure to see that both the question asked and the answer
given are incompatible with the standard views of double effect. This
standard view requires that one construction—and, in my view, the less
reasonable construction—of what Thomas means by “intention” be used,
so as to generate problematic implications. But the more obvious observation is: in just lethal defense, the private party can never intend—in the
primary sense of intend, that is, the intention of the end—to kill. But in
justified defense, when the only or assuredly most reasonable defense
requires the choice of a lethal act, that lethal act may justly be chosen

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under the ratio of defense. For when the act is chosen under the ratio of
defense, because the act tends by its nature to suppress the assault through
suppressing the assailant, and because no lesser quantum of force can
achieve the defensive purpose, the most formal, defining, and containing
species is derived from the end, which is defense.
If, at gunpoint, the felon lowers the ax, and the defending mother or
father then holds the felon for the police, there clearly is no independent
desire to kill the felon (as contrasted with, say, taking the felon out to the
flower garden, noting that he has discommoded one’s evening seriously,
and observing that he will like resting amidst the begonias). Or, to take the
example extant from Thomas’s day, if a felon armed with an ax, when his
opponent’s blade begins to cut a mortal wound, instantly surrenders, and
the defender then halts what would clearly have been the lethal blow,
clearly the defender does not intend the man’s death. The private party
can choose a lethal act under the ratio of defense inasmuch as that quantum of force is required by the end of defense. If, however, that quantum
of force clearly is not required for defense, then the extra quantum of
force clearly is being chosen not under the ratio of defense but as somehow desired in its own right as an end, which the private citizen may not
justly do. Similarly, it once was the case that the contraceptive pill was the
best way for a woman to regularize her cycle—she could, after all, use the
pill without any intention or choice of any venereal act whatsoever, and
so no contraceptive act would occur. But if she chose to use the pill for
the sake of contraception, the fact that it could have been chosen under
the ratio of regularizing her cycle would not be materially relevant.
Thus I no longer view double effect as a special schema, but rather as
a special sort of problem, and one addressed by Thomas deploying the
same typical mode of analysis that he deploys everywhere.The common
tendency to treat the secondary and derived sense of “intention” as the
principal sense, seems in part an effort to compensate for failure to realize that the integral nature of the act and its per se effects are always
included in the object of the act. Hence “intention” comes to be used in
an undifferentiated way of end and means, whereas it is principally, most
formally, and with causal primacy and precedence, used of the end simpliciter, and
is only in a secondary, derived, and analogical sense used of the means. But—
equally important—the means must be choiceworthy; further, the integral nature and per se effects of the act are always included at least
materially in the object of the act, which is not reducible merely to what
makes the act appetible to the agent. The hylemorphism of the object,
the teleology of the object to the finis operantis, and the normative order
of ends in relation to which we may judge that what someone intends or

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chooses is morally defective or good, provide the context for Thomas’s
account of good and evil in human actions.
Fourth Point
I also differ with Fr. Dewan regarding the understanding of the nature of the
soldier’s intention as opposed to that of the private citizen.As he puts it:
I come, then, to the view that in self-defense the act of the private and
the public agent can be physically the same, resulting in the particular
case in the death of the attacker. However, there are two different
morally good acts.The private agent intends as an end his own survival,
and the external act of force is the one necessary to effect that result.
(The killing is incidental, belonging to the physical act as such.) The
public agent, performing the same physical act, intends the killing of
the attacker in order to save his own life, in the interest of the common
good (his exterior act, as a moral act, is formally a killing).

But in certain just defenses, the killing is not merely part of the physical
act, but rather is itself discriminated and chosen as the means of defense.The
illustration of the defense of the child by means of a deliberately chosen
lethal stroke or shot is to this point.That the end for the sake of which it
is chosen is good is important; but it, itself, must also be choiceworthy.
Now, in a justified defense, it is, because it is per se ordained to the end
whose species is defensive. But to say it is not chosen—as though the
magnum .45 is aimed at the head of the assailant, and the shot fired, without deliberate choice that is made precisely because only killing in this way will
disrupt the falling of the hand wielding the ax that is about to fall on the
child—seems not even a factually correct depiction. Yet the view that a
parent ought not act in this manner to defend the child when no other act
is reasonably possible is simply false. Likewise, the intention of the public
agent is not necessarily defensive in the manner portrayed in Fr. Dewan’s
comments, although of course in the article we are discussing Thomas is
taking up the right of public agents to intend to kill when acting in
defense. But the ratio for this right of public agents regards the order to the
common good, according to which the state acts not in a purely defensive
capacity but also in a punitive capacity. In legal orders throughout history,
“dead or alive” has been a formal legal charge; and military units undertake
search and destroy missions, not “search and defend” missions.The public
agent can justly kill as an end of retributive state action, and hence killing
in defense can, for the public agent, be just retribution (whereas the private
citizen cannot intend the killing under the ratio of public retributive
penalty but solely as defensive). Both Augustine and Aquinas depict war as

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essentially punitive.This depiction is in contrast to the erroneous formulation of the United Nations. Likewise it is not intrinsically immoral for
law enforcement agents to execute judgments of a nature different than
is common within our legal system. For example, one such judgment is
illustrated in those earlier regimes that would order the suppression of
bandits either by arresting or by killing them. So, while I concur with Fr.
Dewan that the public agent’s act is formally a killing, I would not frame
this purely defensively even in the case where the public agent is
performing an act of defense. And while I concur that private killing in
self-defense may at times be accidental, it is not always so, and when it is
deliberately chosen precisely because only an act of a lethal nature
suffices for the end of defense, the relation of the object of the act to the
end is per se, and in that case the most defining, formal, containing
species is derived from the end. Because in this case the end is defensive,
it follows that the act will be a defensive homicide.
Fifth Point
Fr. Dewan argues that “the private person has no right to kill” (202). But
normally such a locution would mean “should not deliberately and voluntarily perform the act of killing.” This is not what Fr. Dewan means,
because he excludes the integral nature and per se effects of the act from
the object. Hence, following Cajetan, he can accept the description of the
killing as merely “following from” making a defense, as though it arrived
serendipitously on the scene without any deliberate choice of lethal means on
the part of the defending agent. But in just and deliberately lethal defense
it is not merely from the intention of defense (as of an end) that lethality
derives, since many defenses do not require lethal means and so these are
not chosen by those seeking to achieve a defense. Rather, the lethality derives
from the judgment that in the given case, only lethal means are adequate
to the end of defense, and since these means will suppress the assault by
suppressing the assailant, and no other means are adequate to defense, the
defender chooses to commit a defensive homicide (and indeed, in the
given example, the species of the act is that of just defense).10 What is being
occluded is that in the article in question Thomas uses the strong and
primary sense of intention and not the secondary sense: one may not independently seek someone’s death as an end, but one may choose to kill
under the ratio of defense. Further, the means are chosen after deliberation
and in relation to the end sought.What sense can it make to say that they
are not deliberated and chosen when clearly they are?
10 We are hypothesizing a just defense, but there are other kinds. A felon might seek

to defend himself against apprehension by the police, which would be a sin of strife.

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As for the private person having no right to kill: manifestly, if one may
voluntarily and deliberately kill in defense without this being unjust,
there indeed is a right to kill in just defense. If this right is denied, then,
in the view thus proffered, does a private citizen have a “right” to impede
any motion whatsoever? After all, on precisely the same analysis, the
private citizen, not being a public authority, has no such right to impede
the free actions of others.The man about to murder another has not yet
been judged by a court, and the private citizen is not a policeman.
Indeed, in a certain sense the private citizen has no formalized “right to
impede the free motions of fellow citizens.”Thus he may not even justly
choose to trip the man about to murder a child. But this seems to be a
somewhat positivistic use of “right,” as though any just claim to retard or
resist evil acts were equivalent with the claiming of essentially judicial or
public authority. If “right” means “just claim” then there is a “right” to
kill in justified defense, as there is a “right” to impede murderous motions
by others. If “right” means something other than “just claim,” then it isn’t
morally pertinent to the simple question: Can a private party justly
choose to kill someone under the ratio of defense when only the discrimination and use of lethal means is sufficient to stop the unjust assault?
That law officers and even courts may need to judge such events does
not obscure the fact that whether they are just or not is not merely a
function of positive law.
Even in a positivistic sense, most legal orders in the history of Western
civilization (and indeed, the world) have accepted that a private citizen
may, when no other means is sufficient to the purpose of a just defense,
choose to employ a lethal means precisely qua lethal. Police reports are
filled with precisely such language. No private citizen has the right to
execute, to seek the death of another as an end; but to choose a lethal
means under the ratio of just defense may be licit. One must ask: Does, or
does not, the one who “physically” kills for defense in Fr. Dewan’s analysis actually choose to deploy a lethal means? If so, and we exclude it from
the moral object, one may be concerned lest this establish a ground in
every case for dropping the integral nature and per se effects of the act
from the moral object.
Finally, the unjust assailant, even if morally innocent, is not performatively innocent. In just defense there is no necessary judgment about the
assailant’s culpability, but only about his threat. Perhaps the felon who
threatens to decapitate one’s child with an ax has a brain tumor and isn’t
culpable for his actions. One does not judge him guilty and worthy of
death, nor does one execute him. One judges him both to be threatening one’s child and to need to be stopped, and in the given example one

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chooses the only means—a lethal means that destroys his nervous system
and kills him—that can prevent the ax hand from descending (unless he
surrenders). To say that the lethal act is never in just defense chosen is
counterfactual. Some lethal acts are accidental to defense, even when they
are foreseeable effects.11 But some lethal acts constitute the very chosen
nature of the defense.To say that these are not defensive because they are
lethal is false; and to say that because they are defensive they are not
chosen seems equally false. They are defensive homicides, and if the
defense itself is justified, then—where the lethal act is chosen under the
ratio of defense and does not constitute more force than required for
defense—they are justified defensive homicides.
Conclusion in RE: Defense
Intentionalist distortions of double effect often are defended by the claim
that when it comes to self-defense, the Catholic tradition does what
dissenters from the Magisterium of the Church do with respect to
contraception et alia. But in the case of defense,Thomas very clearly says
that the private citizen may not intend killing—which seems to me
clearly a function of the strong primary sense of the intention of the end—
but that it is licit for the private citizen to choose lethal means, to kill, in
defense. This is true unless it be said that St. Thomas deliberately asked
and answered a morally otiose question, for to ask whether it is licit to kill
a man in defense is to ask about voluntary and deliberate conduct and
choice if it is to ask about morally significant conduct. If the sense of
killing in the question is, as it were, submoral or merely physical, the question becomes tantamount to asking whether it is licit to kill in defense by acci11 For instance, there are equivocal acts that might be expected to cause death, but

which would not certainly do so, and if one of these were the sole means proportioned to defense, then the agent could not be said to have made his defense
through an essentially lethal means. But there are such means, and if and insofar as
they are deliberately employed because none other is proportioned to defense, then
clearly a lethal defense is chosen precisely because of the proportion of the lethality to defense.The sense in which lethality “follows from” defense may be the sense
in which “means” follow from “ends.” In the case in which only an essentially
lethal act is adequately defensive, the choice of lethal means is defensive. Of course,
if there are other means available, then the fact that the added quantum of force is
unnecessary for defense suggests that it has been chosen for another reason which
is not defensive. Likewise, it does not make a contraceptive act less contraceptive
merely because contraceptives may be chosen for the sake of regularizing a
woman’s cycle: if she chooses it in relation to a given venereal act, it is chosen qua
contraceptive. But a woman can choose to use the contraceptive pill simply to
regularize a cycle, and without intending or choosing any venereal act whatsoever,
in which case it clearly is not contraceptive.

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dent, which is no longer to inquire about morally significant conduct. Of
course there is a distinct morally significant question that may be raised
about conduct neither chosen nor intended, namely, whether the agent
may be remotely guilty of irresponsibility because the non-chosen, nonintended acts might have been anticipated (as an habitual drunk may
anticipate that when he is drunk he becomes violent). Nonetheless
morally significant conduct is chosen or intended (and the question of
responsibility for unintended and unchosen acts is a question about prior
intention and choice: should one either intend or choose to drink, given
that one knows one is thereby liable to become violent?).
The growth industry of double effect re-description of acts cannot
rightly plant its flag in the Summa theologiae. Of course, on this conclusion I
am in concurrence with Fr. Dewan, although the susceptibility of other
premises to this problem divides us. It astounds me the degree to which,
with different analyses, we seem for the most part to end with the same deed
to be done (the murderer crossing the rope bridge of Fr. Dewan’s example
can take no succour from his account, something not true of certain aberrantly pacifistic putative interpretations of St.Thomas). But I believe that the
description of that pertinent deed, is, in the case of justified defense, indeed
at times defensive homicide or killing under the ratio of defense.Yet were I able to
think the hylemorphic nature of the object of the moral act, or the teleological order of object to end, to be less formally essential to Thomas’s moral
account, I would rather prefer to renounce defense than differ with Fr.
Dewan. On this score I can only take comfort from Aristotle, who felt the
need to criticize even his beloved teacher Plato. Although the critic in this
case is not in the same league, the criticized—Fr. Dewan—is, and so by
extrinsic attribution the likeness of the two cases may be sustained.
A Fresh Look at Keiser’s View of Moral Teleology
In his essay “The Moral Act:A Fresh Look,”12 Kevin Keiser, responding in
a substantive note to my work,13 argues that I have fundamentally misunderstood Aquinas. He objects to my noting the teaching of Aquinas in
Summa theologiae, prima secundae, question 18, article 7, that in cases wherein
the object of the moral act is per se ordered to the end, the species derived
from the end is most containing, most formal, and most defining, with
respect to the species derived from the object.To quote Keiser:
This is speech that fails to signify.To be both the most containing and
the most defining at the same time is to be both the most general and the
12 Kevin F. Keiser,“The Moral Act: A Fresh Look,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 237–82.
13 Keiser, “The Moral Act,” 277–78, n. 160.

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most specific at the same time.And to be the specific difference and not
be the most defining is to be the most defining and not the most defining. Man is not most defined by the genus of “animal” that contains
him, but by the “rational” that is his specific difference. It would be
absurd to answer the question, “What most defines man?” with the
response, “His animality.”The specific difference is that which signifies
how a thing is what it is.14

Keiser continues to note:
It is possible that Long is incautious about the meaning of “specific
difference” or “defining.” See Teleological Grammar, 51, 84, where he
replaces the term “specific difference” with “accidental specification,”
even though accident is precisely distinguished against specific difference
among the predicables.15

Both of these claims, however, clearly fail to advert to Thomas’s express
teaching in question 18, article 7, of the prima secundae inasmuch as it
bears directly upon the nature of the claims themselves; both also fail to
give an account of the text that does not condemn the text precisely
along with the condemnation of the reading that I have offered of it.
First, as to the issue of genus and species. Certainly it is true that normally
the specific difference is thought of as most formal and actualizing vis-à-vis
the genus, that is to say, as representing a further quantum of actuality vis-àvis the genus understood analogically as potency. And so one ought to be
puzzled by Thomas’s insistence that, in cases of per se order of object and end, the
species derived from the end contains the species derived from the object, in
a quasi-generic manner, while being more formal than the species derived
from the object (even though the latter is, as it were, a specific difference
with respect to it). Normally, that which is formal is viewed as most defining, and as the specific difference derives from the form, we think of the
specific difference as “most formal” and most actualizing.Thomas does not
deny any of this here. But he does re-direct the intelligence, in a way that
he often does with respect to the difference between understanding natural
moral order and understanding the nature of substances.
In one such redirection of the intelligence, by way of prologue and
comparison Thomas famously holds that a circumstance can introduce a
14 Keiser,“The Moral Act,” 277, n. 160.This seems to be one of Steven Jensen’s crit-

icisms as well—see his argument on pp. 268–69 of his Good and Evil Actions: A
Journey through St.Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2010); one notes particularly the illustration of “rational” and
“animal” on p. 269.
15 Keiser, “The Moral Act,” 278.

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new object into a moral act.16 But the object is formal vis-à-vis the moral
act. How then can a mere circumstance—which is as it were, qua circumstance, accidental—introduce a new object into the act? Certainly in the
physical order, a new circumstance does not change species—a cow is a
cow is a cow, irrespective of its circumstances. And, morally, the object is
formal.Yet morally, a circumstance can introduce a new object, because the
object is what the act is about in relation to reason, and by way of the circumstance’s direct effect on what the act is about in relation to reason, it can
change the objective nature of the act.When a circumstance becomes the
principal condition of the object of an act, it specifies the act. For example, a man plans a prison break from a POW camp in which the safety of
all depends on his ability to run as usual, as he is a very fast sprinter; but he
sprains his ankle the night before the escape.What was a reasonable act of
attempting to escape has become something wholly unreasonable by way
of the injury which exposes all to inordinate risk. The act changes in its
species from reasonable act of attempting to escape, to knowably suicidal
act of attempting to escape, because of a circumstance. And of course,
morally speaking, the “circumstance” is thus somewhat more than a mere
circumstance.Yet Thomas does not deny that “circumstance” is normally
distinguished from the essential formality of the object of the moral act.
This is a classic illustration of the redirecting of the intelligence to see how
the apparatus of analogical distinctions regarding genus, form, act, potency,
circumstance, necessity, essence, etc., plays out differently vis-à-vis moral
analysis than one might superficially expect it to do.
The case is similar in the present instant with respect to specific difference and genus. With respect to the nature of form and specific difference, Thomas does not deny that the specific difference represents a
greater quantum of act vis-à-vis the genus, which is viewed materially.
Nor does he deny that the species derived from the object adds a further
difference—which as formal is a further actuation—to the species
derived from the end, which accordingly is like a genus. There remains
therefore a sense in which the difference is to the genus as act to potency,
and this pertains to the species derived from the object vis-à-vis the
species derived from the end.Yet this is insufficiently illuminative of the
actual character of human action, because considered wholly apart from
the nature of finality, which is the crucial consideration in the case of
action. Here is what he does have to say about this:

16 Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10, resp. & ad 1–3.

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Difference is compared to genus as form to matter, inasmuch as it actualizes the genus. On the other hand, the genus is considered as more
formal than the species, inasmuch as it is something more absolute and
less contracted.Wherefore also the parts of a definition are reduced to
the genus of formal cause, as is stated in Phys. ii, 3.And in this sense the
genus is the formal cause of the species; and so much the more formal,
as it is more universal.17

The genus is more formal than the species, inasmuch as it is more absolute
and less contracted—it is not limited merely to any particular specific
modality. Further, we say that the parts of a definition are reduced to the
genus of formal cause, such that in this sense (“et secundum hoc”) “the
genus is the formal cause of the species; and so much the more formal as
it is the more universal.” Parts of a definition are reduced to the genus of formal
cause, and each of these parts is as it were saturated with the formality in
question. Now, in moral order, in the case wherein the object is per se
ordained to the end, the most formal (this is expressly St.Thomas’s designation) species, which is also the most containing (as Thomas puts it in his
respondeo, “Unde una istarum specierum continebitur sub altera,” and he
makes quite clear that it is the species derived from the object that is
contained by the species derived by the end), is derived from the end.
So, one notes Thomas teaching that since the species derived from the
object is to the species derived from the end as the parts of definition are
to the genus of formal cause, the species derived from the end is most
formal, containing, and (this last is my term) defining. Keiser apparently
draws the line at “defining” while accepting “most formal”—but the
genus of formal cause is precisely “most defining” and Thomas expressly
makes the point comparing the species derived from the end with the
formality of the genus of formal cause “into which the parts of a definition are reduced.” Even that which represents the added act, formality,
perfection in the object-species, in the case of per se order of object
toward the end exists solely as required by and for the sake of the end:
like the fitting of the glove to the hand, in the instance of per se order,
the object is entirely subordinate to and for the sake of the end.
17 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 7, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod differentia comparatur ad

genus ut forma ad materiam, inquantum facit esse genus in actu. Sed etiam genus
consideratur ut formalius specie, secundum quod est absolutius, et minus contractum. Unde et partes definitionis reducuntur ad genus causae formalis, ut dicitur in
libro Physic. Et secundum hoc, genus est causa formalis speciei, et tanto erit
formalius, quanto communius.” All Latin passages are derived from the Corpus
Thomisticum, S.Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, made available online by the University of Navarre (www.unav.es/filosofia/alarcon/amicis/ctopera.html#OM).

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All the parts of the definition are reduced to the genus of formal cause,
as the species derived from the object is—in the case of per se order of
object to end—reduced to the species derived from the end (because any
other species is merely a particular modality of the species derived from
the end). Indeed, in this sense the genus is the formal cause of the species.
Thus, unless Keiser wishes to argue with Thomas that the genus of
formal cause is indeed not formal, and that the parts of definition are not
precisely reduced to the genus of the formal cause, or that the formal
cause as saturating all the parts of the definition is not precisely “most
defining,” everything he comments on with regard to my express position pertains directly and unequivocally to the teaching of Aquinas.
Keiser’s criticism also lacks sufficient reference to these words of Aquinas
directly holding that the species derived from the end in cases of per se
order between object and end is most containing and most formal.
But as noted briefly above, there is a further crucial point that is wholly
omitted from Keiser’s account and that is necessary to explain Thomas’s
teaching in ST I–II, q. 18, a. 7. Insofar as object is per se ordered toward end,
the supremacy of the end is precisely what is reflected even in the further determination of the species derived from the object, for the added quantum of perfection,
determinacy, and act reflected in that species is wholly for the sake of the end and
is contained within the most formal species derived from it, as reflecting the optimal
path of the agent to the end. In the case of per se order, everything that
constitutes the added determinacy and act of the species derived from the
object vis-à-vis the species derived from the end, exists for the sake of the
end and as interiorly ordered to it and proceeding from its intention.18 Thus, as with
the case of circumstance, it is not that Thomas denies that there is a further perfection of act in the object vis-à-vis the end; rather, it is that that very further perfection of act is wholly a per se function of the order toward the end.
Keiser’s example of the soul and the matter in the human composite
is unhelpful here, because “animal” as genus vis-à-vis “reason” as difference does not suffice to indicate the type of causality that the end exerts
vis-à-vis the object when the object is essentially ordered to it. The likeness is more confined; that is, just as “reason” is the difference in regard
18 For example, that a homicide be justly defensive will be the most important aspect

of the act: it could be simply murderous.Yet that the defense be lethal adds, by
way of gravity in its object-species, a further actual character to the act. Of course,
the due or integral matter and per se effects of the act are always included in the object.
Cases of per se order in which it seems that what is provided by the objectspecies is morally decisive will turn out, I believe, to be either instances in which
what is taken as the end-species is in fact too indeterminate to count as a moral
species, or cases in which there is not genuinely per se order (because in per se
order the very essence of the object wholly serves and is explained by the end).

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to the genus “animal,” so the species derived from the object represents a
further determination precisely with respect to the species derived from
the end. But, the remotion of the example of matter and soul from final
causality is what makes it to be of very marginal aid or importance for
the question at hand with respect to action (and, of course, this also is
accordingly a remotion not simply from intention but from choice). By
contrast, in the case of per se order of object to end, the causality of the
end is maximal: the further determination and actuality of the species
derived from the object by comparison with the species derived from the
end is chosen and exists only owing to the end, and it is contained within
the most formal species derived from the end, to which it is reduced as the
parts of the definition are reduced to the genus of formal cause.
To take what is thus far an unhelpful illustration of body and soul and
make it helpful, one should consider the difference between body/soul
and end-species/object-species. If the difference of reason vis-à-vis the
matter of the human composite were “chosen” solely because it represented the optimal way of moving toward the good of the body, then we
would have the cognate comparison with the object-species chosen
solely because it represents the optimal way of moving toward the end
and the species derived from it (the end-species is like a genus compared
to the object-species which is like a difference). Of course, this comparison
does not hold, because the body is for the soul, not the soul for the body. But who
would be foolish enough to suggest that the end is for the object, and not the object
for the end, in the case of per se order of object and end? It follows that for the
purpose of illustrating the relation of object-species to end-species the
comparison of the relation of body and soul is unhelpful, because the
relation of final cause to efficiency in human action is sui generis.
Admitting that there is an added quantum of perfection in the difference from the object, one’s attitude toward this datum alters in realizing
with St. Thomas that, in the per se case, everything represented by that
added quantum of perfection is wholly and essentially ordained to the
end—the end-species in this case, as Thomas says quite clearly (although
Keiser does not quote him), is more formal, and so much the more
formal as the more universal. Why more formal? Why more universal?
More formal because the form most of all accounts for the character of
the thing whose form it is, and when object is per se ordered toward end,
the end most of all accounts for the character of the object (that is why
the act is chosen). More universal because a variety of possible distinct
objects might be per se ordained to the end, one of which is for various
reasons better suited to the end than the others—so that the difference
of the object-species in such a case can be, in a sense, and in relation to

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the end simpliciter, accidental. More universal also, because as the noblest
cause the end is most comprehensively and universally perfective.
With respect to Keiser’s admonition about caution regarding specific
difference and the object-species: this species is not accidental to the
particular act, but it is accidental in the sense noted above.That is, there
may be several distinct objects each of which could essentially tend
toward the end, such that any one could serve.Thus, it is accidental to a
trip as such that it be by car, but it is obviously not accidental to a car trip
that it be by car, nor is it accidental that “by car” be essentially a mode of
travel.Accordingly Keiser’s criticism misses the mark, since I do not claim
that the specific difference of action vis-à-vis intention of the end is, in
the per se case, accidental to the action but rather that it may be accidental to
the intention of the end simpliciter. Man is per se an animal; but man is not
per se every animal, nor is every being that is per se an animal a man.
Many distinct objects may tend per se toward a certain end, and thus in
a certain respect be accidental in relation to it (thus whether an animal is
a deer or a muskrat is accidental to animality as such, without suggesting
that the dear or muskrat is not essentially an animal). Of course, where
the nature of the perseity involved is such that only one object can, by
the very nature of the end sought, serve—the strongest sense of perseity—this point made about object and intention will not apply. But it will
apply when the perseity in question is that of several objects each such as
potentially to tend essentially toward the end.19
In any case, though the object adds a quantum of act, and of determinacy, to the intention of the end—it is more formal with respect to superadding a further quantum of perfection—this added perfection is wholly
and essentially what it is owing to the causality of the end. Whatever the
object is, when it is per se ordered to the end (1) its additional perfection
vis-à-vis the end is essentially ordered to the end; (2) in its totality it is a motion
toward the end; and (3) the object-species is contained in the more formal
species derived from the end. Hence the end to which it is ordered along
with the species that derives from it is, adequately considered, most fundamental.The end as such contains more perfection than the means to the end,
19 There are, by the nature of the case, only two ways in which the relation of

perseity may obtain. Because the object and the end are so related, the relation
must proceed either from the nature of the end, in the case that the end by its
very nature requires a certain object (which object nonetheless could be
intended for the sake of a different end—that the intention of “a” essentially
require and imply “b” does not mean that “b” can be willed only for “a”); or it
may proceed from the object insofar as the object tends toward the end by nature
(even though other potential objects might do so as well).

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for otherwise we would seek the means rather than the end. When the
object is per se ordained to the end, this primacy of the end is naturally
decisive precisely because the object is ordered to the end per se.20
Thus it is owing to the causality and nobility of the end that every essential
feature of such an object is determined and chosen: this is what per se order means,
that the object is naturally ordained to the end. The intention of the end is
most formal with respect to action.The fear of teachings that seek to make
further and even accidental orderings to ends trump per se natural order
should not move one to confuse object and end, or to fall into confusion
with respect to the essentially nobler causality of the end in relation to
which the object of the moral act exists.
Finally, with respect to Keiser’s claim that:
In other words, no matter what, the definition of the act done is set by
the exterior act’s object. In this, the doctrine of STh I–II, q. 18, a. 7 is
20 Jensen makes the interesting and argumentatively stronger point (Good and Evil

Actions, 269 and note 39) deriving from ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1, quoting St.Thomas,
“Id enim quod praeter intentionem est, per accidens est; unde non potest esse
specifica differentia.” But no one ever doubted that one use of “intentionem”
regards not only object as well as end, but indeed any partial motio with respect
to the end. But the principal sense is causal, namely, the sense in which owing to
the intention of the end the means are chosen. In a secondary sense, but one
essential to the individual act as such, the end is intended through the means; and
in the widest sense, with respect to the individual act, any partial motion toward
the end can be said to be “intended” as when I say that since I intend to walk
across the room I therefore intend to walk one half the distance, and one quarter, and one eighth, and so forth. It is of course context that tells us what sense
is being used, and with respect to ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, on defense (which Jensen
is addressing), the chief indicator of context is that the question is: “Is it lawful
to kill a man in self-defense?” and St. Thomas’s answer is it is not unlawful—
“non habet rationem illiciti.” Since it is a morally significant question, and is not
the question: “Is it lawful to kill a man in self-defense by accident” the context
makes quite clear that the sense of “intention” in that article concerns the end
simplicter as noblest cause and the very raison d’être for the means (the intention
of defense is most defining). There is more in cause than in effect and so it is fitting
to consider intention of the end in this way before considering it in the secondary terms of the intention either of the end through the means or intention of the
whole act (either of which readings, however, of “intention” in q. 64, a. 7 cannot
make sense of Thomas’s answer to the question asked by the article without
rendering the act no longer to be morally significant; while both of these
secondary senses of intention also presuppose the reality and indeed the understanding of the prior and formal causality of the end which is the principal
object of intention). But Jensen’s comment should draw one’s attention to the
different senses of “intention” and the need to take account of these in the
systematic reading of Thomas’s teaching.

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no different from St. Thomas’s doctrine elsewhere: the exterior act as
chosen, that is, the proximate end, sets the species (cf. STh II–II, q. 11,
a. 1, ad 2, which apparently refers back to I–II, q. 18, a. 7; cf. also the
numerous texts cited in n. 169 below; and Jensen’s treatment in “A
Long Discussion,” 634–36). This Long denies, saying the exact opposite. (278, note 160)

Here one can say only that Keiser needs to distinguish object and end.
He refers to the exterior act’s object, but he seemingly confuses this with
the exterior act’s end, and it is the end of the exterior act that determines
the species.Thomas expressly says the end, not the object.The conflation of
the two is an error. Indeed, in the case of theft and adultery, mentioned
expressly in ST II–II, q. 11, a. 1, ad 2, it is precisely because adultery is not
per se ordered to theft that we seek the species of the physical act from
the end of adultery rather than of theft.That is because the lustful motions
in question in the act are per se ordained to adultery. St.Thomas is quite
clear: in the very article cited by Keiser (ST II–II, q. 11, a. 1, ad 2), he
speaks of end.
With respect to the end of the exterior act determining the species,
Keiser writes, “This Long denies, saying the exact opposite.” But what I
say the “exact opposite” to is the hoary error of supposing either that the
object of the per se act—what the act is about relative to reason—is identical with the end even in the simplest instance; or saying that the object
“sets” the end rather than that the object is precisely chosen with essential
reference and owing to the intention of the end, which is the nobler cause. The
object of the exterior act is what the act is about relative to reason and while
this is judged in relation to the end, it is not identical with the end nor does it
“set” the end, as though first we chose objects and only subsequently,
derivatively, or secondarily concerned ourselves with ends. To the contrary,
the end is first in intention, and the contrary view is Alice in Wonderland, people choosing objects and then intending ends subsequently.
Objects do not set ends, but rather when the object is per se ordained to the end,
the agent chooses the object in relation to and for the sake of the end.When there
is per accidens order, then one is confronted with distinct acts each with
its own per se order, one further and accidentally ordered to the other. It
is not material simplicity, but unification of species deriving from per se
order to the end, which constitutes a formally simple as contrasted with
a formally complex act. In the case of per se order, the external act is
chosen owing to the end, not the other way around. The strongest possible regard for “proximate end” is accordingly found in those who understand the difference between per se and per accidens order, and who
understand that human action is founded upon the case of per se order.

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Were one act not more ordered to one effect than another, rational
human action would be impossible: it is solely per se teleological order
that renders the simplest instance of human action, and the very reality
of the object of a moral act, possible. But the moral act is constituted in
relation to the end, and it is the very cause for one’s consideration and
choice of act and object.21 Keiser’s claim that my account loses what he
calls “proximate end” accordingly misses the mark, because my account
21 One notes again that Jensen supposes that if an end per se requires a certain act,

then every instance of that act tends to that end. But this is no more true than it
would be to say that the proposition “man is per se an animal” means that man is
every animal. Since per se relation between object and end must have a foundation, that foundation can rest principally either in the nature of the end as requiring an act, but without any implication the object might not be sought under a
different ratio: thus heart surgery requires opening the chest cavity of the patient,
but one may open the chest cavity of the patient for many reasons—yet nonetheless, if one intends heart surgery, one must open the chest cavity of the patient and
when one does so pursuant to the intention of the surgery the act is not mutilation but medical surgery. Or: an act may be such that it tends by its very nature
toward a particular end (but there may be several acts that do so). Hence Jensen,
in his “The Role of Teleology in Moral Species,” Review of Metaphysics 63 (2009):
3–27, writes:“Long suggests that cutting open a chest is per se ordered to cardiac
health, since it is necessary in some instances of bypass surgery. Unfortunately, the
same act, it would seem, is per se ordered to the Aztec priest pulling out the heart
of his victim. According to Aquinas, however, a single action has only one natural per se order.” Jensen thinks in this way because he bifurcates the intentional
and the natural, whereas moral thought requires a hylemorphic understanding of
their relation. In any case, the Aztec is not pursuing the end of surgery. Jensen
should tell us: In heart surgery, is the opening of the chest cavity merely mutilation, or is it medical? And if medical, why is it medical? The answer: It is medical,
and it is so because the end sought per se requires opening the chest cavity if the
patient is not, contra the intended purpose of the medical surgery, to die as a result
of the operation.What is genuinely amazing is that Jensen cites in note 18 of his
essay, directly after the passage cited above, Thomas’s teaching that man cannot
have more than one last end, as justifying the view that a thing cannot have more
than one per se effect. But this is like saying that contraceptive pills cannot tend
both to regulate the cycle of a woman and to contracept. Action begins with the
agent’s intention of the end, to which the object is ordained either essentially—
because the nature of the end requires it, or alternately because the object simply
tends of its nature toward that end—or accidentally.The hierarchy of ends can be
known without express advertence to action’s relation to reason. But if we are to
make sense of what an agent is doing, to consider action from the vantage point
of the acting person, then the relation to reason is essential, and that is to consider
what the agent seeks as end (which may be deprived vis-à-vis the hierarchy of
ends) and the rational proportion and relation of the act chosen to the end: all,
granted, in the light of the normative hierarchy of ends, which enables us to make
judgments about the reasonability of intentions and choices.

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holds that the basic “unit of currency” of human action is the instance of
per se order of object to end which is the strongest possible stress upon “end.”
Still it is correct that my account does not begin with a treatment of the
object, but that is because human action doesn’t begin there either; it
begins with the intention of the end, to which action is either per se or
per accidens ordained.
St. Thomas teaches in ST I–II, q. 18, a. 4, ad 2 that the exterior act
bears a proportion to the end, even though the end is extrinsic. Now, St.
Thomas is not holding that the act bears a proportion to itself, nor that
the act is extrinsic to itself : the act is proportioned to the end which is
extrinsic. Nor is he suggesting that the proportion to the end is what
determines the end: we seek an act proportionate to the end because and
insofar as we seek the end. As St. Thomas makes clear in ST I–II, q. 18,
a. 2, ad 2:
The object is not the matter “of which” (a thing is made), but the
matter “about which” (something is done); and stands in relation to the
act as its form, as it were, through giving it its species.22

In every case, what the act is about relative to reason is chosen in relation
to some end: the relation to reason is an oblique reference to the proportion the object bears to the end. But this proportion to the end—which
is the ratio of the act’s appetibility to the agent—although very close to,
and unthinkable apart from, reference to the end, is not itself the end.23
It is not as though one sought the end merely so that one could pursue
it through the object concerned; rather, one chooses the object precisely
because one seeks the end and the object offers the most reasonable or
best way of doing so, for the sake of achieving the end.
Hence, to repeat: even what is most distinguishable about the object and the
species derived from it—that which most constitutes its added quantum of perfection, actuality, determinacy vis-à-vis the species derived from the end—is in the
case of per se order wholly and essentially for the sake of the end. It follows that
the species derived from the end is accordingly most formal. Keiser dislikes “most
defining” but, frankly, since the very added perfection of the objectspecies vis-à-vis the end-species is, in the case of per se order, chosen by the
agent because of its essential order to the end, the object-species does resolve
22 “Ad secundum dicendum quod obiectum non est materia ex qua, sed materia

circa quam, et habet quodammodo rationem formae, inquantum dat speciem.”
23 Nor is it even the whole object, since the object is not only the ratio of the

appetibility of the act to the agent, but also necessarily includes the integral
matter and per se effects of the act performed.

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into the end-species as the parts of the definition resolve into the genus
of formal cause. From the materially sparsest act whose object is per se
ordered to the end, to the materially most complex act in which multiple objects are per se ordered to one end whose unified species contains
them all (even though these objects could be pursued separately, as one
might anesthetize simply for pain, or anesthetize for pain in the context
of aiding surgery), it is the unification of species owing to per se order to
the end that is most decisive.24 A materially complex act may be formally
simple owing to unification of species derivative from per se teleological
order; whereas, a formally complex act includes disjunct species which
are not unified because not per se ordained to one end whose ratio shelters them all.
Like many authors who are preoccupied with the analysis of the
human act, Keiser treats the supremacy of the intention of the end as an
afterthought—perhaps for fear of proportionalists, who equate per accidens further orderings with per se order of object and end.25 Likewise,
he fails to see in Summa theologiae I–II, question 18, article 7, that, in the
case of per se order, everything that constitutes the added determinacy
and actuality of the species derived from the object vis-à-vis the species
derived from the end, exists for the sake of the end both as interiorly
ordered to the end (proceeding from its intention) and as reflecting the
optimal path of the agent to the end. Hence in the case of per se order
of object and end, the intention of the end is most formal precisely in the
24 I would reference my essay “Natural Law, the Moral Object, and Humanae Vitae”

(in the volume Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral
Life, ed. Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering [Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2010], 285–311, for an account of the
character of “simple” action, understood not atomically, in terms of material
sparseness of object, but in terms of the unification of species derivative from the
end owing to per se teleological order.
25 Of course, one cause for this is the erroneous view that per se order pertains only
to complex acts.The per se is always prior to the per accidens, and rational action
would not be possible were not one act more ordered to one effect than another.
Any per accidens ordering must finally reduce to some per se ordering—as we
say that the ordering of adultery or theft one to another is accidental, but understand that there is per se ordering of the object in each case to each end: that
which is done in an act of adultery is not what is done with an act of theft, and
this comparison is possible precisely because of per se order in each case, without which one could not reach Thomas’s judgment (if the order in each case
were purely accidental, then why not include each under the other?—yet that is
preposterous). Regarding per se order places the noblest cause, the end, in conspicuous regard, which is appropriate because in action—and permeatingly in cases of
per se order of object and end—the end is most formal.

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articulation of the object for the sake of the end. The illustration of the
genus “animal” and the difference “rational” is beside the point, because
where object is per se ordained to end, it is chosen precisely because of
its optimality for the end. Thus, though the object-species is as a difference adding determinacy, act, perfection, to the end-species as genus,
everything in the object-species exists and is articulated solely for the sake of the
end. Whereas the soul (difference) does not exist for the animal (genus)
but the other way around, and it is pure absurdity to suggest that the endspecies (genus) exists for the sake of the object-species (difference). Once one
understands that in per se order of object and end, it is precisely the
further determination of act that is wholly ordained to the end, one can
see clearly that the species derived from the end is most formal, containing, and defining (somewhat as the nature of the lock and keyhole define
the nature of the appropriate key). Indeed, the object cannot be understood as per se ordained to the end apart from reference to the end; whereas
the end may be intended prior to any actual determination of means
whatsoever.26 It is in essential relation to the causality of the end that the
species of the object per se ordained to it is intelligible.
In sum, insofar as object is per se ordered toward end, the supremacy
of the end is precisely what is reflected even in the further determination
of the species derived from the object, for the added quantum of perfection, determinacy, and act reflected in that species is wholly for the sake
of the end and is contained within the most formal species derived from
it, as reflecting the optimal path of the agent to the end.When object is
per se ordained to end, the object-species is—in its superadded actual
determinacy vis-à-vis the quasi-generic character of the end-species—
yet caused by the end, essentially for the sake of the end, and so defined by
the end as a motion is defined by its terminus (it cannot be known without
essential relation to the end, whereas the end can be intended prior to
any actual determination of means whatsoever—cf. note 11 above).
The loss of natural teleology has caused theorists to flee from proportionalism by a certain forgetfulness of the primacy and formality of the
end, and to compensate for this loss by treating the object of the external act as though it were in the simplest case simply identical with the
end; but it is not.The noblest cause, the final end, is too central for it to
be lost sight of for long in moral theology and philosophy: Hence those
concerned with the nature of human action may, despite the permeation
of their subject matter by this truth, eventually learn it.
N&V

26 Cf. ST I–II, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3; see also ST I–II, q. 12, a. 1; ST I–II, q. 12, a. 3.

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David Bentley Hart and Pope Benedict:
Atheist Delusions, the Regensburg Lecture,
and Beyond
R ALPH D EL C OLLE
Marquette University
Milwaukee,WI
“Christendom” was only the outward, sometimes majestic, but always
defective form of the interaction between the gospel and the intractable
stuff of human habit.
—David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, 213

S UCH IS Hart’s probative characterization of the Christian culture that
became the stuff of European civilization, whose development is today
both honored and bemoaned by various sectors of the Christian community. Of course David Bentley Hart at the end of his intriguing book
Atheist Delusions:The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies does
not stop there.1 He goes on to say that the “more vital and essential
victory of Christianity lay in . . . the moral intuitions it succeeded in
sowing in human consciences” (213).Yet, using the historical record, the
book vigorously defends the faith. Hart does not deny the “defective
form” of Christianity when it appeared, since he is mindful that the
defect is due to the “intractable stuff of human habit,” postlapsarian as it
is.Yet no ground is given to popular and frequent misconceptions of what
is often unjustly attributed to the church as a source of evil, ignorance or
oppression. Nor, and perhaps more importantly, can one ignore the formative influence for the good that once constituted Christian Europe
which has definitely marked our present secular culture as “post-Christian,” with the loss of soul that this implies for the contemporary West and
its influence throughout the globe.
1 New Haven:Yale University Press, 2009.

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It is not my intention to review in detail this refreshing text except to
note parenthetically that his description of William Manchester’s A World
Lit Only by Fire as “dreadful, vulgar, and almost systematically erroneous”
(35) was a breath of fresh air, as this book was required (and intended to
be serious) reading in my son’s history class at a Jesuit high school. I
mention this because it has become systemic among many Christians to
disown their Christian history, or at the very least to deconstruct it with
an eye toward the emancipatory praxis that is perceived to be the true
embodiment of Christian faith today. My point is that such a posture
about Christendom may be as prevalent within the church as outside it
and has the consequence of blunting any substantial response to the
stereotypical histories fostered by the new atheists and others.
I am not implicating a respectable (although in my judgment flawed)
reading of Christian history among anabaptist and free church traditions.
They seek to enact a costly witness to the gospel embodied in the purity
of Christian discipleship and in face-to face ecclesial fellowship and discipline over against the established churches. That is another narrative and
boils down to differences in ecclesiology, which are fruitful issues for
ecumenical dialogue. Rather, I have in mind those Christians for whom
the weight of Christian history is largely negative, who welcome the postChristian era as a sign of religious maturation for the church (something
like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity”—although rarely
with the Christological depths of Bonhoeffer). For these latter Christians,
striving for a better world and being on familiar terms with their secular
neighbors takes precedence over the proclamation of the gospel and the
ecclesial maturation of the church into the fullness and holiness of Christ
(Eph 4:13, 5:27). In other words, being relieved of the embarrassments of
Christian history, one may proceed to things other than the evangelization
(or re-evangelization) of peoples and cultures, the latter of which requires
a robust and integral relation between faith and reason—historical reason
as well, as Hart so ably demonstrates in this volume.
To be clear, Hart’s own prognostications for the future are not particularly hopeful. Despite the “bizarre amalgamation of the banal and the
murderous” of the “modern post-Christian order” (238) one does not
necessarily expect an “improbable general religious renewal” (239).
However, one should not draw easy analogies between the waning of
paganism in antiquity and that of Christianity today, at least in terms of
popular attitudes. Post-Christian seculars are not burdened by the
unhappy uncertainties of fate that permeated the Greco-Roman world.
In fact, it is precisely the triumph of Christian virtue (at least the ideas
thereof) that distinguishes the post-Christian secular from the antique

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pagan—in such things as the concern for compassion and human rights.
Therefore, in lieu of the culture returning to its disenchanted Christian
roots, Hart’s exhortation models the movement of ancient Christian
monasticism in its “cultivation of ‘perfect charity’ ” (240) as a harbinger
of possible present Christian renewal.
As much as Hart’s prognosis portends an authentic strategy of Christian and ecclesial life, one must not exclude the possibility of a more
robust engagement of Christianity with the dominant secular culture of
the West, provided one caution be observed. Hart’s description of the
ancient monastic intent is compelling and worth quoting in detail.
And the guiding logic of the life they lived was that of spiritual warfare:
that is to say, now that the empire had “fallen” to Christ and could no
longer be regarded as simply belonging to the kingdom of Satan, the
desert fathers carried the Christian revolution against the ancient
powers with them into the wild, to renew the struggle on the battleground of the heart. And this, I think, might be viewed as the final
revolutionary moment within ancient Christianity: its rebellion against
its own success, its preservation of its most precious and unadulterated
spiritual aspirations against its own temporal power (perhaps in preparation for the day when that power would be no more), and its repudiation of any value born from the fallen world that might displace love
from the center of the Christian faith. (240–41)

No doubt we welcome the evacuation (even if compelled) by the
church of its temporal power, a process completed for the most part by
the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century and coinciding incidentally with the First Vatican Council (1869–70). No longer burdened by
its own agency in the exercise of state authority, the church did not cease
to engage culture and the body politic in the exercise of its mission, even
if initially these appeared to be largely defensive moves vis-à-vis the secularization process. Since the papacy of Leo XIII the church’s magisterium
has attempted to address the vicissitudes of the church and its mission in
the modern world. It is also more than obvious that the Second Vatican
Council signified a shift in attitude and posture along the lines of a more
positive and hopeful engagement with modern culture, even devoting an
entire constitution to the matter in Gaudium et Spes. Popes Paul VI and
John Paul II continued this legacy, the latter as prolific as Leo XIII over
the course of a quarter century—in the abundance of his writings,
Blessed John Paul II was similar to this predecessor. On the cusp of postmodernity John Paul II invigorated the ordinary papal magisterium even
as Leo had when confronted by the ascendance of modernity. Benedict

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XVI has even more directly taken up the challenge, having been prepared
by his long tenure in the university and the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith to venture magisterial overviews on the course of
western culture.
In examining the thought of Benedict XVI, both before and after his
ascendancy to the papacy, we glean a picture of a definitive strategy that
has been consistent over his transition from prefect to pope. In his
concern for the future of Europe, Pope Benedict has written extensively
on the nature of politics and on the Christian foundations of European
culture. In many respects one suspects he would agree with Hart’s thesis
and appreciate the apologia he offers. In fact, Pope Benedict’s understanding of these issues is very much affected by how secularization and ecclesiastical disestablishment have informed other Christian strategies of
which he is critical. In order to appreciate his diagnostic and his prescriptions for Christian engagement, we turn first to the cultural foundations
without which Western civilization can no longer thrive and then to that
now-famous lecture given at the University of Regensburg in 2006.
The public that has not read Pope Benedict’s previous writings or his
papal encyclicals would be hard pressed to discover in the media flap over
the Regensburg lecture his long-standing interest in the relationship
between faith and reason along with the distinctive coalescence of the
two in the emergence of European civilization wherein the Greek and
Christian heritages came together. Benedict XVI lays claim to St. Paul’s
vision of the Macedonian pleading for help in the Acts of the Apostles
(16:9–10) as a providential act that introduces the Christian faith into
Europe and thus lays the foundations for the civilization that still requires
Christianity as its anchor. For this reason alone we need to consider its
importance for the Church’s continued missional engagement.
Neither Pope Benedict nor Hart has illusions about the nihilistic ends
of post-Christian secular culture. But whereas Hart concentrates on the
distortions of stereotypical historical readings and undoes them with his
incisive rhetorical gifts of riposte and his insights into matters of cultural
conditioning and historical causalities, Pope Benedict examines the
metaphysical shifts that precipitated the West’s unmooring itself from
Christianity. To appreciate the magnitude of this transformation, one
must understand the synthesis of classical culture and Christianity
attained by the West that produced Europe and from which it has
presently fallen.
Hart delineates the transformation of Greco-Roman culture in revolutionary terms. Above all, the Christian praxis of charity ran so against
the grain of ancient paganism that it not only undermined paganism, it

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also set the foundations for the emergence of a new civilization. Perhaps
no more honest confession of the integrity of Christian faith was given
than that which came than from the mouth of one of its enemies, the
Roman emperor Julian the Apostate: “It is a disgrace that these impious
Galilaeans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well” (45). Or,
as Hart puts it, for ancient pagans this “law of charity was not only an
impossibility but an offense against good taste” (125). Christians were not
exempt from hypocrisy and failure; but their presentation and enactment
of the faith introduced a new notion of what it means to be human that
energized a new community and eventually a new society, all predicated
on the Christian dogma of the incarnation.That the savior had “willingly
exchanged the ‘form of God’ for the ‘form of a slave’ ” constituted such
a rebellion against antique theological and philosophical norms that
nothing less than a “transvaluation of values” (171) occurred in the birth
of the new Christian order.
Pope Benedict XVI no less than Hart identifies divine charity as the
essence of Christian faith and its kerygma—witness his first encyclical
entitled Deus Caritas Est. However, in his account of the relationship
between Christianity and classical culture he emphasizes the synthesis
between biblical revelation and Greek thought. As already indicated, the
providential ordering of this encounter ensured that the metaphysical
construction of Christian faith delivered first principles for the new
order. Two of these principles are of great significance, and the Pope
raised them in his Regensburg lecture.
The first resounds as the explicit theme of the lecture, namely, the necessary complementarity between faith and reason. It was no accident that in
this university setting Pope Benedict should expound the capacity of reason
to grasp reality and undergird faith. Speaking somewhat nostalgically, he
recalls the respected place that theology once held in the university.
Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every
faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making
possible a genuine experience of universitas—something that you too,
Magnificent Rector, just mentioned—the experience, in other words, of
the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult
to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in
everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and
sharing responsibility for the right use of reason—this reality became a
lived experience.The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of
faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the
“whole” of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share

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the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole.
This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not
troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there
was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to
something that did not exist: God.That even in the face of such radical
scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God
through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition
of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted
without question.2

One senses that, rather than longing for the past, Pope Benedict is simply
witnessing to the possibility—perhaps a modest one—that the correlation
of reason’s aspirations to wisdom and faith’s receptivity to divine revelation
are not outside the parameters of the West’s legacy, even in its present secular iteration. Such was the achievement of the ancient church. Its (not
uncritical) hospitality to Greek thought enabled a universitas scientiarum.
Benedict had already decisively argued this in Introduction to Christianity
(1968) and has not departed from it. It is well worth rehearsing.
For then–Professor Ratzinger, the status quaestionis was whether the
“decision of the early Church in favor of philosophy” is sustainable and
programmatic for theology.3 His affirmative answer demonstrated the
correlation between Being and the biblical God, between the God of the
philosophers and the God of faith. By translating the revelation of God’s
name in the burning bush as “I am he that is” (Ex 3:14) the church
fathers identified the “biblical name for God” and the “philosophical
concept of God” and precipitated a theological development that incorporated an ontological rendition of the divine, although not without a
certain tension. “The scandal of the name, of the God who names
himself, is resolved in the wider context of ontological thinking; belief is
wedded to ontology.”4
As I say, Ratzinger did not envision an uncritical reception of Greek
thought in synthesis with Christian faith. While not a partisan of fellow
theologians protesting so-called “ontotheology,” and by no means being
your standard neo-scholastic Thomist, he, nevertheless, affirms the metaphysical aspirations of Greek philosophy—namely, that reason can grasp
2 All quotes from the lecture are taken from its posting on the Holy See’s website;

here, www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/
documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html, accessed
March 26, 2011.
3 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), 137ff.
4 Ibid., 119.

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the whole. This is quite essential if faith is not to be consigned to the
merely subjective realm of religious piety, a charge that Ratzinger leveled
against both Schleiermacher and (even!) Barth.5 If so, the divorce between
reason and piety, between the God of the philosophers and the God of
faith, can only facilitate the collapse of Christianity in the modern world
as it once led to the end of classical pagan antiquity through the latter’s
separation of logos from myth.
But again this was no uncritical assimilation of Greek metaphysics.The
biblical naming of God as it came to be announced in the Christian
kerygma identified “Being” as a person in Jesus Christ. Absolute transcendence (as in the various iterations of Platonism) yielded to the revelation of the triune God of self-giving love and its immanent relational
ontology. Indeed, this is the triumph of the Gospel vis-à-vis Greek metaphysics, not by the dismissal of the same but through transformation of
its legitimate truth; in other words, grace perfecting (and purifying)
nature. With this brief resume of Pope Benedict’s earlier work we can
return to the Regensburg lecture and its programmatic intent.
Pope Benedict argues for the correlation between reason and God.
Such was the point of the story about Byzantine Emperor Manuel II
Paleologus and his unfortunate comments about Mohammed.6 In the
event the thesis that Pope Benedict argues is that “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” He directly confronts
whether in some way his position compromises the gospel, and his
conclusion is in the negative.
5 Ibid., 139.
6 The Pope characterized the comments of Manuel II—”Show me just what

Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and
inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”—
as exhibiting “startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable.”
Whether the emperor’s statement accurately represents the view of Mohammed
or the Qur’an is beyond the scope of this article, including the implied thesis that
in Islam God is absolutely transcendent and bound neither by rationality nor by
“his own word,” as the Pope notes in his lecture. This understanding of God,
revelation, and reason is unacceptable for Christians, whether or not it accurately
represents Islam. Later in a footnote to the lecture posted on the Vatican website
Pope Benedict clarified his own view: “In the Muslim world, this quotation has
unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing
understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an, for
which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion. In quoting the
text of the Emperor Manuel II, I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason. On this point I am in agreement with Manuel
II, but without endorsing his polemic.”

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Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature
merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that
here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the
best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.

The proposal, consistent with his earlier thought and a commonplace
among the church fathers, is that the Johannine use of logos in the gospel’s
prologue enhances its meaning as “both reason and word—a reason which
is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason.” This
demonstrates the “inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek
philosophical inquiry” and proceeds from “the very heart of Christian
faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to
faith,” as Manuel II was quite aware, since he could say that “Not to act
‘with logos’ is contrary to God’s nature.”
The consequences for the character of Europe were decisive. As Pope
Benedict reiterates in this lecture what he had already written elsewhere,
contemporary Europe is the fruit of this synthesis between the Greek and
Christian heritages along with the Latin heritage of Rome and that of
the modern period as well.7 Without this heritage Europe would not be
Europe. To contend for the distinctiveness of Europe is to contend not
only for its Christian roots but also for its confidence in reason. Therefore, it is imperative to appreciate the obstacles that present themselves to
this dual reappropriation of faith and reason.
In regard to faith Pope Benedict warns against those tendencies that resist
the rapprochement between Greek metaphysics and Christian faith under
the guise of a required dehellenization of the faith, a requirement that has
largely proceeded from Protestant theology. Three stages are noted. First,
based upon the Reformation sola scriptura principle, faith should not be held
captive to any metaphysics or “overarching philosophical system.” The
second stage is associated with Adolf von Harnack and nineteenth-century
liberal Protestantism. In returning to the man Jesus, Harnack divested the
faith not only of any philosophical underpinnings but of Christian dogma
as well. By the transition in emphasis from worship to morality in concert
with historical-critical exegesis, the dogmas of the divinity of Christ and the
Trinity are no longer credible. Divine revelation concerning the incarnation
7 See his chapter “Europe:A Heritage with Obligations for Christians,” in Church,

Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology, trans. Robert Nowell [except
chapter 4] (New York: Crossroad, 1988) 221–36, as well as his two books on the
subject: A Turning Point for Europe? The Church in the Modern World—Assessment
and Forecast, trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994) and
Europe Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues, trans. Michael J.
Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).

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of the Son of God now yields to the “religious development of humanity”
with Jesus as the culminating figure.Within this framework there is a Kantian overlay that even the Reformers did not anticipate. Specifically, Pope
Benedict describes the process as “the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant’s ‘Critiques’, but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences.”The reductive effect on reason is
considerable: the “scientific” is restricted to the “interplay of mathematical
and empirical elements,” and thereby faith is confined “to the realm of the
subjective” and ethics and religion are deprived of their “power to create a
community.” When religion becomes a “completely personal matter,” not
only is it barred from the public square, but also doors are opened to various social pathologies, including religious ones.
Finally, the third stage of dehellenization argues “that the synthesis with
Hellenism achieved in the early Church was an initial inculturation which
ought not to be binding on other cultures.” This frees the gospel for
contemporary inculturations and denies that “the fundamental decisions
made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are
part of the faith itself.” Pope Benedict counters that these ancient “developments [were] consonant with the nature of faith itself.” Perhaps this is
simply a traditionally Catholic position vis-à-vis Protestantism, that is, the
role of Tradition in the transmission of the Word of God, but as we shall see
it is important for the issues raised by Hart in reference to a possible Christian response to the state of Western culture as well.
In fact, this response has been one of Pope Benedict’s preeminent
concerns. He agrees with Hart that Christian renewal was exemplified in
Christian monasticism—what Cardinal Ratzinger had once described as
the “utopian civitas of the monks.”8 But this was originally a “voluntary flight
from the world” into “the charismatic non-world.”9 With the establishment
of monastic rules, for instance, the rule of St. Benedict in the West, monastic communities became a fixed component in Christendom. If “Christian
monasticism is nothing other than an attempt to find utopia in faith and to
transfer it to this world,”10 the question arises as to the continued possibility of this venture in the post-Christian West. No doubt medieval Christendom’s monastic and later mendicant religious orders, especially those
devoted to the vita apostolica, began to envision the wilderness as the cities
and towns of urban Christendom that were destined to be transformed
from “wilderness into genuine civitas.”11 But how might this be possible in
8 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, 249 (emphases his).
9 Ibid., 250.
10 Ibid., 249.
11 Ibid., 250.

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the present culture? And if Pope Benedict possesses a more robust hope
concerning this possibility than Hart, how does he construe the prognosis
of the church’s mission vis-à-vis this culture? No doubt, as we shall see,
Pope Benedict does not soften the diagnosis of the present state of things.
However, with certain cautions in mind, we will do well to appreciate how
his conception of missional engagement is as robust as it is.
Two considerations are paramount: first, a proper understanding of
reason as integral to Christian self-understanding and simultaneously
applicable in the culture at large, and second, a self-correction of the
effects of the heresy of Christian messianism, especially in regard to its
post-Christian secular manifestations. I begin with the former in defense
of the Regensburg theses and combine it with his affirmation of John
Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio.
Pope Benedict’s rejection of the dehellenization trend in Christian
theology is not simply an academic matter, a dispute among competing
theological schools. Not only is the critique “coarse and lacking in precision” in Pope Benedict’s view, it undermines essentials of the faith itself.
This goes to the sources of revelation in sacred Scripture, since the “New
Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit,
which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed.” So
for Pope Benedict the integral relation of the “Greek spirit” to Christian
faith is not only a matter of the development of tradition. By countering
dehellenization, Pope Benedict is arguing that Christian faith embraces a
metaphysic of divine self-communication in which the mystery of the
incarnation entails an ongoing community of faith whose self-understanding was historically enacted in specific cultures.This does not prohibit its
further inculturation, so long as essentials of the apostolic faith already
affirmed are not undermined.The latter is not possible without recognizing that the already inculturated mediation of the faith bears metaphysical
significance, since the universality of human reason is something that the
Greeks aspired to and in part sustained through philosophical inquiry.This
account of reason is an anthropological constant that cannot be dismissed
as some sort of husk that is secondary to the real kernel of Christian faith.
To the extent that the church affirmed some of its core dogmas within the
framework of this conceptuality, it carries perennial import for the faith.
Here we turn to an address by Pope Benedict in which he reflected
on the importance of Pope John Paul II’s 1998 encyclical letter Fides et
Ratio. In the face of historical interpretation, which excludes “the question of truth” and even more becomes “an immunization against the
truth,” Benedict underscores the timeliness of the encyclical. Confronted
by the “false humility and . . . false presumption” of the “modern atti-

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tude,” in which the “issue is not truth, but praxis, the domination of
things for our needs,”12 Pope Benedict identifies the key intention of his
predecessor. “Fides et Ratio seeks to restore to humanity the courage to
seek the truth, that is, to encourage reason once again in the adventure
of searching for truth.”13 And, in his own words quite pertinent to the
dominance of the hermeneutical enterprise:“Man is not trapped in a hall
of mirrors of interpretations; one can and must seek a breakthrough to
what is really true.”14 Otherwise, as John Paul II said in his clear warning about the negative aspects of postmodernism (there are positive
aspects as well),“the human being must learn to live in a horizon of total
absence of meaning, where everything is provisional and ephemeral.”15
Modern/postmodern culture cannot sustain the capacities and aspirations of the human person.This failure inevitably leads to the nihilism that
John Paul II diagnoses in the face “the terrible experience of evil that has
marked our age.”While this process has assured the collapse of “rationalist
optimism” with its reductive effects on reason that we have already noted,
we are now also faced with the “temptation to despair.”16 Therefore, in
order to reengage the culture beyond its own relativistic entrapments, Pope
Benedict must plot how universal aspirations are embedded within historical particularism without negating the transcendental foundations of the
former. Again he notes how John Paul II addressed this problem.
In order to demonstrate that the Gospel’s first inculturation and its
subsequent taking up in the faith is not the “canonization of Eurocentrism,” especially one that precludes further inculturations, Pope Benedict
argues that cultures are “the expression of man’s one essence, [and] are
characterized by the human dynamic, which is to transcend all boundaries.”17 This applies to Israel as well as Greece. In regard to the former

12 Benedict writes:“[A] false humility that does not recognize in the human person

the capacity for the truth, and a false presumption by which one places oneself
above things, above truth itself, while making the extension of one’s power, one’s
domination over things, the objective of one’s thought.” Quoted from “Culture
and Truth: Some Reflections on the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio,” in The
Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings and Speeches, ed. John F. Thornton and Susan B.Varenne (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 368.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Fides et Ratio, 91.
16 Ibid.
17 Essential Pope Benedict XVI, 370. See also Fides et Ratio, 70: “When they are
deeply rooted in experience, cultures show forth the human being’s characteristic openness to the universal and the transcendent.”

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the Bible is not simply the expression of ancient Israel’s culture but
expresses the dynamics of divine revelation within the culture as Israel is
called to worship the God not of its own making, the One who is
“completely other.”18 So too, as Pope Benedict points out, the church
was able “to take up the dialogue with Greek philosophy and use it as an
instrument for the gospel, because in the Greek world a form of autocriticism of their own culture, which had arisen through the search for
God, was already underway.” In other words, the move toward “self-transcendence” in Greek culture contributed to the inculturation of the
gospel.19 The same applies to other cultures—John Paul II makes explicit
reference to the great metaphysical systems of India.20
On the crucial question of the specific case of the initial and subsequent inculturations Pope Benedict and John Paul II are in agreement,
and so we see a consistent development in the thought of the two popes.
John Paul II both affirms the past and anticipates the future:
[I]n engaging great cultures for the first time, the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of GrecoLatin thought.To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential
plan of God who guides his Church down the paths of time and
history.This criterion is valid for the Church in every age, even for the
Church of the future, who will judge herself enriched by all that comes
from today’s engagement with Eastern cultures and will find in this
inheritance fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will
emerge as humanity moves into the future.21

Thus for John Paul II and Benedict XVI the anthropological constant
is the basis for culture. Openness to transcendence characterizes human
being and the cultural mediation of this dynamic enables the inculturation of the faith. Such was the case when Christian faith encountered
Greek philosophy wherein the aspiration to the divine was much clearer
than in the pagan religions of the day. As Ratzinger once remarked:“Early
Christianity boldly and resolutely made its choice and carried out its
18 Ibid., 372.
19 Ibid., 372–73.
20 The full quote is in Fides et Ratio, 72:“My thoughts turn immediately to the lands

of the East, so rich in religious and philosophical traditions of great antiquity.
Among these lands, India has a special place.A great spiritual impulse leads Indian
thought to seek an experience which would liberate the spirit from the shackles
of time and space and would therefore acquire absolute value.The dynamic of this
quest for liberation provides the context for great metaphysical systems.”
21 Ibid.

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purification by deciding for the God of the philosophers and against the
gods of the various religions.”22
There is no denial of the need for purification in the philosophical
realm. The confession and definitions of Trinitarian and Christological
dogmas entailed a process of weaning out heterodox influences of certain
Greek metaphysical positions over against the gospel. However, this did
not negate the legitimacy of the turn to philosophy or of the distinctly
Christian metaphysical vision that emerged from the church fathers.This
particular inculturation maintained and enhanced the philosophical aspiration for wisdom that was consistent with the human orientation to the
transcendent.As such, it bore fruit in the theological developments of the
ancient church.This primary reception was ruled by the gospel and was
formative for the tradition of the church. It also did not exclude but
rather encouraged further receptions of human culture under the light of
the faith. Reenter David Bentley Hart.
Hart is no stranger to cultural analysis. His book The Beauty of the Infinite:The Aesthetics of Christian Truth is a tour de force in Christian theological analysis and a critique of the sources and direction of our present
postmodern culture.23 No doubt Hart’s exposé of postmodern pretensions only confirms that the light of faith is necessary for any salutary illumination and transformation of the human condition; reason alone
cannot accomplish the tasks. No disagreement here. The vision of John
Paul II and of Benedict XVI, which would redirect contemporary
inquiry to embrace the sapiential dimensions of reason, is predicated on
the openness of reason to faith and on the illumination of reason by faith
as well as on the unity of truth.24 However, in his radical critique of postmodernism, Hart does not hold out much hope for any engagement of
the culture other than the church’s fidelity to the kerygma and the
conversion of the world to the church. His concern is that postmodernism’s habitation of the public square—and that square’s presumed
22 Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 137.
23 David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).
24 On this latter point see Fides et Ratio, 34: “This truth, which God reveals to us

in Jesus Christ, is not opposed to the truths which philosophy perceives. On the
contrary, the two modes of knowledge lead to truth in all its fullness.The unity
of truth is a fundamental premise of human reasoning, as the principle of noncontradiction makes clear. Revelation renders this unity certain, showing that the
God of creation is also the God of salvation history. It is the one and the same
God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the
natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend, and who
reveals himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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neutrality—reduces “cultural and narrative particularity to something
fundamentally indifferent . . . merely cultural residues . . . beholden to an
‘obligation’ whose claim is both absolute and indeterminate.” In other
words, Christianity must sacrifice its essential identity to an absolutism
that prohibits any absolute commitments, to a cultural violence that
undermines the very being of the church (which is beholden to its
kerygma of the crucified and risen Lord). In this regard Christian thought
should be “suspicious of every claim to neutrality,” even those proffered
by postmodernity as “an extranarrative site or a postnarrative peace.”25
(Recall that postmodernity has deconstructed all metanarratives.) Here
the choice between Athens and Jerusalem (or, more accurately, between
Athens gone awry and the gospel’s enactment of God’s self-giving revelatory act) is clear. “What accord has Christ with Beliar (2 Cor 6:15a)?”
All in all, Hart’s analysis of modernity/postmodernity unveils a more
insidious intent than even Benedict XVI has identified. One example can
suffice. For the Pope (as we have seen) the contemporary investment in
hermeneutics requires that we emerge out of a hall of mirrors of interpretations into truth. The attempt here is to embolden reason in regard
to both its scope and its capacities. For Hart, on the other hand, radical
hermeneutics “dissembles itself as a kind of principled powerlessness”
when, in fact, it is a “discourse of power” and a violent one at that.26 Situated within the “Optics of the Market”—“that ubiquitous realm of
endlessly proliferating images of the real”27—it becomes a serious question whether the gospel can be heard within this postmetaphysical world
of “the immateriality and lightness of the market’s bloodless, dispirited
desires.”28 Hart is a realist on this score.
Theology must ask, though, whether the rhetoric of the form of
Christ, this distinct beauty that inaugurates its own order of supplementation and extension, can enter into a world enclosed within this
cycle of delirious fixation and distracted disenchantment.29

Confronted by this cultural situation Christians must remain faithful to
the divine gratuity at the heart of their faith and bear witness to it as
disciples even if it be “by way of martyrdom, by surrendering their gift
to others even in the moment of rejection.”30
25 Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 428.
26 Ibid., 424.
27 Ibid., 431.
28 Ibid., 438.
29 Ibid., 437–38.
30 Ibid., 442.

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Benedict XVI is certainly not shy about the need for authentic and
radical Christian witness. However, his efforts to retrieve reason out of
modernity’s reductive hold—he concentrates more on Enlightenment
reason than on the postmodernisms in the crosshairs of Hart—are part
and parcel of a larger strategy to reclaim reason and faith for European
culture. Since this culture “imprints itself on the whole world, and even
more than that, in a certain sense gives it uniformity,” Pope Benedict realizes the implications of Europe’s present “purely functional rationality.”
And in the wake of this form of rationality, Europe has developed a
culture that, in a manner unknown before now, excludes God from the
public conscience, either by denying him altogether or by judging that
his existence is not demonstrable, uncertain, and therefore belongs to
the realm of subjective choices—something, in any case, irrelevant to
public life.31

How then is the church capable of entering pubic life in the wake of
this diagnosis—admittedly more a critique of the modernist framework
than a critique of the postmodernist one proffered by Hart? Pope Benedict acknowledges the provenance of Enlightenment thinking from within
Christianity and, although gone wrong, it still holds out the prospect that
reductionist reason is not the last word. Reason can regain its full scope if
Christians “live a faith that comes from the Logos, from creative reason,
which, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational.”32 Indeed,
this is the aspiration and legacy of the Second Vatican Council.
Pope Benedict (unlike Hart) extends an olive branch to the secularists
but then ends up (like Hart) invoking the authenticity of Christian witness
as the most credible sign of the faith. In the meantime, instead of burying
the secularists as Hart seems to advocate, Benedict tries to reverse the
Enlightenment axiom—to act morally even if God does not exist—by
proposing that the only moral credibility that can be gained is to live as if
God does exist. In the end, however, it is only through those touched by
God such as Benedict of Nursia (notice again the monastic witness) that
God comes near.
In the meantime, the appeal to reason works with a proper politics, a
project presaged in earlier writings and come to fruition in his papal
encyclicals—Pope Benedict’s second point.The themes are familiar. In an
essay entitled “A Christian Orientation in a Pluralistic Democracy?” the

31 “Europe’s Crisis in Culture,” in The Essential Pope Benedict XVI, 327.
32 Ibid., 334

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then-Cardinal’s views are succinctly given. “Today we know that man
needs transcendence so that he may shape his world that will always be
imperfect in such a way that people can live in it in a manner in keeping
with human dignity.33
Several steps are required for the maintenance of this position. First,
Christianity must not misdirect its messianic dynamism to a utopian, thisworldly fulfillment. Such misdirection displaces its true fulfillment in the
kingdom of God and likewise undermines the necessary ethics for the
non-messianic state. The kingdom of God cannot become a political
program; we engage in political ethics, not political theology.34 Similar
themes were echoed in the 1984 and 1986 companion documents from
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain
Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” and Instruction on Christian Freedom
and Liberation, promulgated while he was prefect. As is well known, his
critique of liberation theology is intended to restrain the excesses of secularized utopian politics of both the left and the right as well as prevent
the politicization of Christian witness. Hence, his modest claim for
Christian engagement in the public square.
Ratzinger’s prescription for Europe reflects the same sort of caution
and modesty. In his essay “Europe: A Heritage with Obligations for
Christians,” four theses are proposed. In each, restraint is exercised toward
the state and, as in the area of theology’s relationship with philosophy,
each reflects the synthesis of the Greek and Christian heritages. First,
there is an “internal relationship between democracy and eunomia . . . that
is the dependence of the law on moral criteria.”35 Second, if eunomia is
the precondition for democracy, then a precondition for eunomia is a
shared respect “for moral values and for God.”36 Third, respect for God
and for ethics, which provides the foundation of law, translates into “the
rejection both of the nation and of world revolution as the supreme
good.”37 Finally (and this reflects the commendable achievements of the
modern age), “the recognition and safeguarding of freedom of
conscience, human rights, freedom of science and scholarship” are necessarily constitutive of a “society based on freedom.”38 Of course, these
historical developments in Europe would not have taken place without
the foundations that Christianity once provided.
33 Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism and Politics, 211.
34 Ibid., 216.
35 Also, in Church, Ecumenism and Politics, 233.
36 Ibid., 234.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 235.

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Is this a hopeless cause? Will Europe and the West respond to the
Pope’s diagnosis, and the cure as well? One can only speculate. What is
true is that he has continued this engagement as pontiff, and one can
trace in his encyclicals a pattern of thought that continues the developments of his earlier writings. It is a more constructive engagement than
we see in Hart’s work, as prescient as it is. Gifts, after all, do differ from
one another in the life of the church. But he is with Hart on this score.
European civilization has not just deracinated itself but is experiencing
the “failure of its circulatory system.”39 And this has to do with the
distinctly Christian gift in the synthesis that has become the West, namely,
charity. Hence, Pope Benedict’s first encyclical: Deus Caritas Est.
Throughout, Pope Benedict continues to affirm the synthesis of his
earlier writings. The philosophical dimension and the biblical vision are
correlated:“God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this
universal principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the
same time a lover with all the passion of a true love” (DCE 10). Christ
himself as the Logos, eternal wisdom, invites us into his own self-giving
through his act of self-oblation (DCE 13).The Church thus becomes “an
expression of love” through evangelization and the “service of charity”
(DCE 19). More to the point is how Pope Benedict negotiates this in
regard to the church vis-à-vis society.
Pope Benedict conservatively (in the best sense of that word) preserves
the distinction of spheres between faith and politics—appealing to Jesus’
saying about Caesar (Mt 22:21). Justice is the origin and goal of politics and
lies within the proper activity of the state. Here the church respects the
autonomy of both reason and the state while reserving to itself in the exercise of faith and charity the task of “the purification of reason and . . . the
reawakening of those moral forces without which just structures are
neither established nor prove effective in the long run” (DCE 29). Indeed,
the laity work in the world (as their “direct duty”) for a “just ordering of
society” and for the common good, leavening their political activity (as it
were) with “social charity”—which is related to but distinct from ecclesial
charity, which constitutes the church’s “opus proprium” (DCE 29).The latter
entails a “charitable activity” as a “communitarian initiative” in which “the
heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly” (DCE 31).
In Pope Benedict’s second encyclical, Spe Salvi of 2007, an exposition of
the Christian virtue of hope, he compares this virtue with the emptiness of
the antique worldview and then (in more detail) with hope’s desiccation in
39 From his essay “The Spiritual Roots of Europe:Yesterday,Today, and Tomorrow,”

in Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, Without Roots:The West, Relativism, Islam,
trans. Michael F. Moore (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 66.

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its post-Christian iterations. In fact, Greco-Roman antiquity knew nothing more than “the elemental spirits of the universe,” that is, “the laws of
matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind.”The gospel and
its personal God overturned this worldview (SS 5). Christian hope then is
a performative act both individually and socially,40 and embraces an eschatological dimension with salutary effects in the present.
While this community-oriented vision of the “blessed life” is certainly
directed beyond the present world, as such it also has to do with the building up of this world—in very different ways, according to the historical
context and the possibilities offered or excluded thereby. (SS 15)

The secularization of hope follows two basic trajectories in modernity; first, hope in progress through the marriage of science and praxis,
and then a Marxist variation of this hope through a critique of earth and
the turn to politics. Both operate under the kingdom of reason, a regime,
of course, narrowed in scope and (in a Christian perspective) requiring
purification, for without God, there is no hope. In fact, justice, the
purported aspiration of science and politics, becomes the best argument
“in favor of faith in eternal life” since “only in connection with the
impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does
the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing” (SS 43).
In his most recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict explicitly links his new theme of charity in truth with the theme of his earlier
encyclical.
As I said in my Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, history is thereby deprived
of Christian hope, deprived of a powerful social resource at the service
of integral human development, sought in freedom and in justice. Hope
encourages reason and gives it the strength to direct the will. It is
already present in faith, indeed it is called forth by faith. Charity in
truth feeds on hope and, at the same time, manifests it. (CV 34)

Whether or not this olive branch to secularists will be successful is yet
to be determined. However, there is no question that (unlike Hart) he
intends it since, consistent with Gaudium et Spes, the ongoing dialogue
40 Spe Salvi, 14: “This real life, towards which we try to reach out again and again,

is linked to a lived union with a ‘people’, and for each individual it can only be
attained within this ‘we’. It presupposes that we escape from the prison of our
‘I’, because only in the openness of this universal subject does our gaze open out
to the source of joy, to love itself—to God.”

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between faith and reason “constitutes the most appropriate framework
for promoting fraternal collaboration between believers and non-believers in
their shared commitment to working for justice and the peace of the
human family” (CV 57). But there is also a development in this encyclical that signifies an important specification of the basis for this collaboration, one already outlined in Deus Caritas Est: “The Church’s social
teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely on the basis
of what is in accord with the nature of every human being” (DCE 28).
In order to underscore the development in Catholic social teaching
that the encyclical represents—and it is significant—Pope Benedict elaborates the fundamental anthropology that is required. First, he briefly
summarizes the innovations introduced by Pope Paul VI; his summary is
intended as a “fresh reading of Populorum Progressio,” Paul VI’s 1967 social
encyclical, and its theme of human development.41
Pope Benedict builds on the basic requirements of justice but also on
the Catholic notion that “[c]harity goes beyond justice” (CV 6).42 Although
charity incorporates justice and works through it—“Testimony to Christ’s
charity, through works of justice, peace and development, is part and parcel of evangelization because Jesus Christ who loves us, is concerned with the whole
person” (CV 15)—it also expands to include the “logic of gift” and “the
principle of gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity” (CV 34). In this
41 Pope Benedict summarizes the theme in Caritas in Veritate 13: “In the notion of

development, understood in human and Christian terms, he identified the heart of the
Christian social message, and he proposed Christian charity as the principal force
at the service of development.”
42 The full quote reveals the manner in which charity exceeds justice. It clearly
does not dispense with justice. “Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to
give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts
us to give the other what is ‘his’, what is due to him by reason of his being or
his acting. I cannot ‘give’ what is mine to the other, without first giving him what
pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are
just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not
an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and
intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, ‘the
minimum measure’ of it, an integral part of the love ‘in deed and in truth’ (1 Jn
3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice:
recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It
strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand,
charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.
The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but
to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God’s love in human relationships as well; it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for
justice in the world.”

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manner the economy can be civilized if two conditions are met. First, a
“sustained commitment is needed . . . to promote a person-based and community-oriented culture of persons of worldwide integration that is open to transcendence” (CV 42). Second, the goal is “to steer the globalization of humanity in
relational terms, in terms of communion and the sharing of goods” (CV 42).
Clearly, the Pope has moved beyond justice in these prescriptions.
These developments in Caritas in Veritiate do not diminish Christianity’s
public interface with the culture—quite the opposite. The boldness of
proclamation remains. Things can proceed “only if God has a place in the
public realm” (CV 56). The reciprocal relationship between faith and
reason also remains intact.“Reason always stands in need of being purified by
faith” but, so too,“religion always need to be purified by reason in order to show
its authentically human face” (CV 56).The humanism proposed transcends
“a materialistic vision of human events” by accounting for the “the spiritual
dimension,” authentic human development (CV 77). In sum, a “humanism
which excludes God is an inhuman humanism” (CV 78). But the key is at the
fundamental level: “the social question has become a radically anthropological
question” (CV 75). In the next section he further develops the theme:
“There cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless people’s
spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered in their totality as
body and soul” (CV 76).
Pope Benedict invokes the disciplines of metaphysics and theology
(not just the social sciences) in order to understand and preserve “man’s
transcendent dignity,” which also “requires a deeper critical evaluation of the
category of relation (CV 53).” He appeals to the principle of analogy in
which “common human experiences of love and truth” are compared to
“the revealed mystery of the Trinity”—“the three divine Persons are pure
relationality”—and to sacramental marriage—“the two are a real and
relational unity” (CV 54). As a new iteration of that which is natural to
all human beings and consonant with the gospel, Pope Benedict proffers
the following: “The Christian revelation of the unity of the human race
presupposes a metaphysical interpretation of the ‘humanum’ in which relationality is an essential element” (CV 55).
Here we have arrived at a maximal level of engagement with secular
culture, not just a critique and dismissal. In Caritas in Veritate he urges that
economy and politics be governed not only by justice but also by gratuity and communion. He appeals to reason (without its rationalist reductions) but to a reason open to transcendence, even to God. Human nature
is not only that which aspires to the good and the true, but also that
which is embedded in relationality and desires communion. Pope Benedict takes on the challenges of modernity along with the relativisms of its

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postmodern offspring. Although he does not so much engage the intellectual progeny of the latter as does Hart, still, by appealing to the better
angels of their nature—the Enlightenment at its best—he holds out hope
for some response.
One wonders whether, if his dialogue partner had been Jacques
Derrida rather than Jürgen Habermas, things would have turned out
differently.43 Perhaps this is simply a generational difference between Pope
Benedict and Hart, the former engaging the Enlightenment and critical
theory, and the latter sparring with postmodernists. In fact, Pope Benedict
is quite aware of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, accusing it of stifling
humankind’s joie de vivre and freedom. Hart takes on Nietzsche as Christianity’s most formidable opponent in The Beauty of the Infinite.44 In
response, argued Pope Benedict, Christians can be a creative minority
(borrowing from Arnold Toynbee) who can “demonstrate persuasively . .
. how sublime the gift of faith in the God who suffers with us [is] . . . [and]
a life that does not experience the bonds of love as dependence and limitation but rather an opening to the greatness of life.”45 In any event, both
appeal to divine charity at the heart of the gospel, and with the heart of a
pastor (as well as a teacher) Pope Benedict knows that if there is to be
human development, then the world “needs Christians with their arms raised
N&V
in prayer.”46 Surely Hart would agree.

43 See Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

and Jürgen Habermas, edited by Florian Schuller, trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 2006). Note that, in addition to dialoguing with Habermas,
Pope Benedict engaged the Frankfurt School in Spe Salvi (42), mentioning specifically Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (perhaps the first mention by a
Pope!).
44 Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 93.
45 Ratzinger and Pera, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam,
125–26.
46 Caritas in Veritate, 79.

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319

What David Hart’s Atheist Delusions Has
to Teach Us concerning the Rise and Fall
of Christianity’s Cultural Dominance
in the History of the West
J AMES K EATING
Providence College
Providence, RI

I F YOU HAD gone to a certain kind of Catholic college or university
thirty years ago, you would almost certainly have encountered a version
of Western intellectual history that emphasized the glories of the classical Greek and Roman cultures, the sweet fruits brought forth from their
encounter with the Catholic faith, and, most likely, Thomas Aquinas’s
synthesis of Christian faith and Greek reason as that harvest’s most savory
plum. If it went beyond the apex of the thirteenth century, the narration
would have taken a dark turn with the rejection of Thomas’s realist
account of human knowing by the nominalists and guided the student
down the spirals of modern philosophy, modern art, and modern statist
politics, bottoming out with the horror show of the twentieth century.
Throughout it all, prophetic voices, for example, Pascal, Dostoevsky,
Newman, Leo XIII, Eliot, and Maritain, would have been heard warning
that reason shut to God’s revelation would before long erase the dignity
and purpose of human existence. And like the prophets of old, these
modern spokesmen for God looked fearfully to confirmation in the
course of history and would find it in spades with the slaughter benches
of Fascism, Nazism, Soviet communism, and Maoism. At the end of this
bloody road, shining like the sole beacon of hope, would be the possibility of a return to the realism of Aquinas’s philosophy and, ultimately, the
return of Catholicism’s dominance of Western culture. If the student had
learned rightly, he (or she) would be prepared to accept a rejuvenated

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James Keating.

Catholic intellectualism as the most credible alternative to the folly of
modern thought.
But that was thirty years ago and much, much has changed. The old
Ockham to Auschwitz narrative is rarely seen in Catholic higher education these days—although there still remain a few places flying high that
flag. Accordingly, it is worth asking why the Catholic interpretation of
the course of Western history has lost its previous hold on the hearts and
minds of the faculty teaching in our colleges and universities these days.
A satisfactory explanation would be multi-dimensional and, of course,
beyond the ambition of this review. It is enough for our purposes to
acknowledge that the standard Catholic narrative was too often burdened
by overwrought claims implying the all-sufficiency of the medieval
synthesis and a consequent rejection of all aspects of modern culture.
These days the vast majority of Catholic intellectuals insist upon a more
subtle, albeit hardly uncritical, approach to modern philosophy, art, politics, and, of course, science. For these and other reasons, any hope for a
simple restoration of the traditional narrative is misplaced.Yet the recognition that the old model had its flaws, some even fatal, must be distinguished from the vital importance of the project itself. At the risk of
sounding too didactic, I would say that a convincing Catholic narration
of the rise and fall of Christian cultural and intellectual dominance in the
West is a necessary condition for the Catholic faith to be a credible
animator of academic teaching and learning.
The obligatory task of re-envisioning a Catholic interpretation of Western history is, I believe, greatly assisted by the appearance of David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable
Enemies, despite the fact that the author is an Eastern Orthodox Christian
and does not pretend to offer anything approaching a complete overview
of Western culture. His project is, rather, at once more humble and more
grandiose. Hart argues that the Christian vision of God as self-sacrificing
love represents an idea at once so radical in its ethical demands and so
pervasive in its implications of how we conceive of ourselves and our
world that it must be considered the greatest conceptual revolution in the
history of Western, and even, human, consciousness. Hart puts it this way:
My argument is . . . that among all the many great transitions that have
marked the evolution of Western civilization, whether convulsive or
gradual, political or philosophical, social or scientific, material or spiritual, there has been only one—the triumph of Christianity—that can be
called in the fullest sense a ‘revolution’: a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity’s prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as actually to have created a new

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conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the
moral good. . . . [I]t was an event immeasurably more impressive in its
cultural creativity and more ennobling in its moral power than any other
movement of spirit, will, imagination, aspiration, or accomplishment in
the history of the West.And I am convinced that, given how radically at
variance Christianity was with the culture it slowly and relentlessly
displaced, its eventual victory was an event of such improbability as to
strain the very limits of our understanding of historical causality. (xi)

So profound is that revolution that Hart does not shy away from saying
that the emergence of Christianity in the cultural context of late antiquity marked nothing less than the “invention of the human” (213).
Simply put: we are who we are because Christianity entered, and entered
dramatically, into our history.
Not surprisingly, if Hart is to argue for the novelty presented by Christianity, he must focus our attention on crucial moments when Christianity first emerged out of its birthplace in Palestine and encountered the
main cities of the Roman empire of the third and fourth centuries. It is
here, if anywhere, that we will be able to assess just how radical the ideas
of the early Church were and to consider their historical impact on Western culture.This impact is, without doubt, inseparable from Constantine’s
momentous decision to favor this strange and foreign faith, and Hart has
some very interesting and useful things to say about the harsh ambiguities
of Christendom, but his main interest lies in comparing the beliefs of the
early Christians and the pagan Romans concerning the nature of God,
morality, and the character of the cosmos. In venturing a comparison, Hart
treads the same ground as all those who wish to tell the story of first
contact between Christianity and classical culture. It is of interest, therefore, to consider how his approach differs from other accounts. His claim
that Christianity was revolutionary certainly puts him at odds with the
traditional Catholic narrative summarized above, which sees the relationship between Christianity and the classical world as essentially positive.
This narrative, of course, recognized certain problem areas in Roman
morality, especially in its later, more decadent, phase, but made the choice
to view classical culture primarily through its philosophers and the heroic
images found in its epic poetry. Accordingly, the high ideals of the
Romans, and the Greeks before them, are presented as a preaparatio evangelium, and the eventual advent of the Christian Gospel a privileged working out of God’s providence in time and place. Christianity was new, of
course, but this novelty consisted primarily in the theological information
it transmitted, that is, the proclamation of the triune divinity of God, and
the sending of the Son to redeem the world. One could formulate this

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James Keating.

historical nexus within the traditional Catholic narrative, with only a
touch of exaggeration, as Christian grace being placed on top of classically
formed nature.
Although Hart stands at considerable distance from this way of thinking, he reserves his firepower for how the emergence of Christianity
within the classical world is treated in what he calls modernity’s “grand
narrative.” In this accounting, the ideals of the Enlightenment—tolerance, critical rationality, and freedom—were anticipated in GrecoRoman culture but suffocated before given a chance to blossom fully.
Playing the villain, the Christian religion, and more particularly, the
Roman Catholic Church, deprived the world of an early flowering of
peace and light through a combination of religious fanaticism and
enforced ignorance. Only after centuries of intellectual darkness and
barbarity, culminating in the bloody and obviously irrational “wars of
religion” was Europe finally able to turn away from superstition and
bigotry toward true science and authentic liberty. It is to dismantle this
anti-Christian story of Western history, piece by piece, that Hart wrote
this book. His strategy is to expose his readers to a comparison between
the “values” of the classical world and those of the early Christians on
such issues as the care for the sick, the disabled, the unwanted, religious
tolerance, war, slavery, and science. Once the truth is understood, further
adherence to the modern myth becomes impossible (and so also does the
standard Catholic account, it must be said). Far from enlightened pagans
innocent of the confusions of the Christian faith, Hart’s Romans were
morally callous when not outright bloodthirsty, reliably intolerant of
anything that threatened their own social cohesion, and woefully ignorant of how to gain wisdom concerning the workings of nature. In other
words, the classical world, when viewed honestly, is not only far from a
pre-Christian arcadia, it is a world that we moderns, formed as we are by
the historical aftermath of the “Christian revolution,” would condemn
with indignation and revulsion. This reaction and the acknowledgment
of its source is, for Hart, the beginning of wisdom:
If we find ourselves occasionally shocked by how casually ancient men
and women destroyed or ignored lives we would think ineffably
precious, we would do well to reflect that theirs was—in purely pragmatic terms—a more ‘natural’ disposition toward reality. It required an
extraordinary moment of awakening in a few privileged souls, and then
centuries of the relentless and total immersion of culture in the Christian story, to make even the best of us conscious of (or at least able to
believe in) the moral claim of all other persons upon us, the splendor
and irreducible dignity of the divine humanity within them, that depth

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within each of them that potentially touches upon the eternal. In the
light of Christianity’s absolute law of charity, we came to see what
formerly we could not: the autistic or Down syndrome or otherwise
disabled child, for instance, for whom the world can remain a perpetual perplexity, which can too often cause pain but perhaps only vaguely
and fleetingly charm or delight; the derelict or wretched or broken man
or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly
impoverished, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled;
exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates.To reject, turn
away from, or kill any or all of them would be, in a very real sense, the
most purely practical of impulses. To be able, however, to see in them
not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike,
to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls. (213–14)

Aside from admiring the startling beauty of the prose—beauty enough to
render the temptation of white plagiarism invincible—we must attend to
what it might mean to think of Christianity as a revolution within classical culture for the project of producing a credible narration of the place
of faith in the unfolding of Western history. In particular, we must attend
to Hart’s choice to describe the radical love of the unwanted and the
seemingly useless as the distinguishing mark of the Christian revolution.
Hart frames his overall argument by critically engaging the spate of
atheists now garnering popular attention, notably Richard Dawkins,
Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.Truth to be told,
however, Hart finds these poor souls supremely uninteresting and employs
the opening chapter to cast them aside in order to move on to what he
really wants his readers to consider.This dismissal is accomplished not so
much by way of a detailed refutation of their arguments but by brutally
exposing the deep ignorance and intellectual sloppiness behind their
attempts to trash Christianity. In essence, Hart charges that these “fashionable enemies” of the Christian revolution demonstrate zero evidence
either of having gained any understanding of what Christians actually
believe and why, or of having made anything approaching a serious effort
to do so.Yet, as bad as it is not to know, or try to know, what it is one is
so hotly repudiating, worse still, according to Hart, is the lack of historical understanding that prevents these folks from realizing how much of
what they hold dear about ethics, human dignity, and the value of science
is dependent on the historical contributions of the Christian religion they
so hate. A number of reviewers have objected to the rhetoric Hart
employs to ensure that his readers will cease to take these à la mode antiChristians seriously.They worry that Hart’s undeniable skill at lampoon-

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ery might backfire against his purposes, turning off too many of those
otherwise open to being convinced by his central argument. Different
strokes for different folks, I guess, but I find great value in Hart’s chosen
tack.Wading into public dispute with critics of the faith and beating them
at their own game is one of the few palpable contributions Christian
intellectuals can make to the life of the average Church-goer.When done
well it serves to buoy the psyche of believers who feel themselves under
siege and perhaps are even beginning to doubt the intellectual solidity of
their faith. Few Christian writers, if any, offer more solace in this regard
than David Hart, or are able to. Moreover, when considering the role of
polemic in his many writings, including this book, one finds that Hart
almost always (I wish always) reserves his acerbic best for those who
employ self-hyped intellectual prowess to do the faith intentional harm.
Or, to express it in another way, his fire is (almost always) return fire.While
other approaches are possible, and even necessary, I am convinced that
Hart’s blistering rhetoric has the capacity to lift the sagging spirits of many
a harried believer and fortify him or her to live publicly as a Christian.
In any case, the chapter dedicated to best-seller atheism is more or less
separable from the more placid, historical argument that makes up the
rest of the book.There is, however, a profound connection: the dependence of the atheists on their readers uncritically accepting modernity’s
“grand narrative” as, if I may say, gospel truth. Indeed, the fact that these
men have gained a hearing among so many reveals a troubling level of
popular ignorance concerning both the Christian and the classical past.
In fact, very few, even among the relatively well educated, have any
appreciation of the moral abyss that separated the sensibilities of the
Romans (and the Greeks before them) and those of the early Christians.
For that reason, they are susceptible to characterizations of the ancient
pagans as scientifically minded and religiously tolerant in contrast to the
credulity and fanaticism of the Christians. Indeed, it is not at all uncommon to hear Christians themselves speaking as if the ancient Romans
shared many of the moral convictions found in the New Testament, at
least by way of aspiration.Worse still, however, is the shoddy spectacle of
Christians conceding the morally blighted nature of their forbearers in
order to demonstrate their own alignment with modern sensibilities.
Often this kind of ignorant treason is part of a rhetorical strategy to gain
a hearing from those who reject the very possibility of a Christianity that
can be tolerant, reasonable, and so on. It never works. In any case, Hart is
doubtlessly correct that a history lesson is in order for believer, nonbeliever, and anti-believer alike. The intellectual beauty of this book
provides more than enough evidence that he is just the teacher we need.

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If establishing the truth about the Christian and pagan past lies at the
center of Hart’s efforts in this book, it must be said again that his
concerns are far from antiquarian. Rather, Hart finds himself in a rare
point of concord with the new atheists that what one thinks about the
past is determinative for how one envisions the future. In particular, if
one can be convinced that Christianity’s historical impact upon the West
consisted mostly of introducing bigotry and ignorant bullying where
there had been tolerance and healthy curiosity, so much easier will it be
to yearn for a future freed of Christian sway. Accordingly, atheists often
bolster their excited expectations of a coming godless day—a day when
the small-mindedness of the true believer will yield to the latitudinarianism of the non-believer, faithful credulity to critical rationality, and
cringing servility to an absent deity to the spacious freedom of the materialist—with the assertion that this temporal wheel has turned before, but
in the opposite direction. In other words, unbelief becomes all the more
attractive if the movement toward secular enlightenment represents a
return to the ideals and cultural practices of our classical ancestors, ancestors every school girl and boy has been taught (I think this is still vaguely
the case) to admire. Much is altered, therefore, if the truth can be shown
to have been quite different. If it was the Christians, not the Romans,
who stood for the moral code that changed world history for the better,
arguments that a future shorn of Christian influence become instantly
less attractive. Of course, Hart has in mind bigger game than this, that is,
to argue that this code derived from the Christian proclamation of a God
who sends his own Son to redeem sinful human beings for no other
reason than love for his creation. If God has revealed himself to be love,
every human being is bound to every other by a law of absolute charity,
the stranger as well as the neighbor, the strong as well as the weak, the
rich as well as the poor, and the enemy as well as the friend.Accordingly,
the revolutionary idea to love all without exception is itself theological
and its cultural maintenance incompatible with atheism. To begin this
case, Hart must bust a few modern myths about the past.
It is fully worth the effort, therefore, to follow Hart as he eruditely
descends into the details of historical episodes such as the end of the great
library in Alexandria (36–40), the destruction of the Serapeum (41–44),
the murder of the female philosopher Hypatia (45–48), the pagan recovery project of Julian the Apostate (185–93), the scientific work of John
Philoponus (69–70), the astronomical speculations of Ptolemy (58–59,
67–68), and the conflict between Galileo and Pope Urban VIII (62–66).
In each case, he offers up a common depiction of one of these events that
casts Christianity as a purveyor of intolerance and ignorance, and he

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proceeds to correct the record, either by challenging the historical
reasoning or by offering evidence that leads to a different conclusion. On
this level, the book presents a luxurious cornucopia for the historically
inquisitive, and the reader cannot fail to be impressed by the level of
specificity this systematic theologian shows himself capable of as he
ranges through distant centuries and cultures. It is beyond my ken to say
with authority that he is absolutely right about everything he claims
about Roman society (despite the fact that I write these lines with the
Coliseum, that great symbol of pagan savagery turned tourist attraction,
out my window) or the many other disputed areas he enters; but, nothing he says seems to me wrong. One could imagine some classicists rising
in defense of the Romans on this point or that, and I certainly hope that
the book gets a fair hearing from that community.Yet, whether or not
this happens, any fair-minded reader must grant Hart has convincingly
smashed a number of entrenched slanders against the early Christians. If
the truth is a bit more complicated with respect to this or that detail,
Hart’s main thesis still stands firm as a rock: it is simply untrue to represent either the early Christians as ignorant thugs or the Romans as
enlightened lovers of humanity in all its diversity and frailty.The correct
generalization is precisely the reverse.
In any case, Hart’s argument rests, in the end, not so much on the relative immorality of the pagan Romans as on the conceptual treasures
introduced into history by Christianity, and their cultural impact. As a
Christian thinker of the first rank, Hart is more than competent to move
beyond the historical record and draw the reader into intelligent consideration of how Christian teachings concerning God as love, the Incarnation, and salvation from sin through divinization transform the ways we
think of the demands of charity, human identity, and the nature of the
material world. Note how Hart weaves history and the Christian view of
fallen human nature to make the following point:
Christians ought not to surrender the past but should instead deepen
their own collective memory of what the gospel has been in human
history. Perhaps more crucially, they ought not to surrender the future
to those who know so little of human nature as to imagine that a society ‘liberated’ from Christ would love justice, or truth, or beauty, or
compassion, or even life. The Christian view of human nature is wise
precisely because it is so very extreme; it sees humanity, at once, as an
image of the divine, fashioned for infinite love and imperishable glory,
and as an almost inexhaustible wellspring of vindictiveness, cupidity,
and brutality. Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget
how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence

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is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who
does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one
of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of
the political, religious and legal powers of human society. Which is,
incidentally, the most subversive claim ever made in the history of the
human race. (17–18)

And, with the Christian view of the cosmos:
This world, it was now believed, was neither mere base illusion and
‘dissimilitude,’ nor a quasi-divine dynamo of occult energies, nor a god,
nor a prison. As a gratuitous work of transcendent love it was to be
received with gratitude, delighted in as an act of divine pleasure,
mourned as a victim of human sin, admired as a radiant manifestation of
divine glory, recognized as a fellow creature; it might justly be cherished,
cultivated, investigated, enjoyed, but not feared as evil or deficient, and
certainly not worshipped. In this and other ways the Christian revolution gave Western culture the world simply as world, demystified and so
(only seemingly paradoxically) full of innumerable wonders to be
explored. What is perhaps far more important is that it also gave that
culture a coherent concept of the human as such, endowed with infinite
dignity in all its individual ‘moments,’ full of powers and mysteries to be
fathomed and esteemed. It provided an unimaginably exalted picture of
the human person—made in the divine image and destined to partake
of the divine nature—without thereby diminishing or denigrating the
concrete reality of human nature, spiritual, intellectual, or carnal. It even
provided the idea (which no society has ever more than partially
embodied) of a political order wholly subordinate to divine charity, to
verities higher than any state, and to a justice transcending every government or earthly power. In short, the rise of Christianity produced consequences so immense that it can almost be said to have begun the world
anew: to have ‘invented’ the human, to have bequeathed us our most
basic concept of nature, to have determined our vision of the cosmos
and our place in it, and to have shaped all of us (to one degree or
another) in the deepest reaches of consciousness. (213)

The approach we find here gets things, in my opinion, exactly right for
future attempts to reconstruct the place of Christian faith in the history
of Western culture. Correcting mistaken characterizations about what
happened long ago is not in the end a matter of historiography, but
involves the illuminative power of Christian theological beliefs about
God, humanity, and the world, and what their cultural eclipse will mean
for a truly human future.
By way of concluding this reflection on Hart’s book, I shall focus on
two themes that are particularly pertinent to my own concerns.The first

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regards the question of what constitutes modernity and the second, the
value of viewing Christian distinctiveness in light of the historically
demonstrable universals of human nature.What I say here is not by way
of criticism—I enjoyed, and was convinced by, the book too much for
that—but rather to further tease out what I found particularly valuable
in Hart’s work for constructing an adequate account of the place of
Christianity in the history of the West.
To say that David Hart has a low view of modernity in this book
would be an understatement so severe as to border on the false. Modernity presents for him the naked triumph of the will over and against all
natural and divine constraints. If the post-modern heart “wants what it
wants,” the modern will wants to will without any consideration apart
from its desires. It aspires to a freedom so untethered to the truth of reality that it requires a universe utterly devoid of moral character.
To be entirely modern (which very few of us are) is to believe in nothing.This is not to say it is to have no beliefs: the truly modern person
may believe in almost nothing, or even perhaps in everything, so long
as all these beliefs rest securely upon a more fundamental and radical
faith in the nothing—or, better, in nothingness as such. Modernity’s
highest ideal—its special understanding of personal autonomy—
requires us to place our trust in an original absence underlying all of
reality, a fertile void in which all things are possible, from which arises
no impediment to our wills, and before which we may consequently
choose to make of ourselves what we choose. We trust, that is to say,
that there is no substantial criterion by which to judge our choices that
stands higher than the unquestioned good of free choice itself, and that
therefore all judgment, divine no less than human, is in some sense an
infringement upon our freedom. This is our primal ideology. In the
most unadorned terms possible, the ethos of modernity is—to be
perfectly precise—nihilism. (21)

In something of an ironic twist, Hart argues that the historical possibility
of a purely nihilistic view of freedom required the triumph of Christianity over ancient paganism.While the ethical system of the Romans would
be unacceptable to anyone affected by Christianity, that system was seen
by the Romans to be secured by divine and natural realities, realities that
proscribed certain actions and prescribed others.These gods of old and the
nature over which they ruled have, however, been abolished by the Christian upheaval and abolished so completely that no return is possible.
Indeed, as Hart makes clear in his poignant and remarkably sympathetic
discussion of Julian the Apostate’s attempt to turn back the Christian tide,
Roman religion had by the fourth century A.D. already exhausted what-

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ever legitimating power it had once possessed, and it had given way to an
enervating formalism. When Christ vanquished the aged and half-dead
deities of the ancient West, therefore, nothing but ruins beyond shoring
up remained. Accordingly, the waning of Christian faith in the modern
West leaves a metaphysical void in which the post-Christian will
expresses itself without guidance or restraint.
There is much value in Hart’s charge that modernity is inherently and
frighteningly nihilistic—a claim he deepens in the final chapter of the
book regarding the possibility of a “post-human” future (229–41). His
description provides a bountiful service for those charged with teaching
students how best to understand the slow but unrelenting emergence of
secularity following upon the Reformation and its seeming culmination
in their own directionless postmodernity. Moreover, his demolition of the
modern myth of the “wars of religion,” for instance, should be essential
reading for anyone who finds him or herself in a course on the development of Western civilization. Instead of seeing these bloody wars as a last
gasp of medieval fanaticism which had the effect of turning Europeans to
the sweetness of secular rationality, Hart convincingly argues that they
were instead a nightmarish first look at the secular nation-state unhinged
from medieval Christian constraints (88–108). Yet, I wonder if Hart’s
portrait of the modern age in this work, for all its brilliance, paints things
with too dark a brush. Hart seems to concede as much when he admits
early on that his complaint against modernity has to do with its rejection
of Christianity and does not include “modern medicine or air travel or
space exploration or any of the genuinely useful or estimable aspects of
life today” (xi). He proceeds in the next paragraph to exclude as well
from his wrath “modern” philosophical methods, social ideologies, and
modern political theory. If I may say so, that’s excluding quite a bit of
what most understand as constituting modernity! I understand, of course,
that Hart is frying different fish here and is under no particular burden
to provide a more complete rendering of the modern world for purposes
not his own. Rendered it must be, however, for any credible relating of
the Christian faith and the course of Western history. In particular, it will
need to find positive points of contact between God’s revelation in Christ
and typically modern insights into the moral dangers of racism, sexism,
imperialism, and so on. Only the most obtuse defender of the Christian
centuries doubts that real moral advancement has been made over the
past few centuries in these areas and often without explicit reference to
Christian values.Thus, it is incumbent upon anyone who wants to follow
Hart’s approach to acknowledge more explicitly these advances and show
that they have their historical origin in a working out of the absolute

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inclusiveness of Christian charity. Let me make clear, Christian commentators on Western culture are under no obligation to concede anything to
secularity here or “modernity” as an ideological construct. The issue,
rather, is that a credible Christian rendering of modernity will need to go
beyond the purely negative and link its positive elements to the Christian revolution.
The same goes for the necessity to tease out Hart’s suggestions for how
Christianity changed the way we view the natural world. While very
careful not to fall into the trap of seeking legitimation for Christianity as
a preaparatio scientiae, Hart nonetheless makes a convincing case that the
emergence of ‘modern’ science is historically dependent on the particular understanding of nature as creation found in Christianity (202–3).Yet,
as intriguing as the points he makes are, I found myself less than
completely satisfied. While there is no doubt that any division between
an “age of faith” and an “age of reason” must be rejected as Enlightenment piffle, Hart seems to underplay the novelty involved in the dawn of
experimental science in the seventeenth century.This is not to deny the
importance of medieval forerunners to Galileo and Newton, but merely
to acknowledge that there arose a new understanding of how reason must
operate if it is reliably to uncover the regularities of the natural world.
This shift may not constitute the “Rational Revolution” often claimed
by champions of the Enlightenment, but something most definitively did
change, and for the better. Indeed, I can think of nothing that more gives
credibility to modernity’s “grand narrative” than the notion that the
reasoning that has proven so successful in natural science rules out theology as a conveyor of truth and renders religious faith nothing more than
a personal fancy. Again, I did not expect Hart to develop his own
thoughts (which can be found elsewhere) on the relationship of theology, faith, and modern notions of reason, especially since it would have
needlessly obscured the argument he wanted to make. Nonetheless, a
complete defense of the ongoing importance of the Christian revolution
will need to relate positively that revolution to the modern conceptions
of scientific reasoning. My own view, not to be explicated here, is that the
pattern of biblical revelation and faith found in the history of ancient
Israel and early Christianity contains often-overlooked resources for
establishing Christian theology’s organic connection to empirical and
critical rationality.
With respect to religion and human nature, my second theme, much
of what Hart says on this topic comes by way of responding to the
common mantra of the new atheists that there is a causative relationship
between religious conviction and violence. One can barely get through

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a page of their tracts, or two minutes of a televised screed, without
encountering heartfelt assertions that “religion is the greatest cause of
violence in history,” “religious passions are the most savage,” or, simply,
“religion kills.” Hart’s first objection to such statements is that “religion”
does not exist in a way that allows it to do or cause anything.There are,
of course, such things as religions, and they share what Wittgenstein
would call “family resemblances”; however, they differ from one another
to such an extent that what holds true at any level of detail for one most
likely does not hold true for any of the others.Thus, to use Hart’s example, it is possible, indeed, quite more than probable, for the same person
to believe the Nicene Creed with great “religious” certitude while just as
surely rejecting the Aztec “religious” practice of sacrificing human
beings, and to do this without suffering a whit of cognitive dissidence. In
other words, describing a conviction as “religious” tells us almost nothing more about it and certainly not enough to bear the epistemic heft of
the damning universal claims so cherished by the new atheists.This does
not mean, however, that Christian interpretations of human culture can
dispense with the consideration of religion as a universal human reality.
Indeed, the fact that where one finds human culture one will find culturally specific expressions of a desire to know the ultimate reality, to live in
accordance with its truth, and to dwell in its presence is for Christian
theology evidence of a “natural desire for God.” (On this score, Hart has
great fun skewering the pseudo-scientific declarations of Daniel Dennett
that he has, at long last, “discovered” that religion is “natural” to humanity and that this is very bad news for believers [6–16].) Yet while being
religious, in some way or another, is natural to human beings, so are many
other things—for example, to live in society, to conduct war, to procreate, and so on. In each of these cases, what is important for the historian
of culture is not so much the universality of the fact of certain cultural
practices but their particular expressions in time and place. Thus, if we
want to ascribe any historical causality to religious convictions, we will
have to discipline ourselves to deal with particular religions, their distinctive teachings and practices. Apart from a serious consideration of what a
religion teaches on, for instance, the nature of God or how to consider
one’s neighbor, talk of its historical significance has little if any value.
Thus, to return to the issue of killing, if one wants to claim that “Islam
kills” or “Buddhism kills,” it will have to be demonstrated not that
Muslims or Buddhists kill, or have killed, but that such actions are products of being faithful to their own religion’s demands.This, according to
Hart, may very well prove difficult since, in addition to being religious,
human beings have historically demonstrated a universal propensity to

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James Keating.

kill when it seems the advantageous thing to do—which, alas, they do on
a fairly regular basis.
Some kill because their faith explicitly commands them to do so, some
kill though their faiths explicitly forbid them to do so, and some kill
because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to
them. Polytheists, monotheists, and atheists kill—indeed, this last class is
especially prolifically homicidal, if the evidence of the twentieth century
is to be consulted. Men kill for their gods, or for their God, or because
there is no God and the destiny of humanity must be shaped by gigantic exertions of human will. They kill in pursuit of universal truths and
out of fidelity to tribal allegiances: for faith, blood and soil, empire,
national greatness, the ‘socialist utopia,’ capitalism, and ‘democratization.’
Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds
or commit unspeakable atrocities, even when those gods are not gods but
‘tribal honor’ or ‘genetic imperatives’ or ‘social ideals’ or ‘human destiny’
or ‘liberal democracy’. Then again, men also kill on account of money,
land, love, pride, hatred, envy, or ambition.They kill out of conviction or
out of lack of conviction. . . . Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the
sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for
seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent
one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are
cultural variables, but killing is a human constant. (13)

Thus, it appears that when it comes to the causes of human violence, religion proves a very imprecise explanation, at least when compared to the
more obvious explanation that killing others is often a rather efficient
way to advance one’s self-interest or the interest of one’s community.
Another way to put it is that since both the human propensity to
violence and the human need to be religious are equally universal, things
only get interesting if we can discover historical moments when these
tendencies collide. Instead of looking for what kinds of ideas have
become rationales for violence—a target-rich environment if there ever
was—one should employ intellectual energy searching for that greater
rarity: ideas that at once work against the violent tendencies of human
beings and have proven attractive on a wide scale.
Hart’s central assertion that Christianity must be seen as a revolution
within Western history means, if I understand him rightly, that its particular notion of God as love and its consequent high ethical demands were
not evolutionary, that is, explainable by organic shifts within the ethical
systems of Western late antiquity. On the contrary, any honest, nonanachronistic, investigation of what the Romans thought and did regard-

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333

ing war, the poor, the lame, slavery, public entertainment, and the care of
unwanted offspring leads to the conclusion that they never went beyond
the practical, nor even thought much about the possibility of doing so. It
was, on the other hand, of the very nature of the Christian view on these
subjects to be intensively impractical, to love and care for others despite
the fact that doing so would bring no discernible benefit to oneself or
one’s community. The Romans were nothing if not practical. In this
sense, Christianity stood as a thorough indictment of Rome’s pragmatic
morality, not of its development. In other words, the Christian law of
charity of all for all had to be introduced, even forced, into Roman
history and, therefore,Western history; it would not have appeared otherwise.To appreciate this, however, we must begin to see cultural history in
light of the contingency of specific religious ideas and practices and how they
relate to the cross-cultural proclivities of human nature. “Compassion,
pity, and charity, as we understand and cherish them, are not objects
found in nature, like trees or butterflies or academic philosophers, but are
historically contingent conventions of belief and practice, formed by
cultural convictions that need never have arisen at all” (16).These convictions are part of our history because they entered it as part of a definitive
complex of religious ideas about who God is, what it is to be human, and
the nature and fate of our cosmos. Of course, mere introduction is not
enough; they must prove attractive for enough people to make a cultural
and historical impact. Here again, Hart has much to teach us as he
explores in the later chapters of the book the conceptual and practical
allure that Christian teachings had for the Romans and beyond.To give
the reader a sense of what can be done on this score, I offer a last
sampling of Hartian insight in prose:
To look on the child whom our ancient ancestors would have seen as
somehow unwholesome or as a worthless burden, and would have abandoned to fate, and to see in him or her instead a person worthy of all
affection—resplendent with divine glory, ominous with an absolute
demand upon our consciences, evoking our love and our reverence—is
to be set free from mere elemental existence, and from those natural limitations that pre-Christian persons took to be the very definition of reality. And only someone profoundly ignorant of history and of native
human inclinations could doubt that it is only as a consequence of the
revolutionary force of Christianity within our history, within the very
heart of our shared nature, that any of us can experience this freedom.
We deceive ourselves also, however, if we doubt how very fragile this
vision of things truly is: how elusive this truth that only charity can know,
how easily forgotten this mystery that only charity can penetrate. (214)

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James Keating.

In essence, Hart insists that we can understand the place of Christianity
in the history of Western culture, the “Christian revolution,” only when
we pay attention to the clash of human universals and religious particulars. If we are to tell an intellectually interesting and convincing story of
the rise and seeming fall of Christian cultural dominance in the West, it
will only be by way of attending to the revolutionary impact of the
particulars of Christian teaching on recalcitrantly practical human nature.
Only when we consider those moments of conflict, grace against nature,
will we be able to appreciate and communicate the true impact of the
faith on the history of the West and the ongoing necessity of the faith for
there to be a human future. David Hart has already done much of the
N&V
work, and we Catholics should be grateful and follow his lead.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011): 335–340

335

Answering the Atheists: Assessing
David Bentley Hart’s Latest Achievement
J EANNE H EFFERNAN S CHINDLER
Villanova University
Villanova, PA

I N AN EARLIER age, a profession of atheism incurred public opprobrium and social penalties. No longer.Today’s atheists—men like Daniel
Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, et al—often hold
prestigious academic posts, reap handsome profits from their writings,
and enjoy near-celebrity status. Until now their criticisms of religion in
general and Christianity in particular have not been effectively answered.
David Bentley Hart has ably taken up the task of responding to the “New
Atheists” in his latest book, Atheist Delusions:The Christian Revolution and
Its Fashionable Enemies.1 From the first, it hardly seems a fair fight. Hart is
an exceptionally intelligent and erudite theologian with vast historical
knowledge and philosophical acuity. Peerless in his command of language,
his prose is crisp, his style engaging; one’s attention never slackens while
reading this book, which combines Chestertonian conviction with Wildean
wit. Hart is deadly serious and devilishly funny. (One example should
suffice:“Nothing so dilutes one’s sympathy for the Gnostics as an encounter
with their actual writings” [139].) His adversaries, by contrast, appear
boorish, superficial, and ignorant, and Hart levels a devastating critique of
their positions.
The New Atheists recite a familiar litany of criticisms. Christianity,
they contend, is an unreasonable, repressive, and power-driven institution
guilty of persecution, violence, obscurantism, hatred of the body, the
oppression of women, and slavery.The demise of Christendom, for these
authors, thus marked an historical advance for the forces of enlightenment
1 David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions:The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable

Enemies (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2010).

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and freedom. Progress in science, technology, and politics, so their Whiggish narrative goes, required the defeat of the authoritarian church. But
the philosophical and practical victory delivered by modernity and the
rise of the secular nation-state remains vulnerable if Christian belief and
practice endure; hence the vigor of the New Atheist polemics.
Hart is fully equal to the challenge.The main burden of his argument,
given the nature of the criticisms listed above, is to correct the historical
record so egregiously distorted by popular and scholarly writers alike.
Hart accomplishes this handily, marshalling an extraordinary range of
historical evidence to demonstrate that Christianity introduced a revolutionary change in ideas that had widespread, positive social effects.With
this revolution one encounters nothing less than “an entirely new universe
of human possibilities, moral, social, intellectual, cultural, and religious”
(124). Among other things, Christianity, unlike its pagan predecessors,
affirmed the goodness of the body; elevated the status of women for
whom it had special appeal; affirmed the dignity and spiritual equality of
slaves; and stimulated scientific investigation.
Hart’s case for the positive moral and social effects of “the Christian
revolution” is compelling, and he is correct in saying that the case needs to
be made in the current climate. In an earlier age, he observes, the detractors of Christianity had granted—and, like Nietzsche, lamented—the new
creed’s dramatic social impact; today’s critics either deny the significance of
the changes effected by Christianity or insist that its effects were negative.
After extensive appeal to numerous sources, Hart can confidently claim
that, yes, Christianity represented something utterly novel on the historical scene both theologically and morally and that the doctrinal innovations
of the new faith—the incarnation of God, the dignity of the human
person, the radical requirements of charity—yielded a likewise unprecedented and radical ethics, marked by: “giving to all and sundry, freely,
heedless of their characters, out of love for their humanity; visiting those
in prison, provisioning the poor from temple treasuries, ceaselessly feeding
the hungry, providing shelter to all who might have need of it; loving God
and neighbor as the highest good, priestly poverty, [and] universal civic
philanthropy” (191).
So far so good. This is a crucial point to make. There is, however, a
subtle danger in this approach, and it is one to which all Christians should
be sensitive.The German philosopher Robert Spaemann astutely identified it in the case of de Bonald and other philosophers of the Restoration. It is this: In responding to a modern error, one can unwittingly
adopt the terms of one’s adversaries and end up forwarding a position
that, in fact, departs from the Christian tradition. In de Bonald’s case, he

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succumbed to what Spaemann calls “the Traditionalist error,” the most
pertinent dimension of which for our purposes is the sociological reduction of religion. A devout Catholic, de Bonald understood himself to be
defending Christian tradition against the assaults of his contemporaries.
Yet, Spaemann contends that the pious Frenchman can be seen as the
founder of that most modern of disciplines, sociology. Why? Because in
de Bonald the theory of society is paramount, supplanting the place of
metaphysics and rendering social utility the ultimate criterion of value.
In consequence, as Spaemann observes, “Religion is not justified on the
basis of its truth, but rather on the basis of its necessity for society.”2 De
Bonald’s reflection on the Christian dogmas concerning the existence of
God, the immortal soul, and the final judgment is revealing. “These
dogmas are true,” he maintains, “because they are useful for the preservation of society.”3 But, as Spaemann perceptively notes, the highest Christian convictions must have a justification different from their social
necessity.“When theology turns into a mere tautology of sociology, there
is no reason to keep it. But this is what happens in de Bonald.What gets
lost in him is the insight into the meaning of truth that transcends all
things sociological, insight into its sociological uselessness and therefore
into its liberating character.”4
Hart insists that he wishes “to make no claims regarding the plausibility or truth of Christian belief, or of religious conviction in general”
(156). He is (ostensibly) not an apologist. (This claim is belied time and
again by Hart’s stirring rhetoric. The beauty of his language in describing Christian beliefs itself exerts a persuasive power; he is, perhaps unwittingly, an apologist of a very high order.) He is approaching the question
of Christianity (again, ostensibly) in sociological terms. “Probably the
soundest ways [sic] to ascertain what the ‘Christian difference’ was—what
set the new faith apart from other creeds, what drew converts to it, what
excited the wrath of its detractors—is to attempt to assess what social or
moral difference Christianity made, either for individuals or for culture
as a whole” (156). Now, given that contemporary critics of Christianity
often make their case on the same grounds, this is an understandable
move, and Hart executes it exceedingly well. He is especially effective in
2 Robert Spaemann, “Der Irrtum des Traditionalisten. Zur Soziologisierung der

Gottesidee im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Wort und Wahrheit 8 (1953): 496.Translated by
David C. Schindler in preparation for a forthcoming anthology of Spaemann
essays to be published by ISI Books and edited by David C. Schindler and Jeanne
Heffernan Schindler.
3 De Bonald, quoted without citation in ibid., 497.
4 Ibid.

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showing the morally transformative effects of Christian teaching that yet
exert an influence on our post-Christian consciences and to which the
New Atheists themselves are unconsciously indebted. As Hart observes,
these forgetful souls, so distracted by their indignation, “rarely pause to
consider where so many of the moral principles they tirelessly and confidently invoke as their own really come from” (221). Likewise, Hart paints
a sobering, indeed chilling, picture of the inhumane possibilities of a
post-Christian future, a future that has ample room for the return of the
category Lebensunwertes Leben. And yet, as important as these considerations are, they are secondary and depend upon ontologically prior
matters. Moreover, if Spaemann is right, to defend Christianity against its
current detractors principally on these terms risks succumbing to the
modern error of sociological reduction.
This is not to say that Hart focuses exclusively on the social dimension. His treatment of Christian orthodoxy against the Gnostics, for
example, or his explanation of the crucial doctrinal significance of the
Incarnation delves deeply into first-order theological issues. But one
would have to say that the main thrust of Hart’s argument is neither
metaphysical, nor theological, but ethical. And to the extent that this is
true, his enterprise stands in need of another kind of argument. So, for
instance, as important as it is to clear up the historical record regarding
the church’s supposed anti-scientific stance—and Hart does this brilliantly—it is as crucial to challenge the way modern science understands
itself. Dennett and Dawkins arguably bring to expression something
latent in its origins (for example, its positivistic method and utilitarian
ethos) and thus an adequate rejoinder to their proposals would require a
first-order engagement with the founding principles of modern science.
Hart does not provide this kind of engagement but appears anxious
precisely to show Christianity’s contribution to the progress of science
understood in conventional terms. In doing so he risks losing the philosophy of nature that essentially distinguishes the Christian from the materialist world view.This example, which applies to other observations Hart
makes (for instance, concerning equality), points up the necessity of
engaging in “first philosophy” even when responding to criticisms of a
historical and sociological kind. Social theory, to invoke Spaemann again,
cannot replace metaphysics. If Hart were to bring his prodigious intelligence to bear on the primary philosophical issues underlying the New
Atheist charges, we would be very much in his debt.
For all of its strengths, Atheist Delusions may fall prey to another error
typical of a modern perspective, a curious fact given the author’s stringent criticism of modernity and his identity as an Orthodox theologian.

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339

It is an ecclesiological error that posits a difference—even a bifurcation—
between the church and Christianity. Hart deploys it in part to account
for the fact that the radical social implications of the new faith took
centuries, if not millennia, to emerge. Individual Christians in his reckoning have enjoyed special moral clarity, but the force of their insight has
often been blunted by what he pejoratively calls the “institutional
church” (194). So, for instance, an individual luminary, like Gregory of
Nyssa, enjoyed a rare clear-sightedness about the evil of slavery and
preached against it with an evangelical fire that, Hart laments, “subsided
into a pale and feeble flicker in the centuries that followed, all but lost in
the darkness of the immense historical tragedy of institutional Christianity” (181).This is a familiar modern trope: the heroic or creative individual stifled by an oppressive structure. In a similar vein, Hart observes that
Theodosius I’s adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the
empire was “a great boon for the institutional church, perhaps, but was
obviously an almost irreparable catastrophe for Christianity” (194). This
reflects another modern, and in this case specifically post-Reformation,
contention: Christianity can be separated from the church.The problem
is that both sentiments would have been foreign to the habit of mind of
the Fathers, the very sources to which Hart appeals as exemplars of the
Christian revolution.The Patristic period didn’t know a Christianity apart
from the “institutional church” (a concept Hart does not define). It was
the very same (presumably “institutional”) church legalized by Constantine that defined the Christological terms which provided the foundation
for human dignity proclaimed by Gregory.
On the one hand, the church’s internal structure admits of variation
and development and even correction (one thinks of curial reforms, for
instance), and its leaders’ prudential judgments on temporal matters can
be justly scrutinized (Hart’s criticism of the “imperial church” is not
without merit). On the other hand, the church cannot easily be separated
into “official” or “institutional” and somehow “real” or “genuine.” It is a
unitary, visible, living reality, and though its members participate in the
paradox of the casta meretrix unto the last, the church remains the primary
locus of Christian experience in the world.To dichotomize Christianity
and the church renders the faith an abstraction and paves the way for the
incoherence of religious individualism. Hart’s position is vulnerable on
just this score. “The Christian revolution with which this book is
concerned has very little to do with the triumph of the institutional
Catholic order” (197). Rather, for Hart, its substance is “the conversion
of individuals” (197), the “numberless consciences”(202) transformed by
Christian beliefs, which, over time profoundly changed the values of the

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ambient culture. But it was precisely through the church, not a disembodied Christianity, that those conversions were effected—through catechesis, the provision of the sacraments, the proclamation of the Word—in
short, the offering of a radically new vision of human life and possibility
incarnated in a living community.
Hart well appreciates the radical character of this new vision, and his
presentation of its transformative effects constitutes a powerful rejoinder
to the New Atheists.The fact that these effects were rooted in an anthropology and metaphysics uniquely articulated and safeguarded by the
church deserves equal mention. Perhaps a sequel to Atheist Delusions is in
order. Were David Bentley Hart to write one in this vein, his audience
would be richly served.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011): 341–360

341

A Tale of Two Trees: Knowledge
and Life in the Book of Genesis
A L B ENTHALL
Belmont Abbey College
Charlotte, NC
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
— William Blake

A LDOUS H UXLEY ’ S Brave New World portrays a technological
utopia where sex and procreation are cleanly separated through bioengineering and state control. Most females are sterilized as embryos and the
few who remain fertile at birth are conditioned to use contraceptives.All
sex is purely recreational, whereas children are grown in “hatcheries” and
raised in “conditioning centers.” While Huxley may have thought his
readers of 1932 would find this portrait self-evidently disturbing, times
have changed. Many now celebrate a kinder gentler version of Brave New
World as a mandate of civilization.To cite one example: Carl Djerassi, the
Austrian chemist who helped invent the birth-control pill in 1951,
recently made the alarming claim that, thanks in part to his invention, we
now live in a world where “there is no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction.”1 He warns that because of this broken linkage,
Austria now faces population collapse, which he describes as a “demographic catastrophe” and a “horror scenario.” Djerassi then proceeds to
scold his countrymen for their reproductive irresponsibility.At one point
he accuses Austrian couples of “wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while
leaving the rest of the world to get on with it.”2
1 Karl Djerassi,“Warum wir bald sehr alt ausschauen,” Der Standard (December 12,

2009): Album A3.
2 Ibid.

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342

These doomsday predictions gave the unmistakable impression that
Djerassi was criticizing the effects of his own invention. He quickly clarified that this was not the case.3 In subsequent articles and interviews,
Djerassi has reaffirmed the virtues of non-reproductive sex as a mode of
liberation, especially for women. By urging his fellow Austrians to “get
on with it,” he says, he was simply exhorting couples to do their duty by
replenishing the species through in-vitro fertilization. Djerassi remains
puzzled and alarmed that the biological drive to reproduce by sex has not
been replaced by the more cultivated desire to reproduce by technology.
Despite his vexation, Djerassi is surely right when he says that sex and
reproduction are now divorced in the minds of most Europeans and, by
extension, many Americans. In noting this, Djerassi voices an assumption
held by Western society for decades: namely, that the connection between
sex and reproduction is merely biological, and that severing this link is a
morally neutral act like getting a haircut. Such an assumption may be
partly based on experience, since not every conjugal act does in fact
produce a child. Given the experiential gap between sex and children,
why not widen the distance through various techniques, devices, or
chemicals? What are the ethical implications of consciously severing the
biological link between sex and procreation?
Modern reproductive technologies have brought this question to a
moment of crisis.The question, however, is not new. Men and women have
sought to control, modify, or even sunder the connection between sex and
children for millennia. Contraceptive techniques and devices date back at
least as far as ancient Egypt.4 Given the ancient pedigree of the question,
it would be surprising if the Hebrew Scriptures were silent on the subject.
To re-read what is commonly called the “temptation narrative” of Genesis
2 and 3 with this topic in mind is to face a series of questions that seem
uncanny in their relevance to modern concerns. To be specific, I believe
that the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life function in the narrative
of Genesis in ways that address the connection between sex and procreation with peculiar intensity. In this article, I will argue that the unitive and
procreative aspects of sexuality are dramatized by the Tree of Knowledge
and the Tree of Life respectively, and that the Biblical account of original
sin implies, among many other things, an existential rupture between sex
and procreation, between Biblical “knowledge” and the transmission of
human “life.” I also hope to show how the Judeo-Christian understanding
3 Karl Djerassi, “I never blamed the pill for the fall in family size,” The Guardian

( January 27, 2009): 33.
4 See Robert Jütte, Contraception: A History (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008).

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343

of this connection is embedded in the broader ethical context which the
book Genesis both instigates and illuminates.
Before I turn to the text, however, a caveat is in order. Traditional
discussions of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life tend to be either
cryptic or convoluted. Sometimes they succeed in being both. In the early
Christian Church, gnostic sects performed ingenious readings of the “Tree
of Knowledge” as a reference point for the pursuit of gnosis, or “hidden
knowledge” of God. Orthodox Church Fathers responded with understandable reticence. As modern physics repeatedly demonstrates, there are
some things the rational mind cannot know without distorting the object
of knowledge. Jewish and Christian commentary on the two trees therefore tends to be elliptical and oblique. As Carlos Steel observes, when
asked about the difference between the Tree of the Knowledge and the
Tree of Life, St. Maximus the Confessor taciturnly replied:
The teachers of the church could have said much about the proposed
question because of the grace given to them, but they preferred to
honor this biblical text by silence, and since they knew that the understanding of the masses could not attain to the profundity of the text,
they were not willing to give a profound explanation of it.5

While Maximus goes on to discuss the two trees as an analogy of body
and soul in the light of grace and revelation, his cautionary tone is worth
noting. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
In traditional exegesis, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
has broadly typified the mysterious and perverse will to define good and
evil on one’s own terms, thereby cutting oneself off from God.As a result
of this primordial sin, humanity fell from grace. Likewise,Adam and Eve’s
banishment from the Tree of Life represents the loss of divine life and all
that goes with it, including personal immortality. I have no intention of
challenging these long-established readings. I am, however, suggesting
that these Scriptures contain an additional layer of meaning that has deep
implications for how we understand the connection between sex and
procreation. My argument is intended to amplify the traditional understanding of Genesis, not to replace it.
In the second book of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve,“You may
freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall
5 Carlos Steel,“The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” in Iohannes Scottus

Eriugena:The Bible and Hermeneutics, ed. Gerd van Riel, Carlos G. Steel, and James
McEvoy (Brepols: Leuven University Press, 1996), 240.

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die.”6 While the word “knowledge” here has many meanings, at least one
of its implications is sexual “knowing.”The word cdy (yada) or “knowledge” is a euphemism for the conjugal act throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.The word was translated into Greek as cimx́rjx in the Septuagint,
and appears in Luke’s Gospel when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she
will conceive and bear a son. Mary responds, “How can this be, since I
do not know a man?”7
The same word cdy also appears in Genesis 4:1, “Now Adam knew
Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.”8 Here, sexual knowledge
is correlated with the begetting of new life in Eve’s firstborn child. Given
this connection, how precisely are we to understand the “Tree of Knowledge” and the “Tree of Life” in the two preceding books? I am not a
Scripture scholar, and I defer to the experts on some of the questions I
am raising. One such question is precisely how far the story of Genesis
can be applied to matters of sexuality without reducing its meaning to
sexuality alone. While the sexual and procreative dimension of Genesis
may constitute only one layer of its meaning, I would argue that understanding this aspect sheds considerable light on the story as a whole.
II
In Genesis 3, Satan tempts Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. By doing so they are cut off from
the Tree of Life and expelled from paradise. Jews and Christians alike have
traditionally understood this sin as one of pride and disobedience. Given
the spiritual ramifications of the passage, most commentators interpret
the trees symbolically as well as literally. For example, St. Augustine says
in City of God XIII.21 that the Tree of Life is a symbol of “wisdom
herself, the mother of all good; and the Tree of the Knowledge of good
and evil, the experience of a broken commandment.” He continues:
These things can also and more profitably be understood of the
Church, so that they become prophetic foreshadowings of things to
come.Thus . . . the tree of life is the holy of holies, Christ; the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, the will’s free choice. For if man
despise the will of God, he can only destroy himself; and so he learns
the difference between consecrating himself to the common good and
reveling in his own. For he who loves himself is abandoned to himself,
in order that, being overwhelmed with fears and sorrows, he may cry,
6 Gn 2:16–17. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations are taken from the

New Revised Standard Version.
7 Lk 1:34.
8 Gn 4:1.

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if there be yet soul in him to feel his ills, in the words of the psalm,“My
soul is cast down within me,” and when chastened, may say, “Because
of his strength I will wait upon You.”These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon Paradise without giving offense to
any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed
by its circumstantial narrative of facts.9

Augustine goes on to say that Adam and Eve’s transgression resulted in
their alienation from God and subsequent loss of personal immortality.
Such a reading constitutes the literal meaning of the text.
In addition to its literal dimension, most scholars agree that the early
books of Genesis are suffused with complex elements of wordplay,
symbolism, dramatic irony, and other literary devices with which modern
readers tend to be unfamiliar. These literary elements play a significant
role in the temptation narrative. After the creation account of Genesis 1,
we learn in Genesis 2 that God “planted a garden in Eden, in the east;
and there he put the man whom he had formed.”10 We also read that
“out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the
garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”11 This may seem
clear enough at first. God planted two trees, and both were “in the midst”
of the garden, as the Revised Standard Version renders it.The New American
Bible and the New International Version, however, translate the two trees as
being “in the middle” of the garden.The Hebrew word in question is dwt
(tavek), which can mean generally “among” or more specifically “in the
center.” If the word does refer to the center of the garden, a logistical
question arises as to how two trees can occupy a single midpoint. This
question has in fact puzzled a number of exegetes.
God then issues his prohibition against eating from the Tree of Knowledge:“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,‘You may freely
eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall
die.’ ”12 The divine mandate clearly names the Tree of Knowledge in this
passage, and we might expect to find the same clarity in the temptation
narrative of Genesis 3. But this is precisely what we do not find.
In the third book of Genesis, Satan asks the woman,“Did God say, `You
shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?” Eve responds, not by referring to
9 St. Augustine, City of God, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: First Series, vol. 2, ed.

Philip Schaff (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 256.
10 Gn 2:8.
11 Gn 2:9.
12 Gn 2:16–17.

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the prohibition against the Tree of Knowledge, but by saying,“We may eat
of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, `You shall not eat of
the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch
it, lest you die.’ ”13 And which tree would that be? As Genesis 2 makes
clear, both the tree of Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are located
in the “midst” or “middle” of the garden. Eve’s vague identification of the
tree by location alone is most peculiar, given the gravity of the situation.
Some scholars see in this textual ambiguity an element of profound irony.
As Tryggve Mettinger observes in The Eden Narrative (2007):
On the surface level of the text, the phrase “in the midst of the garden”
in 2:9 is valid for both trees; the woman makes no real “mistake” in 3:3.
On a deeper level, however, the poet subtly plays on the variation
between 2:9 (tree of life in the midst) and 3:3 (tree of knowledge in the
midst). When the woman uses the expression “in the midst of the
garden” (3:3), she creates a double entendre.The linguistic referent in her
crucial statement is the tree of knowledge; this is clear from what
immediately follows. At the same time, she inadvertently alludes to the
tree of life, which we find at the beginning and end of the text. Or, to
be more exact: the narrator makes this important allusion. The tree of
life was, as the reader recalls—and as both God and the narrator
know—planted “in the midst” of the garden” (2:9). . . .
What we have in the woman’s words is, in fact, a case of situational
irony. . . .The woman refers to the tree of knowledge, but the way she
expresses herself invites the reader to understand the utterance as a tacit
allusion to the tree of life. This understanding is unintended by the
woman, but probably intended by the narrator.14

Such an ironic “double vision” of the forbidden tree raises a number of
questions about the nature of the divine prohibition itself. For example,
why in Genesis 2:16–17 does God issue his command to Adam alone, just
before he creates Eve? Most commentators speculate that Eve would have
learned about the divine prohibition indirectly from Adam, which might
help to explain her obscure reference. She seems not even to know the
tree’s proper name. In fact, it may even be Satan who first associates the
forbidden tree with “knowledge” in Eve’s mind when he says, “You will
not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”15 He does not promise her “life” in any form, eternal or otherwise. Consequently, Eve partakes
13 Gn 3:2–3, emphasis added.
14 Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Eden Narrative: A Literary and Religio-Historical

Study of Genesis 2–3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 38.
15 Gn 3:4–5.

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347

of the tree only when she sees “that the tree was good for food, and that
it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make
one wise.”16 Eve’s ambiguous reference to the “tree in the middle” may
therefore represent an unfallen consciousness that has not yet made the
distinction between knowledge and life. At the same time, the ironic
wordplay also dramatizes the narrator’s (and the reader’s) sadder but wiser
view of the rupture between knowledge and life after the fall.
Eve’s equivocal response to Satan also raises the fascinating question as
to whether there are really two trees there at all, or only one tree viewed
under two aspects. Some biblical scholars have theorized that the temptation narrative was reworked from earlier sources in which only one tree
appeared. Would this earlier tree have been identified with the Tree of
Knowledge or with the Tree of Life? According to Mettinger, “scholars
working along literary-critical lines of the traditional, continental type
usually find the tree of knowledge to be the original tree, the tree of life
being a later development. . . . A reverse perspective—first the tree of life
and then also the tree of knowledge—has only been adopted by a few
exegetes.”17 The textual origins of Genesis, however, are not directly relevant to the topic at hand. As Mettinger observes:
This narrative stands out as one literary unit. A vast amount of scholarly energy has gone into critical surgery, experiments that seriously
maimed the patient. In contrast to this, I have argued that the text
works excellently as a narrative about the failure of the first humans and
the calamitous consequences of this failure. The tensions that may be
found in the text hardly suffice to falsify this conclusion. Rather, they
should be seen as resulting from the tradition-historical process that lies
behind the narrative.18

Thus, despite the fact that the author of Genesis may have derived images
and themes from prior sources, the unified narrative remains. Robert
Gordis puts the matter clearly:
The assumption made a generation ago that that alleged biblical redactor operated mechanically with his sources and could not be expected
to have had any intelligent view of the material he used is now rightly
rejected by contemporary research. Even if “sources” were to be
assumed, we still must come to grips with the conception underlying
the “finished product” that we find in Genesis. It is recognized today
that the architectonic structure of the pentateuchal narrative, and
16 Gn 3:6.
17 Mettinger, The Eden Narrative, 10.
18 Ibid., 134.

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particularly of Genesis, cannot be the result of chance or of a “scissors
and paste” method of compilation, but represents a religious and literary achievement of the highest order.19

This narrative unity holds especially true for the two trees as they work
together in the story. Ivan Engnell remarks that “we can do no better than
take the whole for what it really is, a single unitary story” in which “both
trees are from the very beginning organically at home in the narrative.”20
On this view, both trees are essential to the text of Genesis as it has
informed Judeo-Christian tradition for more than two millennia.
Given this dramatic unity, commentators have understood the complex
relation between the two trees in Genesis in a variety of ways. In the
second-century “Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus,” for example, the
anonymous Christian author exhorts his reader to cultivate the “paradise”
within which God plants by grace:
For in this place the tree of knowledge and the tree of life have been
planted; but it is not the tree of knowledge that destroys—it is disobedience that proves destructive. Nor truly are those words without significance which are written, how God from the beginning planted the tree
of life in the midst of paradise, revealing through knowledge the way to
life, and when those who were first formed did not use this [knowledge]
properly, they were, through the fraud of the Serpent, stripped naked.
For neither can life exist without knowledge, nor is knowledge secure
without life.Wherefore both were planted close together.21

If indeed Genesis depicts God as “revealing through knowledge the way
to life,” why then was the Tree of Knowledge forbidden? Writing two
centuries later, St. Ephrem pursues this very question. In his Hymns on
Paradise, he locates the Garden of Eden on a mountain at the top of
which grows the Tree of Life, with the Tree of Knowledge growing
farther down the slope. This topographical conceit allows him to place
the Tree of Life literally “in the middle” of the garden, while still locating the Tree of Knowledge more generally in the “midst.” In III.13,
Ephrem draws an analogy between the Tree of Life and the Holy of
Holies in the Jewish Temple, with the Tree of Knowledge serving as the
sanctuary veil or gateway:
19 Robert Gordis, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Old Testament and

the Qumran Scrolls,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76 (1957): 129.
20 Ivan Engnell,“ ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Life’ in the Creation Story,” Supplements to Vetus

Testamentum 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1955), 110.
21 “Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed.Alexan-

der Roberts (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 29–30.

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349

The tree was to him
like a gate;
its fruit was the veil
covering that hidden Tabernacle.
Adam snatched the fruit,
casting aside the commandment.
When he beheld the Glory
within,
shining forth with its rays,
he fled outside;
he ran off and took refuge
among the modest fig trees.22

Ephrem goes on to say that Adam and Eve as yet knew nothing about
the Tree of Life. Had they kept God’s command, he says, they would have
been allowed to eat from both trees. As he explains in his Commentary on
Genesis 2:3:
Had the serpent been rejected, along with the sin, they would have
eaten of the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge would not have
been withheld from them any longer; from the one they would have
acquired infallible knowledge, and from the other they would have
received immortal life.They would have acquired divinity (allahutha) in
humanity, and had they thus acquired infallible knowledge and immortal life, they would have done so in this body.23

God’s prohibition against eating from the Tree of Knowledge was therefore temporary and provisional.The forbidden tree would have been not
only allowed, but a positive corollary to eating from the Tree of Life had
Adam and Eve maintained their original innocence.
If Ephrem connects the two trees intimately, other Church Fathers go
even deeper in their philosophical exegesis of Genesis, seeing not two
separate trees but a single tree viewed in two ways. As inheritors of the
neo-Platonic tradition, many see the Tree of Life as typifying the human
capacity for participating in “mind” or “spirit” (associated with divinity),
whereas the Tree of Knowledge typifies imprisonment in the bodily
senses. In his book The Experience of God, Eastern Orthodox theologian
Dumitru Sta∑niloae identifies a common thread running through the
commentaries of St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Gregory Palamas, St.
Basil, and others:
22 St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, ed. and trans. Sebastian P. Brock (Crest-

wood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 95.
23 Ibid., 214.

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The fathers cited above imply that by the two trees we are to understand one and the same world: viewed through a mind moved by spirit,
that world is the tree of life that puts us in relationship with God; but
viewed and made use of through a consciousness that has been
detached from the mind moved by spirit, it represents the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil which severs man from God.24

Sta∑niloae pays special attention to Gregory of Nyssa’s treatise “On the
Making of Man,” where Gregory emphasizes the role of the senses in the
temptation narrative:
Like the fathers mentioned above, St. Gregory of Nyssa saw the tree of
knowledge especially in the sensible aspect of the world, but he put
particular stress on the fact that this aspect may give rise to evil in the
human person because it is grasped in an exclusive manner through the
senses. In itself the sensible aspect of the world is by no means evil but
can become quite dangerous for the human person because the senses,
before they are spiritually strengthened, can be easily inflamed by the
sensible beauty of the world.25

On this view, Gregory understands Adam and Eve’s first sin as a “grasping” after knowledge in the form of physical sensation, which thereby
separated the material from the spiritual. Gregory does in fact say in “On
the Making of Man” that the Tree of Knowledge tempted Adam and Eve
with what “appears to be good in so far as it affects the senses with sweetness.”26 Although Gregory never condemns the body as such (doing so
would verge on the Manichean heresy), his warnings against the bodily
senses may contain echoes of gnosticism, with its distrust of the senses
and its pitting of mind against matter. Such a dualistic understanding
would have been alien to the ancient Hebrew imagination, which saw all
of material creation as emphatically good. If the “grasping” of Adam and
Eve cannot be fully accounted for by excessive sensuality, what then was
the essence of their sin?
Hans Urs von Balthasar agrees with Sta∑niloae that Gregory and others
understood the two trees as somehow unified before the Fall, and that the
essence of the first sin lay in “grasping” after knowledge. But unlike
Sta∑niloae, von Balthasar refuses to associate the Tree of Knowledge with
24 Dumitru Sta∑niloae, The Experience of God: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune

God, trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer, vol. 2 (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 1994), 166–67.
25 Ibid., 167.
26 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second
Series, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 410.

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351

“the senses” and the Tree of Life with “mind” or “spirit.” Rather, he leaves
the correlation veiled in mystery.Thus he says in The Christian State of Life:
Gregory of Nyssa and others comment that, since there could not have
been two trees in the center of the garden, there must have been a mysterious identity between the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good
and evil.The tree was forbidden insofar as it gave knowledge of good and
evil, for this was the only fruit man could take for himself. If he were not
to die, he would in any case have to receive from God the original life
that was opposed to death.And he was to receive it without grasping for
it, without seeking it in the knowledge of good and evil.27

In this regard, von Balthasar’s vision approaches the Hebrew reluctance
to divide body and spirit, or to see this conflict as a primary factor in the
sin of Adam and Eve. Mind/body dualism may indeed be a great evil. But
it is not the essence of the Fall in the Hebrew imagination.We must look
instead for a more fundamental spiritual conflict.
Von Balthasar’s remarks on the elusive unity of the two trees is paralleled by the Jewish mystical tradition. As Gershom Scholem observes in
The Messianic Idea in Judaism:
The trees in Paradise are not merely physical trees; beyond this they
point to a state of things which they represent symbolically. In the
opinion of Jewish mystics both trees are in essence one.They grow out
into two directions from a common trunk. Genesis tells us that the Tree
of Life stood in the center of Paradise, but it does not indicate the exact
position of the Tree of Knowledge. The Kabbalists took this to mean
that it had no special place of its own but sprouted together with the
Tree of Life out of the common matrix of the divine world.28

If the two trees were essentially one, he says, then Adam and Eve’s sin lay
precisely in cleaving the one from the other. Scholem continues:
The sin of Adam was that he isolated the Tree of Life from the Tree of
Knowledge to which he directed his desire. Once the unity of the two
trees in men’s lives was destroyed, there began the dominion of the Tree
of Knowledge. No longer did unitary gushing, unrestrained life prevail,
but the duality of good and evil in which the Torah appears in this
aspect of revelation. Since the expulsion from Paradise, in the exile in
27 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

1983), 89.
28 Gershom Gerhard Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on

Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 69.

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352

which we all now find ourselves, we can no longer apperceive the world
as a unified whole. . . .
Only the redemption, breaking the dominion of exile, puts an end
to the order of the Tree of Knowledge and restores the utopian order
of the Tree of Life. . . . The Torah of the Messianic age will be that of
the Tree of Life, which no longer knows anything of all those separations and limitations.29

The Fall of man thus occurred through some essential misappropriation
of knowledge in its relation to life. As a result, man was cut off from life,
also in some fundamental way.
But here another problem arises. If Adam and Eve’s sin lay in separating knowledge from life, it would seem that God has already separated the
two by naming the Tree of Knowledge as such. Does not this distinction
implicate God in the first sin? Herein lies one more reason for the textual
ambiguity over the number of trees “in the middle” of the garden. The
inspired writer of Genesis may well be trying to express a pre-lapsarian
reality to post-lapsarian minds. From the fallen perspective, God’s act of
naming the forbidden tree assumes the very division it prohibits. This
dilemma over naming is not unlike the particle/wave conundrum regarding light in modern physics.We know that light is not two things but one
thing. We also know that light behaves differently in various contexts; so
differently, in fact, that we call it by two different names. In some experiments we call it a particle; in others we call it a wave. Operating in a similar mode of quantum duality, the text of Genesis presents us with a tree
that seems both singular and double. In this regard, the Genesis author
may well be trying to dramatize a connection between two seemingly
unrelated things which the fallen mind can barely conceive as a unity.
This “double vision” of knowledge and life also raises a metaphysical
question. Can two things be two things, and still be one thing? For example, are body and soul two things or one thing? Philosophers from Aristotle onward have sometimes answered this knotty question by replying
“both.” Body and soul are not the same thing; they are distinct. But
neither are they two separate things; they co-inhere in a unified living
organism.Thus if we know one thing as distinct from another thing, we
need not know them as fundamentally separated. As Samuel Taylor
Coleridge once observed in Biographia Literaria :
The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction; while it
is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself constantly aware,
that distinction is not division. In order to obtain adequate notions of
29 Ibid., 69–70.

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353

any truth, we must intellectually separate its distinguishable parts; and
this is the technical process of philosophy. But having so done, we must
then restore them in our conceptions to the unity, in which they actually co-exist; and this is the result of philosophy.30

Understood along these lines, the book of Genesis presents us with a
spiritual vision in which knowledge and life are distinct but undivided.
The temptation, however, turns distinction into separation. Satan holds
out the possibility that Adam and Eve will know “as God knows.” But
what precisely does this mean?
Given that God is in no way dependent on his own creation, his transcendence entails his radical “separateness.”While creation participates in
God’s goodness, God does not participate in his own creation (although
he is immanent to it by virtue of his omnipresence). As Aquinas says in
Summa theologiae,“the first and best good (i.e. God) does not participate in
goodness, for being good by essence is prior to being good by a kind of
participation.”31 He says much the same thing in Summa contra Gentiles:
That which is can participate in something, but the act of being can
participate in nothing. For that which participates is in potency, and
being is an act. But God is being itself, as we have proved. He is not,
therefore, by participation good; He is good essentially.32

Given that God infinitely transcends his own creation, his perfect knowledge must also be independent of the creation he knows.Although God’s
knowledge and life are both eternal, the Scriptures portray his knowledge
as temporally preceding the creation of life.Thus God says to the prophet
Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”33 In Adam’s
experience, however, just the opposite is the case. God breathes the
breath of life into Adam first, and only later does Adam begin to know
30 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. 2, ed.W. Jackson Bate and James

Engell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 11.
31 Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 2, corp.:“Primum autem quod est bonum et optimum,

quod Deus est, non est bonum per participationem, quia bonum per essentiam,
prius est bono per participationem.”Translation from Aquinas: Summa Theologiae,
Questions on God, ed. Brian Leftow and Brian Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 32.
32 Summa contra Gentiles, lib. 1, cap. 38, n. 5: “Id quod est participare aliquid potest,
ipsum autem esse nihil: quod enim participat potentia est, esse autem actus est.
Sed Deus est ipsum esse, ut probatum est. Non est igitur bonus participative, sed
essentialiter.” Translation from On the Truth of the Catholic Faith (Summa Contra
Gentiles), vol. 1, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 153.
33 Jer 1:5.

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creation by naming it. Adam’s knowledge participates in the gift of life
and not the other way around. Adam lives and therefore knows. He does
not know and therefore live—Descartes notwithstanding. Satan’s temptation is nothing less than the suggestion that Adam and Eve invert the
order of life and knowledge. In their perverse attempt to know as God
knows, they aspire to know absolutely and not through participation. In
doing so they separate knowledge from life.
This redefinition of knowledge constitutes a closing in of the self on
itself. To know in this way is to extract experience for its own sake by
sundering it from its vital context. The same pattern emerges in eating
disorders such as bulimia, in which the “knowledge” of food is separated
from its nutritive “life.” C. S. Lewis often draws parallels between eating
and sex to illustrate this strange dissociation:
The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those
who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual)
from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along
with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not
mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than
about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that
pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to
get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.34

Although Lewis does not mention it here, one of the other “kinds of union”
that go along with sexual union is the literal unity of a single child emerging from the union of two other human beings. Union thus begets unity.
In what sense then is God’s prohibition against eating from the “Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” really a command not to separate
knowledge and life? Gordis sheds light on this pivotal question by proposing a different translation of the Hebrew words bw,\m and crfwf, traditionally rendered as “good” and “evil.” Based on the occurrence of these same
Hebrew words in similar contexts, Gordis says that the words should be
translated as “natural” and “unnatural.”Thus he explains:
On the other hand, we believe that the phrase may have originated in
the two aspects of sexual experience, the normal (bw\,m) manifestations
of the impulse and the abnormal ( crfw)f . The variety and frequency of
variant sexual patterns are well attested in biblical narrative and law. For
the ancients, the line of demarcation between normal and abnormal
forms of sexual experience was by no means as distinct as it is in the
modern world, at least in its official code. . . .
34 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001), 104–5.

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355

The specific connotation here proposed for crfwf bwmo “natural and
unnatural,” may be supported by two similar biblical passages. In the story
of Lot’s difficulties with the Sodomites and in the equally primitive tale
of the Levite from Mt. Ephraim and his concubine, who are attacked by
the inhabitants of Gibeah in Benjamin, the townsmen demand that the
male guest(s) be handed over to them stf), xcfd;nw; (Gn 19:5); wncednw;
f ( Jgs
¨
¨
19:22). In each case, the host replies crtf . . . l)a [“do not act so wickedly,”
¨
RSV] and expresses his willingness to offer up instead a woman to their
lust.The latter phrase, as Ehrlich correctly noted, cannot mean, “do not
do wickedly,” for violating the chastity of an innocent woman is surely
an evil. Ehrlich therefore renders rightly “do not act unnaturally.” Now,
if crf refers to the abnormal aspects, kw,m would refer to the normal, and
the phrase “knowing good and evil” becomes a stereotyped idiom
encompassing the entire range of sexual experience.35

On this reading, Genesis 2:9 should be translated as “the tree of the
knowledge of natural and unnatural,” rather than “good and evil.” Since the
natural end of sexual knowledge is the transmission of new life, Gordis’s
emended translation implies that the divine prohibition is at least in part
a mandate against “unnatural knowledge”—that is, a command not to cut
off sexual knowing from the transmission of life.The textual correlation
between the sin of Genesis 3 and the sin of sodomy in Genesis 19 and
Judges 19 is especially illuminating, since sodomy even more violently
ruptures the connection between sex and procreation.
If Genesis dramatizes the pursuit of knowledge cut off from life, what
are we to make of Adam and Eve’s banishment from Eden? As with
Dante’s portrayal of sinners in the Inferno and Purgatorio, the sin carries
with it its own punishment:
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of
us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take
also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever”—therefore the LORD
God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from
which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the
garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which
turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.36

Although it is possible to interpret Adam and Eve’s expulsion as an arbitrary punishment, a closer reading of the text suggests otherwise. Before
banishing them, God also announces individual punishments for Adam
35 Gordis, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Old Testament and the

Qumran Scrolls,” 131–33.
36 Gn 3:22–24.

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and Eve. God says to Eve,“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children . . . ,” and to Adam he says,
“cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days
of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall
eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.”37
Note that both penalties involve procreation: Eve will suffer in bearing
children and Adam will suffer in feeding them. Both punishments
dampen the desire to transmit life.While Adam and Eve’s loss of personal
immortality is the primary penalty for their transgression, the interior
counterpart may well be a rupture between the desire for sexual knowledge and the desire to give and receive new life in the form of children.
In other words, Adam and Eve are punished by getting what they want
(knowledge apart from life) and by their subsequent inability to want
knowledge and life in their original unity.As with most spiritual warfare,
the battle is fought along the frontier of human desire.
III
If Genesis depicts a spiritual rupture between sex and procreation, other
Scriptures dramatize a unity which grace may restore. But how is the
cleavage to be healed? As Scholem says, “Only the redemption, breaking
the dominion of exile, puts an end to the order of the Tree of Knowledge
and restores the utopian order of the Tree of Life.” Although Scholem is
referring to Jewish Messianism, his observation applies equally well to the
Christian tradition. As Christ says to the churches in Revelation 2:7, “To
him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the
paradise of God.” A number of Christian writers have also identified the
cross of Christ with the Tree of Life. In The Tree of Life, for example, St.
Bonaventure meditates extensively on the cross as an emblem of the life
of Christ, who is himself a mystical tree upon which life-giving virtues
blossom. In a more nuptial vein, St. John of the Cross portrays the soul’s
espousal to God in The Spiritual Canticle by imagining a dialog between
Bridegroom and Bride in a garden that harks back to Eden:
Beneath the apple tree:
There I took you for My own,
There I offered you My hand,
And restored you,
Where your mother was corrupted.38
37 Gn 3:16–19.
38 St. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, in The Collected Works of St. John of the

Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1979), 499.

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Commenting on his own verse line by line, John says the following:
The Bridegroom explains to the soul in this stanza His admirable plan
in redeeming and espousing her to Himself through the very means by
which human nature was corrupted and ruined, telling her that as
human nature through Adam was ruined and corrupted by means of the
forbidden tree in the Garden of Paradise, so on the tree of the cross it
was redeemed and restored when He gave it there, through His Passion
and Death the hand of his favor and mercy, and broke down the barriers between God and man which were built up through original sin.
Thus he says:
3. Beneath the apple tree:
That is, beneath the favor of the tree of the cross (referred to by the
apple tree), where the Son of God redeemed human nature and consequently espoused it to Himself and then espoused each soul by giving
it through the cross grace and pledges for this espousal.
And thus he says:
4. There I took you for My own
There I offered you My hand,
That is: there I offered you My kind regard and help by raising
you from your low state to My companion and spouse.
5. And restored you,
Where your mother was corrupted.
For human nature, your mother, was corrupted in your first parents,
under the tree, and you too under the tree of the cross were restored.
If your mother, therefore, brought you death under the tree, I, under
the tree of the cross, brought you life.39

For John, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are reunited in the
one tree of the cross.Through the sacrifice of Christ, the redeemed and
spousal “knowing” between God and the soul restores the natural unity
between knowledge and life which Adam and Eve ruptured. The New
Testament is replete with similar formulations that reintegrate knowledge
and life, as when Christ says simply that “this is eternal life, that they
know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”40
What Christian theologians call “salvation history” may here be applied
to the way in which the internal connection between knowledge and life
was wounded, and how it may be healed by grace.
39 Ibid., 499–500.
40 Jn 17:3.

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358

Although the ethical history of contraception is exceedingly complex,
the practice was was seen as “unnatural” in most Christian churches prior
to the Lambeth Conference of 1930, when the Anglican Church broke
with tradition and allowed the practice between married couples for
“grave reasons.”41 Most other Protestant denominations followed suit.The
Catholic Church, however, has maintained the traditional view, reiterated
in Humanae Vitae (1968), which reaffirms “the inseparable connection,
willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative,
between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and
the procreative meaning.”42 Seen in this light, the terms “unitive” and
“procreative” would seem applicable to the Tree of Knowledge and the
Tree of Life respectively—as would the “inseparable connection” between
them portrayed in Genesis.
More recently, Pope John Paul II has meditated deeply on the
profound unity between “knowledge” and “life” in Theology of the Body,
a series of reflections on the book of Genesis in light of the Gospel. In
one passage, Blessed John Paul makes what some have called a revolutionary observation regarding the “divine image” in which Adam and
Eve were created. He says that this image comprises not merely reason or
free will (although these are included), but the capacity for sexual love
and procreation. He does this by explicating Genesis 1:27–28:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created
him; male and female he created them.And God blessed them, and God
said to them,“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it;
and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air
and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”43

According to John Paul, this remarkable passage shows how “man became
the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the
communion of persons, which man and woman form from the very beginning. . . . Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of
solitude as in the moment of communion.”44 John Paul goes on to say
that the conjugal embrace of man and woman illustrates the “spousal
meaning of the body,” as they give themselves totally and freely to one
41 Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae:A Generation Later (Washington, DC: The Catholic

University of America Press, 1991), 5–6.
42 Humanae Vitae, no. 12.
43 Gn 1:27–28.
44 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.

Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 163, emphasis in
original.

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359

another in love. Man and woman thus become an image of God through
knowledge in the nuptial sense.
But John Paul goes further. After creating male and female together as
the divine image, God charges Adam and Eve in the very next verse to
“be fruitful and multiply.” John Paul reads this exuberant command as
another aspect of the same image, insofar as the divine nature creates life
out of love.Thus he says that “the mystery of his creation (‘in the image
of God he created him’) corresponds [with] the perspective of procreation (‘be fruitful and multiply’).”45 The divine image is fully constituted
by marital love and by the child that love produces, taken together as a
unity. In other words, the divine image in Genesis 1 is precisely the union
between knowledge and life. It is that image which the first sin mysteriously defaces in the story of the two trees.
In one passage, John Paul says that, despite the ruptured bond between
sex and procreation caused by the Fall, Genesis nonetheless affords a
glimpse of that unity persisting after the Fall:
Procreation brings it about that “the man and the woman (his wife)”
know each other reciprocally in the “third,” originated by both. For this reason,
this “knowledge” becomes in some way a revelation of the new man,
in whom both, the man and the woman, again recognize each other,
their humanity, their living image.46

Despite their newly fallen state, Adam and Eve’s knowledge of one
another in sexual intimacy only deepens when they behold the living
face of their first child.The unity of knowledge and life thus abide in the
image of the human family.
If Theology of the Body suggests that knowledge and life are fully united
in the Judeo-Christian vision of the human family, Djerassi and others
continue to dream of their final divorce.The trouble is that only half their
dream has come true. The majority of couples in the West have wholeheartedly embraced sexual knowledge divorced from life, and no amount
of chiding will now induce them to encumber their relationships with
reproductive gadgetry. Nor does the grueling prospect of raising children
seem terribly attractive as they pursue the mirage of perpetual romance
afforded by contraceptive culture. Progressive couples will “enjoy their
schnitzels” and leave the transmission of life to the “experts”—that is, to
men in white coats who work for corporations, the government, or both.
In meantime, if procreation fails to be taken over by the technicians,
45 Ibid., 136.
46 Ibid., 211–12, emphasis in original.

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birthrates will continue to spiral downward.The end result is not hard to
predict. John Paul II spoke repeatedly about an encroaching “Culture of
Death” which may be literally realized sooner than he foresaw.
As sociologists puzzle over the phenomenon of population collapse in
Europe, which is now spreading to Iran and other Arab countries, they
will be forced to return to one central question: why don’t contemporary couples want to have children? How did an entire culture lose its
desire for life? Since the publication of Brave New World, other literary
voices have joined Huxley’s in holding up a mirror to Western societies,
asking whether an oversexed and childless world is really so desirable after
all. P. D. James’s novel The Children of Men (1992), which was made into
a popular film, asks just such a question. Meanwhile, the book of Genesis speaks with renewed urgency to a culture in the process of choosing
knowledge at the expense of life. As it has done from the beginning, the
story of the two trees illuminates the subterranean connection between
sex and procreation, as well as the personal and social consequences of
N&V
sundering that living bond.

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361

Pope Paul VI on the Renewal of Vatican II
as an Act of the Church Drawing from
Her Treasure Things both Old and New
D OUGLAS G. B USHMAN
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

I N VARYING ways all of the popes associated with Vatican II—John
XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI—have been deliberate in
stressing the essential continuity between the preceding Catholic Tradition
and what the Council taught. For Pope Paul VI, one of these ways entailed
referring to or commenting on the text of Matthew 13:52 to convey that
the teaching of Vatican II and the renewal that it initiated stand in a twofold
relation to the apostolic Tradition. On the one hand, the relation is one of
continuity, conveyed through an emphasis on the Church’s fidelity to her
Tradition. She retains, safeguards, and continues to believe and teach what
has been revealed and handed on.This is what is old (vetera). On the other
hand, the relation is one of development, conveyed through observations
regarding the necessary adaptation of the Tradition for pastoral reasons. By
adjusting to the demands of the times in which she lives and deepening her
understanding of the patrimony of faith, the Church arrives at a deeper
understanding of the deposit of faith and produces new expressions of the
old (nova). As the subject of a living Tradition, the Church herself is the
“scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven.” Like a head of
a household, the Church has a storehouse out of which she is able to bring
“what is new and what is old” (nova et vetera).
The significance of the many passing references Pope Paul made to this
text in Matthew becomes clear in light of the occasions on which he elaborated at greater length on the text in order to emphasize that the Church
exists in a dynamic fidelity to her own essential identity. A particular point

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of his attention is the Second Vatican Council.While dynamic fidelity is a
characteristic of the entire Catholic Tradition, Pope Paul was concerned
to affirm that this is a feature of the twenty-first ecumenical council. For
him Tradition itself is the storehouse in which nova et vetera exist together.
Tradition, and thus also the Church, possess the quality of being simultaneously faithful and innovative, conservative and progressive, essentially
unchanging yet adaptable.To grasp this is necessary in order to understand
the true nature of the Council’s aggiornamento envisioned by Pope John
XXIII and by Pope Paul VI. Pope Paul understood this aggiornamento to be
the “guiding principle” of Vatican II and the “goal and task” of his own
pontificate.1 Thus, the effort to understand this aggiornamento in terms of
the nova et vetera theme is fundamental for seeing the Council through the
eyes of Pope Paul VI, and for an accurate evaluation of his pontificate.
Since each member of the Church, as well as various groups and associations of the faithful, participate in the Church’s life and mission, it is not
surprising to find the Pope invoking the passage of St. Matthew, not only
when considering the Church as a whole, but also when addressing religious communities and encouraging them in their efforts to respond to the
Council’s call for “accommodated renewal.”2 He also saw the nova et vetera
theme at work in the pontificates of the popes who preceded him, beginning with Leo XIII.At the same time it is a principle of the life of the local
Church, as several of his ad limina addresses make clear.All of this shows that
in Pope Paul’s mind Vatican II should be considered a new expression of the
Church’s faith, drawn from the storehouse of Tradition, and thus faithful to
that Tradition while at the same time actualizing that Tradition in a new way.
Predecessors Compared to the Wise Head of Household
Pope Paul was vividly conscious of the legacy of papal teaching that
preceded Vatican II and that, in many respects, the Council endeavored to
synthesize.Writing in his first encyclical about dialogue and the “pastoral
approach and method” that he and the Council were appropriating
perhaps more consciously and critically than his predecessors, Pope Paul
considered Leo XIII to be “almost as a personification of the Gospel
character of the wise scribe, who, like the father of a family, ‘knows how
to bring both new and old things out of his treasurehouse’ (Matt 13:52).”3
What he understood by this becomes clear in what immediately follows.
1 See Ecclesiam Suam, 50.
2 The phrase is found in the descriptive title of Perfectae Caritatae, Decree on the

Accommodated Renewal of Religious Life, and appears several times throughout the decree (see Perfectae Caritatae, 1, 2, 4, 7, 18, 25).
3 Ecclesiam Suam, 67.

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Pope Leo “assumed his function as teacher of the world by making the
object of his richest instruction the problems of our time considered in
the light of the Word of Christ.”
In this text, what Pope Leo XIII taught in order to address the new
situations in the world at the time is nova, while the “light of the Word of
Christ” as it was received by the Church from the Lord, lived, and developed up to the time of his pontificate is vetera.The same is true of Leo’s
successors. In the language of the Council, the “course of events leads
men to look for answers” to the fundamental questions about what it
means to be human, about the purpose of human existence.The Church
is convinced that “people are waiting for an answer to these questions”
and her mission is to show how they are all answered in Christ.4 Pope
Paul commends Pope Leo for turning to the treasury of the Church’s
faith in order to respond to the perennial questions of man as these questions were being posed in the new circumstances of the time.
Pope Paul describes the pontificate of Leo XIII in terms borrowed
from Vatican II, terms that indicate that in the social teaching of Leo XIII
there is perceptible one of the fundamental intuitions of John XXIII
regarding Vatican II. The Council was to address the crisis of humanism
by taking up a consideration of the fundamental problems facing
mankind at that time.5 This is what stood out in the mind of Cardinal
Bea, as qualified a witness as any:“Pope John has told us that the first idea
of the Council came to him in connection with the problems concerning all men and particularly that of peace.”6 According to Cardinal Bea,
the radio broadcast of John XXIII, just four weeks before the opening of
the Council, was “a solemn warning” occasioned by a review of the
documents that had been prepared for the Council. In this message the
Pope identified “a whole series of world problems to be debated by the
Council, but which in fact were not dealt with in the nearly seventy
schemata” that had been drafted in preparation for Vatican II.7
This seems to be corroborated by an account of Pope John reviewing
the draft texts or schemata that were the fruit of years of preparatory work,
and that were to serve as the foundation for the Council’s initial deliberations. Upon entering the Pope’s office, one of his close collaborators saw
4 Gaudium et Spes, 4, 9. See also Gaudium et Spes, 18, 21, 22.
5 On this subject one can profitably consult John Kobler, Vatican II and Phenome-

nology: Reflections on the Life-World of the Church (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, 1985), 7–8, 30.
6 Augustin Cardinal Bea, The Church and Mankind (Chicago: Franciscan Herald
Press, 1967), 3.
7 Ibid., 4.

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Douglas G. Bushman

him bending over the pile of texts with a ruler.The Pope was measuring
the height of the stack of texts, and said: “You see here! There are thirty
centimeters of condemnations in this schema.”8 In the terms of the nova et
vetera theme, Cardinal Bea’s words and this anecdote amount to saying that
the schemata were replete with vetera but lacking in nova. In view of Pope
Paul’s reading of Leo XIII, they lacked the dynamism of the Catholic Tradition as it had expressed itself in Pope Leo’s pontificate and his drawing the
new out of the old.
The nova et vetera theme appears again in Pope Paul’s homily on the
tenth anniversary of the death of Pope John XXIII ( June 2, 1973), in
which he sought to correct serious misperceptions about his immediate
predecessor. This homily was not so much a long-delayed eulogy as the
seizing of a pastoral opportunity to repeat once more the vital importance
of a faithful and balanced understanding of the life of the Church. He was
aware that some regarded Pope John and the Council he convoked as
ruinous for the Church. Some considered him the Pope of “liberation
from the chain of tradition, the promoter of an arbitrary ‘updating’ [aggiornamento] lacking pre-determined limits.”9 As Pope Paul saw it, though,
John XXIII was an innovative Pope, who knew how to discover the vital
fecundity of the Gospel message and “how to draw the new and the old
from the inexhaustible treasure of the Gospel (Matt 13:52).”This applies,
especially, to the Second Vatican Council.
Addresses to Bishops on their Ad Limina Visits
Bishops’ ad limina visits were a frequent occasion for Pope Paul to
invoke the passage on nova et vetera. To the bishops of England he gave a
general reminder that they must be faithful stewards of the faith entrusted
to them:“Fidelity to the faith of our Fathers: the faith in all its purity, with
8 Robert Rouquette, La Fin d’une Chrétienté, I (Paris: Cerf, 1968), 319. Rouquette

recounts this story in the context of making the point that although there was a
great discrepancy between Pope John’s vision for the Council and the preparatory
documents, the Holy Father did not interfere with the distribution and discussion
of those documents, confident that the college of bishops would be the providential agent of the reform he was convinced was needed but which he had not
himself worked out in detail.
9 Pope Paul had addressed this earlier, in his speech of November 18, 1965: “This
word [Italian: aggiornamento; Latin: accomodatio ], which described [Pope John’s]
goal, certainly did not have the meaning for him which some try to give it, as if
it allowed for the ‘relativization,’ according to the spirit of the world, of everything in the Church—dogmas, laws, structures, traditions. His sense of the
doctrinal and structural stability of the Church was so vital and strong that it was
the basis and foundation of his thought and of his work.”

Pope Paul VI on the Renewal of Vatican II

365

all its exigencies, in all its power; the faith with its inexhaustible treasure
of nova et vetera (Matt 13:52).” He added: “Your own Cardinal Newman
understood so well the demands of this fidelity, and how the organic
development of Christian doctrine must be in complete harmony with
pure apostolic faith.”10 After recalling to the Swiss bishops that they faced
“a certain number of new questions or initiatives that require care and
mature consideration,” Pope Paul stressed that “it is necessary to proclaim
the Gospel in the present context in terms that are able to reach the new
generations.”There is need for “a witness of charity and justice adapted to
the needs of today.” Laity and clergy zealously desire to respond to these
needs, but if the solutions they propose are to be fruitful and enduring, he
insisted, they must keep certain things in mind. In responding to various
religious needs while respecting legitimate sensibilities, they must be faithful to Revelation and to all the teachings of the Magisterium and, he specified, to canonical regulations and decisions of the Holy See. Pope Paul
referred to all of these as the nova et vetera. Presumably, this means that the
response to actual needs and sensibilities are nova, while Revelation, Magisterial teaching, and canonical regulations are vetera.The bishops’ duty is to
assure that the nova and vetera are kept in balance, and to see that their
collaborators are formed in such a way as to assure that they are able to
safeguard this balance. They should take Vatican II as their guide: “The
Second Vatican Council, and the authoritative directives for its implementation, outline how to think about this and the way to follow.”
What did Pope Paul think would happen if this balance of “new” and
“old” is not upheld? It is typical of his intellectual and spiritual dispositions to sound the warning against two opposing dangers.11
10 Ad limina address to the bishops of England, November 10, 1977.
11 An outstanding example of this is Pope Paul’s address of September 27, 1974, to

the Third General Assembly Synod of Bishops, in which he outlined their purpose
as “comparing the traditional conception of the activity of evangelization with the
new openings that appeal to the Council and the changed conditions of the
times.” Then he made the characteristic appeal for balance: “This will certainly
entail a preferential regard for the structures and institutions of the Church experienced through centuries; but, without disavowing the past or destroying
acquired values, it will strive serenely to remain open to all that is good and valid
found in new experiences, thus reconciling nova et vetera, especially when movements that work in collaboration with the hierarchy are treated. In any case, you
will make your own the Pauline maxim: ‘Test all . . . and retain what is good’ (1
Thess. 5:21).” Pope Paul returned to the nova et vetera text just three days later, in
another address to the Synod Fathers: “We are sure, venerable Brothers, that
remaining faithful to the ‘faith transmitted to the saints once for all’ ( Jud 3) and
drawing from its treasures things both ‘new’ and ‘old’ (Matt 13:52), you will correspond to this expectation” (September 30, 1967, address to Synod of Bishops).

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Those who neglect or want to thwart them [the “new” ], by invoking
fidelity to the past, are unfaithful to the mission of the Church today and
to her responsibility for tomorrow.Those who go beyond them in order
to follow their personal inspiration build on sand a Church without
roots. One and the other diminish the Church’s unity and credibility.12

The “new” can be embraced in a way that prejudices against the “old,”
and the “old” can be clung to in a way that prejudices against the “new.”
The vitality of the Tradition can be smothered by a paralyzing fear of
stepping into the “new” as well as by unprincipled pastoral initiatives that
are not consistent with the “old.”
In his opening address to the Council, Pope John had exhorted the
participants:“Our duty is not just to guard this treasure, as though it were
some museum-piece and we the curators, but earnestly and fearlessly to
dedicate ourselves to the work that needs to be done in this modern age
of ours, pursuing the path which the Church has followed for almost
twenty centuries.”13 Pope Paul would make his own this reference to a
museum:“The Tradition is not a museum. . . . It is a plant that blooms with
every spring, a sap that continually renews itself.”14 The Tradition is not
like a fossil of something that once was living, that has been frozen in time.
Rather, it is a living reality that continues to grow and to shape history.
In an address to the bishops of France, Pope Paul evoked the “great
crowd of witnesses,” that is, the numerous French saints, whose “faith,
charity, and apostolic zeal were so resourceful because they were, first of
all, faithful.” It is precisely their fidelity that made them resource-full, able
to draw from the treasure of the Church’s faith in order to bring its virtualities to bear upon the needs of their times. Employing an analogy
between the natural and the supernatural orders, the Pope asserted that all
living things must be faithful to their origin, from which they receive the
principle of their development. For Christians this origin is the Church,
from which they receive their spiritual being. As a result, the Church is
also the principle of their spiritual lives, which must develop in fidelity to
the Church. The Church “lives, indeed, within time, yet her living tradi12 Ad limina address to the bishops of Switzerland, December 1, 1977.
13 In different terminology he repeated himself in a letter to the bishops of January

6, 1962: “We, the bishops of God’s Church, have some serious rethinking to do
on the serious responsibilities of our pastoral office.True, by God’s grace we have
safeguarded, and continue to safeguard, the integrity of Catholic doctrine as
taught by the Holy Gospels, revered Tradition, the Fathers of the Church, and the
Roman Pontiffs.That much is to our credit. But it is not enough. God’s command
goes further:‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations’ (Matt 28:19).”
14 Address during a pilgrimage to Subiaco, September 8, 1971.

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tion integrates the nova et vetera of the Gospel.” Fidelity to the Church
assures our communion with those who have gone before us, our fathers
in faith.A mechanical kind of mimicking of their methods will not suffice;
rather, he said, we must take to ourselves the secret of their living flame.15
The same Gospel that was a treasure of resources for the saints of old
offers the riches of its resources to those who are faithful to it today.Those
who strive to promote the Church’s mission today can be resourceful, in
the sense of creatively adaptive, because they are resource-full, that is, they
have access to the rich resources of the Gospel that is the treasure from
which both nova and vetera can be drawn.
Similarly, to the bishops of Eastern Germany Pope Paul urged that their
ministry be “a ministry of faithfulness with respect to the extraordinary
treasures of Christian Tradition” as well as a “ministry of what is new.”The
latter will be conducted with “evangelical audacity” in order to promote
the reception of what Vatican II taught and to address “the things that
emerge from the needs of today of your Christian community within its
own time and place.”This, the Holy Father stated, is “the very evangelical
meaning of the father of a family, who draws from his storehouse ‘things
both new and old’ (Matt 13:52).”16 Once again, the proper disposition
with respect to the Tradition as vetera is fidelity, while evangelical bold
confidence is the disposition with respect to the Tradition as nova.
Nova et Vetera Identified with Tradition
Pope Paul’s most extensive treatment of nova et vetera and Matthew 13:52
in relation to Vatican II came in his General Audience of August 7, 1974.
He observed that the phrase nova et vetera is a condensed formula that
contains “the solution of the relationship between our religious knowledge and history.”The name of this solution is Tradition.The Pope then
turned to engage in a pastoral reading of the signs of the times (though
he did not evoke this phrase from Vatican II).
He noted that talk of tradition clashes with the contemporary fascination with the future.The future is the source from which modern man is
disposed to derive his primary sense of duty, while he has shaken off any
sense of obligation to the past. As for tradition, today’s mentality thinks of
it as a heavy chain,“esteeming [traditional] values as worthless, antiquated,
anachronistic, surpassed.” Thought of the prior age produces a “furious and
revolutionary” impatience. The past is a burden for those who think only
of embracing “the adventure of an unknown future.” They think they will
be impeded if they have “to submit to the prudence and the experience of
15 Ad limina address to bishops of France, June 20, 1977.
16 Ad limina address to bishops of Eastern Germany, September 29, 1977.

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the preceding generation.” He observed that education has succumbed to
this way of thinking. Having taken a “pragmatic and utilitarian direction,”
it fails to recognize the values that appear to be opposed to the promise of
future progress.
It is clear that the Pope is aware that such a general, cultural attitude
toward the idea of tradition cannot help but have its effect on the
members of the Church. It is a sign of the times that presents a particular
challenge to the tension of living in the world but not being of the world.
In the case at hand, disregard or even disdain for tradition is unhealthy
even on the natural level.This is why the Holy Father’s reflections are first
directed to a consideration of history and its important role in human life.
History, he asserted, is “mother of the past and of the future” and
preserves “perennial values.”The decisive point on which he insists is that
these values are “not so much generated by history, but generative of
history.”Were they man-made they would be subject to human will and
could be altered at will. In fact, though, they have a certain precedence
or priority that is rooted in the relation of creation to Creator.The “inexorable dynamism” of time “teaches us the intrinsic insufficiency of
[created] things and stamps them with their fundamental definition as
‘creatures,’ ” and this “launches the intelligent spirit toward the eternal
question: where is the Creator?”
The Pope’s train of thought seems to be that the handing down of
objective values on the natural level finds its supernatural complement in
what has been revealed and transmitted in sacred Tradition. Man’s natural
tendency to discover and to adhere to values imbedded in human traditions, themselves rooted in the relation of creation to Creator, has a parallel in the sphere of faith.The Gospel’s “objective content comes to us from
a precise history.” It embraces the entire sweep of time and history, and
even “reaches into the future when Christ will come again (donec veniat—
Matt 10:23).” This interpretation of the flow of time “gives to history a
meaning, a logic, a possibility of being intelligible and synthetically
ordered.” In the eyes of faith, then, the past “is definite, historical, indelible.” He finds confirmation of this in Vatican II:“Therefore, the Christian
economy, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we
now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tim. 6:14;Tit. 2:13)” (Dei Verbum, 4).
We find our support in one salvific Tradition.
Pope Paul goes on to distinguish between the essential content of
Tradition as divine revelation and the various traditions that are “customs,
styles, transitory and mutable forms of human life, without the charism
of truth that makes them unchangeable and obligatory.”

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[T]hese purely historical and human traditions not only contain many
contingent and short-lived elements, with regard to which freedom for
critical judgment and for reform remains, but they often demand to be
criticized and reformed due to the facility with which human things
grow old, or become distorted, and they need to be purified and also
replaced. It is not without reason that we speak of “updating” [aggiornamento] and renewal [rinnovamento] . . .

Frequently the innovation we seek “is an effort to return to the origins
and to draw from the ancient and authentic sources of Tradition the
strengths and the programs for a renaissance to happen (‘ressourcement,’
as an expressive French neologism has it).”Tradition is “the treasure from
which the wise Christian extracts old things and new things.” For this a
special charism is needed, the ecclesiastical Magisterium, which is
assured, especially in decisive moments, the assistance of the “Spirit of
truth” ( Jn 14:17; 16:13).
Pope Paul identified two possible deviations.The first, restrictive, limits
the faith to Scripture alone, cutting it off from the living Tradition of the
Church.17 The second is to proffer a personal and novel interpretation
without due regard for those who have responsibility to guard the deposit
of faith, that is, the Magisterium. Concerned that he not be misunderstood, the Pope explained that this does not mean that
the truths of the faith are not able to be and must not be the object of
study, research, deeper understanding, and also of being expressed in
given cultural environments and given spiritual moments.The doctrine
of the faith is not deprived of logical and coherent development;
indeed, it is readily obedient to the needs of thought and to the duties
of contemplation, according to the exhortation of the same St. Paul,“to
grow in the knowledge of God” (Col 1:10; cf. Eph. 1:17; cf. Newman).
But faith must remain unequivocal and faithful to its essential and original meaning—uniform with itself, with what Christ proclaimed, and
with what the Church, protected by the Holy Spirit, for the salvation
of the men, today still proclaims, defends, and extends toward the
boundless vision of the divine and ineffable reality.18

17 He clearly has the Protestant position of sola Scriptura in mind, inasmuch as this has

come to be understood as isolating the Scriptures from the life of the Church and
from the Magisterium. As the schism of Archbishop Lefebvre has demonstrated, it
is also possible to fall short of the synthesis of nova et vetera by limiting faith to a
particular historical realization of the living Tradition. Neither Scripture nor Tradition can be isolated or cut off from the living subject of both, the Church.
18 General Audience of August 7, 1974.

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For Pope Paul, then, there is a comparison if not an analogy between the
natural order of reason and the supernatural order of faith. Naturally, man
discovers in creation perennial values that are not the product of historical
processes and yet are historically transmitted as traditions. This implies a
distinction between the historical situations and dynamics that can be the
occasion for the discovery of these values, on one hand, and the values
themselves and the capacity of human intelligence to discern them, on the
other hand.These values are imbedded in the objective order of creation as
having emanated from the Divine Mind, and the human mind is capable of
discovering them.19 Therefore these perennial values precede man’s discovery of them. They precede as well the traditions that are formed by them
and by which they are transmitted.They are the generating causes of, and
they give direction to, historical processes.Why? Because man is the agent
that shapes history, and his decisions are a function of the values that he
holds.Various traditions are the result of man’s history-shaping activities.20
Supernaturally, in Sacred Tradition believers discover the perennial
truths of Divine Revelation. These are not the product of the historical
network of man’s efforts to deepen his faith; rather, they are what man
comes to know by faith. Divine Revelation precedes faith, by which it is
received, celebrated, lived, and reflected upon by the Church.This receiving, celebrating, living, and reflecting gives rise to Tradition, which is
capable of developing.At the same time there also arise various traditions,
resulting from the life of faith based on Divine Revelation. These traditions reflect Divine Revelation but are not related to it in the same way
that Sacred Tradition itself is. This is to say that they are not normative.
They are simply the product of lived faith at a particular time in history.
In terms of the nova et vetera theme it seems, then, that the nova can be
either the various traditions giving expression to Divine Revelation as
lived in a particular historical context, or a new expression of the Church’s
understanding of Divine Revelation that can be properly identified as
belonging to Sacred Tradition. In other words, corresponding to Tradition
and traditions there can be Nova and nova.The nova may be adaptations of
pastoral aggiornamento at the level of a particular Church or a local Church,
as Pope Paul’s addresses to various groups of bishops attest. Rooted in the
vetera of the treasury of Tradition, such nova are related to the vetera of
Sacred Tradition as prudential judgments are related to universal and
19 The Pope could easily have referred to Gaudium et Spes 36 on this.
20 Today one might speak more readily of cultures rather than traditions, recogniz-

ing that cultures are value-bearing.The Church’s interest in culture is due to her
interest in man. Culture stands in a twofold relation to man. It is formed by man
and it comes back to form man.The same can be said about traditions.

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unchanging moral principles. The teaching of Vatican II on the episcopate
and collegiality provides an example of both kinds of “things that are
new.”That Jesus called the apostles together and formed them as a college
in which Peter’s role was to give it unity, and that He intended that their
successors likewise form a college that has Peter’s successor as its head, is
a matter of a development of doctrine, that is, of the Church’s understanding of Divine Revelation. It takes its place among the Nova, something “new” that the Church has brought out of the treasury of Tradition.
That this collegiality should be exercised in the concrete institution of the
synod of bishops is clearly another matter, one that takes its place among
the nova, something “new” that is ecclesiastical tradition.The institution of
the synod of bishops carries, so to speak, the doctrine of collegiality, but
not in such a way that the two cannot be separated.
The Necessary Balance of Nova et Vetera
There has already been occasion to remark that Pope Paul’s intellectual
temperament was such that he was acutely aware of the possibility of two
exaggerations. Corresponding to nova et vetera are, respectively, pastoral adaptation to the concrete needs of the Church and fidelity.The way in which
nova and vetera are related, and their necessary balance and complementarity, can be conveyed by considering the Church ad intra and ad extra.21
Concerning the Church’s relation to the temporal order, “there are
two ways for the Church to sustain her youth, that is, to be inserted as a
living religion in the fabric of the course of history.” Pope Paul described
these two ways in the following way:
One, that we could say is resolved ad extra, is for the Church to
approach the world that surrounds her, to assume its language, customs,
and mentality, to the extent that this is compatible with the Church’s
nature and mission to insert herself in the history that passes, to
“historicize herself.” The other way, which we could call ad intra,
according to which the Church looks within herself for the inexhaustible vitality of her truth, her traditional consistency, her spiritual
wealth. Both ways are good, provided they wisely complement one
another.This is very close to the Gospel binomial nova et vetera that we
must strive to put into practice to give strength and testimony to the
perennial flowering of the kingdom of God.
21 The ad intra/ad extra distinction was made by John XXIII in his radio message of

September 11, 1962.The theme became an organizing principle of the Council by
the initiative of Cardinal Suenens and Cardinal Montini. See Léon-Josef Cardinal
Suenens,“A Plan for the Whole Council,” in Vatican II Revisited by Those Who Were
There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole, O.S.B. (Minneapolis:Winston Press, 1986), 88–105.

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But unfortunately sometimes, today, in this effort of renewal, some,
certainly moved by sincere zeal, become preoccupied with the first way,
forgetting or neglecting the second. It happens then that many are
tempted to believe only in what is new, only what is modern, only
what is mixed with the experience of the contemporary world. This
engenders an instinctive temptation to repudiate what was done and
thought yesterday, to detach oneself from traditional theology and discipline, to put everything in question, as if one had to start afresh to build
the Church today, to reconstruct its doctrines starting not so much
from the data of revelation and tradition, but rather from the temporal
realities in which contemporary life develops, to initiate new forms of
thought, spirituality, and custom, with the pretext of infusing in our
Christianity an authenticity discovered only at the present time, and
comprehensible only to the men of our time. At first this process of
renewal touches on and clears away transitory things and forms; but
then, for some, it comes to impair essential and untouchable things and
forms in the Church that are essential and that should not be touched.
Then there is a danger that, though not intentionally, the mentality of
the reformer adapts itself and becomes formed in relation to the
currents of thought, to the way of thinking of others; and truths that
are not time-bound, because divine, are sometimes folded into a
historicism that deprives them of their content and stability. St. Paul
seems to provide the defense, and he, the apostle who strained to be all
things to all men (1 Cor 9:22), warns us that the Cross of Christ must
not be made void: “Ut not evacuetur crux Christi” (1 Cor 1:17).
The other way, that of the Church’s fidelity to herself, is certainly
what holds the true secret of her perennial youth, what makes her
search into the divine treasure confided her by Christ, for the wisdom
and the strength to make herself present, always living and working in
the midst of the men to whom she wishes to bring the message of faith,
charity, and salvation. Only in this way must she make herself correctly
known in a way accessible to men. To accomplish this she must strive
to know them, to understand them, to promote the practice of Christian life for them, and to give them the joy of encountering Christ. She
must strive, in a word, to show herself to be “apostolic”: this art so
beautiful, but so difficult!
And this is precisely what the Church today wisely and boldly
strives to do through the Council, so that Christ shines forth to the
world, as engraved on the base of the obelisk of the Plaza of St. Peter,
always the same Christ: yesterday, today and forever.22

Pope Paul’s penchant for pointing out the balance required for the
Church as a living organism to continue to grow into the “new” while
remaining faithful to the “old” was not limited to occasions when he
22 General Audience, August 11, 1965.

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invoked the text of Matthew on nova et vetera. His remarks on the place
of Latin in the Church are illustrative. To those he described as having
“shallow minds or unthinking passion for the new [that] leads them to
the idea that the Latin language must be totally spurned by the Latin
Church,” he listed reasons why “it is absolutely clear that Latin must be
held in high honor.” At the same time, “those who, out of an empty
aestheticism that goes too far in seeking to preserve what is old or out of
a prejudice against anything new” need to realize “that Latin must be
subordinate to the pastoral ministry and is not an end in itself.” The
“highest law,” he insisted, “must be the well-being of souls,” which was
the governing principle of the renewal of Vatican II.“Any defense, therefore, of the rights this language has acquired in the Church must avoid at
all costs impeding or constricting the renewal of pastoral service
mandated by the Council.”23
The balance of nova and vetera is not established by a fixed formula. It is,
rather, the dynamic judgment of pastoral prudence regarding adaptation to
new situations in the Church’s life, based on and in fidelity to Tradition.The
virtue of prudence would betray itself were it simply to reproduce and apply
past judgments without first determining if they are adequate to each new
situation. Similarly the Church would fall short of the demands of pastoral
charity were she to remain content with the pastoral adaptations of another
era. Prudence is simultaneously faithful to the fixed norms of eternal law
and to the demands of reasoned awareness of circumstances in the here and
now. Similarly, the nova et vetera principle conveys that the Church’s pastoral
accommodations are necessarily determinations of unchangeable truths of
divine revelation in the concrete ‘today’ of the Church’s life. Since the
Church exists to serve man, this means that the Church’s pastors must always
weigh what is best for the good of souls. At the same time, what is best for
souls has been determined in its essential outlines—by the dynamisms of
human nature and the truth of divine revelation that corresponds to those
dynamisms as their fulfillment. Consequently, this pastoral, prudential
reasoning is circumscribed by Tradition, which stands in relation to each
prudential judgment as the “old” to the “new.”
The parallel between the relation of prudential judgments to universal
moral principles, on one hand, and the relation of the nova to the vetera of
Tradition, on the other, holds an additional point of comparison. Just as
prudence cannot be reduced to being an intellectual virtue, so the acts by
which the nova is drawn from the vetera are not simply detached, intellectual calculations. Prudence presupposes the rectitude of the will, that is, the
23 Address to Latinists, April 26, 1968.

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moral virtues, and thus a certain connaturalization of the prudent person
to the good. Similarly the judgments leading to the nova depend upon a
connaturalization by love with respect to the content of Tradition.24
The Renewal of Religious Orders
When encouraging religious in their undertaking of the renewal called
for by the Council, Pope Paul does little more than summarize what Vatican II understood by accommodated renewal in Perfectae caritatae. What
he adds to the actual text of this decree, though, is a reference to Matthew
13:52, as in the following:
To all the religious families we will say: it seems to Us that, in the present
ecclesial season, they must respond to two demands: that of the fidelity to
the wish of the Founders and the Foundresses, what was originally recognized and approved by the authority of the Church; that of the renewal
according to the spirit and the dictate of the Council, which—as well you
know—has been stated for you especially in the Decree Perfectae Caritatis.
We tell you that it is evangelical wisdom—you remember the example of
the head of the household, who draws from his treasure nova et vetera (cf.
Matt 13:52)—to respect both of these lines. Consider it, therefore, as the
straight railway that not only prevents dangerous veers, but also guarantees the path on the way to the holiness.25

In a general audience the Pope indicated that while “some have
mistaken the meaning of the new directions and exhibited a greater
readiness to destroy and to suppress than to preserve and to develop,” in
fact this is not reflective of the Council’s intentions. Quoting an address
from a year earlier to Abbots and Abbesses, he said:
the Council is not to be thought of as a kind of cyclone or revolution
that would overturn ideas and practices and allow for unthinkable and
rash novelties. No! The Council is not a revolution but a renewal. . . .
While elaborating the Constitution on the Liturgy, the intention of the
Council Fathers was clearly shown: not to impoverish the Church’s
treasury of sacred music, but to enrich it; not to dissociate, but to unite
24 This is, perhaps, what Pope Benedict XVI had in mind when he stated: “It is

clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands
new thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also clear
that new words can only develop if they come from an informed understanding
of the truth expressed, and on the other hand, that a reflection on faith also
requires that this faith be lived. In this regard, the program that Pope John XXIII
proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the synthesis of fidelity and
dynamic is demanding” (Address to the Curia of December 22, 2005).
25 General Audience of July 27, 1977.

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fidelity to the tradition and openness to renewal; to bring together, in
summary, the “old” and the “new,” nova et vetera, in a wise equilibrium,
following the example of the scribe of the Gospel (Matt 13:52).26

Along similar lines, in an address to participants in the National
Congress of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Pope Paul asserted that in
missionary work, as in every field of pastoral life, a challenge arises when
traditional understandings are confronted with new conditions that
require a new openness and new methods that appeal to the authority of
the Council. The solution is to strike a balance between a serene openness to what is new “without disavowing the past or destroying acquired
values.” It is the synthesis of nova et vetera that draws on “the contribution
that the Church has given in its teachings in the doctrine of the Council and the experience of its missionaries.”27
Even when he does not make an explicit reference to the text of
Matthew, Pope Paul consistently thinks in terms of the “new” and the
“old” when addressing religious. For example, when speaking to a general
chapter of Discalced Carmelites, several themes associated with nova et
vetera appear. First, he places their deliberations in the context of Vatican II
by referring to them as an aggiornamento encouraged by the Council.Then
he refers to their order as one that is both ancient and modern [vetusto e
moderno], thereby attributing to it this aspect of the mystery of the Church
herself. Next, he briefly describes the process of accommodated renewal
for this Order in terms reminiscent of the theology of ressourcement. This
Order must “think again about its origins” and “look back in order to go
forward in the right direction,” for “the way forward is pointed out by its
point of departure.” Finally, he recalls the metaphor of a tree, stating that
“the tree draws life from its root.”28 Just as the newness of annual leafing
depends upon the health and maturity of the old roots, so the hoped-for
fruits of aggiornamento, the nova, are a function of the life-giving nutrients
provided by the founder’s charism, the vetera.
The Renewal of the Liturgy
The Second Vatican Council had clearly stated that the introduction of
any innovations into the liturgy could be justified only if they were
genuinely and certainly required for the good of the Church. In addition,
they should not have the nature of being an invention of something
brand new and unfamiliar; rather,“care must be taken that any new forms
26 General Audience of April 5, 1967.
27 Address of September 20, 1972.
28 Address of June 22, 1967.

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adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.”29 The use Pope Paul VI made of the nova et vetera theme in conjunction with the liturgical renewal may be considered his reiteration of this
fundamental principle.
When speaking to the Consilium for the Liturgy, the Pope underscored that “the liturgical renewal [renovatio] should not be understood as
rejection of the sacred patrimony of the previous age and a rash acceptance of whatever is new.”What the Council Fathers intended and insisted
on, rather, was that “alterations must be congruent with sound tradition.”
After quoting Sacrosanctum Concilium 23, that “any new forms adopted
should in some way grow organically from forms already existing,” he
concluded: “This is why that reform should be called wise, because by
suitable reason it is able to make the nova et vetera coalesce.”30
With regard to sacred music, “the intention of the conciliar Fathers
was clearly shown: not to impoverish the Church’s treasury of sacred
music, but to enrich it; not to dissociate but to associate fidelity to the
tradition and openness to renewal. It was, in a few words, to unite, in a
wise balance, following the example of the scribe in the Gospel, the ‘old’
and the ‘new,’ nova et vetera (Matt 13:52).”31
In another address to the Consilium for the Liturgy the relation
between the “new” and the “old” was developed by means of a metaphor
to convey the idea of organic growth.
The proper implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy
requires of you that the “new” and the “old” be brought together in a
bond that is both suitable and beautiful. What must be avoided at all
costs in this matter is that eagerness for the “new” not exceed due
measure, resulting in insufficient regard for or entirely disregarding the
patrimony of the liturgy handed on. Such a defective course of action
should not be called renewal of the Sacred Liturgy, but an overturning
of it.The liturgy, in fact, displays a similarity to a hardy tree, the beauty
of which shows a continual renewal of leaves, but whose fruitfulness of
life bears witness to the long existence of the trunk, which acts through
its deep and stable roots. In liturgical matters, therefore, no real opposition should occur between the present age and previous ages; but all
should be done so that, whatever be the innovation, it be made to
cohere and to concord with the sound tradition that precedes it, and so
that from existing forms new forms grow, as though spontaneously
blossoming from it.32
29 Sacrosanctum Concilium, 23.
30 Address of October 14, 1968.
31 General Audience of April 3, 1967.
32 Address of October 29, 1964.

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Renewal, Aggiornamento, and Nova et Vetera in Evangelization
In an address to the College of Cardinals, the text of Matthew 13:52
figures into an extended reflection on the renewal of Vatican II. Reflecting on the upcoming synod of bishops on evangelization, Pope Paul
described the world to which the Church brings the Gospel as secular,
self-sufficient, and closed to God. Then he asked the pointed question
whether the Church’s response has been effective.Are our pastoral methods sufficiently adapted? Have we discovered what might be called an
evangelical rhetoric that can help overcome the indifference to the
proclamation of the Gospel that seems to typify the disposition of
contemporary men? He continued:
The methods of another time, corresponding to the necessities of a different sociological context, are not adequate in a society and for a mentality
that are profoundly changed. Now, the updating [aggiornamento] of pastoral
methods has been one of the purposes of Vatican II, and We have not
failed continually to recall its necessity in Our teaching. But if We want
to make a frank and calm examination of conscience,We cannot say that
the updating [aggiornamento], to which the bishops (Christus Dominus, 17),
the priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 13) and the laity (Apostolicam Actuositatem,
6, 8, 14) have been called, has fully achieved its objective.The conditions
of the society in which we live require us all, therefore, to review the
methods again, to search by every means to study how to bring to modern
man the Christian message, in which alone he can find the answer to his
questions and the strength for the fulfillment of human solidarity. For this
We have asked our brothers in the episcopate to study together, in the
next Synod of Bishops, evangelization in the contemporary world. It is a
way to recall and to respond to the conciliar teaching, that we examine
ourselves regarding our total fidelity to the duty of Christ’s ministers and
dispensers of the mysteries of God (cf. 1 Cor 4:1). In this way,We think,
this effort, which is so close to Our heart, can continue to contribute to
the happy synthesis of nova et vetera, of tradition and of reform, to preserve
and to update [aggiornare] the patrimony of the faith so that its intangible
wealth is introduced in a convincing way to the men of our time.33

In this text “the happy synthesis of nova et vetera” serves to explain the
meaning of the aggiornamento of Vatican II.The updating concerns methods and means of pastoral ministry.Yet, since the means are inseparable
from the essential content of Tradition, Pope Paul can say that the patrimony of faith itself is both preserved and updated by prudent aggiornamento.The pastoral goal is clearly identified as an effective presentation of
the Gospel to the men and women in the world at the time.
33 Address to the College of Cardinals, June 22, 1973.

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Pope Paul did not explain precisely what he meant when he referred
to the “methods of another time,” but one readily surmises that he had in
mind the practices of the Church before the great changes that had
occurred, changes which led to an increasing alienation of men from the
Church as they embraced a secularism of independence from God and the
Church. During the centuries of the age of Christendom the Church
played the major role in shaping society, whereas now she had been
marginalized and deemed irrelevant by a growing number of people. Pope
Benedict XVI incisively described this situation. On their part, modern
men “practically no longer wanted to allow the Church any room” and
this culminated in a widespread stance of “stubbornly proposing to make
the ‘hypothesis of God’ superfluous.” On her part, the Church had become
defensive, responding with “a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit
of the modern age.” By the time of Vatican II both sides had moderated
and a certain openness to one another had developed.34
In a manner consistent with this view, not too long before becoming
Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:“This is precisely what the Second Vatican
Council had intended: to endow Christianity once more with the power to
shape history.”35 In cultures marked by profound political consciousness and
that think in terms of power, this statement could easily be misunderstood
as a desire for domination. In fact, though, the power to shape history is the
power to influence men in the depths of their freedom and consciences,
since it is men who give history its shape.Yet how can the Church reach
men in their freedom and consciences if it cannot communicate effectively
with them, if it cannot express its faith in modes that, while being faithful
to the essential content of that faith, are familiar to those she addresses?
Should learning a new vocabulary be a prerequisite for modern men, or
men of any age, to hear the Gospel? Is such a pre-evangelization necessary?
The Church’s answer to this last question is an emphatic Yes. Only, it is not
the men of the ages who must first learn the Church’s language, but the
Church that must first learn the languages of men.The Church adapts her
message to the language, categories, and mentalities of men in order effectively to bring the Gospel to them.This brings a transformation of the way
they think, and this new way of thinking, based on faith in the Gospel,
becomes the source of their actions that transform history.
What Cardinal Ratzinger was saying is that history should be shaped
by God’s will, and since the Church exists in order to bring God to men,
her mission is to shape history through those who submit their freedom
34 Address to the Curia, December 22, 2005.
35 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity, Yesterday, Today, and

Tomorrow,” in Communio 31 (2004): 482.

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to God as they encounter Him through the Church. It is, then, in fidelity
to her own mission that the Church remains faithful to Tradition and that
this very fidelity becomes an exigency for renewal or aggiornamento.What
is clear about the passages in which Pope Paul turns to the text on nova
et vetera is precisely that this fidelity is twofold, or bipolar. It is fidelity to
God, Who reveals, and fidelity to man, for whom He reveals. “In being
thus faithful to God and to the men to whom He sends us, we shall then
be able, with prudence and tact, but also with clear vision and firmness,
to make a correct assessment of opinions.”36
This is precisely what the Council itself taught when it asserted that
the Church is “driven by the inner necessity of her own catholicity.”37
Renewal, or aggiornamento, is not an unprincipled accommodation to the
spirit of the modern world. It is, rather, the concrete form of being faithful to the Church’s own God-given, inner dynamism to meet the challenges of her mission first by self-examination and conversion: “Every
renewal of the Church is essentially grounded in an increase of fidelity to
her own calling.”38 By recommitting herself to mission and to service of
mankind, the Church draws on her ancient sources of vitality and finds
therein things that were always there, potentially, but are now drawn out
as the “new” that is needed for the fulfillment of her mission.
The contrast of the situation of the Church in the 1960s and 1970s to
its situation in a former age was deeply etched in the consciousness of
Paul VI. How could it be otherwise for the Successor of Peter who
understood Vatican II in terms of aggiornamento and took this as the theme
of his pontificate? In another age “the Church lived in close association
with contemporary society, inspiring its culture and sharing its modes of
expression.” This closeness made the exercise of the apostolic office of
preaching and teaching “relatively easy.”Today, however, “a serious effort
is required of us to insure that the teaching of the faith should keep the
fullness of its meaning and scope, while expressing itself in a form that
allows it to reach the spirit and the heart of all men, to whom it is
addressed.”39 That Pope Paul was thinking here of the well-known
passage of Pope John XXIII in his opening address to the Council is
confirmed by the fact that he goes on to quote it.
In the same apostolic exhortation the Pope was especially concerned
to urge bishops, regarding fidelity to the Tradition, to “be attentive lest
36 Apostolic Exhortation on the Fifth Anniversary of the Close of the Second Vati-

can Council (Quinque Iam Anni ), December 8, 1970.
37 Ad Gentes, 1.
38 Unitatis Redintegratio, 6.
39 Quinque Iam Anni, December 8, 1970.

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this necessary effort should ever betray the truth and continuity of the
teaching of the faith.” He went on to warn against the temptation of “an
arbitrary selection” that would play to “what our ears like to hear” and
avoidance of “what does not please contemporary taste.” Then he
sounded a cautionary note regarding the use of sociology. While it is
“useful for better discovering the thought patterns,” anxieties, and even
modes of opposition to the Gospel of contemporary men, it is not the
criterion of truth.
Man’s Questions and the Church’s Answers:
Dialogue and Signs of the Times
In the same apostolic letter just discussed, Pope Paul followed his exhortation to vigilance in safeguarding the truth of the faith with an important call for balance.The necessary concern for fidelity to the faith should
not deter pastors from listening to the people around them in order to
discern the profound questions they are asking about the meaning and
purpose of life.
All the same, we must not be deaf to the questions which today face a
believer rightly anxious to acquire a more profound understanding of
his faith. We must lend an ear to these questions, not in order to cast
suspicion on what is well-founded, not to deny their postulates, but so
that we may do justice to their legitimate demands within our own
proper field which is that of faith. This holds true for modern man’s
great questions concerning his origins, the meaning of life, the happiness to which he aspires and the destiny of the human family. But it is
no less true of questions posed today by scholars, historians, psychologists and sociologists. These questions are so many invitations to us to proclaim
better, in its incarnate transcendence, the Good News of Christ the Savior.40

These questions, as the Council indicated and as Pope John Paul II
clearly held, arise from the depths of the human spirit as it encounters the
world and seeks ultimate answers.They are, then, the “ever ancient but ever
new questions concerning the mystery of existence that are indelibly
imprinted on the human heart.”41 This is a key to understanding the reading of the “signs of the times” and how this relates to the nova et vetera
theme. Every era in the economy of salvation has its own distinctive signs,
but they can be reduced to man’s search for God as this is expressed in his
40 Quinque Iam Anni. Emphasis added.
41 Pope John Paul II, Special Audience of April 29, 1993, for Presidents of the Epis-

copal Conference Commissions for Catechesis and other participants in a workshop on preparing local catechisms.

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search for fulfillment and the questions about the meaning and purpose of
his existence that preoccupy him.42 This search of man for God is itself a
manifestation of God’s search for man, since He has planted the desire for
Him in our hearts.To read the “signs of the times” is to discern the concrete
indications of man’s search for God and of God’s search for man. This
presupposes a precise understanding of human nature and of the ways of
God. It explains why so many magisterial texts, especially Gaudium et Spes
and the social encyclicals, include a survey of man’s situation.
When the Church reads the “signs of the times” to ascertain man’s
situation and the forms in which the perennial questions about the
meaning of life are posed, she responds by drawing from the treasury of
her Tradition things both “old” and “new.” They are always “old” and
“new” because the questions are “ever ancient and ever new.” This
dynamic of man’s questions and God’s answers through the Church is the
essential conceptual framework for the dialogue of salvation, which is the
mode of the Church’s mission of evangelization.
What Inspired Pope Paul’s Use of Matthew 13:52?
Pope Paul did not indicate what source might have inspired his use of the
Gospel passage on nova et vetera as a hermeneutical principle for the
renewal of Vatican II. Pope John XXIII had referred to the text only
twice, both times prior to the Council. In neither instance was it a question of invoking the nova et vetera theme in relation to the Council. Still,
the points he made and supported by the reference to Matthew 13:52
concern the hermeneutics of continuity in the Church’s life. It should
not be overlooked, in this context, that the spirit of Vatican II is the spirit
of Catholicism.The twenty-first ecumenical council certainly has several
distinguishing characteristics that differentiate it from other councils.43 It
is, nevertheless, an act of the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church,
established by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, and for this reason
it must be understood as having in common with all other councils that
it is an “authoritative rereading of the Gospel”44 in order to respond to
42 The theme of man’s questions and God’s answer to them in Christ is a major

component of the pastoral style of Gaudium et Spes. It became a hallmark of the
pastoral magisterium of Pope John Paul II, reaching a summit in Veritatis Splendor (especially chapter one) and Fides et Ratio.The latter encyclical discerns that
one of the distinctive and most worrisome “signs of the times” at the end of the
second millennium was man’s resistance to asking the fundamental questions
about life and its meaning.
43 See the address of Pope John XXIII, of November 14, 1960, to the Preparatory
Commissions.The text can be found in The Pope Speaks, vol. 6, 376–85.
44 Pope Benedict XVI, address of April 20, 2005.

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the questions of the day. Or, as Pope John broadly described ecumenical
councils,Vatican II was to be an act by which the Church renews herself.
“What, in fact, is an Ecumenical Council if not the Church’s renewal of
itself in the encounter with the presence of the risen Jesus?”45
Such rereading of the Gospel and renewal in the encounter with the
risen Lord must be subject to the principle contained in the nova et vetera
theme, namely, continuity in essentials and adaptation and development as
a result of a deeper understanding of the Gospel and the need to address
new situations, problems, and questions.This is clear in Pope John’s homily
on the occasion of the episcopal consecration of twelve cardinals of the
order of deacons.46 He drew attention to the historical alterations that had
taken place in the institution established to assist the Successor of Peter in
his governance of the universal Church.“It is quite natural,” he said,“that
the college of cardinals should develop and adapt to new exigencies of the
apostolate,” clarifying that this cannot concern anything in the Church
that has been divinely instituted. Concerning matters of ecclesiastical
institution, which are thus subject to adaptation, for reasons of pastoral
expediency “it happens that along the way we need to modify it [the
College of Cardinals], in keeping with the new requirements of pastoral
zeal, or to correct disparities in regimen and procedure, in view of a better
responsiveness and a more perfect ordering of the persons, offices, and
initiatives.” His homily thus identifies a principle of the Church’s life that
has been at work in this history of development and adaptation of the
College of Cardinals, which includes his own recent modifications. All of
this leads him to state: “This consecration is a magnificent fusion of the
‘old’ and the ‘new’. Without doubt the singular character of this event is
realized in these words of the Lord.This is the mystery of paterfamilias qui
profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera (Matt 13:52).”
Pope John’s other use of the nova et vetera text came in an address to
those participating in a general chapter of the Order of Preachers.47 The
chapter, he said, was an event characterized by reception and fidelity to
the founding and history of their Order, while at the same time asking
how to respond to new times and situations.This will require that “new
duties and considerations will interact with the old,” and “this faithfully
corresponds to the words of the Divine Redeemer, who said:‘omnis scriba
doctus . . . similis est homini patri familias, amilias, qui profert de thesauro suo
nova et vetera’ (Matt 13:52).”The Pope continued, connecting this with a
passage of St. Paul: “You as yet are connecting the new, brought out of
45 Radio Message of September 11, 1962.
46 April 19, 1962.
47 September 25, 1959.

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your treasure, with the old; and in this way you comply with the perennial precept, which St. Paul set forth in these words: ‘but be reformed in
the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the
acceptable, and the perfect will of God’ (Rom 12:2).”
These two references to Matthew 13:52 by Pope John XXIII are
chronologically closest to Paul VI as papal utilizations of the nova et vetera
theme as a biblical foundation for the changes, development, and adaptation of ecclesiastical institutions in response to diverse circumstances,
events, and challenges confronted throughout history. There are others
that can be noted. Nearly a century before Vatican II, Pope Pius IX took
up the nova et vetera theme in an allocution occasioned by a religious art
exposition in Rome.48 He first asserted that religious truths remain
“essentially immutable” and that “all the truths divinely revealed have
always been believed” and “have always been a part of the deposit
confided to the Church.”Then he stated that “some of them must from
time to time, according to circumstances and necessity, be placed in a
stronger light and more firmly established” and said that this is the meaning of the passage on nova et vetera in Matthew 13:52. He identified the
“old” with the continuous teaching of “the doctrines which are now
beyond all controversy” and the “new” with “new declarations giving a
firm and incontestable basis to those doctrines which, although they have
always been professed by her, have nonetheless been the object of recent
attacks.” In this text, the nova et vetera theme is invoked as a biblical foundation for the development of the Church’s teaching rather than the
modification of ecclesiastical institutions. Pius XII had also alluded to our
text in his exhortation on the development of holiness in the life of
priests.49 “Whoever sets before himself his own sanctification and that of
other people must be equipped with solid learning that comprises not
only theology but also the results of modern science and discovery so
that, like a good father, he may draw ‘from his storeroom things new and
old’ (Matt 13:52) and make his ministry always more appreciated and
fruitful.” Presumably, theology correlates to the “old”—divine revelation
and the entire Catholic Tradition—and modern science to the “new.”50
48 May 16, 1870.Text in The Church, trans. Mother E. O’Gorman (Boston: St. Paul

Editions, 1980), 208–9.
49 Apostolic Exhortation, Menti Nostrae, of September 23, 1950.
50 This might be seen in connection with the encouragement in texts of Vatican II that

use be made of the human sciences as helps in discerning the signs of the times, that
is, the concrete situations in which those the Church is called to serve find themselves, so that she can adapt her pastoral actions. On the encouragement of the
Council to make use of these sciences, in Fides et Ratio 61, John Paul II referred to

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Prior to Paul VI, then, there was precedent in the use of Matthew
13:52 to address the two fundamental dimensions of the renewal of Vatican II, pastoral adaptation (aggiornamento) of ecclesiastical institutions and
the development of doctrine.51 This is far from establishing a direct causal
influence of these precedents on Pope Paul VI.
There is another papal precedent to Pope Paul’s use of nova et vetera,
though in this case it does not come with an explicit reference to
Matthew 13:52. Pope Leo XIII referred to “certain Catholic philosophers who, throwing aside the patrimony of ancient wisdom, chose
rather to build up a new edifice than to strengthen and complete the old
by aid of the new” [veteris nova augere et perficere].52 New discoveries and
understandings do not dismantle the previously acquired wisdom but
build upon it, augment it, and complete it.53 This dynamic understanding of growth in collective wisdom over the centuries in terms of the
“new” and the “old” was part of the theological culture at the time of
Vatican II. Some theologians invoked the Latin phrase veteris nova augere
et perficere as an axiom of theological procedure when commenting on
Vatican II and as a guiding principle for their theology.54

Gaudium et Spes 57 and 62. In addition, see: Optatam Totius 2 and 20; Apostolicam
Actuositatem 32; Christus Dominus 17.
51 Examples of adaptation of ecclesiastical institutions include the restoration of the
permanent diaconate, the catechumenate for adults, revision of the lectionary
and of the Liturgy of the Hours, and pastoral councils. Another institutional
adaptation, the synod of bishops, corresponds to one of the most significant
doctrinal developments that took place at Vatican II, namely, the teaching on the
collegiality of the episcopate.
52 Aeterni Patris, 24.
53 As Pope Benedict XVI pointed out, they can also bring about corrections.“The
Second Vatican Council, with its new definition of the relationship between the
faith of the Church and certain essential elements of modern thought, has
reviewed or even corrected certain historical decisions, but in this apparent
discontinuity it has actually preserved and deepened her inmost nature and true
identity” (Benedict XVI, Address to the Curia of December 22, 2005).
54 For example, John Courtney Murray, S.J., referred to vetera novis augere et perficere
on several occasions in connection with the pontificate of John XXIII and Vatican
II. See his articles:“Things Old and New in ‘Pacem in Terris,’ ” in America 107 (April
27, 1963): 612–14;“La liberta religiosa e l’ateo,” in L’ateismo contemporaneo 4 (1970):
109–117; “The Issue of Church and State at Vatican II,” in Theological Studies 27
(December 1966): 580–606. These articles are conveniently available online at:
woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/Murray/0_murraybib.html. Another example is Bernard Lonergan, S.J. See the article on Lonergan in The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Modern Western Theology, at: people.bu.edu/wwildman/
WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_840_lonergan.htm.

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The relatively infrequent use of the passage on nova et vetera prior to
Paul VI suggests that it is perhaps more likely that one of several references in the documents of Vatican II had influenced his use of the theme.
The teaching of Dei Verbum 16, that “God, the inspirer and author of both
Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the
Old and the Old be made manifest in the New,” could easily be adapted
in conjunction with the text of Matthew’s Gospel on nova et vetera. It
appears in Lumen Gentium 25, on the teaching office of bishops,55 and
there is also a vague allusion to it in Gaudium et Spes 91.56 Though there
is no explicit reference to Matthew 13:52 in Dignitatis Humanae 1, it
clearly underlies the passage:
This Vatican Council takes careful note of these desires in the minds of
men. It proposes to declare them to be greatly in accord with truth and
justice.To this end, it searches into the sacred tradition and doctrine of
the Church—the treasury out of which the Church continually brings
forth new things that are in harmony with the things that are old.57
55 Regarding Matthew 13:52 in Lumen Gentium 25, Gerard Philips simply commented

that “the bishop contributes to the development of the knowledge of what is
revealed, as the father of a family concerned to bring the new and the old from his
treasure. In the understanding of those who hear him, he assures a life rejuvenated
by very old truths, and in this way the fertile field of revelation produces fruits that
are increasingly rich” (L’Église et son mystère au deuxième Concile du Vatican. Histoire,
texte et commentaire de la Constitution Lumen Gentium [Paris: Desclée, 1967],Vol. I,
322). This appears to refer to what Dei Verbum teaches about the development of
sacred Tradition, though Dei Verbum was promulgated after Lumen Gentium. Interestingly, the reference to Matthew 13:52 in the context of the episcopal teaching
office was present in the original schema De Ecclesia prepared for the Council, and
remained present in every subsequent draft of Lumen gentium, apparently without
any discussion or comment. This can be concluded from consulting the biblical
index of the very useful synopsis of all the material in the Acta Synodalia on Lumen
Gentium, ed. Francisco Gil Hellín (Libreria editrice Vaticana, 1995). Each of the
seven entries for Matthew 13:52 is found in one of the drafts of Lumen Gentium.
Note that the index is inaccurate on two counts: the references indicated as appearing on pages 627 and 689 are actually on pages 629 and 690, respectively.
56 “Drawn from the treasures of Church teaching, the proposals of this sacred synod
look to the assistance of every man of our time, whether he believes in God, or
does not explicitly recognize Him” (Gaudium et Spes, 91).
57 It is clear from the recommendations for changes to the text that the bishops
were aware that Matt 13:52 was the underlying base for this sentence (see Acta
Synodalia IV/V, 113).The reference to nova et vetera appears for the first time in
the textus reemandatus, approved by the Coordinating Commission on May 11,
1964. There does not appear to be any explanation for its introduction in the
official reports or (relationes ) accompanying the presentation of the text for
discussion by the Council Fathers.

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It may be presumed that this was intended to express the Council’s
consciousness of engaging in doctrinal development or aggiornamento,
with particular emphasis on the harmony or constant accord of the new
with the old.58 Given the well-known contentions that accompanied the
drafting of this document, it is not surprising that such a statement should
be found here. At the same time, it may be taken more generally as an
expression of the spirit of the entire Council.59
Besides the use of Matthew 13:52 in papal teaching and Vatican II, the
nova et vetera theme was well established in the theological culture of the
time. Others also saw the passage on nova et vetera as an apt scriptural text
for understanding the work of Vatican II, or at least as a point of reference to indicate a certain continuity or comparison between Jesus’ relation to the Old Testament and the relation of the Church and Tradition
to the fullness of revelation in Christ. Louis Bouyer, for example, linked
it to the Council’s aggiornamento.60 Without referring to Vatican II,Yves
58 The Latin has: “ . . . haec Vaticana synodus sacram ecclesiae traditionem docti-

namque scrutatur, ex quibus nova semper cum veteribus congruentia profert.”
59 The comment of John Courtney Murray in this regard is relevant: “. . . religious

freedom is not the most important issue before the Council, nor the most difficult,
except insofar as it raises the issue of development of doctrine, which is the issue
underlying all issues at the Council” (“This Matter of Religious Freedom,” America [ Jan 9, 1965]: 43; conveniently available at: woodstock.georgetown.edu/
library/murray/1965k.htm). More amply: “The problem of the development of
doctrine was in reality the fundamental problem underlying all the other problems
treated by the Council. The Council itself showed, perhaps as never before in
history, that the Church itself does not accept the error of archaism, which consists
in the desire to halt the Church’s growth in her understanding at any level of
evolution—scriptural, patristic, medieval, modern, contemporary—and to refuse
the possibility of new growth. No other conciliar text challenges this error as
directly as Dignitatis humanae. No doubt this is the reason why it encountered so
much opposition. This is certainly also its ultimate theological significance. And
perhaps in this significance one finds implicitly contained the significance of the
entire Council, which bears witness in multiple ways to the growth of the Church:
growth in its historical consciousness, in its human consciousness of human
dignity, in its ecumenical consciousness of its ministry of reconciliation, and above
all in its evangelical consciousness that the Church has of herself and of the word
that was entrusted to her by God—a word that is not only the ‘word of truth’
( James 1:18), but also and identically the word of freedom” (“Vers une intelligence
du développement de la doctrine de l’Église sur la liberté religieuse,” in Vatican II:
La Liberté Religieuse, ed. J. Hamer and Y. Congar [Paris: Cerf, 1967], 147).
60 “Aggiornamento goes hand in hand with the opening out to the world, and surpasses
it.What John XXIII wanted, what the Council had tried to begin . . . was the aggiornamento of the judicious scribe who searches for the nova et vetera in a treasure with
which he had become unfamiliar” (Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism
[Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1969], 44).

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Congar made a passing allusion to it in his theology of Tradition.61 Not
quite forty years before the Council, Cardinal Journet launched the journal Nova et Vetera, which was intended to serve the purpose of what
amounts to a new evangelization (though it would be more than fifty
years later that Pope John Paul II popularized the phrase). Journet said
that the Church needed a deepened understanding of her own Tradition
in order to respond to the new developments and situations of the historical period in which she lives. In his inaugural article, which includes a
reference to Matthew 13:52, he set forth a theology of ressourcement and
aggiornamento a generation before Pope John XXIII employed the latter
term to signify the spirit of Vatican II.62
Conclusion
Pope Paul VI frequently turned to the nova et vetera theme of Matthew
13:52 to convey that the Second Vatican Council was faithful to the
essentials of Catholic Tradition while introducing certain new modes of
expression and steps forward in the Church’s understanding of that Tradition. It was also faithful to the Tradition as it adapted various elements of
ecclesiastical institution and structure in order to respond more effectively to the pastoral challenges of the Church of the time. The selfconscious way in which Vatican II set out to initiate an ecclesial renewal
explains that, while nova et vetera and Matthew 13:52 are evoked here and
there by his predecessors, reference to it became frequent for Paul VI.
Earlier popes were certainly aware that the Catholic Tradition does not
stand still, that there is need for continual contact with developments in
philosophy and the sciences, and that the Church needs to attend to the
circumstances and situations in which she exercises her mission. Still, the
deliberate and systematic way in which Vatican II set out to renew the
Church called for a justification for this renewal. It especially called for a
demonstration of the continuity in the Catholic Tradition. For Pope Paul
VI, and even for the Council itself, the letter and the spirit of Matthew
13:52 served to convey precisely that the Church was being faithful to
her own God-given dynamism by engaging in the renewal of Vatican II.
This note of fidelity to what is “old” must be understood precisely. It
is not a question of making changes, as if these were somehow desirable
61 The Meaning of Tradition (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1964), 109.
62 See the article,“Introducing the English Edition of Nova et Vetera :The Influence

of Charles Cardinal Journet,” by the Editors of Nova et Vetera (2003): 1–9. The
attention Paul VI paid to the theology of Journet has been researched by JeanPierre Torrell, O.P, “Paul VI et le cardinal Journet. Aux sources d’une ecclésiologie,” Nova et Vetera (1986): 161–74.

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in themselves, and then turning to the Tradition as a kind of governor
that would play the role of keeping exuberance in check. If that were the
case, then the Tradition would become merely a factor of limitation,
when in fact it is itself the living source of what grows out of it in an
organic fashion. Fidelity to the Tradition requires aggiornamento. Pope
John XXIII seems to have restricted his understanding of aggiornamento
to the updating of ecclesiastical institutions, in order to make them more
effective instruments of the Church’s pastoral solicitude.At the same time
he clearly saw that the success of the Council depended upon a thoroughgoing spiritual renewal on the part of the Church’s members.63 Paul
VI made this updating of the life of Christ in the members of the Church
the central element of his understanding of conciliar renewal. “This
strong invitation to holiness could be regarded as the most characteristic
element in the whole Magisterium of the Council, and so to say, its ultimate purpose.”64 For him, the renewal of Vatican II was a call to conversion. Corresponding to ongoing conversion on the part of the Church’s
members is a constant need to adapt the Church’s human structures to
bring them more in line with the demands of the Church’s mission. In
addition, the Church’s Tradition must be reflected upon anew in every
age and, at times, in the deliberate and formal way that took place at Vatican II.To place that Tradition in a museum in order to preserve it would
be a fundamental form of betrayal of that Tradition.
Naiveté was not a fault of Paul VI. He recognized that “the apostle’s art
is a risky one.”65 This acknowledgment came in the context of asking:
“To what extent should the Church adapt itself to the historic and local
circumstances in which its mission is exercised? How should it guard
63 Especially relevant are passages in his encyclical Paenitentiam Agere ( July 1, 1962).

For example, Pope John envisioned spiritual renewal in relation to ecumenism:
“The salutary results we pray for are these: that the faith, the love, the moral lives
of Catholics may be so re-invigorated, so intensified, that all who are at present
separated from this Apostolic See may be impelled to strive actively and sincerely
for union, and enter the one fold under the one Shepherd” (Paenitentiam Agere,
25). He asserted that “renewal of Christian life . . . is one of the principal aims of
the coming Council” (Paenitentiam Agere, 27).This would be echoed in the first
sentence of the first conciliar text promulgated at Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The Council’s aim, he wrote “will be to render more effective that divine
work which our Redeemer accomplished.” If everyone engages in conversion to
repudiate living according to principles that are not worthy of “each in his own
station in life, he will be enabled to play his individual part in making this Second
Ecumenical Vatican Council, which is especially concerned with the refurbishing of Christian morality, an outstanding success” (Paenitentiam agere, 34, 36).
64 Sanctitatis Clarior, Motu proprio of March 19, 1969.
65 Ecclesiam Suam, 88.

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against the danger of a relativism which would falsify its moral and
dogmatic truth? And yet, at the same time, how can it fit itself to
approach all men so as to save all, according to the example of the Apostle:‘I became all things to all men that I might save all?’ ”66 The question
is not whether the Church should adapt in order to approach all men. It
is only a question of how this is to be done. For Pope Paul the Church
is, like Christ Himself, a physician whose mission is to heal those who are
sick.67 There is a risk that in the process of healing others the physician
might contract the very diseases he is fighting, but this risk should only
be a motive to take cautionary measures. It should not result in a fear that
prevents the physician from seeking out those who are sick.As Pope John
Paul II put it:
In continuing the great task of implementing the Second Vatican
Council, in which we can rightly see a new phase of the self-realization of the Church—in keeping with the epoch in which it has been
our destiny to live—the Church herself must be constantly guided by
the full consciousness that in this work it is not permissible for her, for
any reason, to withdraw into herself.68

The solicitude of Paul VI to implement Vatican II resulted in the nova
et vetera theme being linked with a number of key concepts: sacred Tradition, fidelity to God and to man, aggiornamento, balance, reading the signs
of the times, evangelization, dialogue.An exhaustive treatment of the nova
et vetera theme would entail developing in depth his thought on these
subjects. This study must be content to have established that the nova et
vetera theme finds its home in this family of concepts and to have indicated in a general way some of their relationships.
The treasure from which the Church draws things both “old” and
“new” is sacred Tradition. The Church’s essential disposition toward this
Tradition is fidelity, yet, since this Tradition is ultimately God’s answers in
Christ to the ever ancient and ever new questions of man, fidelity to Tradition is also fidelity to man. Fidelity to man requires a pastoral reading of
the signs of the times in order to guide the prudential judgment about how
to configure a meaningful response to man’s questions.When man’s situation is new and the expressions of his questions are correspondingly new,
the Church’s response will draw from the living Tradition of past responses,
66 Ecclesiam Suam, 87.
67 Yves Congar noted that Paul VI often employed the image of the doctor turning

with love toward a sick person, and the Good Samaritan. See Le Concile de Vatican
II. Son Eglise, Peuple de Dieu et Corps du Christ (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 22.
68 Dives in Misericordia, 15.

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the vetera, which take the form of new expressions, the nova. At the same
time, the Church understands these new questions in terms of her patrimony of faith, the vetera from which she draws.This is the aggiornamento of
Vatican II, which engages in ressourcement with the conviction of faith that
the answers to today’s questions and pastoral challenges have already been
given in divine revelation as it has been lived and reflected upon by the
Church. Aggiornamento, then, is a balance of fidelity and pastoral boldness as
the Church fulfills her mission of redemption through a dialogue of salvation, the essential terms of which are man’s basic questions about life’s
meaning and the answer God has provided in Christ.
This is especially clear in an address of Paul VI to the Commission to
Study Problems of Population, Family, and Birth. Though the nova et
vetera theme is not invoked to make a point about Vatican II, the principle it is called upon to make accurately conveys the pastoral purpose of
the Council:
Your research covers many spheres. On the one hand, it requires a better
knowledge of the laws of physiology, of psychological and medical realities, of demographic movements, and of great social changes. On the other
hand, and above all, it requires knowledge of the sphere of the superior
light that content of faith and the traditional teaching of the Church project on these facts. Like an attentive mother, in every age the Church is
solicitous to give a response adapted to the great problems that men face.
To this end, she welcomes, according to the counsel of the Lord, the nova
et vetera, in order to give to the divine leaven of the Gospel all of its richness and to obtain for men the abundance of supernatural life.69

There are, then, two distinct but related significations of the word nova
in the texts of Pope Paul VI. It can refer to the new things, the rerum
novarum, which are the new situations in which men live and the corresponding questions that arise and which the Church must address. It can
also signify the Tradition as newly understood and newly expressed, and
the adaptations of ecclesiastical structures, institutions, and traditions. By
themselves the new situations are not the nova that is derived from the
vetera of the Church’s Tradition. Rather, they are the occasion, the catalyst
as it were, for a fresh reflection on the treasury of the Church’s faith.The
resulting insights are the nova that are the Tradition as it has come to be
more deeply understood, and the new traditions or institutions are historical carriers of the Tradition, though they are not to be identified with it.
Pope Paul identified two positions that effectively dismantle the
complementarity, synthesis, and balance of nova et vetera. He saw that there
69 March 27, 1965.

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are two ways to upset the proper balance: either to side with the nova in
a way that neglects or rejects the vetera, or to side with the vetera in a way
that excludes the nova.What should be a duality of complementarity can
end up being a dualism of fundamental opposition on the level of
concepts. And conceptual opposition does not remain confined to that
order. It leads to division among Catholics on the level of ecclesial allegiance, as though one had to choose between a Church of the vetera and
a Church of the nova. For the Church to maintain her genuine catholic
unity, that is, her dynamic and missionary unity, a unity that goes out to
all people, inviting and embracing all that is true, good, and beautiful, and
purifying all that is not, Pope Paul VI stressed that the principle of nova et
vetera is a responsibility for the Church. If it is chiefly the responsibility
of bishops to discern the signs of the times and to adapt the pastoral apparatus of the Church to the needs of contemporary men, religious are no
less called to engage in an accommodated renewal, as are the laity, since
by Baptism they become participants in the saving mission of Christ as it
is continued through the Church.70 If nova et vetera is essential to the
mystery of the Church, then by the sensus fidei all who participate in that
mystery also participate in and contribute to the dynamic process of the
nova constantly emerging out of the vetera.The persistent concern of Paul
VI was to exhort the members of the Church to carry forward the
renewal or aggiornamento called for by the Council by maintaining the
necessary balance of nova et vetera in order to be faithful to the normative
synthesis of “new” and “old” in Jesus Christ.
As the history of the Council and the post-conciliar period demonstrates, this was no merely theoretical concern. The tendency to oppose
nova and vetera was, and remains, a serious challenge to the interpretation
and implementation of Vatican II. Pope Paul realized that the two deviations from the correct synthesis of nova and vetera are rooted in personal
dispositions. He experienced them firsthand in the course of the Council and afterward, and the responsibility of his office as “the visible principle and foundation of the unity of the bishops and of the faithful”71
required that he address the issue. The nova et vetera principle serves to
assure both the unity of the universal Church and the Church’s
diachronic unity, so that the Church of today retains the essential identity of the Church throughout the ages.
It is significant that in the texts examined in this article Pope Paul did
not invoke Matthew 13:52 to establish a general principle that could be
applied to particular cases, questions, or subjects related to one or another
70 See Lumen Gentium, 33.
71 Lumen Gentium, 23.

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teaching or adaptation of Vatican II. His purpose was to recall this general
principle as a guiding standard for the interpretation and implementation
of the Council. He may have judged that the Council’s balance of nova
and vetera was sufficiently clear and that on the level of specific content
he could only repeat what it taught and enacted. His frequent references
to the nova et vetera theme, then, would be intended to provoke a selfexamination on the part of his addressees. If the nova et vetera principle
was operative at Vatican II and explains its dynamic and missionary
fidelity to Sacred Tradition, then this principle is an essential condition
for the faithful and accurate interpretation of the Council. The fundamental conviction of Paul VI was that the key to the faithful interpretation and implementation of the Council is to read its documents in the
same spirit in which it was convoked, conducted, and concluded. His
numerous evocations of the nova et vetera principle provide the evidence
to conclude that the spirit of Vatican II is nothing other than the spirit of
the Catholic Tradition itself, a spirit that adheres faithfully to the “old”
and, precisely in the name of that fidelity, brings forth what is “new.”
Taking the Lord’s words on nova et vetera to describe the spirit of Vatican
II indicates that for Pope Paul the conciliar spirit is in fact the spirit of
Christianity itself, the spirit of Catholicism.
Pope Paul’s use of Matthew 13:52, then, reveals the heart of his understanding of Vatican II. At the Council, the Church rediscovered the
dynamism of her own catholic unity. She experienced in a “new” way the
“old” truth about her own mystery, rooted in the mystery of Christ. It is
a mystery of continuity and fulfillment, of permanence and development.
The text of Matthew’s Gospel on the scribe who, like a head of household, knows how to draw from his storehouse both nova and vetera, serves
to make a direct link between the Council and the mission of Jesus, who
fulfilled the promises of the Old Covenant by establishing the New
Covenant. The realization of the Church’s mystery is at the same time
definitively accomplished and continually developing. Her universality
and unity are both indefectibly established and ever increasing in extension and perfection.Vatican II, then, is both an end and a beginning. It is
an end to things judged by the Council Fathers to have accompanied the
Church for a period of her pilgrimage of faith for a time as historically,
culturally, pastorally, and theologically contingent in nature and no longer
adequate as expressions of her mystery and as conducive to her mission
in the current historical epoch. It is a beginning to things judged as more
in keeping with her mystery and mission in this same historical epoch.
For Pope Paul VI, all of this is contained in the nova et vetera theme, in
which the Church finds an adequate way to express her consciousness of

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this dimension of her own mystery. Perhaps more deliberately and
consciously than ever before, at Vatican II the Church did what she always
does in order to be faithful to her mystery and mission. She entered more
deeply into her own mystery in order to be faithful to all that is essential
to that mystery while adapting herself to the exigencies of her catholic
unity at this point in her history. The renewal of Vatican II should be
understood as having been, for Pope Paul VI, an act of the Church drawing from the treasure of her own mystery and the deposit of faith things
N&V
both old and new.

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395

Christ’s Priesthood and Christian Priesthood
in the Letter to the Hebrews
M ARY H EALY
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, MI

P RIOR TO Vatican Council II, there was little emphasis in Catholic
theology on the common priesthood of all the faithful.Among the many
aspects of the Council’s return ad fontes, to the Church’s sources in Scripture and Tradition, was a recovery of the biblical doctrine of the priestly
identity of the whole people of God (cf. 1 Pt 2:5, 9; Rv 1:6; 5:10; 20:6).1
Lumen Gentium emphasizes that, although the common priesthood and
the ministerial priesthood “differ from one another in essence and not
only in degree,” they “are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its
own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.”The
decades since Vatican II have witnessed an attempt to gradually assimilate
this new emphasis on the common priesthood in all its implications,
while balancing it with the uniqueness of the ministerial priesthood—
not always with complete success. One of the distortions that has
attended this effort is what has been called the “clericalization of the laity
and laicization of the clergy.”2 There is an evident lack of clarity concerning what exactly the priesthood is, in what sense it is uniquely exercised
by those ordained to priestly ministry, and in what sense it is shared by
all the faithful.
Among the factors that make this assimilation a challenging task, not
least is the fact that the New Testament nowhere uses the term “priests”
or “high priests” for those whom Christ appointed as ministers of the new
1 This retrieval had, however, already begun in Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical Mediator

Dei, 83–104.
2 Cf. Pope John Paul II, address to Antilles bishops, May 9, 2002; and Christifideles

Laici, 23.

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covenant. It is not difficult to see why this is the case. In the period prior
to 70 A.D., when much or most of the New Testament was written,
“priest” denoted something very specific in a Jewish context: it denoted a
descendant of Aaron who offered animal sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple
according to the prescriptions of the Mosaic law. Obviously Christ and his
apostles fit none of these characteristics. “Priest” also denoted something
very specific in a gentile context: idolatrous pagan priests, who were of
course even further removed from the identity and role of Christ.
Although there are significant indications in the Gospels that Christ
intended the Twelve to serve as a new priestly leadership for a new Israel,
these are allusive and indirect.3 Paul too uses priestly terminology in a way
that suggests his awareness of his apostleship as a priestly ministry,4 but
again this is indirect; Paul does not refer to himself as a priest.
Moreover, only one book of the New Testament, the letter to the
Hebrews, refers to Christ using the biblical term for a priest (Greek
hiereus, which translates the Hebrew kohen). Yet for Hebrews, Christ’s
priesthood is not a peripheral matter but is the heart of its christology as
well as the interpretive key to its soteriology, that is, its explanation of
how we are saved.With the hindsight of two thousand years of Christian
history, it is difficult for us to appreciate the groundbreaking originality
of the letter to the Hebrews. Perhaps Jesus might say to this author, as to
Peter (Mt 16:17), “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my
Father who is in heaven.” Not surprisingly, this mysterious letter—or
rather, homily within a letter, written by an anonymous author to
unknown addressees in an unidentified setting—was one of the last
books to be universally accepted among the early churches as part of the
New Testament canon. Like the rest of the New Testament, Hebrews
interprets the mystery of Christ against the background of the prophecies and figures of the Old Testament. But whereas for the rest of the
New Testament the primary biblical prototype for our salvation is the
Exodus event (the source of key soteriological notions like redemption,
3 For a brief analysis of these allusions and their significance, see Brant Pitre,“Jesus,

the New Temple, and the New Priesthood,” Letter & Spirit 4 (2008): 47–83. See
also Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis, “Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah” (Parts 1
and 2), Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 4 (2006): 155–75 and 5 (2007):
57–79;André Feuillet, The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers, trans. Matthew J.
O’Connell (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975).
4 Rom 15:16; 1 Cor 4:1; 9:13–14; 2 Cor 5:20; 1 Tim 4:14. See Thomas Lane,“The
Ministerial Priesthood in the New Testament,” Incarnate Word 2 (2009): 723–40;
Albert Vanhoye, Old Testament Priests and the New Priest, trans. J. Bernard Orchard
(Petersham, MA: St Bede’s, 1986), 267–69.

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ransom, deliverance from slavery), Hebrews views salvation from the
perspective of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur —the day each year
when the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies, making atonement
by sprinkling the blood of a sacrificed bull and goat.Whereas other New
Testament writings speak of Jesus as Messiah-King (like David and
Solomon of old), a redeemer and lawgiver (like Moses), and the founder
of a new humanity (like Adam), Hebrews speaks of Jesus as a priest, a new
Aaron who offers sacrifice to God to expiate the sins of the people.The
ideas of priesthood and sacrifice were germinating in the New Testament
period as the early Christians reflected on the meaning of Christ’s death
and resurrection. But it is the letter to the Hebrews that weaves these
ideas into a coherent and powerful vision of Christ, the true high priest
whose sacrifice fulfills and infinitely surpasses the old.
Hebrews is thus the primary biblical source for the Catholic doctrine
of the priesthood.The continuing effort at the development of an authentically biblical theology of the new covenant priesthood must involve a
careful study of this letter. Although the letter does not speak directly of
Christ’s apostles or Christians in general as priests, a deeper understanding
of its teaching on Christ’s priesthood will shed new light on both the
ministerial priesthood and the common priesthood as distinct ways in
which Christ’s priesthood is realized in his body the Church.
Hebrews opens its argument regarding Christ’s priesthood with an
elegantly succinct definition of the priesthood as understood in the Old
Testament: “Every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to
act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for
sins” (Heb 5:1). In the central section of the letter (5:11–10:39),
Hebrews shows how this definition applies preeminently to Christ. As
with every aspect of the mystery of Christ, the relation between the old
and the new involves both continuity and discontinuity. On the one
hand, Christ is the perfect realization of all that the Old Testament priesthood stood for. On the other hand, he realizes it in an unexpected way,
not fully conforming to the old pattern but transforming and elevating it
to a whole new level.
In this article I propose to describe four essential aspects of priesthood
expressed in Hebrews 5:1 and to show how, for each, Hebrews presents
Christ as both fulfilling and radically transforming the Old Testament
notion. At the end, I will offer some brief reflections on how the vision
of Christ’s priesthood found in Hebrews can deepen our understanding
of the priesthood of the new covenant in both its forms.

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Chosen from among Men
First, a priest is “chosen from among men” (ex anthrop̃roñ).5 In order to
act on behalf of human beings, a priest must be one of them; he must be
a genuine representative. An angel, for example, cannot serve as a priest
for human beings. In the Old Testament this characteristic is evident in
that the Israelites’ priests are chosen from among their brethren, the tribe
of Levi. However, the accent in the Old Testament is not on the
commonality between priest and people, but on how the priest has to be
separated from the rest of the people.6 The root meaning of the word
“holy” (Hebrew qadosh ) is “separate” or “set apart.” Since a priest is one
who draws near to God, the Holy One, he must be set apart from all that
is profane. The elaborate description of the ordination of Aaron and his
sons is all geared toward expressing the absolute necessity of separation.
They are distinguished from others by their sacred vestments, by their
ceremonial bath which washes away the residue of any contact with the
profane, by their anointing with oil, and by their sprinkling with sacrificial blood (Ex 29; Lv 8–10).The Aaronic priests are also subject to strict
regulations to maintain ritual purity. They must be free of all blemishes
and physical defects (Lv 21:17–23). They must never approach a corpse
or mourn for the dead except for their nearest kin (Lv 21:1–4). In the
case of the high priest, the rules are stricter still: he can never leave the
sanctuary, and he may not even mourn for his parents (Lv 21:11). Only
the priests may enter the sanctuary, and only the high priest may enter
the inmost chamber, the Holy of Holies—and only once a year, on the
Day of Atonement (Lv 16). Outside, the sanctuary is surrounded by a
sacred zone in which the Levites stand guard to ensure that no lay person
even inadvertently stray too near the sanctuary and bring down the wrath
of God (Nm 1:51–53). All this is to instill in the people an awareness of
the infinite distance between the holy God and sinful, unholy humanity.
Once this emphasis is recognized, it is striking to compare the way
Hebrews describes how Christ is chosen from among men. In order for
Christ to become high priest, Hebrews does not say he had to be separated from others. Rather, “he had to be made like his brethren in every
respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest”
(Heb 2:17)—that is, the Son of God had to become incarnate. The
emphasis is not on separation but on solidarity.To become like us, he had
to experience temptation (2:18; 4:15), suffering (5:8), insult (13:13), and
5 The Greek term used here (appearing twice in Heb 5:1) is anthro p̃os, “human

being,” rather than the gender-specific aner,˜ “male.”
6 See Albert Vanhoye, Our Priest Is Christ:The Doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews,

trans. M. I. Richards (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1977), 28.

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death (2:9). Not only are his physical wounds not an obstacle to his
priesthood, as they would be in the old covenant, they are its very condition! Jesus is able to be a com-passionate high priest because he has literally suffered-with us. He comes to our side in times of trial as one who
knows our human experience from within (cf. Jn 2:25). It is hard to
imagine a more radical transformation of the concept of priesthood.
This transformation is even more evident if we consider the specific
circumstances that led to God’s choice of the Levites. After the disastrous
golden calf idolatry in Exodus 32, Moses demands that the Levites who
rallied to his side go through the camp “and slay every man his brother,
and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor” (Ex 32:27)
in order to atone for the sin and turn away God’s wrath.After they do so,
Moses declares, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of
the LORD, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother” (Ex 32:29).
It is precisely their willingness to ignore the bonds of human solidarity
that qualifies the Levites to serve in the sanctuary.7 A similar incident
occurs in Numbers 25:1–13, where Phinehas slays a fellow Israelite in the
act of idolatrous intermarriage and thereby earns himself a perpetual
priesthood. Thus if any quality typifies a priest of the Pentateuch, it is
severity. A priest must have such zeal for the holiness of God that he is
ready to kill without mercy, even his closest family members.
How does this compare to Christ’s priesthood as portrayed in Hebrews?
The primary attribute used to describe his priesthood is mercy. His priestly
office, rather than distancing him from us, draws him into the most
profound identification with us.“For he who sanctifies and those who are
sanctified have all one origin.That is why he is not ashamed to call them
brethren” (Heb 2:11).The Gospels depict this solidarity with sinners at the
beginning of Jesus’ ministry in his submission to John’s “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4) and at the end of his ministry in
his crucifixion as a common criminal, between two other criminals (Mk
15:27; cf. Is 53:9). Obviously Christ has no less zeal for the holiness of God
than the ancient Levites (cf. Mk 11:15–17; Jn 2:17).Yet he exercises this
zeal not by slaying his people in retribution for our sins, but by submitting
himself to the death that we deserve. In Christ, faithfulness to God and solidarity with sinners are perfectly united, revealing the infinite mercy of the
Father.8 He has effected his priestly consecration—his “setting apart”—not
by separating himself by sinners, but by separating sinners from sin!
The irony of the Old Testament priesthood, as Hebrews points out, is
that although priests are segregated from the people by so many rituals,
7 Ibid., 29.
8 Ibid., 30.

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they cannot escape the fact that they themselves are sinners (5:3; 7:27)—
witness the lead role played by Aaron in the golden calf debacle.Though
they may not touch corpses, they themselves will eventually become
corpses through physical death (7:23). Their fallen human condition is
not fundamentally changed by their priestly consecration. Christ, on the
other hand, is “holy, blameless, unstained” (7:26)—possessing the absolute
holiness that belongs to God alone. Hebrews adds that Christ is “separated from sinners” (7:26), but this now has a different meaning: his
humanity has been totally transformed by his resurrection and can no
longer by affected by the realm of sin and death: “death no longer has
dominion over him” (Rom 6:9).
Appointed by God
The second element highlighted by Hebrews 5:1 is that a priest is
“appointed” by God. One does not simply choose to enter into priestly
ministry as a career or even as a form of generous humanitarian service.
Appointment to this office is entirely at God’s initiative.“One does not take
the honor upon himself, but he is called by God, just as Aaron was” (Heb
5:4). In the Old Testament, this principle was expressed in God’s designation of the tribe of Levi to serve in the sanctuary, and of the family of Aaron
to serve as priests within that tribe. No other priesthood was acknowledged or allowed to function on behalf of God’s people (Nm 18:1–7).
Numbers depicts the impressive divine confirmation of this mandate in the
story of the revolt of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who accused Aaron of
having exalted himself to the priesthood and who harbored ambitions of
attaining it themselves (Nm 16:1–10). In punishment, God caused the
ground to open up and swallow them alive along with their households
(Nm 16:28–33). The budding of Aaron’s rod, alone of the rods of the
Israelites leaders, was further miraculous proof that Aaron had not arrogated
the priesthood to himself but was appointed by God (Nm 17:1–13).
How does this second characteristic apply to Jesus? Throughout the
New Testament a common theme is that Jesus assumed his messianic
mission not on his own initiative but in obedience to the Father, knowing that it meant for him only suffering, humiliation, and rejection (Mt
26:39; Mk 10:45; Rom 15:3; Phil 2:8). Jesus’ sayings in the Gospel of John
typify his disposition: “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my
Father who glorifies me” ( Jn 8:54; cf. 5:30; 6:38; 14:31). It is God who
has appointed Jesus for his mission. But the author of Hebrews knows that
for his Jewish Christian readers it is not at all obvious that Jesus was
appointed a priest. He acknowledges the difficulty: “For it is evident that
our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe

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Moses said nothing about priests” (Heb 7:14).To make his case for Jesus’
priesthood the author of Hebrews turns to the psalms, quoting from
Psalms 2 and 110 respectively:“So also Christ did not exalt himself to be
made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘You are
my Son, this day I have begotten you,’ as he says also in another place,‘You
are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek’ ” (5:5–6). These two
psalms are, in fact, the pillars on which the entire argument of Hebrews
rests. Both are royal psalms clearly referring to the Davidic king, the
anointed one who rules over God’s people. The early Christians easily
recognized them as prefiguring Jesus, the promised Messiah and son of
David.9 Psalm 2 designates the Davidic king as God’s son, a claim that
applies in a transcendent way to Christ.And Psalm 110 makes the surprising claim—unique in the Old Testament—that the Davidic king is a
priest.10 God even swears an oath of ordination:“The LORD has sworn and
will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek’ ” (Ps 110:4). But how can the king, who belongs to the
tribe of Judah, be a priest? The psalm implies that there is an authentic
priesthood other than, and prior to, the Levitical priesthood established at
Mount Sinai.The psalmist calls it the “order of Melchizedek” in allusion
to the mysterious priest-king of Salem who blessed Abraham and offered
bread and wine (Gn 14:18–20). The psalm suggests that such a priestly
office belongs to the Davidic king simply by virtue of his being king—it
is a royal priesthood.The fact that Melchizedek was a gentile also suggests
a universal priesthood that was not limited to the Israelite people.
Psalm 110, as Hebrews interprets it, thus serves as a powerful argument
that a pre-Levitical, royal, and universal priesthood has been reestablished
in Christ. To confirm the point, Hebrews notes that the priesthood of
Melchizedek in Psalm 110 is by divine oath (“The LORD has sworn”),
whereas the Levitical priesthood in the Law of Moses was established
without a divine oath, implying that the latter was a temporary and
changeable arrangement (Heb 7:20–28).
How, then, was Christ appointed to this priestly office of Melchizedek?
The psalm implies that it is by eternal divine decree, but Hebrews hints
9 Psalm 110 is one of the most frequently quoted biblical texts in the New Testa-

ment, applied to Jesus by citation in Mt 22:44; Mk 12:36; Lk 20:42; Acts
2:33–35; Heb 1:13; and by allusion in Mt 26:64; Mk 14:62; 16:19; Lk 22:69;Acts
7:55–56; Rom 8:34; 1 Cor 15:25; Eph 1:20–22; Col 3:1; Heb 1:3; 8:1; 10:12–13;
12:2; 1 Pt 3:22.
10 David (2 Sm 6:12–18; 24:25) and Solomon (1 Kg 3:15; 8:62–64) had, in fact,
engaged in the priestly activity of offering sacrifice, but are nowhere else referred
to as priests. Elsewhere kings are rebuked for presuming to carry out priestly
activities (2 Chr 26:16–21 and possibly 1 Sm 13:8–14).

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that it occurred at a specific moment in history: the event of Christ’s
passion and resurrection.The author suggests this by making one of the
most daring theological claims in the New Testament: the Son of God
had to be “made perfect” through suffering (2:10; cf. 5:9 and 7:28).This
statement would have startled the early Christians as much as it does us.
In what sense could God’s Son need to be “made perfect”? And why did
it have to be through suffering?
Hebrews seems to be using the verb “make perfect” (teleioo )˜ in three
senses.11 First, it alludes to the Old Testament use of the adjective
“perfect” (teleios) for animals that are whole and unblemished, worthy to
be offered in sacrifice to God. Applied to human beings, teleios signifies
total moral integrity and singleness of heart toward God (Gn 6:9; 1 Kg
11:4; Sir 44:17). That Jesus had to be “made perfect” in this sense does
not mean that he was ever morally flawed. Rather, all the evil of human
sin unleashed upon him brought forth the most intense act of love, trust,
and obedience to God that could ever come from a human heart (cf. Heb
5:8). In the furnace of suffering Jesus’ human nature was refined to limitless perfection.The more intensely he suffered, the more perfect was the
obedience he offered, as man, to the Father.
Second, Christ was “made perfect” in that his human nature was
rendered capable of divine life. By becoming man he had assumed our
fallen nature, which is in radical need of perfection, having fallen short of
the heavenly glory for which it was made. He was “beset with weakness”
(Heb 5:2); he was “in every respect tempted as we are, yet without sin”
(Heb 4:15). As man, Jesus experienced weakness, weariness, hunger, and
thirst; he had to pay his taxes; he knew loneliness and misunderstanding;
and finally he was killed.Although he never sinned, he died to the whole
regime of sin that holds human beings in bondage (cf. Rom 6:10).
Having assumed human nature in its fallen state, he transformed it
through the act of love in which he died. As the Gospels repeatedly
affirm, Jesus’ suffering was therefore necessary as the God-appointed
means for his human nature to enter divine glory (Mk 8:31; Lk 24:26).
Finally,“make perfect” (teleioo )˜ in Hebrews alludes to this term as used
in the Septuagint to render a Hebrew idiom, to “fill the hand” of a
priest—that is, to ordain him (Ex 29:9; Lv 8:33; Nm 3:3). That Jesus was
“made perfect” by his suffering means that has been ordained the great
high priest (Heb 4:14), and his rite of ordination was the cross! Once
again there is continuity but also a radical transformation of the Old Testament notion. Christ’s priestly consecration is not through an external
11 I owe this insight to a mini-course on Hebrews taught by Fr. Francis Martin.

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ritual but through the divinization of his humanity. He “has become a
priest, not according to a legal requirement concerning bodily descent but
by the power of an indestructible life” (Heb 7:16). Through his passion
and resurrection, his human nature was perfected and made infinitely
worthy to be offered in sacrifice to God. Simultaneously he was ordained
as the high priest who is able to “bring many sons to glory” (2:10).
Mediation between God and the People
The third element of the definition in Hebrews 5:1 is that a priest “acts
on behalf of men in relation to God”; he serves as a mediator. This
mediatory function presupposes that human beings are unable to enter
into communion with God on their own.There is a gulf between God
and man that must be crossed, a divide that must be overcome (see Is
59:2), and God himself provides the way by setting up priestly mediators.The heart of a priest’s role is to overcome the divide by atoning for
sin and then to maintain the divine-human communion once it has
been established.This role is graphically portrayed in the covenant ritual
at Mount Sinai (Ex 24), where Moses sprinkles the blood of sacrificed
bulls on the altar (representing God) and on the people, symbolically
forming a blood-kinship bond. The same function is depicted in negative form in Numbers, where as a result of the rebellion of Korah a
plague breaks out and begins to decimate the people. When Aaron
quickly carries burning incense into the midst of the people, the plague
is stopped (Nm 16:46–50).12 In the old covenant the priests’ mediatory
duties were carried out daily in the prescribed temple sacrifices for sin,
and annually in the rituals of the Day of Atonement.
But already in the Old Testament there was a recognition that the
covenant mediation provided by the Aaronic priesthood was deficient.
How could the blood of irrational animals forge a genuine communion
between God and man? How could it cleanse the pollution in the human
conscience? In fact, the covenant had hardly been ratified when Aaron
himself led the people into the golden calf apostasy. Priests are again the
instigators of mischief in Leviticus 10:1–2 and often throughout the Old
Testament, in the violent intrigues of the Hasmonean period, and right up
to the machinations of the Sanhedrin in the passion of Christ.Throughout the history of Israel it becomes increasingly apparent that the sacrificial rituals are powerless to change the human heart and to overcome the
12 The priest’s mediatory role also includes intercession, although, strikingly, the

Pentateuch portrays only Moses and never Aaron as interceding for the people.
Later in the biblical tradition, however, intercessory prayer is attributed to Aaron
(Ps 99:6;Wis 18:21).

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evil that perpetually rises up from within.This recognition culminates in
the insight of Jeremiah that God would have to provide a new covenant,
a covenant in which his law is written on the human heart ( Jer 31:31–34).
When Hebrews compares Christ’s mediation with that of the Aaronic
priests, the accent on discontinuity and contrast becomes even more
marked. Note that Hebrews says the Old Testament priest “acts on behalf
of men in relation to God” (5:1), not that he acts on behalf of God in
relation to men. Old Testament priests do act on God’s behalf in that they
are charged with teaching the people God’s law (Lv 10:11; Dt 33:10). But
only Christ, the firstborn Son whom God sent into the world (Heb 1:6),
is fully able to represent God to man as well as man to God; he perfectly
fulfills the role of mediator on both sides. His total identification with
sinners does not compromise his union with God but instead becomes
the means of his perfectly accomplishing the Father’s will.
Hebrews notes that the rites of the old covenant are irremediably
external.They “cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal
only with food and drink and various ablutions, regulations for the body
imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb 9:9–10).The assertion that
the law “made nothing perfect” runs like a refrain through the central
section of Hebrews (7:11, 19; 9:9; 10:2; cf. 11:40) and is finally stated in
its starkest form at 10:4:“it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats
should take away sins.”The very fact that “the priests go continually into
the outer tent, performing their ritual duties” (Heb 9:6) year after year,
demonstrates that their ceremonies have no lasting effect.The Old Testament itself bears witness to this futility, as Hebrews shows by quoting the
new covenant passage of Jeremiah 31:31–34 in full (the longest biblical
quotation in the New Testament):
The days will come, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not like the covenant
that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my
covenant, and so I paid no heed to them, says the Lord. This is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the
Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. . . . (Heb 8:8–12)

This promise highlights the essential difference between the Aaronic
priests’ mediation and that of Christ: the latter brings about not external,
ceremonial purity but purity of heart, the transformation of the human
heart prophesied by Jeremiah. Christ has finally and permanently overcome the divide between God and man.

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Hebrews indicates that there is a twofold aspect to Christ’s atonement
for sin. First, he has made expiation for past sins (cf. Rom 3:25; 1 Jn 2:2;
4:10). By his death, he took upon himself the penalty for the broken
covenant of Mount Sinai, thereby bringing forgiveness for all the transgressions of Israel—and of all God’s people for all time (Heb 10:12). “He
is the mediator of a new covenant . . . since a death has occurred which
redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant” (Heb
9:15). The covenant curse has been borne in his own body, and thereby
neutralized (cf. Gal 3:13).13 But it is not enough to provide forgiveness for
sins already committed. Christ also had to deal with sin itself—the root of
evil in the human heart.To explain how Hebrews shows this, we will need
to consider the fourth and final element in the definition of priesthood.
Offering of Sacrifice
Finally, the way that a priest carries out his mediation is by “offering gifts
and sacrifices for sins” (Heb 5:1; cf. 8:3). In particular, as Hebrews later notes,
he offers blood sacrifices, since “under the law almost everything is purified
with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of
sins” (Heb 9:22).This principle, common to many ancient religions, rests on
the intuition that blood, as the seat of life, is supremely valuable. Nothing
more precious could be offered to God, and nothing else could make up for
the disastrous rupture of communion that is sin.“It is the blood that makes
atonement, by reason of the life” (Lv 17:11). From the beginning of the
Aaronic priesthood, the priests’ central function was to offer blood sacrifices
to atone for sin and to renew communion between God and man.
Yet throughout the Old Testament there is a certain tension. God
requires of his people sacrifices of bulls, rams, goats, and doves, as well as
libations of wine, offerings of grain and oil and incense (Lv 1–7; Nm 15;
Mal 1:13–14).Yet God also affirms the supreme importance of obedience
over these ritual offerings. In fact, the latter are worthless if they are not
accompanied by the very covenant righteousness that they are meant to
establish. Samuel admonishes King Saul, “Has the LORD as great delight
in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of
rams” (1 Sm 15:22; cf. Pr 21:3). This theme becomes even more
pronounced in the prophets, who rail against the perfunctory temple
offerings not marked by true fidelity to God. “I desire steadfast love and
not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings” (Hos
6:6). “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn
13 See Scott Hahn, “A Broken Covenant and the Curse of Death: A Study of

Hebrews 9:15–22,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 66 (2004): 416–36.

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assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal
offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted
beasts I will not look upon” (Am 5:21–22; cf. Mi 6:6–8). Even within
the Old Testament, it becomes evident that the priestly sacrifices are incapable of fully achieving their very purpose.
The explanation of how Jesus fulfills this aspect of the Old Testament
priesthood is the high point of the letter to the Hebrews. As high priest,
Jesus too had to offer sacrifice. But in his case there is no distinction
between priest and victim. He offered not a helpless animal but himself
(Heb 7:27; 9:14). He “entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not
the blood of goats and calves but his own blood” (Heb 9:12). Hebrews
notes that he did so through the “eternal Spirit” (Heb 9:14), a phrase not
used anywhere else in the Bible. As A. Vanhoye points out, this phrase
alludes to the perpetual fire on the altar of sacrifice in the temple, which
had to be kept burning before God night and day (Lv 6:12–13); in
rabbinic terminology it was called the “eternal fire.”14 Hebrews hints that
the fire that engulfs Jesus’ priestly sacrifice is nothing other than the Holy
Spirit. Through his life, public ministry, agonizing passion and death,
Jesus’ human heart was set ablaze to an infinite degree by the Spirit, so
that he could return to the Father the limitless love that He had deserved
but never received from humanity.15 Like a holocaust—the kind of sacrifice in which the victim is completely burnt on the altar—Jesus was
entirely consumed in his self-offering. His suffering was the kindling that
perfected his obedient love for the Father, and so made his humanity—
and thus the humanity of “all who obey him” (5:9)—capable of divine
life.Thus the value of Jesus’ sacrifice is infinitely greater than the temple
holocausts. His all-sufficient offering perfectly unites the requirement of
blood sacrifice and the commandment of love.
Hebrews expresses this synthesis by placing the words of Psalm 40:6–8
on the lips of Christ:
When Christ came into the world, he said,“Sacrifices and offerings you
have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.Then I said,‘Lo, I have
come to do your will, O God,’ as it is written of me in the roll of the
book.” (Heb 10:5–7)
14 A.Vanhoye,“L’Esprit éternel et le feu du sacrifice en He 9, 14,” Biblica 64 (1983):

263–74.
15 “According to the Letter to the Hebrews, on the way to his ‘departure’ through

Gethsemane and Golgotha, the same ‘Jesus Christ’ in his own humanity ‘opened
himself totally’ to this ‘action of the Spirit-Paraclete’, who from suffering enables
eternal salvific love to spring forth” ( John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, 40).

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The body prepared for the Son was the body he assumed in his incarnation, precisely so that he would have something of infinite value to offer
the Father. Jesus, like us, was tempted to give in to the self-centered and
self-preserving demands of the flesh—its natural recoilment in the face
of inconceivable pain. But he did the very opposite; he turned his back
on himself out of love for the Father and for us. In the words of St.
Athanasius:“This is the reason why he assumed a body capable of dying,
so that, belonging to the Word who is above all, in dying it might become
a sufficient exchange for all. . . . He put on a body so that in the body he
might find death and blot it out.”16
Hebrews draws the conclusion that, whereas the Old Testament sacrifices had limited and temporary efficacy, Christ’s sacrifice has total and
eternal efficacy: “For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood
of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify
your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb
9:13–14).The once-for-all sufficiency of Christ’s work of redemption is
nowhere stated more definitively than in Hebrews. Unlike the Aaronic
priests, Jesus has no need to “offer himself repeatedly. . . for then he would
have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.” Rather,
“he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself ” (9:25–26).Whereas the Old Testament priest “stands
daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices,” Christ
“offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” and then “sat down at the
right hand of God” (10:11–12).What does this mean for the worshipers?
Hebrews draws a radical contrast:“If the [Old Testament] worshipers had
once been cleansed, they would no longer have any conscience (syneidesis ) of sin” (10:2). This implies that the new covenant worshipers have
once been cleansed, and have no more conscience of sin! The conclusion
is restated in a different way in Heb 10:10: “We have been sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
For readers of Hebrews then and now, however, this affirmation may
seem to fly in the face of reality. Most of us are conscious of plenty of sin
(or if not, we have a dull conscience). Moreover, the Church provides the
sacrament of reconciliation and other means to cleanse us of the sins we
continue to commit. But a full consideration of the teaching of Hebrews
challenges us not to allow this subjective reality to obscure the objective
truth. Our sanctification is complete in a way that was not true of the
16 Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 9.44.

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Old Testament worshipers. From now on, our Christian life consists in
appropriating and more deeply living the holiness we have already been
given, not in acquiring a holiness we do not have (cf. 1 Cor 1:2; 6:11).17
Implications for the Common Priesthood of the Faithful
What implications does the doctrine of the priesthood found in Hebrews
have for the common priesthood of the faithful? One line of reflection is
suggested by the use of the key term “make perfect” (teleioo ).˜ Hebrews
expresses the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice, strikingly, by using this term in a
new way—now applied to his people! “For by a single offering he has
perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (10:14; cf. 12:23). This
suggests that the same three senses of teleioo ˜ applied to Christ also apply to
those “many sons” whom Christ brings to glory: they are interiorly
renewed and made totally blameless and upright, worthy to be offered in
sacrifice to God; they are made capable of divine life; and they are ordained
priests of the new covenant. Christ has changed his disciples from within,
radically and permanently. The whole life of those who follow Christ is
now qualified to be a priestly life, in which all our actions and sufferings
can be offered as “a sacrifice of praise . . . pleasing to God” (Heb 13:15–16),
or as Paul exhorts us, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).Thus we
are invited to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe;
for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:28–29).
Christ’s sanctification of his brothers and sisters brings about a change
in one other aspect of the Old Testament priesthood.Whereas part of the
Aaronic priest’s function was to tightly control access to God so that the
people would not be consumed by God’s wrath, Christ’s priestly function is precisely the opposite: he opens access to the Father. Formerly
only the high priest would dare to enter the Holy of Holies, and only
once a year; now all are invited in. Now that the worshipers have been
made holy—assuming they are faithful to their baptismal consecration—
there is no danger in drawing near to the All-Holy. Rather, the constantly
repeated exhortation in Hebrews is to approach God with confidence.
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we
may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16).
“A better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God”
(7:19); we have “a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the
curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf ” (6:19–20).
17 See Benedict XVI’s comments on baptism and confession in relation to the

“bathing” and foot washing of John 13:10 in Jesus of Nazareth, Part II (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 73.

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“He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him”
(7:25). “Since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of
Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the
curtain, that is, through his flesh . . . let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil
conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (10:19–22).
It is, of course, not the same Holy of Holies as in the old covenant.
Hebrews argues that the limited, temporal nature of the old covenant
priesthood means that its sanctuary was also imperfect and provisional:
the Aaronic priests “serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary.”
Hebrews demonstrates this point by noting that “when Moses was about
to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make
everything according to the pattern (typon) which was shown you on the
mountain’ ” (Heb 8:5).This implies that there is a greater, heavenly sanctuary of which the earthly one was only a rough copy.That “greater and
more perfect tent” (Heb 9:11) is Christ’s own risen body (cf. Mk 14:58;
Jn 2:21; 2 Cor 5:1). “For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made
with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear
in the presence of God on our behalf ” (Heb 9:24).
Implications for the Ministerial Priesthood
From the earliest days, the Church’s tradition, reflecting on the witness of
the New Testament, maintained that not only is Christ the great high
priest in fulfillment of the former priesthood, but that those whom he
calls to serve as shepherds of the new community, the Church, are also
priests in a real sense by participation in his own priesthood. Hebrews
alludes to this new priesthood by asserting that “We have an altar from
which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (Heb 13:10)—
clearly pointing to the Eucharistic liturgy at which Christ’s appointed
ministers of the new covenant preside. Like his priesthood, theirs has
elements of both continuity and discontinuity with the old. I will
conclude by offering a few thoughts on how Hebrews’ vision of the eternal priesthood of Christ can illuminate our understanding of the ministerial priesthood.
Like Christ, priests are chosen from among men for a special calling.
But they are chosen for solidarity, not for separation. Their essential
priestly quality is not severity but mercy (2:17). Aware that they too are
“beset with weakness” (5:2), they are willing to draw near to sinners and
bear their burdens even at high cost to themselves (cf. Gal 6:2–3).
Like Christ, priests are appointed by God. They are appointed not in
their own right as independent functionaries, but by participation in the

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one priesthood of Christ. In ministering to God’s people, they remain
entirely dependent on him. As his ordination took place in the transforming fire of his passion (2:10), so priests are called to let the sacramental grace of their ordination transform (or “perfect”) their whole life,
bringing about a progressively deeper conformity to him.
Like Christ, priests are mediators between God and human beings.
But their mediation cannot be merely by the outward form of the sacraments, rites, and laws of the Church.This would be an inappropriate reestablishment of the former kind of priesthood (9:9–10)—a return to
externality. Rather, these sacraments have to be taught, celebrated, and
lived in their full interiority, in a profound communion of heart and life
with Christ. God’s people have to be constantly directed toward the interior renewal and sanctification that is the purpose of these rites.
Finally, like Christ, priests offer a sacrifice for sins—but in this case, they
make present anew his own once-for-all sacrifice of himself (10:14).
Hebrews suggests this, as noted above, by its allusion to the Eucharistic sacrifice (13:10) in which the Church continually shares in Christ’s self-offering
to the Father. Priests must help the people of God realize the unlimited
power of this sacrifice and appropriate it fully into their lives.They do not
restrict access to God but help people draw near to the throne of grace with
N&V
the confidence of children approaching their heavenly Father.

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Relating Aquinas’s Infused and Acquired Virtues:
Some Problematic Texts for a
Common Interpretation
A NGELA M C K AY K NOBEL
Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

T HOMAS AQUINAS famously posits not one, but two sets of moral
virtues: the acquired virtues, which order man to his natural good and
which can be acquired through one’s own repeated virtuous acts, and the
infused virtues, which order man to supernatural beatitude and which must
be bestowed on man by God.The very fact that Aquinas describes two sets
of moral virtues naturally raises the question of how he believes those
virtues are related.This latter question is particularly important because of
its ties to broader questions about the relationship between grace and
nature.To draw too sharp a distinction between the infused and acquired
virtues—to argue, for instance, that one set of virtues has nothing at all to
do with the other—would be tantamount to a denial of the oft-repeated
and thoroughly Thomistic idea that grace perfects nature. Aquinas clearly
believes that there is at least a minimal relationship between the infused and
acquired virtues, for he argues that the cultivation of the acquired virtues
disposes one to receive grace and the infused virtues. A number of scholars, however, argue that the relationship between the infused and acquired
virtues goes much deeper than this, and that these virtues are mutually
interdependent: on the one hand, the infused virtues perfect and complete
the acquired virtues; on the other hand, one cannot successfully carry out
acts of infused virtue unless one simultaneously cultivates the acquired
virtues. Scholars who make such claims, moreover, typically support them
by citing the same few texts of Aquinas. My aim in this essay is not to
defend or refute the claims themselves, but rather to examine three texts

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typically cited in support of them. I will argue that, far from establishing
the sort of mutual interdependence described above, these texts leave the
relationship between the infused and acquired virtues utterly opaque.
One cannot interpret these texts in the way that these scholars do without assuming some of the very claims these texts purportedly prove.
This essay will have four parts. In the first three parts I will examine
three texts commonly cited as evidence of the interdependence of the
infused and acquired virtues, and I will argue that these texts fall far short
of establishing such claims. In the fourth and final section, I will argue
that any theory of the relationship between the infused and acquired
virtues must first establish its compatibility with the few explicit remarks
that Aquinas does make about the infused and acquired virtues.
The project of this essay is important for two reasons. First, although I
focus narrowly on the proper interpretation of three small sections of text,
the proper interpretation of them has important ramifications for broader
questions about the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues.
My argument shows that some positions typically taken for granted need
a more robust defense. If such a defense cannot be given, then the positions themselves need to be rethought. Second, this essay indicates that
Aquinas’s account of the infused and acquired virtues is more complex
and more difficult to navigate than many scholars propose.1
I. The Infused Virtues Strengthen the Acquired Virtues:
ST I–II, q. 51, a. 4, ad 3
One way of affirming a deep interdependence between the infused and
acquired virtues is to maintain that the infused virtues somehow
complete or perfect existing acquired virtues.2 Scholars who make such
1 Several recent scholars have also noted the numerous interpretational questions

that Aquinas’s theory of the infused moral virtues raises. See for instance Bonnie
Kent, Virtues of the Will (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1995), 31–32; Jean Porter, “The Subversion of Virtue,” The Annual of the
Society of Christian Ethics (1992), 19–41; and Mark Jordan, “Philosophy and
Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and
Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 232–51, esp.
239. While these scholars raise general questions, however, this paper takes a
more detailed approach inasmuch as it zeroes in on specific texts of Aquinas.
2 One can make such a claim regardless of whether one believes that the Christian’s
acquired virtues somehow “coexist” with his infused virtues or that his acquired
virtues are somehow “united” to his infused virtues. For a discussion of the differences between these two positions, see Angela Knobel,“Two Theories of Christian
Virtue,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2010): 599–618, and Angela
Knobel,“Can the Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist in the Christian Life?” Studies in Christian Ethics 23 (2010): 381–96. I now believe that the description of the

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claims, moreover, typically cite the same text as evidence, namely ST I–II,
q. 51, a. 4, ad 3.3 A recent version of such a claim is made by John Inglis,
who cites this text in support of his assertion that
Aquinas claimed that receiving the proper infused moral virtue
strengthens the corresponding acquired moral virtue. . . . The infused
virtues are like a medicine that strengthens the acquired virtues and
allows one to surpass them in living the good life.Without the parallel
infused moral virtues that redirect one’s actions, such actions would
remain imperfect. Therefore, one prepares for the infusion of moral
virtue through the acquisition of moral habits that are themselves
strengthened by infusion.4

Inglis is by no means the only scholar who offers such an account.5 Like
others who make similar claims, Inglis believes that proof for this interpretation of Aquinas can be found in the fourth article of question 51 of the
“unification” view that I offered in those papers should be nuanced. Some of those
who believe that the infused and acquired virtues “form a unity” nonetheless believe
that the Christian’s infused and acquired virtues remain distinct. These scholars
simply hold that the acts of those virtues, though distinct, typically occur simultaneously. Although this point does not substantially affect the thesis of either paper,
it is an important one, and deserves mention.
3 Not all scholars cite this text in defense of this claim.Terrence Irwin, who likewise claims that Aquinas believes the infused virtues perfect the acquired virtues,
cites Summa theologiae I–II, q. 69, a. 3. In that text, however, Aquinas is describing not the differences between the infused and acquired virtues but the differences between the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. See Terrence Irwin,
The Development of Ethics, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 647.
Still other scholars have made this claim without citing a specific text in defense
of it. See for instance Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior
Life, trans. Sr. Timothea Doyle, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Herder, 1947), 64. Some other
scholars, such as Anthony Falanga and Andrew Dell’Olio, cite Aquinas’s numerous statements that charity is the “form” of the virtues in defense of this claim.
See Anthony Falanga, Charity the Form of the Virtues According to Saint Thomas
Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1948) and
Andrew Dell’Olio, Foundations of Moral Selfhood (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2003), 129–30. An adequate defense of this latter position would need to
show that Aquinas intends this claim to apply equally to infused and acquired
virtue, and neither Falanga nor Dell’Olio establishes that this is the case. A full
discussion of this point, however, is outside the scope of the present paper.
4 John Inglis, “Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues,” Journal of
Religious Ethics 22 (2002): 19.
5 Etienne Gilson, for instance, cites the same text in support of a virtually identical
claim. See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre
Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1994), 343. For a history of the debate over the
meaning of this text, see Robert Coerver, The Quality of Facility in the Moral Virtues

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prima secundae. Here, in response to the third objection,Aquinas writes:“the
acts which are produced by an infused habit do not cause a habit, but
confirm a pre-existing habit.”6 It is by no means obvious, however, that we
should interpret this quote in the way that Inglis and others do.7
Even when read in isolation, it is clear that the text cited above admits
a different interpretation.While Aquinas definitely does assert that acts of
infused virtue strengthen the pre-existing virtue, he nowhere says that the
pre-existing virtue that is strengthened is an acquired virtue. In fact, it
would be reasonable to think that the pre-existing virtue that is strengthened by acts of infused virtue is the infused virtue that gave rise to the acts
in the first place. Absent some further argument, it is not at all clear why
one should assume that it is the acquired counterpart that acts of infused
virtue strengthen.When this text is read in context, and especially when
it is read in conjunction with other passages where Aquinas makes the
same remark, such an interpretation becomes even less convincing.
The text cited from article 4 of question 51 is offered in reply to an
objection and as such must be read in conjunction with it. The fourth
article of question 51 of the prima secundae asks whether any dispositions
are infused in man by God. The third objection points out that if man
did have dispositions infused in him by God, then he would be able to
exercise them in action. Repeated actions, however, are themselves causes
of dispositions.Thus, one who possessed an infused disposition and who
exercised it in action would really have two dispositions of the same
species: one that was infused in him by God, and one which he caused
through repeated acts. Since it is impossible to have two forms of the
same species in one subject, the objector concludes, it is not possible to
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1946), 46–54. The
historical figures Coerver cites differ from Gilson in this important respect: they
hold that the infused and acquired virtues are distinct from each other. Gilson
appears to believe that the infused and acquired virtues form a unity. This latter
question, however, is not directly relevant to the present discussion. Though she
does not explicitly argue for his interpretation of this text, Reneé Mirkes appears
to take a position similar to that of Gilson when she addresses other interpretations
of this text in “Moral Virtue and Facility,” The Thomist 61 (April 1997): 189–218.
6 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 51, a. 4, ad 3: actus qui producuntur ex habitu infuso non
causant aliquem habitum, sed confirmant habitum praeexistentem; sicut medicinalia remedia adhibita homini sano per naturam, non causant aliquam sanitatem
sed sanitatem prius habitam corrobant (Leon. 6.329).
7 Mazella and Suarez are exceptions, for they would criticize an interpretation
such as Inglis’s. See Coerver, The Quality of Facility in the Moral Virtues, 49.Their
objections, however, focus heavily on the theoretical problems such an interpretation raises.While I agree with their criticisms, my own criticism will focus on
the question of whether this claim is an accurate reading of the text.

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have habits that are infused by God.8 The objector, then, has a very
specific concern, and the concern is this: if one has an infused virtue and
acts accordingly, one will create an acquired virtue that—since it
produces the same kind of actions as its infused counterpart—is of the
same species as the infused virtue.This, however, is problematic, since one
would then have two habits—one acquired and one infused—of the
same species. The objection, then, takes it for granted that (a) acts of
infused virtue will be of the same species as the infused virtues themselves and that (b) when such acts are performed repeatedly, they will
generate an acquired virtue, a virtue that—given (a)—will necessarily be
of the same species as the infused virtue that produced it, and hence of a
different species than any pre-existing acquired virtues.
Some of the claims made in the objection above are claims that Aquinas
has no reason to object to.Aquinas, like his objector, would agree that one
cannot possess two different “forms” of the same species of virtue. In fact,
Aquinas emphasizes that the infused and acquired virtues belong to different species, and on this basis he argues that the infused and acquired virtues
can exist simultaneously in the same individual.9 Perhaps more importantly, Aquinas would agree that the infused virtues produce a different
species of act than the acquired virtues do. Indeed, it is the very necessity
of a different species of act that leads Aquinas to posit the infused virtues
in the first place.10 All of this is important, because it helps to clarify the
specific problem that Aquinas needs to respond to.Aquinas needs to explain
why repeated acts of infused virtue don’t create an acquired virtue that
belongs to same species as the infused virtue whose acts produced it.
As we saw above, Aquinas responds to the objection that repeated acts
of infused virtue would create an acquired virtue by arguing that repeated
8 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 51, a. 4, obj. 3: Praeterea, si aliquis habitus a Deo infunditur,

per illum habitum homo potest multos actus producere. Sed ex illis actibus
causatur similis habitus, ut in II Ethic. dicitur. Sequitur ergo duos habitus eiusdem speciei esse in eodem, unum acquisitum, et alterum infusum. Quod videtur
esse impossibile, non enim duae formae unius speciei possunt esse in eodem
subiecto. Non ergo habitus aliquis infunditur homini a Deo (Leon. 6.329).
9 Aquinas, Scriptum Super Sententiis (hereafter In Sent.) III, d. 33, q.1, a. 2, qa. 4, s.c.
2: Praeterea, duae formae ejusdem speciei non possunt esse in uno subjecto. Sed
virtus infusa est simul cum virtute acquisita, ut patet in adulto qui habens
virtutem acquisitam ad Baptismum accedit, qui non minus recipit de infusis
quam puer. Ergo virtus acquisita et infusa differunt specie (Moos. 1027).
10 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 63, a. 3, ad 1: Ad primum ergo dicendum quod aliquae
quidem virtutes morales et intellectuales possunt causari in nobis ex nostris
actibus, tamen illae non sunt proportionatae virtutibus theologicis. Et ideo
oportet alias, eis proportionatas, immediate a Deo causari (Leon. 6.409). See also
Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a. 10.

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acts of infused virtue don’t cause a virtue, but “confirm the pre-existing
habit.” Especially because of Aquinas’s repeated insistence that the infused
and acquired virtues belong to different species, it is natural to assume
that the “pre-existing habit” that acts of infused virtue confirm is the
infused habit that produced it.To claim that the “pre-existing habit” that
acts of infused virtue confirm is an acquired virtue is confusing for two
reasons. First, this would mean that acts of one species of virtue
“confirm” an altogether different species of virtue, and such a claim
seems strange. If there is any virtue that acts of infused virtue “confirm,”
it seems it should be the very virtue that produced the act, not a different species of virtue altogether. Second, and perhaps more importantly,
Aquinas says that acts of infused virtue “confirm the pre-existing habit.”
We have absolutely no reason to assume, however, that an acquired virtue
“pre-exists” in all those who possess the infused virtues.To the contrary,
it is clear that many of those who receive the infused virtues, such as
sinners and baptized infants, have no acquired virtues at all. In those cases
where no acquired virtue pre-exists to be confirmed, it simply cannot be
the case that the “pre-existing” virtue that is “confirmed” by acts of
infused virtue is an acquired one. The most reasonable way to interpret
Aquinas’s response, then, is as follows: acts of infused virtue don’t cause
one to acquire a virtue of the same species as infused virtue; acts of
infused virtue confirm the infused virtue that already exists.
Aquinas’s response to the same question in his Quaestiones Disputatae
de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis supports the interpretation offered
above. In this text, after offering the same responses given in the prima
secundae, Aquinas draws a comparison between acts of infused virtue and
acts of acquired virtue. Even acts of an acquired virtue don’t create a new
virtue, but strengthen an existing virtue. If it were otherwise, he explains,
habits would be multiplied indefinitely.11 Aquinas, then, seems to be
making a general point about how virtues increase. Once one possesses a
virtue, one can no longer say that acts of that virtue create a new virtue,
or one would possess countless virtues. Rather, one must say that acts of
that virtue strengthen the virtue that already exists. Again, though—and
this is especially clear from the parallel that Aquinas draws between the
infused and acquired virtues—it is unreasonable to read this as an assertion
that acts of infused virtue strengthen a pre-existing acquired virtue. To the
11 Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a. 10, ad 19:

Ad decimumnonum dicendum, quod actus virtutis infusae non causant aliquem
habitum, sed per eos augetur habitus praeexistens: quia nec ex actibus virtutis
acquisitae aliquis habitus generatur; alias multiplicarentur habitus in infinitum
(Marietti).

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contrary,Aquinas appears to be saying that acts of infused virtue strengthen
pre-existing infused virtues, just as acts of acquired virtue strengthen preexisting acquired virtues.
One might object to the argument offered above in the following way.
Aquinas clearly maintains that while man can increase the acquired virtues
through repeated acts, only God can increase the infused virtues. Given
this, one might argue that if repeated acts of infused virtue strengthen any
virtue, they must strengthen an acquired virtue. For, such an objector might
argue, if we concede that repeated acts of infused virtue “strengthen” an
infused virtue, then it looks like we have managed to increase an infused
virtue through our own power, and Aquinas has already denied that this is
possible. Aquinas’s own remarks about the increase of infused virtue,
however, indicate a response to such an objection.
In different texts, Aquinas indicates both that it is God who increases
the infused virtues and that man’s actions are nonetheless conducive to
the increase of infused virtue. In his Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus:
De virtutibus in communis, Aquinas argues that the infused and acquired
virtues are increased in different ways.The acquired virtues are increased
by man’s actions, while the infused virtues are increased by God. Nevertheless, Aquinas argues that man’s actions can dispose him to receive the
infused virtues, either insofar as he cultivates acquired virtues, which
dispose him to receive the initial gift of infused virtue, or insofar as he
performs acts of infused virtue that dispose him to receive an increase in
those virtues.12 Aquinas makes roughly the same point in the sixth article of question 24 of the secunda secundae. In the context of explaining
whether or not every act of charity results in an increase of charity,
Aquinas explains that each act of charity “disposes toward the increase of
charity, inasmuch as one act of charity makes man more ready to perform
another act of charity.”13 After several such acts, man “breaks forth in a
12 Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a. 11: Unde

sicut virtutes acquisitae augentur ex actibus per quos causantur, ita virtutes infusae
augentur per actionem Dei, a quo causantur. Actus autem nostri comparantur ad
augmentum caritatis et virtutum infusarum, ut disponentes, sicut ad caritatem a
principio obtinendam; homo enim faciens quod in se est, praeparat se, ut a Deo
recipiat caritatem. Ulterius autem actus nostri possunt esse meritorii respectu
augmenti caritatis; quia praesupponunt caritatem, quae est principium merendi.
Sed nullus potest mereri, quin a principio obtineat caritatem; quia meritum sine
caritate esse non potest. Sic igitur caritatem augeri per intensionem dicimus
(Marietti).
13 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 24, a. 6: Ita etiam non quolibet actu caritatis caritas actu
augetur, sed quilibet actus caritatis disponit ad caritatis augmentum, inquantum
ex uno actu caritatis homo redditur promptior iterum ad agendum secundum

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more fervent act of love . . . and then charity is increased in act.”14
Aquinas’s explanation of charity’s increase is perfectly consistent with his
claim that acts of infused virtue “do not create a virtue, but through them
an existing virtue is increased.” Man’s repeated charitable acts make him
more prompt to perform similar acts until he “breaks forth in a more
fervent act of love,” and his charity is increased. It is God, of course, who
is ultimately responsible for both the initial infusion of charity and any
further increase in it. But as the above text indicates, the repeated acts of
one who possesses charity prepare him for that increase.
The most natural reading of ST I–II, q. 51, a. 4, ad 3, then, does nothing to support the claim that repeated acts of infused virtue strengthen an
existing acquired virtue.To the contrary, the most natural reading of this
text implies that repeated acts of infused virtues result in an increase of
infused virtue, just as repeated acts of acquired virtue result in an increase
of acquired virtue. In the former case, such acts merely prepare man for
the increase, since it is God who increases infused virtues. In the latter
case, it is man himself who is responsible for the increase of virtue. In both
cases, however, growth in virtue parallels man’s repeated virtuous acts.
II. The Acquired Virtues “Facilitate” Acts of Infused Virtue:
ST I–II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2
In the previous section, I addressed the claim that acts of infused virtue
“strengthen” existing acquired virtues. Many scholars go beyond this
claim, though, and argue that the infused virtues are themselves dependent on the acquired virtues. Several scholars argue that those who possess
the infused virtues must also simultaneously cultivate the acquired virtues,
and that it is only by the simultaneous cultivation of the acquired virtues
that one can successfully perform acts of infused virtue.Without the assistance of the acquired virtues, they argue, infused virtues are only virtues
in an analogous sense. Andrew Dell’Olio, for instance, argues that “infused
virtues, without the facility or ability that comes with acquired virtues, are
habits only in an analogous sense. For they lack the ease or facility of operation that characterize a habit in the strict sense.”15 Inglis gives an account
caritatem (Leon. 8.180–181); it is important not to assume that this sort of
increase—in which repeated acts dispose to an increase over time, until a sudden
increase occurs—is unique to the infused virtues.Aquinas gives a similar account
of how any habit increases in ST I–II, q. 52, a. 3.
14 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 24, a. 6: et, habilitate crescente, homo prorumpit in actum
ferventiorem dilectionis, quo conetur ad caritatis profectum; et tunc caritas augetur in actu (Leon. 8.180–181).
15 Dell’Olio, Foundations of Moral Selfhood, 136. Although it is not directly relevant
to the present discussion, it is worth noting that Dell’Olio’s claim that the infused

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roughly identical to that offered by Dell’Olio, claiming that “Aquinas
argued that it is easier for one with acquired virtue to live the life of
infused virtue than it is for one with infused moral virtue alone.Acquired
virtue can remove habits contrary to infused virtue, habits that make acts
difficult and unpleasant.”16 Again, this account is hardly unique to Inglis
and Dell’Olio. Several other scholars make similar claims.17
When scholars cite text in defense of the claim that the infused virtues
rely on acquired virtues for their successful action, they typically cite ST
I–II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2. Both Inglis and Dell’Olio cite this text in defense of
the statements quoted above, and other scholars cite it as well.18 As with
ST I–II, q. 51, a. 4, ad 3, however, it is not at all clear that the text supports
such an interpretation.The third article of question 65 asks whether charity can exist apart from the moral virtues.The second objection argues that
charity can exist without the moral virtues. As evidence for this claim, the
objector offers examples of those who possess charity but find it difficult
to perform acts of moral virtue. Since those who possess the virtues should
find the exercise of virtue easy and pleasant, the fact that these individuals
find it difficult to perform acts of moral virtue seems to indicate that they
virtues are virtues “only in an analogous sense” is confusing. For Aquinas, it is the
infused virtues and not their acquired counterparts that are the paradigm of
virtue. If one wishes to claim that the infused virtues are virtues only in an analogous sense, then one is committed to the claim that the paradigm of virtue is
only analogously a virtue. While one might conceivably make such a claim,
Dell’Olio seems to mean that the acquired virtues are the paradigm.The claim,
at the very least, needs clarification. Many other scholars, including John Harvey,
likewise describe the infused virtues as virtues “only in an analogous sense.” Such
claims, again, need clarifying. See John Harvey, “The Nature of the Infused
Moral Virtues,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 8 (1955):
172–221; Coerver credits Mazella with the same view. See Coerver, The Quality
of Facility in the Moral Virtues, 17. For a nice explanation of the contrary view, see
Jordan, “Philosophy and Theology,” 236–41.
16 Inglis, “Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues,” 21.
17 See for instance Mirkes, “Moral Virtue and Facility,” 191; Garrigou-Lagrange,
The Three Ages of the Interior Life, V.1, 63; Jennifer Herdt, Putting on Virtue
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 87. Terrence Irwin, interestingly
enough, reads this text in precisely the opposite way, citing it as evidence that the
acquired virtues can make it more difficult to practice the infused virtues. See
Irwin, The Development of Ethics, 647. Irwin’s diametrically opposite reading
supports my claims about the ambiguity of this text.
18 Inglis, “Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues,” 21; Dell’Olio,
Foundations of Moral Selfhood, 136; See also Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 87, and
Mirkes, “Moral Virtue and Facility,” 191. Not everyone who makes such claims
cites text to support them. Garrigou-Lagrange, for instance, simply asserts that
this interdependence exists.

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do not possess the moral virtues.19 Aquinas replies by explaining why some
who possess habits still find it difficult to exercise them. This occurs, says
Aquinas, when some obstacle is present. Those who possess the habit of
science, for instance, have trouble exercising it when they are sleepy or
unwell. Similarly, some of those who possess the infused virtues also possess
vicious dispositions as a result of previous actions.20 Having offered this
explanation, Aquinas then denies that contrary dispositions play a similar
role in acts of acquired virtue: “This difficulty does not arise for the
acquired moral virtues, because the repeated acts by which they are
acquired also remove the contrary dispositions.”21
The assertion that the infused virtues rely on the acquired virtues for
their successful action goes considerably beyond anything Aquinas explic19 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 65, a. 3, obj. 2: Praeterea, qui habet habitum virtutis, de facili

operatur ea quae sunt virtutis, et ei secundum se placent, unde et signum habitus
est delectatio quae fit in opere, ut dicitur in II Ethic. Sed multi habent caritatem,
absque peccato mortali existentes, qui tamen difficultatem in operibus virtutum
patiuntur, neque eis secundum se placent, sed solum secundum quod referuntur ad
caritatem. Ergo multi habent caritatem, qui non habent alias virtutes (Leon. 6.424).
20 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2: Ad secundum dicendum quod quandoque
contingit quod aliquis habens habitum, patitur difficultatem in operando, et per
consequens non sentit delectationem et complacentiam in actu, propter aliquod
impedimentum extrinsecus superveniens, sicut ille qui habet habitum scientiae,
patitur difficultatem in intelligendo, propter somnolentiam vel aliquam infirmitatem. Et similiter habitus moralium virtutum infusarum patiuntur interdum
difficultatem in operando, propter aliquas dispositiones contrarias ex praecedentibus actibus relictas. Quae quidem difficultas non ita accidit in virtutibus moralibus acquisitis, quia per exercitium actuum, quo acquiruntur, tolluntur etiam
contrariae dispositiones (Leon. 6.425). In this text,Aquinas does not limit the acts
that can cause the “previous dispositions” that provide obstacles to acts of infused
virtues to sinful ones. In his treatment of the same question in his Quaestiones
Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus cardinalibus, however, he offers a slightly
different answer, saying that a repentant sinner, as a result of his previous sinful
acts, retains dispositions that oppose acts of charity and the infused virtues. Some
scholars seem to interpret Aquinas’s remark here as an indication that dispositions
that are contrary to the infused virtues can arise only from previous sinful acts
and not, say, from the pagan’s acts of acquired virtue. See for instance Michael
Sherwin, “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice,” The Thomist 73
(2009): 44.Aquinas’s explicit focus on the dispositions possessed by the repentant
sinner in this article, however, indicates that he may not intend to assert that
contrary dispositions can be caused only by acquired vices. Aquinas’s repeated
assertions that the acquired and infused virtues may give rise to different acts also
make such an interpretation seem doubtful.
21 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2: Quae quidem difficultas non ita accidit in
virtutibus moralibus acquisitis, quia per exercitium actuum, quo acquiruntur,
tolluntur etiam contrariae dispositiones.

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itly says in question 65, article 3, ad 2. His aim in responding to the second
objection is to explain how it is that one can possess the infused virtues and
yet still experience difficulty in performing acts of infused virtue. In order
to explain how this difficulty arises, he contrasts the infused virtues with
their acquired counterparts. Those who possess acquired virtues don’t
experience difficulty when they perform acts of acquired virtue, because
the very process of acquisition drives out contrary inclinations.The infused
virtues, on the other hand, are bestowed all at once. Although the infused
virtues do destroy vices qua vices, they do not drive out pre-existing dispositions.The infused virtues,Aquinas tells us in other texts, do not drive out
contrary inclinations; they merely cause it to be the case that one is not
ruled by those inclinations.22 One can, then, simultaneously possess an
infused virtue and contrary dispositions. In one who possesses the infused
virtues, such contrary inclinations make acts of infused virtue difficult in
the same way that hunger or fatigue makes it difficult for one who
possesses the habit of science to arrive at conclusions. A considerable leap
is required, however, to move from Aquinas’s claim that the infused and
acquired virtues confer different kinds of facility to the claim that the
infused virtues somehow depend on or are completed by the acquired virtues.
One might argue, of course, that Aquinas’s description of the different
facilities conferred by the infused and acquired virtues invites certain
conclusions about their interdependence. While I think one could
certainly argue that this text supports the “minimal” account of the interdependence between the infused and acquired virtues described earlier
(that is, the cultivation of acquired virtue disposes one to receive grace
and the infused virtues), I will argue in what follows that one cannot
make any more substantive claims without making assumptions that are
not substantiated by the text.
Those who claim that the infused virtues depend upon the cultivation
of the acquired virtues for their successful action must both (a) make an
assumption about whether those who possess the infused virtues must
continue to cultivate the acquired virtues, and (b) make an assumption
about the similarities between the kinds of acts that the infused and
22 Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a. 10, ad 14: Sed quan-

tum ad aliquid praevalet in hoc virtus acquisita, et quantum ad aliquid virtus infusa.
Virtus enim acquisita praevalet quantum ad hoc quod talis impugnatio minus sentitur. Et hoc habet ex causa sua: quia per frequentes actus quibus homo est assuefactus ad virtutem, homo iam dissuevit talibus passionibus obedire, cum consuevit eis
resistere; ex quo sequitur quod minus earum molestias sentiat. Sed praevalet virtus
infusa quantum ad hoc quod facit quod huiusmodi passiones etsi sentiantur, nullo
tamen modo dominentur. Virtus enim infusa facit quod nullo modo obediatur
concupiscentiis peccati; et facit hoc infallibiliter ipsa manente (Marietti).

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acquired virtues give rise to. Certainly, if the cultivation of the acquired
virtues continues to be important, and if the acts required by infused
virtue are identical to those that the acquired virtues would require, then
I should be able to make myself find acts of infused virtue easy and pleasant simply by cultivating the corresponding acquired virtues.This would
likewise be the case if, as has been suggested, the infused virtues are
acquired virtues that have received the further end of supernatural beatitude.23 If the act itself remains unaffected and is merely subordinated to
a further end, then such an account makes sense. Suppose, however, that
the infused and acquired virtues are different not only at the level of ultimate ends but also at the level of proximate ends: not very different, but
different nonetheless, so that if infused virtue would require that I
perform act x, acquired virtue would require that I perform the only
slightly different (but different nonetheless) act x1. In this latter case, I still
do not have a developed capacity that allows me to perform act x with
pleasure and ease.What I have is a developed capacity to perform an act
that is very similar to x with pleasure and ease. As a result of possessing
such a capacity, I may find the doing of x less repugnant than other acts
which are further from x1, but I still have not cultivated a habitual disposition that allows me to do x with pleasure and ease. More importantly,
if the acquired virtues do indeed give rise to different acts than their
infused counterparts do, then it is not at all clear why one who possessed
the infused virtues would want to cultivate a disposition to perform acts
of acquired virtue.Why, instead of cultivating a disposition to perform x1,
wouldn’t I just perform x, secure in the knowledge that by doing so
repeatedly I would dispose myself to receive an increase in infused virtue?
Given the above line of reasoning, the acquired virtues will provide the
facility that the infused virtues initially lack only if those in a state of grace
must continue to cultivate the acquired virtues, and even then, only if the
acts of infused and acquired virtue somehow coincide. One might certainly
attempt to argue that this is the case, but anyone wishing to do so would
have to grapple with the numerous texts where Aquinas appears to deny
this.The moral virtues lie in a mean between excess and defect, and Aquinas
consistently argues that the mean of acquired virtue is different from the
23 See for instance Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St.Thomas Aquinas, 341–42;

Mirkes, “Moral Virtue and Facility,” 218; and Irwin, The Development of Ethics,
647. John Inglis’s view is more complicated, but he likewise seems to find the
notion that the acquired virtues can simply be “directed” to supernatural beatitude unproblematic. See Inglis, “Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral
Virtues,” 19. To answer this question decisively, one needs to consider Aquinas’s
claim that man’s end is “two-fold.”

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mean of infused virtue.24 When he makes such claims, moreover, he consistently argues not only that the infused and acquired virtues sometimes
require different actions but that the proximate end is itself different in each
case.25 When I perform an act of acquired temperance, I seek to preserve
the health of the body.When I perform an act of infused temperance, I seek
to castigate the body and bring it into subjection, albeit in a way that does
not harm my bodily health. Even when the acts are identical to an outside
observer, they are still importantly different. Everything about Aquinas’s
explanation, then, makes it seem as if the acquired virtues create a disposition to perform an act that is similar to, but nonetheless importantly different from, the acts that infused temperance requires. If this is so, then it is not
at all clear why the cultivation of these similar but importantly different
habits is needed to “facilitate” the activity of infused temperance.
One might well use ST I–II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2 to support the more minimal position described earlier: that one who has previously cultivated the
acquired virtues will, when he receives grace and the infused virtues, find
acts of infused virtue less difficult.Aquinas clearly asserts in other texts that
the cultivation of the acquired virtues disposes one to receive the infused
virtues in the first place.26 One thing such a claim might mean is that one
who has cultivated acquired virtues has removed many of the obstacles that
stand between him and the infused virtues. The gluttonous convert probably will face more obstacles in his attempt to perform acts of infused
24 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 63, a. 4: Manifestum est autem quod alterius rationis est

modus qui imponitur in huiusmodi concupiscentiis secundum regulam rationis
humanae, et secundum regulam divinam. Puta in sumptione ciborum, ratione
humana modus statuitur ut non noceat valetudini corporis, nec impediat rationis actum, secundum autem regulam legis divinae, requiritur quod homo castiget
corpus suum, et in servitutem redigat, per abstinentiam cibi et potus, et aliorum
huiusmodi. Unde manifestum est quod temperantia infusa et acquisita differunt
specie, et eadem ratio est de aliis virtutibus (Leon. 6.410–411). See also Aquinas,
In Sent. III, d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, qa. 4, ad 2 and Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de
Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a.10, ad 8.
25 See Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 63, a. 4, obj. 1 and ad 1; In Sent. III, d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, qa.
4, obj. 2; Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a. 10, obj.
9. It is also noteworthy that Aquinas often uses “object” and “proximate end”
interchangeably in these texts. The objector in ST I–II, q. 63, a. 4, obj. 1, for
instance, uses “proximate end,” and Aquinas responds by speaking of the “object.”
26 Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a. 11: Unde
sicut virtutes acquisitae augentur ex actibus per quos causantur, ita virtutes
infusae augentur per actionem Dei, a quo causantur. Actus autem nostri
comparantur ad augmentum caritatis et virtutum infusarum, ut disponentes, sicut
ad caritatem a principio obtinendam; homo enim faciens quod in se est,
praeparat se, ut a Deo recipiat caritatem (Marietti).

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temperance than will a convert who previously cultivated acquired temperance.This does not mean, however, that the latter individual will not face
obstacles, or that he will find acts of infused temperance easy. It does not
even necessarily mean, importantly, that one’s previously acquired temperance will not present an obstacle in its own right: it might merely mean
that acquired temperance is less of an obstacle than the acquired vices are.27
It is important to distinguish between the claim that the cultivation of the
acquired virtues prepares one to receive the infused virtues, and the claim
that the acquired virtues somehow complete the infused virtues.The former
assertion merely holds that the cultivation of acquired virtues somehow
makes the pagan more receptive to the gift of grace.28 One can agree to
such an assertion without conceding anything about the role that the
acquired virtues play after the infusion of grace. The latter assertion,
however, claims a continued role for the cultivation of the acquired virtues
even after the infusion of grace, and it claims that the infused virtues
depend on such cultivation for any ease or facility of action.
III. Acquired Prudence “Completes” Infused Prudence:
ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 1
A third text commonly cited as evidence of the interdependence
between the infused and acquired virtues is found in the fourteenth article of question 47 of the secunda secundae. Several scholars cite this text as
evidence that infused prudence relies on acquired prudence for its
perfection. In reality, as I will show in this section, such claims involve
considerable over-interpretation of the text. In order to see this more
clearly, however, it is necessary to begin by examining a word that appears
in this text, namely “industria.” I will argue that scholars mistake the
meaning of this term and in doing so mistake the very narrow argument
of ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 1 for a much broader one.
Industria appears in several different places in Aquinas’s corpus, and in
each of those places it has to do with diligent or purposeful action. It is
industria, for example, that Aquinas uses to express the difference between
sinful acts that occur unintentionally or as a result of passion and those
that are done deliberately.29 When an individual sins through industria, he
27 The disposition to eat the amount most conducive to the body’s health might be

less of an obstacle to the body’s “castigation and subjection” than gluttony, but
there is nothing to say that it will not be an obstacle in its own right.
28 For an interesting hypothesis about how this occurs, see Brian Shanley, “Pagan
Virtue,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 553–77.
29 See for instance Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 24, a. 3, obj. 3; ST I–II, q. 47, a. 2; and ST
I–II, q. 78, a. 1, among others.

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puts deliberate thought into the commission of his sin.30 Such sins are,
of course, worse than sins of passion. Industria is likewise used to capture
the idea that one can alter one’s natural inclinations. In his account of
modesty, for example, Aquinas argues that even if some are not naturally
inclined to modesty, they can remedy the defects of nature through the
industria rationis. 31
Although the word industria does not appear frequently in Aquinas’s
discussions of virtue, it is clear that industria has at least something to do
with virtue. One cannot develop virtues or perform virtuous actions
unless one consciously sets out to perform virtuous acts. It is through such
deliberate actions that one is able, for instance, to overcome the natural
inclinations that dispose toward vicious actions, and hence it is unsurprising that Aquinas says that those who are not naturally inclined toward
modesty can become so through the industria rationis. Such deliberate
action will likewise play an important part, as we shall see, in prudence.At
the same time, it is important to notice that even if industria may turn out
to be a necessary condition of virtue, industria is not a virtue. It merely
describes a feature of action, namely the purposefulness or the deliberateness or the conscious effort involved in that action. Such industria, moreover, can be a feature of good actions and bad actions alike. With this
background in place, we can now turn to ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 1.
Many scholars maintain that for Aquinas infused prudence is incomplete unless it is complemented by acquired prudence. Infused prudence,
these scholars argue, gives man prudence only “in those things necessary
for salvation.” Because of this, even those who possess the infused virtue
of prudence need to cultivate acquired prudence, so that they will possess
prudence not only in those things necessary for salvation, but in all
aspects of life. Josef Pieper, arguing for this point, writes: “It is true that
every Christian receives in baptism, along with the new life of friendship
with God, a new supernatural ‘infused’ prudence. But, says Thomas, this
prudence granted to every Christian is limited solely to what is necessary
30 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 78, a. 4 s.c.: Sed contra est quod peccatum quod ex indus-

tria committitur, ex hoc ipso graviorem poenam meretur, secundum illud Iob
XXXIV, quasi impios percussit eos in loco videntium, qui quasi de industria
recesserunt ab eo. Sed poena non augetur nisi propter gravitatem culpae. Ergo
peccatum ex hoc aggravatur, quod est ex industria, seu certa militia (Leon.7.75).
31 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 168, a. 1, ad 2: Ad secundum dicendum quod, quamvis ex
naturali dispositione habeat homo aptitudinem ad hanc vel illam dispositionem
exteriorum motuum, tamen quod deest naturae, potest suppleri ex industria
rationis. Unde Ambrosius dicit, in I de Offic. motum natura informat, si quid sane
in natura vitii est, industria emendet (Leon. 10.350).

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for his eternal salvation; there is, however, a different,‘fuller’ prudence, not
immediately granted in baptism, which enables a man to make provision
for himself and others . . . this is that prudence in which supernatural
grace has united with the prerequisite of naturally perfected ability.”32
The “fullest” form of prudence, Pieper concludes, occurs when infused
and acquired prudence “are combined . . . in a graced unity.”33 A virtually identical account is offered by Dell’Olio, who argues that “the principles of natural prudence and supernatural prudence form a fuller,
unified wisdom.”34 Like Pieper, Dell’Olio believes that the supernatural
prudence infused in baptism “extends only to what is necessary for salvation.”35 There is, however, another “fuller” prudence, which is present
only “in those Christians who also have acquired prudence through their
own natural capacities.”36 Thus, Dell’Olio argues, success in the moral life
requires that the Christian cultivate both acquired and infused virtue.
Other scholars offer similar accounts.37
If Aquinas does indeed hold that there is a “fuller” prudence that
consists of both the infused prudence that “extends to those things necessary for salvation” and the acquired prudence that extends to everything
else, then his position is a confusing one, for it implies that some activities in life require infused prudence while others require acquired prudence.
It is not at all clear, moreover, how the “fuller” prudence described above is
really a “union” of both virtues. Before worrying about the details of such
a claim, however, it is important to examine whether or not such a position can really be attributed to Aquinas.
All of those who argue that those who possess infused prudence also
need to cultivate acquired prudence in order to possess prudence “fully”
cite the same text in defense of their claims, namely the fourteenth article of question 47 of the secunda secundae.After addressing in the thirteenth
article the question of whether sinners can possess prudence, Aquinas
turns in the fourteenth article to the question of “utrum prudentia sit in
omnibus habentibus gratiam.” The first objection argues that prudence
cannot be in all who have grace. In order to have prudence, the objector
argues, one must have “industria,” because it is through this that individ32 Pieper, Prudence (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959), 14.
33 Ibid.
34 Dell’Olio, Foundations of Moral Selfhood, 136.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 See for instance Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 87–88 and Bonnie Kent, “Habits and

Virtues,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 124–25.

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uals “sciant bene providere quae agenda sunt.” Since many of those who
have grace lack industria, the objector argues, not all those who have grace
also have prudence.38
I will turn to Aquinas’s reply in a moment, but before doing so it is
important to note two things that are relevant to the present discussion.
The first noteworthy point is that Aquinas has already raised and
responded to a similar objection in the prima secundae.There, in the course
of examining whether one can have moral virtue without intellectual
virtue, Aquinas is faced with the objection that not all of those who have
moral virtues have intellectual virtues.The intellectual virtues, the objector argues, require that man use his reason perfectly. But many of those
who do not use their reason well are “virtuous, and acceptable to God.”
Thus, the objector argues, one can have the moral virtues without the
intellectual virtues.39 Aquinas responds that those who have the moral
virtues need not be able to reason well in every respect, but only regarding those things where virtuous action is required. And this kind of good
reasoning, he argues, is in all who have virtue. In this way, says Aquinas,
even some of those who seem simple are prudent.40 Even in the prima
secundae, then, Aquinas distinguishes between the kinds of abilities needed
for prudence and the kinds of abilities needed for other things.
The second noteworthy point has to do with what it is that the objector claims some of those who possess grace lack. In the prima secundae
text, the objector argued that some of the people who have the moral
virtues aren’t smart enough to have intellectual virtues. In the secunda
secundae text, the objection is similar but slightly different: some of those
who possess grace don’t possess the industria that prudence requires.The
objection, then, does not focus on prudence itself, but on a claim about

38 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, obj. 1:Videtur quod prudentia non sit in omnibus

habentibus gratiam.Ad prudentiam enim requiritur industria quaedam, per quam
sciant bene providere quae agenda sunt. Sed multi habentes gratiam carent tali
industria. Ergo non omnes habentes gratiam habent prudentiam (Leon. 8.362).
39 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 58, a. 4, obj. 2: Praeterea, per virtutem intellectualem homo
consequitur rationis usum perfectum. Sed quandoque contingit quod aliqui in
quibus non multum viget usus rationis, sunt virtuosi et Deo accepti. Ergo videtur quod virtus moralis possit esse sine virtute intellectuali (Leon. 6.375).
40 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 58, a. 4, ad 2:Ad secundum dicendum quod in virtuoso non
oportet quod vigeat usus rationis quantum ad omnia, sed solum quantum ad ea
quae sunt agenda secundum virtutem. Et sic usus rationis viget in omnibus virtuosis. Unde etiam qui videntur simplices, eo quod carent mundana astutia, possunt
esse prudentes; secundum illud Matth. X, estote prudentes sicut serpentes, et
simplices sicut columbae (Leon. 8.375).

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a necessary condition of prudence, namely industria.41 As we saw above,
however, this merely amounts to the claim that individuals cannot possess
prudence unless they are diligent about finding out what needs to be
done. The objector is merely making a point about something that one
must possess in order to be prudent. One cannot have prudence unless
one is motivated: one cannot have prudence unless one is diligent about
finding out what should and should not be done. Not all of those who
are in a state of grace, the objector argues, are so motivated.
Aquinas replies to the objection that not all those in a state of grace
possess industria by distinguishing two different kinds of industria. One kind
of industria, says Aquinas, is “sufficient” for those things that are necessary for
salvation. Since grace “teaches all things,” this kind of industria is given to all
those who possess grace.There is another, fuller industria, however,“through
which one is able to provide for himself and others, not only concerning
those things necessary for salvation, but even concerning all matters pertaining to human life, and such industria is not in all who have grace.”42
It is important to be clear about what Aquinas’s response does and does
not say. The objector raises a concern about the industria that is a necessary condition for infused prudence.Aquinas responds that those who are
in a state of grace are at least motivated to learn what they should do in
order to pursue eternal salvation.43 They might not be similarly diligent
in other areas of their lives; the latter is a “fuller” sort of industria, and is
not possessed by all those who are in a state of grace. It is certainly true
that industria in things necessary for salvation is a prerequisite of infused
41 Aquinas also uses this word in ST II–II, q. 47, a. 13, ad 3 in the context of

explaining how it is that the sinner can deliberate well and yet not possess
prudence. Aquinas responds that the wicked cannot deliberate well about the
ultimate end, but that they can have a certain naturalis industria which can be used
for either good or bad. Aquinas compares such a one to Aristotle’s deinotica.
Aquinas’s use of industria in other contexts suggests that even here translations
such as the one offered by Gilby—“native shrewdness”—are overstated. When
Aquinas describes the shrewdness or cleverness that is a part of prudence, he uses
a different word, namely solertia. See Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 49, a. 4, tit: Utrum
solertia sit pars prudentiae.
42 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 1: Est autem alia industria plenior, per quam
aliquis sibi et aliis potest providere, non solum de his quae sunt necessari ad
salute, sed etiam de quibuscumque pertinentibus ad humanam vitam; et talis
industria non est in omnibus habentibus gratiam (Leon. 8.362).
43 Baptized infants and those who are in a state of grace but similarly unable to use
their reason clearly require a special explanation. One natural explanation would
be offer the same explanation for their industria that Aquinas offers for the other
infused virtues, namely the distinction between habitus and usus. This point is
explained in what immediately follows.

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prudence, so that one cannot possess infused prudence unless one makes
an effort to learn what actions are necessary for salvation. Nothing
Aquinas has said, however, implies that this “fuller” industria has anything
to do with the union of infused and acquired prudence. Aquinas has not
said anything about the interdependence of infused and acquired
prudence; indeed, he has not said anything about prudence at all. He has
only argued that the kind of industria that is a necessary condition of
infused prudence is present in those who possess grace. Can we conclude
that one who possesses “fuller” industria possesses both infused and acquired
virtue? Absent some account of what such “fuller” industria amounts to, or
of how the infusion of grace affects existing acquired virtues, or some
account of whether and how the infused and acquired virtues interact, or
whether one who possesses infused virtue is even capable of cultivating
separate acquired virtues, it does not seem that we can.
The text commonly cited as evidence of the interdependence between
the infused and acquired virtues, then, falls far short of establishing such a
connection. Nor do the surrounding articles indicate that such connection
exists.Aquinas mentions acquired prudence once in article 14, and he does
so only in order to contrast acquired prudence with the main form of
prudence under discussion, namely infused prudence. The third objection
argues that because the young have grace but not prudence, prudence is not
in all who have grace.44 Aquinas replies by distinguishing infused and
acquired prudence. Acquired prudence, says Aquinas, comes from practice,
so that the young possess it neither in habit nor in act. Infused prudence,
though, comes from God, and hence baptized infants have prudence and the
other virtues, even if they do not yet perform the activities of those virtues.
Aquinas then explains how infused prudence becomes perfect.When one
performs acts of infused virtue repeatedly, one merits their increase, and
hence infused prudence becomes perfect,“even as the other virtues do.”45
What Aquinas does not say in his response to the third objection is as
interesting as what he does say. If it were really the case that those with
44 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, obj. 3: Praeterea, philosophus dicit, in III Topic.,

quod iuvenes non constat esse prudentes. Sed multi iuvenes habent gratiam. Ergo
prudentia non invenitur in omnibus gratiam habentibus (Leon. 8.362).
45 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 3: Ad tertium dicendum quod prudentia
acquisita causatur ex exercitio actuum, unde indiget ad sui generationem experimento et tempore, ut dicitur in II Ethic. Unde non potest esse in iuvenibus nec
secundum habitum nec secundum actum. Sed prudentia gratuita causatur ex
infusione divina. Unde in pueris baptizatis nondum habentibus usum rationis est
prudentia secundum habitum, sed non secundum actum, sicut et in amentibus.
In his autem qui iam habent usum rationis est etiam secundum actum quantum
ad ea quae sunt de necessitate salutis, sed per exercitium meretur augmentum

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infused prudence needed to cultivate acquired prudence in order to
achieve a “fuller” prudence that comprised a union of the two virtues,
then the third objection would provide an ideal place for Aquinas to offer
such an explanation. Such an explanation, however, is not forthcoming.
Instead, Aquinas offers an explanation of how infused and acquired
prudence differ. When he then proceeds to explain how infused
prudence is “perfected,” moreover, he makes no mention of the need to
cultivate acquired prudence.To the contrary,Aquinas simply explains that
when one performs acts of infused virtues, one merits their increase, and
that as those virtues increase, they are perfected.
Conclusions
In the preceding sections, I argued that the texts cited in defense of some
common theses about the relationship between the infused and acquired
virtues fall short of establishing the positions they supposedly support.
My analysis of these texts, if correct, lends support to those who claim
that Aquinas’s position on the relationship between the infused and
acquired virtues is simply unclear. It is important to emphasize, however,
that I have not argued in favor of a specific theory of the relationship
between the infused and acquired virtues, and I certainly have not argued
that no such relationship exists. I have not even argued that the texts
examined above are the only texts one might cite in defense of such a
claim. I have argued only that if such a relationship does exist, proof of
such a relationship must be sought elsewhere than in the texts that are
commonly cited as evidence of it.
If I am correct in arguing that claims about the relationship between
the infused and acquired virtues are under-supported by the texts
commonly cited in defense of those claims, then it is only natural to
wonder where one might look for other more substantive evidence of
that relationship. Aquinas, however, is of very little help in this regard.
Aside from insisting that the infused virtues exist, that they are the only
“true” virtues, and that they differ in important ways from their acquired
counterparts,Aquinas says very little about how the infused and acquired
virtues are related.46
quousque perficiatur, sicut et ceterae virtutes. Unde et apostolus dicit, ad Heb.V,
quod perfectorum est solidus cibus, qui pro consuetudine exercitatos habent
sensus ad discretionem boni et mali (Leon. 8.362).
46 In Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus: De virtutibus in communis, a.10, ad 4,Aquinas
does say that the acquired virtues can be meritorious only through the “mediation” of the infused virtues.Although this claim is frequently cited, its cash value
remains unclear.

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Given Aquinas’s silence about the relationship between the infused and
acquired virtues, one reasonable strategy might be to consider whether a
given thesis about the relationship between the infused and acquired
virtues can be made compatible with Aquinas’s account. While such a
method seems vague, it actually provides considerable concrete guidance.
For Aquinas does make a number of assertions about the differences
between the infused and acquired virtues. For instance, we have already
seen that—at least according to Aquinas—the infused and acquired
virtues are specifically different, that one cannot increase the infused
virtues through one’s own power, and that the mean of acquired virtue
differs from that of infused virtue. Aquinas also insists that the infused
virtues are “proportionate” to supernatural beatitude in a way that the
acquired virtues are not. For those who wish to propose theories about
the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues, then, these
explicit claims are a reasonable starting point. If one wishes to propose a
theory of the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues, then
one should begin by explaining how the theory is compatible with
Aquinas’s explicit remarks. If it cannot be made to fit Aquinas’s explicit
remarks, then it cannot serve as a genuinely “Thomistic” account of the
relationship between the infused and acquired virtues.
N&V

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St. Thomas Aquinas’s Treatment of
the Name “Father” in ST I, q. 33, a. 2
J OHN B APTIST K U, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

I N THE Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas’s speculative analysis dealing with the relationships among procession, relation, and person (ST I,
qq. 27–32) culminates in an understanding of the names of the divine
persons given in Scripture. Gilles Emery observes that the persons are the
organizational key to the Summa theologiae’s Trinitarian treatise and that
Aquinas’s consideration of the divine persons is an exposé of the divine
personal names.1 Having identified a divine person as a subsisting relation
in the divine essence (ST I, q. 29), Aquinas then considers the person’s
name (qq. 33–38). In the question on the Father (ST I, q. 33), Thomas
devotes two of the four articles to this naming: a. 2 on whether “Father” is
1 Concerning the organizational key to the Summa theologiae: Gilles Emery, Trinity in

Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003), 134–37. Concerning the personal
names (“Father,”“Unbegotten,”“Word” and “Son,”“Image,”“Holy Spirit,”“Love”
and “Gift”): Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans.
Francesca Aran Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 151. Gilles
Emery, “Le Père et l’oeuvre trinitaire de création selon le Commentaire des
Sentences de s. Thomas d’Aquin,” in Ordo Sapientia et Amour: Hommage au
Professeur J.-P.Torrell, ed. C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires,
1993), 89, notes that although Aquinas carefully examines the names “Word,”
“Image,”“Love” and “Holy Spirit” in the Sentences Commentary, there is no article
on the name “Father.”There Thomas treats of “principle” and “innascibility,” exposing the priority of the personal aspect to that of the essential aspect concerning the
term “principle.” The Summa theologiae follows this logic concerning the name
“Father” and establishes precisely that it is fitting to the Father to be a principle
(ST I, q. 33, a. 1). In both the Scriptum, or commentary on the Sentences, and the
Summa theologiae, the consideration of the Father is completed by the question on
adoptive filiation (In III Sent., d. 10, q. 2 and ST III, q. 23).

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properly the name of a divine person, and a. 3 on whether “Father” is primarily
a personal name. In the pages that follow, we will examine ST I, q. 33, a. 2
and its four objections in order:
I. a name identifies a person uniquely (corp.),
II. relation signifies a person (ad 1),
III. “Father” is the best name for this person (ad 2),
IV. “Father” is properly attributed to this person (ad 3),
V. the Father is the prime analogate of paternity (ad 4).
The third objection will lead us to an extended reflection on Thomas’s
use of analogy and metaphor, and the fourth objection to a detailed
consideration of Thomas’s theology of generation and the procession of
the Word.
I. A person’s Name Identifies Him Uniquely
(ST I, q. 33, a. 2, corp.)
In keeping with the central placement of the concept of relation in his
Trinitarian theology, Thomas shows in this article that the most proper
name for the innascible Genitor is “Father”—a relational name. The
Father is most properly named for his relation of fatherhood, by which
he is constituted; he is this relation. Aquinas begins this article by
confirming the intuitive understanding that a person’s name uniquely
identifies him:
The proper name of any person signifies that by which the person is
distinguished from all others. . . . Now that by which the person of the
Father is distinguished from all others is paternity. Hence the proper name
of the person of the Father is the name “Father,” which signifies paternity.2

2 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, corp.: “Respondeo dicendum quod nomen proprium cuiuslibet

personae significat id per quod illa persona distinguitur ab omnibus aliis. . . . Id
autem per quod distinguitur persona Patris ab omnibus aliis, est paternitas. Unde
proprium nomen personae Patris est hoc nomen Pater, quod significat paternitatem.” As a Christian theologian, Thomas not only appeals to the language of
Scripture but also has the intention of showing speculatively why the language of
Scripture is normative. Emery notes this concerning this second article of ST I,
q. 33. Here Aquinas begins with an argument that a name should uniquely identify the one named. Emery remarks that if we do not understand Thomas’s intention, we might suppose that he should simply have begun with a consideration
of the name “Father” in the New Testament. But, continues Emery, Aquinas’s
intention here is precisely to give an account of the language proper to Scripture;
he endeavors to show why the language proper to Scripture is imperative. Emery,
The Trinitarian Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas, 153.

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Here in the Summa theologiae, moving with customary haste, Thomas
offers a shorthand account of how “that by which the person of the
Father is distinguished from all others is paternity.” He gives a more
detailed answer in Compendium theologiae I, ch. 57:
Three properties belong to the Father: one by which he is distinguished from the Son alone, and this is paternity; another by which he
is distinguished from two, namely the Son and the Holy Spirit, and this
is innascibility . . . ; the third is that by which the Father himself, with
the Son, is distinguished at the same time from the Holy Spirit, and it
is called common spiration.3

So, it should be noted that the Father is not distinguished only by paternity; rather, he is distinguished by all three of his properties. Now, it could
be argued that according to the logic that a name must signify “that by
which the person is distinct from all others,” the Father would better be
named “the Innascible” than “the Father” since innascibility distinguishes
him from both the Son and the Holy Spirit while paternity distinguishes
him only from the Son. But “the Innascible” proves not to be the most
fitting name for the Father because innascibility does not distinguish and
constitute the person of the Father. Innascibility, which is a denial of a relation, distinguishes the Father from both other persons, not by relative
opposition but by the uniqueness of its character.That is, the Father alone
has no origin, and this dignity enjoyed by the Father is not a relation but
precisely a lack thereof. Innascibility and spiration both conceptually
presuppose paternity, which constitutes and distinguishes the person of the
Father. So, the Father can be said to be distinct from all other persons by
reason of his paternity in that his other two properties presuppose his
paternity, which by itself distinctly constitutes his person. Aquinas makes
clear that common spiration is not subordinate to filiation, but if the
person is viewed as a subsistent relation, as in Thomas’s doctrine, the
property that constitutes the person will inevitably enjoy a conceptual
priority. The name “Father” is specifically referred to the Son, but to a
Son who co-spirates: he is a Word “breathing forth Love.”4 In this article
3 CT I, ch. 57: “tres oportet Patri conuenire: una qua distinguatur a Filio solo, et

hec est paternitas; alia qua distinguatur a duobus, scilicet Filio et Spiritu Sancto,
et hec est innascibilitas . . . ; tertia est qua ipse Pater simul cum Filio distinguitur
a Spiritu Sancto, et hec dicitur communis spiratio.” Unless otherwise indicated,
all English translations of both primary and secondary sources are my own.
4 ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2:“Verbum . . . spirans Amorem.” In Ioan., ch. 6:45 (lec. 5, no.
946).

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from the prima pars, Thomas establishes with theological rigor the intuitive notion that a person’s name uniquely identifies him.
II. Relation Signifies the Person (ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 1)
All four of the objections in ST I, q. 33, a. 2 deal with our attempt to
name God by some kind of analogy or image in the created order,
namely by our understanding of “relation” (objection 1),“father” (objection 2), “word” (objection 3), and “generation” (objection 4). The first
objection suggests that “Father” is not the proper name of a divine
person, because “Father” signifies a relation, whereas a divine person is an
individual substance. In his reply, Aquinas exposes the objection’s failure
to appreciate the difference in the way that paternity exists in God and
among creatures, and he concludes that the Father is best named for his
relation of paternity:
Among creatures a relation is not a subsisting person.Therefore, among
us the name “father” signifies not a person but the relation of a person.
In God, however, this is not so, as some mistakenly opined. For the relation signified by the name “Father” is a subsisting person. Hence, as was
said above [in q. 29, a. 4], the word “person” in God signifies a relation
as subsisting in the divine nature.5

In qq. 27–29, Aquinas scrupulously constructs an argument showing that
divine processions give rise to opposed real relations which constitute the
divine persons. Here he applies that conclusion to the specific case of the
Father: “Father” does not only signify the way this person is related to
another person; it signifies the person himself.“Father”“signifies a relation
as subsisting.”6 In drawing our attention to the fact that God is not like
created fathers, who are constituted as human beings and are only accidentally changed by their fatherhood, this reply impels us not to overlook the
profound theological significance of the fact that the Father is named after
the relation by which he is constituted. This affirmation can easily be
extended to deal with other theological problems, such as Eunomius’s
5 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 1:“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod apud nos relatio non est

subsistens persona: et ideo hoc nomen pater, apud nos, non significat personam,
sed relationem personae. Non autem est ita in divinis, ut quidam falso opinati
sunt: nam relatio quam significat hoc nomen Pater, est subsistens persona. Unde
supra dictum est quod hoc nomen persona in divinis significat relationem ut
subsistentem in divina natura.” In In I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, corp. and In I Sent.,
d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, corp.,Thomas identifies the Porretans as mistakenly opining that
the properties are in the persons as accompanying and are not the persons themselves.
6 ST I, q. 29, a. 4, corp.:“Persona igitur divina significat relationem ut subsistentem.”

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suggestion that the name “Father” concerns an activity of God and is not a
proper personal name.7 In Aquinas’s account, just as “Father” is not simply
the way this person is related, so neither is it merely the way he acts.
III. “Father” Is the Most Proper Name for this Person
(ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 2)
Thomas moves on to entertain an objection to the name “Father,” in
favor of a name like “Begetter,” based on the idea that a more general
name for God is always better than a more specific name. That is, on
account of God’s transcendence of our comprehension, the less specific
we are, the less inaccurate.Thomas articulates this principle in ST I, q. 13,
a 11, where he confirms that for God, the most general title “he who is,”
is the most fitting. And in ST I, q. 33, a. 1, ad 1,Thomas reintroduces this
principle in his determination that “principle” is superior to “cause” in
describing the Father, since “principle” is a more general term than
“cause.”8 Here in ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 2, he explains why, despite this principle, when it comes to naming the Father, the more general name
“Begetter” is not better than the more specific name “Father”:
According to the Philosopher in book II of the De Anima, the name of
a thing ought to come above all from its perfection and end. Now generation signifies something in the process of becoming, but paternity signifies the complement of generation.Therefore,“Father” is more properly
the name of the divine person than “the One begetting” or “Begetter.”9

In ST I, q. 40, a. 2,Thomas will rank the name “Begetter” below “Father”
since origin is incapable of intrinsically distinguishing and constituting a
hypostasis. Here he expresses the same idea less technically, in terms of
perfection. “Father” is most properly the name of this divine person
7 Eunomius of Cyzicus, Apologie, ed. C. Mondésert, trans. Bernard Sesboüé, Sources

chrétiennes, vol. 305 (Paris: Cerf, 1983), ch. 24 (p. 282, lines 26–28). Basil of
Caesarea, Contre Eunome, ed. C. Mondésert, trans. Bernard Sesboüé, Sources chrétiennes, vol. 299, 305 (Paris: Cerf, 1982–83), bk. 1, ch. 24 (p. 256, lines 13–15),
rejects Eunomius’s position.
8 Admittedly, the more profound reason for rejecting the term “cause” is its implication of a dependence of the effect on the cause; but since a cause is a specific
case of a principle, the argument that the broader term is better does follow.
9 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod, secundum Philosophum,
in II de Anima, denominatio rei maxime debet fieri a perfectione et fine. Generatio autem significat ut in fieri: sed paternitas significat complementum generationis. Et ideo potius est nomen divinae personae Pater, quam generans vel genitor.”
For Aristotle’s text, see Aristotle, On the Soul, ed.Walter Stanley Hett, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 288 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), bk. 2, ch. 4
(pp. 92–94, 416b24).

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because paternity signifies not only the source of generation but generation’s coming to completion and the fruit thereof, the very complement
(complementum ). “Father” signifies the person in himself and refers to the
relation, which expresses formal completion. “Begetter” signifies the
person in his act and refers to the action, which expresses origin. The
distinction here concerns the mode of signification. Now, the Dominican master could simply have ruled in favor of “Father” because it is the
name God himself reveals in Scripture; here Aquinas takes the trouble to
show the harmony between faith and reason, demonstrating that this
Scriptural name does not contravene theological principles that have
been articulated in defense of the faith elsewhere.
IV. “Father” Is Properly Attributed—Analogously
and Not Only Metaphorically
In this section, we will consider (A) the proper attribution of the name
“Father” within the Trinity, which will entail an examination of Aquinas’s
understanding of (B) analogy and (C) metaphor.
A. Proper Attribution (ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 3 )
As we have noted above, in q. 33, a. 2, ad 1, Aquinas observes that “among
us the name ‘father’ signifies not a person but the relation of a person”
while in God “the relation signified by the name ‘Father’ is a subsisting
person.” In ad 3, he again points out the difference between the created and
uncreated orders, this time with respect to the Word.The objection argues
that since in man a word does not subsist and is thus only metaphorically
a “son,”“offspring,” or “something begotten,” therefore any begetter is only
metaphorically the “father” of a “word.” But in the first question in the treatise on the Trinity of the Summa theologiae (q. 27), Aquinas establishes that
“the Word proceeding proceeds as subsisting in the same nature [as the
Father] and so is properly called the ‘begotten’ and a ‘Son.’ ”10 Here in q. 33,
a. 2, he repeats that conclusion, adding that the name “Father” is properly
attributed to him who speaks that Word subsisting in the same nature:
In human nature a word is not something subsisting, and hence cannot
properly be called “begotten” or a “son.” But the divine Word is something subsisting in the divine nature and hence is properly and not
metaphorically called a “Son”; and his principle is called a “Father.”11
10 ST I, q. 27, a. 2, ad 2: “unde verbum procedens procedit ut eiusdem naturae

subsistens. Et propter hoc proprie dicitur genitum et Filius.”
11 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 3:“Ad tertium dicendum quod verbum non est aliquid subsis-

tens in natura humana: unde non proprie potest dici genitum vel filius. Sed

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Because the Word shares the same nature as the principle from which he
proceeds, this procession qualifies for the definition of a “birth,” and the
names “Father” and “Son” are properly and not only metaphorically
predicated.
In ST I, q. 13, a. 3,Thomas lays the groundwork for our proper predication of names for the God who transcends us. In order to grasp the significance of Thomas’s deceptively simple assertion here in q. 33 that
“Father” is “the proper name of the person of the Father,”12 a brief
consideration of Thomas’s use of analogy and metaphor is in order.
B. Analogy
Univocal predication describes the use of the same word in the same way
for different objects. For instance, Lassie and Snuppy (the first cloned
dog) are both equally described by the term “dog.” Equivocal predication
describes the use of a word in completely different ways for the different
objects. For example, a tree has one sort of “bark” and a dog has quite
another. The richest exploitation of speech, however, stretches words
beyond univocity but not to the point of the dissociation of equivocity.
This powerful exercise of language is found in analogy and metaphor.
An analogy is a comparison that is neither univocal nor purely equivocal. It is somewhere between the two.Thomas’s theological deployment
of analogy is based on his understanding of creation as an effect of God,
who is a universal cause. In his explanation of creation,Thomas employs
the Aristotelian principle that every effect resembles its cause but imperfectly.The effect always possesses the cause’s perfections less perfectly than
the cause itself possesses them. Nevertheless, the effect resembles the
cause, otherwise the cause would not be causing anything. So, there is a
real resemblance between created things and the God who causes them,
despite the fact that God and creatures are more dissimilar than similar.
That is, God is uncreated, all-perfect, and eternal, while we are utterly
dependent at every moment on God for our existence and, as mere
participators in being, are ontologically more similar to non-existence
Verbum divinum est aliquid subsistens in natura divina: unde proprie, et non
metaphorice, dicitur Filius, et eius principium, Pater.” A mistranslation of proprie
as “literally” instead of “properly” in the Benziger edition is unfortunately
repeated in the Gilby edition. See ST I, q. 1, a. 9, on whether Scripture should
use metaphors and ST I, q. 13, a. 3, on whether some names can be applied properly to God. A metaphor is an example of literal speech that is not proper speech. In
Thomas’s vocabulary, the opposite of the literal sense is the spiritual sense, as he
makes clear in ST I, q. 1, a. 10.
12 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, corp.

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than we are to God’s existence.13 Even so, our existence resembles God’s
because he is the cause of it, and we can thus conclude that created reality is analogous to God’s reality: God exists, and created things exist.When
we say that we exist and God exists, we use not an equivocal sense of
“exist” but an analogical one:
Likeness of creatures to God is not said to be on account of agreement
in form according to the same definition of genus or species, but only
according to analogy, inasmuch as God is a being by his essence but others
are beings by participation.14

It is therefore possible to know God through creatures. In fact, our
knowledge of God, on this side of heaven, is only with reference to
created things:
In this life we cannot see God in his essence; but through creatures we
know him as their principle and by way of his excelling and transcending them. In this way therefore he can be named by us from creatures, yet not as if the name that signifies him expresses the divine
essence as it is in itself.15

There is a flexibility in analogous concepts that reflects analogous reality. As a result, the lived use of concepts in judgment, and not formal
logic, provides the necessary context for understanding analogy.The flexible usage of analogous concepts rests not merely on the content of the
concept itself in our minds but also on the exercise of judgment.16 We
are capable of signifying what we do not completely understand. Indeed,
we must do so even concerning those things which do not naturally
exceed our capacity to know, but about which we still have more to
learn. For instance, when a child on a boat sees a whale and shouts
“whale!” the child might have a very weak grasp of what a whale is, as
13 Cf. De potentia, q. 3, a. 1, ad 3.
14 ST I, q. 4, a. 3, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod non dicitur esse similitudo

creaturae ad Deum propter communicantiam in forma secundum eandem
rationem generis et speciei: sed secundum analogiam tantum; prout scilicet Deus
est ens per essentiam, et alia per participationem.” Cf. ST I, q. 13, a. 5, corp.
15 ST I, q. 13, a. 1, corp.:“Deus in hac vita non potest a nobis videri per suam essentiam; sed cognoscitur a nobis ex creaturis, secundum habitudinem principii, et
per modum excellentiae et remotionis. Sic igitur potest nominari a nobis ex
creaturis: non tamen ita quod nomen significans ipsum, exprimat divinam essentiam secundum quod est.”
16 This is W. Norris Clarke’s conclusion. See his “Analogy and the Meaningfulness
of Language About God:A Reply to Kai Nielsen,” The Thomist 40 (1976): 67–69.

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compared to a dolphin, a shark, or even a crocodile. But the child does
not signify a vague concept in his mind; he signifies that thing swimming
in the water, that is indeed a real whale. And he signifies a whale no less
than an expert marine biologist does.17 When we signify God the Father,
we rely on divine revelation and not on our own firm grasp of the world
by means of our five senses. But our ignorance of the transcendent God
does not prevent us from speaking of him; that is, we are not relegated to
speaking of our own ideas of God. If pressed to say whom we mean
when we speak of God the Father, we would ultimately have to explain
that we mean the one Jesus was talking about. And we are able to do this
because with the power of judgment, we can extend analogous terms to
signify beyond the range of our experience.18 Our intellect can make a
judgment about the transcendent God, by way of analogy, based on a
concept derived from the sensible realm.We name the effect but signify
the cause.19 On this point, it is critical to distinguish the thing signified
(res significata ) as it is in itself, from the thing as understood conceptually
in our limited minds (ratio nominis), according to our limited way of
speaking (modus significandi ).20 The mind uses the ratio nominis to signify
the res significata, comprehending all the while that the earthly modus
significandi and ratio nominis cannot apply to God. By deliberately withholding the application of our modus significandi to God, we intentionally
separate from God creaturely imperfections and the imperfect manner in
which creatures possess perfections.21 Therefore, we can properly affirm
truths about God, provided that we realize that our concepts and way of
understanding cannot do justice to the truth we are affirming of God.
Aquinas affirms that in this “negative” judgment, the intellect transcends
its own mode of understanding:
17 I borrow this cogent example from Timothy Smith, Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian

Theology: A Study in Theological Method (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 196.
18 Gregory Rocca, “Distinction Between Res Significata and Modus Significandi
in Aquinas’ Theological Epistemology,” The Thomist 55 (1991): 80. Rocca has
since published a monograph on this topic; see Gregory Rocca, Speaking the
Incomprehensible God:Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004).
19 ST I, q. 4, a. 3, corp. See Smith, Thomas Aquinas’Trinitarian Theology: A Study in
Theological Method, 227.
20 Two examples of our limited modus significandi are: (1) we cannot signify the
abstract (such as fatherhood) and the concrete (such as Father) at the same time,
and (2) we cannot avoid using words that suggest passivity in God in our description of the notional actions, such as when we say that “the Son is generated.”
21 See Rocca, “Distinction Between Res Significata and Modus Significandi in
Aquinas’Theological Epistemology,” 182–85, 194.

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Now our intellect understands being according to the mode in which it
is found in things here below. . . .Although that which our language names
“being” is signified by way of concretion, nevertheless our intellect in
attributing being to God transcends the mode of signification, attributing
to God that which is signified but not the mode of signification.22

Analogy is employed precisely when the mind predicates the ratio nominis
of God in an act of judgment about him who transcends the human mind’s
quidditative ability. Since the analogical nature of predication about God
rests on judgment, not on concept, no univocal core of meaning for both
God and man has to be distilled to make proper speech possible.23 For example, when we say that God is wise, we have our earthbound concept of
“wise,” and we do not know all that it means for God to be wise. But the
wisdom present in creatures, known connaturally by our intellect, is analogous to wisdom in God because he causes all wisdom. If we realize that
our mode of signifying is shot through with human limitation, we can
purify our predication with the extra step of denying all imperfections of
God.Thus, we must proceed via negativa, but we are not simply babbling.
To assert that all speech about God is equivocal is to claim that the connection between the statements “Socrates is faithful” and “God is faithful” is
the same as the connection between the statements “this tree has bark” and
“this dog has a bark.” Namely, there would be no correspondence at all
between the terms. But since analogical stretching of terms is not only
permitted but in fact reflects (analogous) reality as it is, man is capable of
proper speech about God despite the overwhelming dissimilarity between
created and uncreated wisdom. “The divine Word . . . is properly and not
metaphorically called a ‘Son’ and his principle a ‘Father.’ ”24
C. Metaphor
In both metaphor and analogy, terms are being juxtaposed so that despite
their differences, a perceived similarity between them will afford a new
insight into at least one of the terms.Analogy and metaphor differ in this:
22 De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 7:“Intellectus autem noster hoc modo intelligit esse quo

modo invenitur in rebus inferioribus a quibus scientiam capit, in quibus esse non
est subsistens, sed inhaerens. Ratio autem invenit quod aliquod esse subsistens sit:
et ideo licet hoc quod dicunt esse, significetur per modum concreationis, tamen
intellectus attribuens esse Deo transcendit modum significandi, attribuens Deo
id quod significatur, non autem modum significandi.”
23 Rocca, “Distinction Between Res Significata and Modus Significandi in
Aquinas’Theological Epistemology,” 194–96.
24 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 3:“Sed Verbum divinum . . . proprie, et non metaphorice, dicitur Filius, et eius principium, Pater.”

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In an analogy, a judgment is made that there is an objective correspondence
between the two terms. In a metaphor, a correspondence between the
two terms is suggested in order to communicate something about one of
the terms by means of the other, but no judgment is made that there is
an objective correspondence between the two terms, as is made in an
analogy. So, a metaphor is not proper speech. For example, in an analogy,
health can be predicated of a person and of food:“Socrates is healthy” and
“orange juice is healthy.” Socrates and orange juice are not healthy in the
same way, but the speaker makes a judgment that there is an objective
correspondence in reality between health and each of these two terms.
Now, Socrates’ good health could be communicated metaphorically by
saying that “Socrates is a rock.” Here no judgment is made affirming an
objective correspondence between a rock and Socrates. Rather, there is a
suggested correspondence between the invulnerability of the rock and of
Socrates’ state of good health. Analogy, though between univocity and
equivocity, is still proper speech. A metaphor, in contrast, does not use its
terms according to proper predication.25
Thomas explains that terms bound up with creaturely imperfection
cannot be predicated of God except by way of metaphor. For instance, if
God is said to be a “rock” and “fortress” (Ps 18:2) or “like a lion” ( Jer
49:19), it cannot be taken properly, because rocks, fortresses, and lions
necessarily possess the imperfection of being created:
Certain names signify perfections of this kind proceeding from God to
created things in such a way that the imperfect mode itself in which
creatures participate divine perfection is included in the very signification of the name, as “stone” signifies something existing materially; and
names of this kind can be applied to God only metaphorically. But other
names signify perfections themselves absolutely, without including in
their signification any mode of participating, such as “being,” “good,”
“living,” and the like; and such names are properly said of God.26
25 Richard Swinburne has an intriguing explanation of how a metaphor can be

transformed into an analogy through repeated usage. See Swinburne, Revelation:
From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 42–44. Equivocal
terms are exploited in puns and can thereby be transformed into metaphors. For
instance, if a great hitter in baseball referred to himself as “a bat out of hell,” he
would be exploiting the identical spellings and pronunciations of two completely
different words, namely the animal that sleeps hanging upside down and the
cylindrical tapered stick used in baseball. Although these two “bats” would
normally be equivocal, here they are being linked in metaphor by means of the
power common to both to inspire fear.
26 ST I, q. 13, a. 3, ad 1:“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod quaedam nomina significant huiusmodi perfectiones a Deo procedentes in res creatas, hoc modo quod ipse

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Nevertheless, good metaphors still capitalize on the analogous real similarity between rocks or lions and God, albeit not properly. But terms that
are not necessarily bound up with created imperfections can be predicated properly of God—not univocally but analogously. Thus, we speak
properly when we say that God is wise, good, one, true, beautiful or
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thomas has no presumption of univocal
predication, since he keeps the similarity between created things and God
in the context of cause and effect.
Now, God is incomprehensible to us because he exceeds our limited
capacity to understand; it is not that he is intrinsically incomprehensible.
On the contrary, he is infinitely and unfathomably intelligible. Absolutely
speaking, there is nothing more self-evident than God, but he is not so
evident to us who cannot comprehend his essence.27 God understands
himself completely, but when we gaze on his blinding brightness, we are
like the night owl staring into the sun.28 So, the Trinity’s transcendence
must not be identified with the impenetrable darkness of irrationality, and
man should not be regarded as relegated to metaphorical speech.
Thomas’s whole theology is based upon his faith in a benevolent creator
of rational creatures who are capable of receiving the gift of the revelation of the creator’s own self-knowledge.This allows Thomas to account
for the inseparability of revelation and human verbal formulation. No
consideration of what can be known or said of the mystery of God’s
Triune life can be authentic apart from the faith of the Church founded
on the revelation of God himself.Theology proceeds from revealed principles, namely, God’s own self-knowledge as communicated to believers.
We could know by reason alone that God is one, but that God is triune
is known only by faith.29
Concerning the names of the divine persons revealed in Scripture
then, “Father” is properly and not only metaphorically the name of the
divine person who generates the Son; and “Father” names a perfection in
God. The reality we signify is God the Father and not only our idea of
God the Father. We signify the Father by purifying the earthly concept
of fatherhood through the judgment that the Father is without impermodus imperfectus quo a creatura participatur divina perfectio, in ipso nominis
significato includitur, sicut lapis significat aliquid materialiter ens: et huiusmodi
nomina non possunt attribui Deo nisi metaphorice. Quaedam vero nomina significant ipsas perfectiones absolute, absque hoc quod aliquis modus participandi claudatur in eorum significatione, ut ens, bonum, vivens, et huiusmodi: et talia proprie
dicuntur de Deo.”
27 ST I, q. 2, a. 1, corp.
28 ST I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 1 and q. 12, a. 1, corp.
29 ST I, q. 32, a. 1.

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fection and far exceeds what we have in our created minds. Since we
describe God by way of concepts drawn from the created order, some
names cannot be applied to God properly; further, those which can be
said properly must be understood as analogous. By means of analogy,
Thomas steers between the rationalism of univocity and the agnosticism
of equivocity.
V. The Father Is the Prime Analogate of Paternity
(ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 4)
In this section, we will review: (A) ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 4, where Thomas
shows that the name “father” applies more properly to God than to creatures, and (B) Thomas’s descriptions of (1) the procession of the Word and
(2) the generation of the Son.We will see that Thomas establishes that God
the Father is the prime analogate of fatherhood, by arguing from the
perfection of divine generation and paternity. This will lead us to a consideration of the procession of the Word and the generation of the Son.
A. Perfect paternity
As we have concluded above, ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 3 asserts that the Word
is properly called a “Son” with a properly named “Father.” The fourth
objection challenges this. Observing that what is said properly of God
must apply more to God than to creatures, the objection argues that the
name “father” seems to apply more (per prius) to creatures than to God,
because the best example of generation seems not to be found in God,
where the Father and the Son share one numerically same essence and
differ only by relation, but rather among creatures, where the sons generated are distinct from their fathers “not only according to relation but
also according to essence.”30 In his reply, Aquinas counters that the prime
analogates of “Father” and “generation” are indeed found in God, as
regards the res significata:
The words “generation” and “paternity,” as well as other words that are
properly said of God, are said more properly of God than of creatures
with respect to the thing signified, but not with respect to the mode of signification. Hence also the Apostle says in Eph [3:14], “I bend my knee to
30 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, obj. 4: “non secundum relationem tantum, sed etiam secundum

essentiam.”As will become clear in the reply, when he says here in the objection
that sons differ “according to essence,” he means that they do not share one
numerically same essence. Corporeal creatures of the same species possess the
same essence specifically but not numerically, as they are individuated by matter
(and not by relation alone).

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the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all paternity in heaven
and on earth is named.”31

Even though we start with a human word for a human reality in order
to name God the Father, the created fatherhood that we begin with is in
fact derived from its divine exemplar—“from whom all paternity in
heaven and on earth is named.”We apply “father” analogously to the true
instance of a Father, since he exceeds our knowledge.And those fathers to
whom we apply the term univocally are only analogously fathers in that
they only feebly imitate the true Father.32 Thus, with respect to our
mode of signifying, “father” applies more directly to creatures than to
God, but since by analogy we can properly signify him who is the true
exemplar of fatherhood, “Father” is indeed applied to God before creatures, and it is attributed properly.
Thomas continues this argument with an analysis of what perfect
fatherhood is:
For it is manifest that a generation receives its species from its terminus,
which is the form of the thing generated. And the nearer this is to the
form of the one generating, the truer and more perfect the generation
is—as a univocal generation is more perfect than a non-univocal generation—for by nature, the one generating generates something similar to
itself in form. Hence, the fact that in divine generation the form of the
one generating and the one generated is numerically the same, while
among created beings it is not numerically but only specifically the
same, shows that generation, and consequently paternity, is said more
properly of God than of creatures. Hence, the fact that the distinction of
the one generated from the one generating in God is only by relation
pertains to the truth of divine generation and paternity.33
31 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 4:“Ad quartum dicendum quod nomen generationis et pater-

nitatis, sicut et alia nomina quae proprie dicuntur in divinis, per prius dicuntur
de Deo quam de creaturis, quantum ad rem significatam, licet non quantum ad
modum significandi. Unde et Apostolus dicit, ad Ephes. III,‘Flecto genua mea ad
Patrem Domini nostri Iesu Christi, ex quo omnis paternitas in caelo et in terra
nominatur.’ ”
32 Divine paternity includes what among creatures are unmistakably maternal
perfections, such as conception and birth. In ScG IV, ch. 11 (no. 3478), Aquinas
affirms, based on Ps 110:3 and Jn 1:18, that the Word is born from the Father’s
womb (ex utero) and remains in the Father’s bosom (in sinu ). For more on
Aquinas’s handling of these images, see Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St.
Thomas Aquinas, 156.
33 ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 4: “Manifestum est enim quod generatio accipit speciem a
termino, qui est forma generati. Et quanto haec fuerit propinquior formae
generantis, tanto verior et perfectior est generatio; sicut generatio univoca est
perfectior quam non univoca: nam de ratione generantis est, quod generet sibi

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So, the nearer the son’s form is to the father’s form, the more perfect the
generation, because the self-communication in the generation is more
complete:“for by nature, the one generating generates something similar
to itself in form.” Therefore, the most perfect paternity, generation, and
filiation are found in God, because in God the similarity between the
Father and the Son is perfect. “Father,” then, refers most perfectly, fully,
and properly to God the Father. Here Aquinas pushes back against a creaturely bias. The more intense full and perfect generation is not one that
appears to produce more by begetting more richly diverse sons.That would
be true only where the father communicates a potency that he himself
cannot realize, as is the case among creatures. But in fact, the most perfect
generation possible is exemplified by a Father who possesses every perfection and is able to communicate all that he is to his Son. Thus, concludes
Aquinas, it is a mark of divine paternity that the Father and Son are
distinguished only by relation.
This theme of the perfect generation of a perfect paternity will continue
to reappear in the treatise on the Trinity treatise of the Summa theologiae in
support of the Son’s perfect equality. For instance, in q. 33, a. 3, Thomas
observes that “the perfect meaning (ratio) of paternity and filiation is to be
found in God the Father and in God the Son, because one is the nature
and glory of the Father and the Son.”34 And he notes in q. 39, a. 8, that
since “it is the Son who has in himself truly and perfectly the nature of the
Father” and “he is the expressed image of the Father,” perfection and
proportion are appropriated to the Son.35 Then, contrasting the Son’s filiation with creation’s in q. 41, a. 3, he observes that “it is necessary that the
Father not pour out part of the nature in himself by generating the Son,
but rather that he communicate the whole nature to him, remaining
distinct only according to origin.”36 Finally, in q. 42, a. 4, concerning
whether the persons are equal in greatness,Thomas again contrasts divine
simile secundum formam. Unde hoc ipsum quod in generatione divina est
eadem numero forma generantis et geniti, in rebus autem creatis non est eadem
numero, sed specie tantum, ostendit quod generatio, et per consequens paternitas, per prius sit in Deo quam in creaturis. Unde hoc ipsum quod in divinis est
distinctio geniti a generante secundum relationem tantum, ad veritatem divinae
generationis et paternitatis pertinet.”
34 ST I, q. 33, a. 3, corp.: “perfecta ratio paternitatis et filiationis invenitur in Deo
Patre et Deo Filio: quia Patris et Filii una est natura et gloria.”
35 ST I, q. 39, a. 8, corp. :“est Filius habens in se vere et perfecte naturam Patris. . . .
[E]st imago expressa Patris.”
36 ST I, q. 41, a. 3, corp.: “Unde necesse est quod Pater, generando Filium, non
partem naturae in ipsum transfuderit, sed totam naturam ei communicaverit,
remanente distinctione solum secundum originem, ut ex dictis patet.”

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and human fatherhood, noting that human sons only gradually become
equal to their fathers and that through a defect of the father’s generation, a
son may possibly never become equal to his father.This is not the case with
divine paternity, which achieves a perfect generation:
Now by the definition of paternity and filiation, through generation a
son should attain the possession of the perfection of nature that is in his
father, as the father himself possesses it. . . . And it cannot be said that
the power of God the Father was defective in generating.37

Since the Father is named for and constituted by this perfect paternity
expressed in a perfect generation, we now consider Aquinas’s understanding of this most paternal notional act of generation.
B. The Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Word
In this section, we will consider (1) Aquinas’s exploitation of the procession of the Word in order to interpret the meaning of the birth of the
Son in God, and (2) elements concerning divine generation that are not
addressed by the word analogy. In this first section, we will (a) briefly
review various metaphors for divine generation in Aquinas, before (b)
outlining the analogy of the word and (c) examining the texts in Aquinas,
where he elaborates this analogy in reference to divine generation.
1.The Son’s birth viewed as the procession of the Word
Thomas treats extensively of the generation of the Son and the divine
power of generation in the De potentia and the Sentences Commentary.
Although in the Summa theologiae he does dedicate one article (ST I, q.
27, a. 2) to generation and later deals specifically with the topic again
where he considers the notional acts of generation and spiration with
respect to the persons (ST I, q. 41, a. 1), the discussion in this mature
work gravitates toward the procession of the Word. From the very beginning of the treatise on the Trinity in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas
describes divine generation in terms of the procession of the Word: “the
procession of the Word in God is called a generation.”38 In the Sentences
37 ST I, q. 42, a. 4, corp.: “Hoc autem est de ratione paternitatis et filiationis, quod

filius per generationem pertingat ad habendam perfectionem naturae quae est in
patre, sicut et pater. . . . Nec potest dici quod virtus Dei Patris fuerit defectiva in
generando.”We find this observation already in Athanasius, Hilary, and Augustine.
38 ST I, q. 27, a. 2, corp.:“Respondeo dicendum quod processio verbi in divinis dicitur generatio.” In In I Sent., d. 15, q. 5, a. 1, qla. 1, ad 3,Thomas notes that the name
“Son” has a special affinity with the coming forth of creatures, since generation and
creation designate a coming forth from a principle, whereas the name “Word” is

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Commentary, an earlier work in which Thomas’s theology of the Word is
in its embryonic stage, his speech bears a more deliberate distinction
between the procession from the Father of a Son who has the Father’s
nature and the procession of a Word that bears a certain likeness in the
divine intellect :
Therefore I say that by reason of his procession he is the Image, both
insofar as he proceeds as the Son, because the Son is named from the
fact that he has the nature of the Father, and insofar as he proceeds as
the Word, because the Word, as has already been said, is a certain likeness in the intellect of the thing itself understood.39

Thomas does not use human birth and paternity as the image for
grasping divine birth and paternity, because the idea of a son being
generated is laden with physical imagery.The births we know are physical, and they take place in time and are completed. None of these conditions apply to divine birth, which is intellectual and eternal, without
beginning or end. Also, human fathers are co-principles with mothers in
their generation of offspring, whereas the innascible Father is the sole
principle of the Son. In modeling an immanent intellectual procession
that gives rise to a distinction of opposed relation alone, the relationship
of a human father to his son cannot compare to that of a speaker to his
word spoken.The analogy of a word conceived and spoken in the mind
of man affords an intensely rich reflection on the unity of essence and the
distinction of relative opposition in God. Indeed, in Thomas’s judgment
we have no better analogy for penetrating the mystery of the Trinity:
“among all [the analogies], the procession of the word from the intellect
represents more clearly that it is not posterior to that from which it
proceeds.”40 The indispensability of the analogy of the word may be
observed from the fact that discussion of the procession of the Holy
Spirit—which lacks an equally clear analogy—is so much more difficult.
Aquinas introduces the analogy of the word in the very first article of the
treatise on the Trinity of the Summa theologiae and refers to it constantly
associated with the return of creatures as well as with the coming forth. For more
on this point, see Gilles Emery, La Trinité Créatrice (Paris:Vrin, 1995), 407.
39 In I Sent., d. 28, q. 2, a. 3, corp.:“Ita etiam dico quod Filius ex ratione processionis suae habet quod sit imago, et inquantum procedit ut Filius, quia Filius dicitur ex hoc quod habet naturam Patris; et inquantum procedit ut verbum, quia
verbum, ut dictum est [d. 27, q. 2, a. 1], est quaedam similitudo in intellectu ipsius
rei intellectae.”
40 ST I, q. 42, a. 2, ad 1:“Inter omnia tamen expressius repraesentat processio verbi
ab intellectu: quod quidem non est posterius eo a quo procedit.”

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throughout the treatise.Thomas never abandons the definition of generation as producing a Son of the same nature, and he will argue that the reference in John’s Gospel (1:18) to the Son’s being “in the bosom of the
Father” affirms the Son’s consubstantiality.41 But the procession of the
word serves as his key analogy for understanding divine generation.
a. Various metaphors for divine generation. Various patristic images
for the Son’s birth, like splendor in the light or a river and its source,
do not illustrate unity and distinction at the same time, with the same
clarity as the analogy of a spoken word. Aquinas mentions these but
does not exploit them to explain generation.42 He does borrow
Augustine’s Johannine metaphors of seeing and hearing for divine
generation although he does not develop them.We peruse those texts
now before moving on to the analogy of the word.
These Johannine metaphors are based on Jesus’ revelation that all
has been given into his hands ( Jn 3:35, 13:3) because he does what he
sees and hears the Father doing ( Jn 3:32, 5:19, 8:26).43 When
commenting on John 3:32, the Angelic Doctor aligns seeing with
proceeding as the consubstantial Son and hearing with proceeding as
the Word of the Father’s intellect: “Therefore it is said that ‘he sees’
insofar as he proceeds from the Father’s essence and that ‘he hears’
insofar as he proceeds as the Word of the paternal intellect.”44 Later in
the same commentary, when interpreting John 5:19, Thomas repeats
41 In Ioan. 1:18 (lec. 11, no. 218).
42 For examples of Aquinas’s reference to these images, see: ScG IV, ch. 14 (p. 56,

col. 1, line 15; no. 3499): “splendor ex luce”; In Ioan. 17:24 (lec. 6, no. 2261):
“splendor a luce”; ScG IV, ch. 10 (p. 30, col. 1, line 23; no. 3449): “aqua fontis
effluit in rivum”; Super Primam Decretalem:“unam aquam esse in tribus rivis.” For
references in the Fathers concerning the splendor from the light, see: Ambrose
of Milan, De Spiritu Sancto, ed. Claudio Moreschini, Sancti Ambrosii Episcopi
Mediolanensis Opera, vol. 2 (Milan: Bibl. Ambrosiana, 1979), bk. 1, ch. 14, par.
163; Augustine of Hippo, Sermones, PL vol. 38 (Paris:Vrayet, 1865), Sermo 117
(col. 668, line 54); Augustine of Hippo, Contra Aduersarium Legis et Prophetarum,
ed. Paulus Orosius and Klaus Daur, Corpus Christianorum [CCSL], vol. 49
(Turnholt: Brepols, 1985), bk. 1 (p. 45, lines 318–319); Augustine of Hippo,
Contra Maximinum, PL vol. 42 (Paris:Vrayet, 1886), ch. 23 (col. 801, line 54). For
references concerning rivers and their source, see Hilary of Poitiers, La Trinité (De
Trinitate ), IX–XII, ed. P. Smulders, SC vol. 462 (Paris: Cerf, 2001), bk. 9, ch. 37
(p. 88, lines 3–5).
43 Aquinas names Augustine in In Ioan. 5:19 (lec. 3, no. 754), as we document
below.
44 In Ioan. 3:32 (lec. 5, no. 534): “ideo dicitur ‘Quod vidit,’ inquantum procedit de
essentia Patris, ‘et audivit,’ inquantum procedit ut Verbum intellectus paterni.”

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his description of generation in terms of vision, but here, as in ST I, q.
27, he reads generation not only in terms of consubstantiality but also
in terms of an intelligible procession:
Rightly is the generation of the Son by the Father designated by
vision, as the Son’s seeing what the Father does is nothing other than
to proceed from the acting Father by an intelligible procession.45
Hence, according to Augustine, the Father’s showing the Son is
nothing other than the Father’s generating the Son. And the Son’s
seeing what the Father does is nothing other than the Son’s receiving his being and nature from the Father. Nevertheless, this showing can be said to be similar to seeing, insofar as the Son is the
splendor of the paternal vision, as is said in Heb 1:3; for the Father,
seeing and knowing himself, conceives the Son, who is the
conception of this vision. It can also be similar to that which
comes through hearing, insofar as the Son proceeds from the
Father as the Word—as if to say that “the Father shows all things
to the Son” insofar as he produces him as the splendor and the
conception of his wisdom and as his Word.46

Later still in the Commentary on John (15:15), Aquinas explains that
“the Son’s hearing the Father is the Son’s receiving his essence from
him.”47 Then, in ST I, q. 42, a. 6, ad 2,Aquinas uses the images of the
Son’s seeing and hearing together as referring to nothing other than
the Father’s communication to the Son of both “knowledge as well
45 In Ioan. 5:19 (lec. 3, no. 750): “Sed hoc [‘non potest Filius facere quidquam, nisi

quod Patrem viderit facientem’] dictum est ut designetur communicatio paternitatis Filio per generationem, quae convenienter designatur hoc verbo viderit,
quia per visum et auditum in nos ab alio scientia transfunditur. . . . Quia ergo
visio designat derivationem cognitionis et sapientiae ab alio, recte per visionem
generatio Filii a Patre designatur, ut sic nihil aliud sit Filium videre Patrem
facientem, quam procedere intelligibili processione a Patre operante.”
46 In Ioan. 5:19 (lec. 3, no. 754):“Unde, secundum Augustinum, demonstrare Patrem
Filio, nihil aliud est quam Patrem generare Filium. Et Filium videre quae Pater
facit, nihil aliud est quam Filium esse et naturam a Patre recipere. Potest tamen
dici demonstratio illa similis visuali, inquantum ipse Filius est splendor visionis
paternae, ut dicitur Hebr. I, 3: nam Pater videns se et intelligens, concipit Filium,
qui est conceptus huius visionis. Potest etiam esse similis ei quae fit per auditum,
inquantum Filius procedit a Patre ut Verbum. Ut si dicatur quod ‘Pater omnia
demonstrat Filio,’ inquantum producit ipsum ut splendorem, et conceptum suae
sapientiae, et Verbum.” For Augustine’s text, see Augustine of Hippo, In Iohannis
Evangelium tractatus, ed. Radbodus Willems, CCSL vol. 36 (Turnhout: Brepols,
1954), tract. 23, par. 11 (p. 241, lines 56–57):“Sic autem demonstratio Patris Filii
uisionem gignit, quemadmodum Pater Filium gignit.”
47 In Ioan. 15:15 (lec. 3, no. 2017): “Filium ergo audire a Patre, est accipere essentiam eius ab eo.”

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as essence.”48 We can see then that Aquinas’s alignment of the Son’s
seeing and hearing the Father with either consubstantial generation
or intellectual procession may vary slightly, but he clearly takes note
of this Johannine imagery.
b. The word analogy. Thomas’s elaboration of the procession of the
Word develops Augustine’s so-called “psychological model” of the
Trinity, which is based on the image of the Trinity in man, in whom
we find the immanent intellectual procession of a spoken word and
the immanent volitional procession of love.49 As Thomas understands
it, the human knower, coming into contact with real objects in the
world outside, is related to four things: (1) the thing known, (2) the
intelligible form (species intelligibilis) that is abstracted by agent intellect, (3) the act of knowing, and (4) the concept.50 The concept differs
from the act of knowing in that the concept is the terminus in which
the act of knowing is accomplished.The concept is what is properly
named the word; this is what we signify with an exterior word physically pronounced.51 The act of knowing the object and the word that
expresses this knowledge may be said to have two different origins. In
us, the origin of the act of knowing the object is the object itself,
which moves us intentionally from potentiality to act. For instance,
when a man experiences an apple, the common sense unites the data
from the five senses to produce a phantasm in the imagination, and
the (agent) intellect shines on the phantasm and sees the apple in the
48 ST I, q. 42, a. 6, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod in demonstratione Patris et

auditione Filii, non intelligitur nisi quod Pater communicat scientiam Filio, sicut
et essentiam.”
49 See Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, ed. W. J. Mountain, CCSL vol. 50–50a
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1968), bk. 9–10. Edmund Hill, The Mystery of the Trinity
(London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), 124, points out that it is misleading to call
the model “psychological,” since Augustine’s triad of memory, knowledge, and
love does not refer to the powers of the soul (entitative habits) but to the activities of the mind (which are necessarily in act and have objects).
50 See ST I, q. 85, a. 2 and In Ioan. 1:1 (lec. 1, no. 25). I am following and fleshing
out Dondaine’s clear account of Thomas’s epistemology. See H.-F. Dondaine,
“Renseignements techniques (Appendice II),” in Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Somme
théologique: La Trinité (Paris: Éditions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1946), 217–19. G.
Emery notes that in this account of the speaker producing a word, Thomas is
reinterpreting an Aristotelian anthropology in light of Augustine. See Emery, The
Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 58. Thomas adopts a basically Aristotelian anthropology regarding reason’s governing the passions and regarding
the intentional union of the knower and the known, which he reworks in light
of revelation and the Christian tradition, especially that of Augustine.
51 See ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 3.

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intellectual order, that is, as an idea in abstracted universal immaterial
terms.52 This abstraction is the “intelligible form,” whose origin was
that particular apple as perceived by the senses. The origin of the
concept of the apple, on the other hand, may be said to be the intellect!
The intelligible form of the apple must be received by the (possible)
intellect and expressed as a word. It is at this point that the knower
actually knows the apple and can make judgments about it. And the
origin of this intelligible form is the (agent) intellect.53 Now, unlike
us, God does not turn to anything outside himself for knowledge. He
knows creatures through the divine essence, which is the very source
of the creatures. For Aquinas, God knows himself, and he knows
everything else by knowing himself.
c. Aquinas’s application of the word analogy to divine generation.
With such distinctions, Thomas can clarify how “in God, ‘Word,’ if
taken properly, can only be applied personally.”54 His reasoning is as
follows. God knows himself by his intellect, and this self-knowledge
bears fruit in a concept of the divine intellect. Now, the three persons
of the Trinity share the one divine intellect, but the Father alone
speaks the Word.The Father speaks his whole self (the divine essence)
in a single Word, his Son. The Son, who is the divine essence on
account of the Father’s perfect speaking, is God’s self-knowledge
conceived. Indeed, all three persons are equally the divine intellect,
which is God’s self-knowledge. And there is no real distinction
52 See ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 4.
53 Thomas analyzes human knowledge in terms of act and potency, two principles

that Aristotle brilliantly introduced in order to account for change in the material world.The intellect is one power, but for the sake of analysis, it is of no small
avail to distinguish act and potency in the intellect in the act of knowing. The
agent intellect acts (on the phantasm), and the possible intellect is in potency (to
the intelligible form that it receives).The possible intellect is reduced to act by the
intelligible form.The possible intellect is ready to welcome whatever intelligible
form has just been abstracted, as the knower comes into contact with the world.
Once this distinction is established, it can be said that the origin of the word is the
intelligible form rather than the object, on account of the difference between the
material and immaterial orders. In this analysis, the object is the origin of the data
but not of the word. Such an epistemological description affords us a better analogy of the Trinity, for of course the divine Word has no source outside of God the
Father. See ST I, q. 54, a. 4, s.c.; ST I, q. 76, a. 2, corp.; ST I, q. 79, a. 4, corp. and
ad 4; ST I, q. 84, a. 6, corp.; ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 3 and 4.
54 De potentia, q. 9, a. 9, ad 7:“verbum in divinis non potest dici nisi personaliter, si
proprie accipiatur.”The same is affirmed in ST I, q. 34, a. 1 and In Ioan. 1:1 (lec.
1, no. 29). See also ScG I, ch. 53 (no. 442), ScG IV, ch. 11 (no. 3473); Quodlibet V,
q. 5, a. 2; De veritate, q. 4, a. 2.

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between what God is and what he knows. But there is a real difference between the speaker and the spoken Word, even when the
speaker of the divine self-knowledge speaks a Word that is perfectly
identical to him in everything except for the fact that one is the
speaker and the other is the proferred conception of the speaker. Now
this can be so only if the fruit of the divine intellect remains immanent to the intellect, as was already indicated in ST I, q. 27, a. 1.
A consideration of passages from ST I, q. 34, a. 1, supplemented with
miscellaneous passages from the Commentary on John, the De potentia
and the Scriptum should suffice to illustrate this reasoning. These will
exhibit Thomas’s understanding of the Word (1) as immanent, (2) as
relative, and (3) as proceeding as the fruit of a procession in God.
1. In the treatise on the Trinity of Summa theologiae, Aquinas develops his theology of the Son as the Word of the Father in q. 27, a.
2, concerning generation in God, as well as in the first of the two
questions on the person of the Son (q. 34). His most extended
treatment appears in the first article of q. 34, which examines
whether “Word” is a personal name.55 There he observes that a
concept is by nature immanent: “For the interior word proceeds
from the one speaking such that it remains within him.”56 Thomas
thus establishes that this analogy is metaphysically sound for
describing a divine person.The word analogy illustrates an immanent procession, which satisfies the conditions for avoiding Arianism and Sabellianism, as outlined in the very first article of the
Trinitarian treatise (q. 27, a. 1).
2. ST I, q. 34, a. 1 shows furthermore that a word is relational; it
signifies “something proceeding from another”:
Augustine says in VII De Trinitate that “as the Son is referred to
the Father, so also is the Word referred to him whose Word he
is. . . .” 57
55 Whereas in the question on the person of the Father,Aquinas examines whether

“Father” is the proper name of a divine person, in this article he ponders whether
“Word” is the proper name of the Son. The Son had already been established as
a divine person since, as he explains in the prologue of q. 34, “the meaning of
‘Son’ is already considered in the meaning of ‘Father,’ ” who was treated in q. 33.
56 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 1: “nam verbum interius sic a dicente procedit, quod in ipso
manet.”
57 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, s.c.: “Sed contra est quod dicit Augustinus, in VII de Trin.: ‘Sicut
Filius refertur ad Patrem, ita et Verbum ad id cuius est Verbum.’ ” For Augustine’s
text, see Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, bk. 7, ch. 2 (p. 249–250, lines 4–6).

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Now, a word is properly said in God insofar as a word signifies a concept of the intellect. Hence Augustine says in XV De
Trinitate that “whoever can understand a word, not only before
it sounds but even before the images of its sounds have been
clothed by thought, can already see some likeness of that Word
of whom it was said, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ ” Now,
the concept itself of the heart proceeds by nature from another,
namely from the knowledge of the one conceiving. Hence
insofar as it is said properly of God, a word signifies something
proceeding from another—which pertains to the nature of
personal terms in God because the divine persons are distinguished according to origin, as was said [in q. 27, Prol. and q.
32, a. 1, s.c.].58

So, this interior word, at the same time immanent and relational,
provides an analogy for essential unity in personal distinction.
Since the interior word, or concept, does not leave a person’s mind
but remains in him, we have an analogy for the divine Word
proceeding from the Father but remaining in the divine nature.
And since this word can be distinguished from the intellect itself
that conceives it, we have an analogy for the divine Word’s distinction by relation from the Father who speaks him.
3. In the replies to the second and third objections of ST I q. 34, a. 1,
which we will examine shortly, Aquinas articulates more precisely
how a procession by way of intellect, which intellect in God is
essential and on the side of unity, gives rise to a person, which is
relative and on the side of distinction: the Word is the fruit of the
conceiving intellect, and not the act of knowing or the intelligible
form.The divine intellect is possessed equally by all three persons,
but the Word as the concept in the divine intellect, spoken by the
Father, is distinct from the Father (and the Holy Spirit) in the real
order. This breakthrough, which first appears in the Summa contra
58 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, corp.: “Dicitur autem proprie verbum in Deo, secundum quod

verbum significat conceptum intellectus. Unde Augustinus dicit, in XV de Trin.,
‘Quisquis potest intelligere verbum, non solum antequam sonet, verum etiam
antequam sonorum eius imagines cogitatione involvantur, iam potest videre
aliquam Verbi illius similitudinem, de quo dictum est: In principio erat Verbum.’ Ipse
autem conceptus cordis de ratione sua habet quod ab alio procedat, scilicet a
notitia concipientis. Unde verbum, secundum quod proprie dicitur in divinis,
significat aliquid ab alio procedens: quod pertinet ad rationem nominum personalium in divinis, eo quod personae divinae distinguuntur secundum originem, ut
dictum est.” In ST I, q. 40, a. 2, corp., Thomas clarifies that persons “are better
said to be distinguished by relations than by origin.” For Augustine’s text, see De
Trinitate, bk. 15, ch. 10 (p. 485, lines 64–73).

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Gentiles, is original to Thomas.59 Many of Aquinas’s contemporaries
held that the Word was only a personal name, but none explained
why it did not also have to be an essential name, by means of this
distinction. Clearly the Word must be personal, as it refers to the
person of the Son, spoken by the Father. But since divine knowledge is not proper to any divine person, it would seem that the
Word must also be essential. In the Sentences Commentary and the De
veritate,Thomas describes the Word as both personal and essential.At
this point, he had not yet sufficiently distinguished a concept from the
act of knowing and from the intelligible form of the thing known. In
the Sentences Commentary,Thomas rejects two positions in favor of
the claim that the Word is only to be taken personally, arguing
instead that “the concept of the intellect is either the form understood or the operation itself of understanding,” both of which are
essential. In that case, if the Word were taken only as personal, God’s
self-knowledge would be personal and not essential, so that “it would
be necessary that the Father understand by the Son, formally”; and
thus the Word would be a principle to the Father—which is impossible! Instead, he concludes, the Word must be taken “to signify something absolute and something relational simultaneously, such as the
word ‘knowledge.’ ”60 In other words, as there is essential knowledge and begotten knowledge, so it would seem that there is the
essential Word and the begotten Word.
59 For a limpid account of Aquinas’s original breakthrough in distinguishing concept

from the act of knowledge in order to apply “Word” exclusively to the person and
not to the divine essence, see Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas,
180–85, esp. 182. Cf.Yves Floucat,“L’intellection et son verbe selon saint Thomas
d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 97 (1997);Yves Floucat, L’intime fecondité de l’intelligence:
Le verbe mental selon saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris:Téqui, 2001); and Hyacinthe Paissac, La théologie du Verbe: Saint Augustin et saint Thomas (Paris: Cerf, 1951).
60 I Sent, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2, qla. 2, corp.:“Conceptio autem intellectus est vel operatio ipsa
quae est intelligere, vel species intellecta. . . . si non esset ibi nisi verbum personale,
quod est Filius, oporteret quod Pater intelligeret Filio, quasi formaliter. . . . sed
imponitur ad significandum rem aliquam absolutam simul cum respectu, sicut hoc
nomen scientia.”There are two redactions of this article attested in the Mandonnet
edition of the Scriptum. Footnote 3 on page 659 of this edition does not in fact
reflect a variant addition found in some versions, as supposed by the editor. It is the
last portion of an older shorter redaction of this article that was replaced by the
text that now appears on pages 659–60.The last line of our quotation above comes
from the later redaction.The first two lines appear in both redactions. See A. F. Von
Gunten, “In principio erat Verbum: Une évolution de saint Thomas en théologie
trinitaire,” in Ordo sapientiae et amoris: Hommage au Professeur J.-P. Torrell, ed. C.-J.
Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 1993), 121, n. 7.

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The Summa contra Gentiles marks an advance in Thomas’s thought
on this question. In this and later works, Thomas finds a clearer
articulation of the distinctions among a concept, the act of knowing and the intelligible form. For instance, at the very beginning of
the Commentary on John,Aquinas refines his distinction between the
word and the intelligible form, which is that by which (quo) the intellect understands:
The interior word is compared to the intellect not as that by
which (quo) it understands but as that in which (in quo) it understands, because the intellect sees the nature of the thing understood in what is expressed and formed.That is what we mean by the
term “word.”61

In ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 2,Thomas describes this word as the fruit
of the act of the intellect that is not to be taken as the act of the
intellect or as one of its habits:
Nothing that pertains to the intellect can be said of God
personally, except the Word alone; for only a word signifies
something emanating from another. For that which the intellect forms by conceiving, is the word. Now the intellect itself,
insofar as it is in act through the intelligible form, is considered
absolutely. And similarly, to understand, which is to the intellect in
act as to be is to a being in act, is considered absolutely. For to
understand does not signify an action going out of the one
understanding but an action remaining within him. Therefore
when it is said that a word is knowledge, knowledge is not taken as
the act of the knowing intellect or as one of its habits, but as
that which the intellect conceives by knowing. Hence also Augustine
says that the Word is begotten Wisdom, which is nothing other
than the concept itself of the One who is wise.And in the same
way this concept can even be called begotten Knowledge.62
61 In Ioan. 1:1 (lec. 1, no. 25): “verbum interius; et ideo comparatur ad intellectum,

non sicut quo intellectus intelligit, sed sicut in quo intelligit; quia in ipso expresso
et formato videt naturam rei intellectae. Sic ergo habemus significationem huius
nominis Verbum.”
62 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 2:“Ad secundum dicendum quod nihil eorum quae ad intellectum pertinent, personaliter dicitur in divinis, nisi solum Verbum: solum enim
verbum significat aliquid ab alio emanans. Id enim quod intellectus in concipiendo format, est verbum. Intellectus autem ipse, secundum quod est per speciem
intelligibilem in actu, consideratur absolute. Et similiter intelligere, quod ita se
habet ad intellectum in actu, sicut esse ad ens in actu: non enim intelligere significat actionem ab intelligente exeuntem, sed in intelligente manentem. Cum
ergo dicitur quod verbum est notitia, non accipitur notitia pro actu intellectus
cognoscentis, vel pro aliquo eius habitu: sed pro eo quod intellectus concipit

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Here Aquinas distinguishes the intelligible form, the intellect, and
the act of understanding from the concept, or word. He notes that
as regards what pertains to the intellect in the Trinity, only the
Word can be said personally or attributed properly to one person;
everything else that pertains to the divine intellect must be taken
absolutely, or essentially. Only the Word can be said to come forth
from the Father in such a way as to be related to him by an
opposed relation. The Son is personally the Word of the Father’s
intellect.63 The Father communicates his essence and his knowledge to the Son through an eternal generation so that the Word is
the “doctrine of Father.”64 The Word is the perfect and complete
reflection of the Father within the divine intellect, distinct only by
relation of opposition on account of its procession from him.The
Word is not simply wisdom or knowledge, which is essential; he is
begotten Wisdom and begotten Knowledge, which are personal.
Now, because the Word is begotten, the Father cannot be said
to be wise by his Word :
But the Son is called the Wisdom of the Father, because he is
Wisdom from the Father who is Wisdom. For either of them is
of himself Wisdom, and both together are one wisdom. Hence
the Father is not wise by the wisdom that he has begotten, but
by the wisdom which is his essence.65

Thomas’s clarification of this point underscores the fact that the
Word is personal. God’s self-knowledge is essential, but his
concept of that self-knowledge is personal—indeed this concept
is the person of the Son.When the Father speaks his Word of selfknowledge, we have a notional act, a Trinitarian procession. Now,
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all wise by essential wisdom; the Father is not wise because of the Word but
because of himself, namely by his divine essence. But while each
cognoscendo. Unde et Augustinus dicit quod Verbum est sapientia genita: quod
nihil aliud est quam ipsa conceptio sapientis: quae etiam pari modo notitia genita
dici potest.” For Augustine’s text, see Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, bk. 15, ch.
7 (p. 477, lines 69–70).
63 For example, In Ioan. 3:32 (lec. 5, no. 534) and 14:6 (lec. 2, no. 1869); ST I–II, q.
93, a. 1, ad 2.
64 In Ioan. 7:16 (lec. 2, no. 1037):“Si enim intelligatur de Christo Filio Dei, sic cum
doctrina uniuscuiusque nihil aliud sit quam verbum eius, Filius autem Dei sit
Verbum eius: sequitur ergo quod doctrina Patris sit ipse Filius.”
65 ST I, q. 39, a. 7, ad 2:“Sed Filius dicitur sapientia Patris, quia est sapientia de Patre
sapientia: uterque enim per se est sapientia, et simul ambo una sapientia. Unde
Pater non est sapiens sapientia quam genuit, sed sapientia quae est sua essentia.”

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of the three persons is of himself wise, only the Father (who is
unbegotten Wisdom) speaks the Word, who is begotten Wisdom.
In q. 34, a. 1, ad 3, Thomas extends the insight of ad 2, distinguishing the essential action of understanding from the notional
action of speaking, that produces a word. He marks his theological
advance here with an explicit reference to Anselm, who overlooked this distinction:
For the Father, by understanding himself, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, and all other things contained in this knowledge,
conceives the Word, so that thus the whole Trinity, and even
every creature, is spoken by the Word—as a man’s intellect
speaks a stone by the word he conceives in understanding a
stone. Indeed Anselm improperly took “to speak” as “to understand,” but they are different. For “to understand” implies only
the relation of the one understanding to the thing understood,
in which no sense of origin is implied, but only a certain informing of our intellect—as our intellect is reduced to act by the
form of the thing understood. But in God “to understand”
implies complete identity, because in God the intellect and the
thing understood are altogether the same, as was shown above
[q. 14, aa. 4–5]. On the other hand, “to speak” principally
implies the relation to the word conceived; for “to speak” is
nothing other than uttering a word. But by means of the word,
“speaking” implies a relation to the thing understood which is
manifested to the one understanding, in the word uttered. And
thus in God, only the person who utters the Word is the one
speaking, although each person understands and is understood,
and consequently is spoken by the Word.66
66 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 3:“Pater enim, intelligendo se et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum,

et omnia alia quae eius scientia continentur, concipit Verbum: ut sic tota Trinitas
Verbo dicatur, et etiam omnis creatura; sicut intellectus hominis verbo quod
concipit intelligendo lapidem, lapidem dicit. Anselmus vero improprie accepit
dicere pro intelligere. Quae tamen differunt. Nam intelligere importat solam habitudinem intelligentis ad rem intellectam; in qua nulla ratio originis importatur, sed
solum informatio quaedam in intellectu nostro, prout intellectus noster fit in actu
per formam rei intellectae. In Deo autem importat omnimodam identitatem: quia
in Deo est omnino idem intellectus et intellectum, ut supra ostensum est. Sed
dicere importat principaliter habitudinem ad verbum conceptum: nihil enim est
aliud dicere quam proferre verbum. Sed mediante verbo importat habitudinem ad
rem intellectam, quae in verbo prolato manifestatur intelligenti. Et sic sola persona
quae profert Verbum, est dicens in divinis: cum tamen singula personarum sit
intelligens et intellecta, et per consequens Verbo dicta.” For Anselm’s text, see
Anselm of Canterbury, Monologion, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, Opera Omnia,
vol. 1 (Edinburgh:T. Nelson, 1946), ch. 62 (p. 72).

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God understands himself essentially, and this includes an understanding of creation, because it is by knowing himself that God
knows everything of which he is the source. In other words, the
whole Trinity understands itself (and creation) essentially, and each
person of the Trinity understands the whole Trinity (and creation)
essentially. Now, this self-knowledge is not only understood but
also spoken. God’s speaking his knowledge is the Father’s speaking
his Word. Only the Father speaks the Word. And in the speaking
of the Word, the whole Trinity is spoken, because the Father’s
knowledge is of the whole Trinity.The Word is the concept of the
divine essence, of the whole Trinity, spoken only by the Father:
The Father speaks himself and every creature by the Word that
he begets, insofar as the Word begotten sufficiently represents
the Father and every creature.67

Thus, the Son himself is the terminus of this notional act of speaking. And the same applies to the Holy Spirit, whose procession
presupposes the speaking of the Word. For Aquinas, the Son is the
divine essence as spoken in the Word of knowledge, and the Holy
Spirit is the divine essence as breathed forth in the Gift of love.
2.The Generation of the Son
As we have noted above, in the Summa theologiae, the article specifically dealing with generation (ST I, q. 27, a. 2) elaborates the discussion in terms of
the procession of the Word. Issues for which Aquinas does not appeal to the
analogy of the Word, such as the Father’s will in generation, and generation
as a power of the divine essence, appear later in the Summa theologiae, in the
questions on the relationship of the persons to the notional acts (q. 41). In
the Sentences Commentary, the De potentia, and the Summa contra Gentiles, by
contrast, these same issues are handled in questions specifically dealing with
generation.68 To complete our consideration of the Father’s generation of a
Son, we will examine: (a) Aquinas’s definition of generation in ST I, q. 27,
a. 2, and (b) his treatment of (i) the Father’s will in generation and (ii) the
Father’s communication to the Son of the power to generate.
a. Definition of generation. The Nicene Creed professes Christians’
belief in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten
67 ST I, q. 37, a. 2, ad 3:“Pater dicit se et omnem creaturam Verbo quod genuit, inquan-

tum Verbum genitum sufficienter repraesentat Patrem et omnem creaturam.”
68 On the Father’s will: In I Sent., d. 6; ScG IV, ch. 11 (no. 3477); De potentia, q. 2,

a. 3; q. 10, a. 2, ad 4 and 5. On the communication of the power to generate: In
I Sent., d. 7; De potentia, q. 2, a. 2.

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(cemmghémsa) of the Father.” Here the Creed recalls Acts 13:33 and
Heb 1:5 and 5:5, all of which apply Ps 2:7 to Christ:“You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.”69 In the very first question of the Trinitarian treatise (ST I, q. 27),Aquinas considers how “generation” might
apply to God. He begins by distinguishing a general definition of
begetting from begetting among living things:
Generation has a twofold meaning. In one sense, it is common to
everything subject to generation and corruption, in which sense
generation is nothing but change from non-existence to existence.
In another sense it is proper and belongs to living things, in which
sense it signifies the origin of a living being from a conjoined
living principle; and this is properly called birth.70

So, among non-living things, there is corruption and generation but
not a communication of the same nature, as for instance, when paper
is burned it becomes ash, and when graphite is subjected to extreme
pressure and high temperature it becomes diamond. But if a larger
stone is simply broken into smaller stones, this is not recognized as a
generation. Living beings, by contrast, produce offspring of the same
nature. Indeed, anything that a living being produces that is not of
the same nature is not called a son, as “a hair does not have the aspect
of a son or one begotten, but only what proceeds according to the
aspect of a likeness.”71
69 Jn 1:14, 1:18, 3:16, 3:18, and 1 Jn 4:9 can be cited as referring to Christ as the

“only-begotten” (lomocemǵ) Son if cemǵ is interpreted as coming from
cemma x (to be born) instead of from cemoy (genus), in which case lomocemǵ is
read as “only” Son. In his Commentary on John, Aquinas accepts lomocemǵ as
“only-begotten,” whereas the more modern versions of the Bible, such as the
RSV, translate lomocemǵ as “only son.”
70 ST I, q. 27, a. 2, corp.:“generationis dupliciter utimur. Uno modo, communiter ad
omnia generabilia et corruptibilia: et sic generatio nihil aliud est quam mutatio de
non esse ad esse.Alio modo, proprie in viventibus: et sic generatio significat originem alicuius viventis a principio vivente coniuncto. Et haec proprie dicitur nativitas.” In II In de Anima, lec. 7 (no. 312), Aquinas refers to this twofold meaning of
“generation” without specifying one as common and the other as proper. Reporting on Aristotle’s comment that reproduction “is the activity most natural to all
living things,” Aquinas explains that this is “because in a certain way the process
of generation is common to all beings, even to inanimate things.” “Of course,”
continues Aquinas, “the latter are generated differently; still, they are generated.”
The distinction in Aristotle himself is only vaguely hinted at where he allows that
reproduction may not be the most natural activity for things that are “spontaneously generated.” See Aristotle, De anima, bk. 2, ch. 4 (pp. 84–86, 415a27–b1).
71 ST I, q. 27, a. 2, corp.:“Unde pilus vel capillus non habet rationem geniti et filii,
sed solum quod procedit secundum rationem similitudinis.”

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Thomas then contrasts generation among created living beings from
that in God: creatures “proceed from potency to the act of life,” while
God’s “life does not proceed from potency to act.”72 Thus, inanimate
creatures are simply generated from nothing into existence, and living
creatures are generated from nothing into existence through a parent of
the same nature,“a conjoined living principle.” But in God, generation
is only according to a conjoined living principle.As Thomas observes in
ST I, q. 33, a. 2, ad 4, which we have examined above in section V, this
is the truest generation, and it applies to creatures analogously.
Thomas reaffirms this definition with respect to divine generation
in ST I, q. 41, mining our common manner of speaking for a theological insight. He observes that we do not describe the relationship
between maker and made as “father” and “son”; rather, a son is he
who proceeds from his father by nature, that is, of the same nature.
Thus, concludes Aquinas, God the Son cannot proceed out of nothing; otherwise he would not properly be the Son of God the Father,
whose nature it is to be uncreated:
Therefore, if the Son were to proceed from the Father as out of
nothing, then he would be related to the Father as a thing made to
its maker, which manifestly cannot be named filiation except by a
kind of likeness. Hence, it follows that if the Son of God were to
proceed from the Father as out of nothing, he would not truly and
properly be called the Son.73

Ultimately the more general definition of “generation” that
describes inanimate creatures proves inapplicable to God, and Thomas
has recourse immediately to the analogy of the Word, for divine generation.Although it might seem obvious today that we must understand
divine generation to be immaterial and eternal, this was a real concern
of Christian theologians in the earliest centuries of the Church.74 For
instance, Origen was reluctant to speak of a Son generated from the
Father’s substance (ot< ría), because of materialist interpretations.75 In
72 ST I, q. 27, a. 2, corp.: “de potentia in actum vitae procedunt. . . . vita non exeat

de potentia in actum.”
73 ST I, q. 41, a. 3, corp.:“Si ergo Filius procederet a Patre ut de nihilo existens, hoc

modo se haberet ad Patrem ut artificiatum ad artificem: quod manifestum est
nomen filiationis proprie habere non posse, sed solum secundum aliquam similitudinem. Unde relinquitur quod, si Filius Dei procederet a Patre quasi existens
ex nihilo, non esset vere et proprie Filius.”
74 Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas, 186.
75 Lewis Ayres, Nicea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23–24.

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order to be perfectly clear, Thomas affirms that “the Father did not
exist before generating the Son”76 and that “the action by which the
Father produces the Son is not successive.”77 Rather,“the Son is always
being begotten, and the Father is always begetting.”78 And when the
Son is said to be born of the Father, “the preposition ‘of ’ signifies a
consubstantial generating principle, and not a material principle.”79
Revising slightly the words of the Council of Ephesus,Thomas makes
specific reference to the contribution of the term “Son” for indicating
identity of nature and the term “Word” for securing immateriality:80
To show that he is of the same nature as the Father, he is called the
Son; to show that he is coeternal, he is called Splendor; to show
that he is altogether similar, he is called the Image; to show that he
is begotten immaterially, he is called the Word.81
76 ST I, q. 36, a. 3, ad 3: “unde non prius fuit Pater quam gigneret Filium.” In In

Ioan. 1:2 (lec. 1, no. 61), Aquinas observes, as Origen had, that the Father was
never without his Word—although Martin Sabathé, “La Trinité rédemptrice:
Processions et missions trinitaires dans le Commentaire de l’évangile selon saint
Jean par saint Thomas d’Aquin” (Diss., University of Fribourg, 2009), 213, note
598, explains that this passage will be struck from the Leonine Commission’s
critical edition since it appears in only one manuscript.
77 ST I, q. 42, a. 2, corp.:“Et iterum, quod actio qua Pater producit Filium, non est
successiva.”
78 ST I, q. 42, a. 2, ad 3: “Unde Filius semper generatur, et Pater semper generat.”
79 ST I, q. 41, a. 3, ad 1:“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod, cum Filius dicitur natus
de Patre, haec praepositio de significat principium generans consubstantiale; non
autem principium materiale.”
80 Here Thomas adds the name “Image” and substitutes “immaterial” for “impassible”
concerning the Word. In ST I, q. 42, a. 2, ad 1,Aquinas quotes a Christmas sermon
of Theodotus, bishop of Ancyra (d.c. 445), that was read at the Council of Ephesus.
See Theodotus, Homilia II in die Nativitatis Domini, PG, vol. 77 (Paris:Vrayet, 1864),
col. 1376–77. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Questions 33–43, ed.
Thomas Gilby, trans.T. C. O’Brien, 60 vols., vol. 7 (London: Blackfriars with Eyre
& Spottiswoode, 1976), 194, note 7. But, note 7 bears a typographical error:
Theodotus’s homily appears in the fifth and not the sixth volume of Theodotus,
Eiusdem homilia altera lecta in Synodo G.L., ed. Giovanni Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio, vol. 5 (Paris: H. Welter, 1901), 210.
J. Weisheipl notes that Thomas was the first medieval author to cite the first five
ecumenical councils verbatim. See James A.Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His
Life, Thought and Works (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), 164–65. See also JeanPierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas:The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 103.
81 ST I, q. 34, a. 2, ad 3: “Nam ut ostendatur connaturalis Patri, dicitur Filius ; ut
ostendatur coaeternus, dicitur splendor ; ut ostendatur omnino similis, dicitur
imago; ut ostendatur immaterialiter genitus, dicitur Verbum.”Also In Ioan. 1:1 (lec.
1, no. 42):“Ut enim ostendatur connaturalis Patri, dicitur Filius; ut ostendatur in

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From our consideration of the Word above (section V.B.1), it should
be clear that Aquinas is not content to accept the analogy of the Word
merely as a supporting model to help interpret the generation of a
consubstantial Son. For Aquinas, the procession of the Word is the
generation referred to in the Creed. Since a generation in God must
indicate an origin from a conjoined living principle, Aquinas demonstrates
that the Word has an origin from a conjoined living principle:82
Therefore, the procession of the Word in God has the nature of a
generation. For he proceeds by way of an intelligible action—
which is an activity of a living being—and from a conjoined principle, as was already said above [in a. 1]; and he proceeds under the
aspect of a likeness—because the concept of the intellect is a likeness of the thing understood—and as existing in the same nature,
because in God to know and to be are the same, as was shown
above [in q. 3, a. 4 and q. 14, a. 4]. Hence the procession of the
Word in God is called a generation and the Word himself proceeding is called a Son.83

It is by means of the speaking of the Word that Aquinas intends to show
what the generation of the Son in God is.
b. The concomitant will and the communication of the power to
generate. We now examine two questions concerning the Son’s
generation that are not addressed in the word analogy: (i) the Father’s
concomitant willing to give birth to the Son, and (ii) the Father’s
communication of the power to beget to this Son who is begotten.
i. The Father’s concomitant will in generation. In Thomas’s discussion
of the Father’s will in the Son’s generation, he steers between two
poles that must be rejected. On one hand, the Son is generated by
nature, not by the Father’s will; on the other hand, the Father does
not beget by necessity. At stake is the Son’s equality with the
Father, on one hand, and the Father’s freedom from coercion, on
nullo dissimilis, dicitur imago; ut ostendatur coaeternus, dicitur splendor; ut
ostendatur immaterialiter genitus, dicitur Verbum.”
82 A more abbreviated form of the same argument appears in ST I, q. 34, a. 2, corp.
and In Ioan. 1:1 (lec. 1, no. 29).
83 ST I, q. 27, a. 2, corp:“Sic igitur processio verbi in divinis habet rationem generationis. Procedit enim per modum intelligibilis actionis, quae est operatio vitae:
et a principio coniuncto, ut supra iam dictum est: et secundum rationem similitudinis, quia conceptio intellectus est similitudo rei intellectae: et in eadem
natura existens, quia in Deo idem est intelligere et esse, ut supra ostensum est.
Unde processio verbi in divinis dicitur generatio, et ipsum verbum procedens
dicitur Filius.”

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the other.Thomas demonstrates that the Son’s generation does not
depend on the Father’s willing it; rather, the Father begets the Son
by nature. In other words, it is God’s nature to be a Trinity. Here we
must look all the way back past creation to a divine action that is
not freely willed.There is no reason to be sought to explain generation as if it were the Father’s choice. He generates because he is
the Father; that is simply the way God is. In the Summa theologiae,
Thomas repeats the straightforward presentation he makes in the
Sentences Commentary concerning this question.84 In ST I, q. 41, a.
2, he distinguishes willing as desiring and willing as causing. The
Father indeed desires the Son to be generated, but he does not cause
the Son to be generated. In other words, the Father does not
generate the Son by choice, but neither is he forced to do so.
If the Father had begotten the Son by will, the Son would be
a creature; this was Arius’s erroneous claim:
When something is said to be by will, or to come about by
will, it can be understood in two senses. [1] In one way, it can
be understood as the ablative [“by will ” (voluntate )] designates
only concomitance, as I can say that I am a man by my will
because I will to be a man. And in this way it can be said that
the Father begot the Son by will: as he is God by will because
he wills to be God, so also he wills to beget the Son. [2] In
another way, it can be understood that the ablative implies the
relation of a principle, as it is said that the craftsman works by
will, because will is the principle of his work. And according
to this sense, it must be said that God the Father did not beget
the Son by will but produced creatures by will. . . .And therefore the Arians, wishing to establish that the Son was a creature, said that the Father begot the Son by will, insofar as will
designates a principle. But we must assert that the Father begot
the Son not by will but by nature.85
84 See I Sent., d. 6, q. 1, aa. 1 and 2. Although he uses “necessary absolutely” (neces-

sarium absolute ) and “conditionally” (ex conditione ) in a. 1 in the Sentences
Commentary and “necessary of itself ” (necessarium per se ) and “by reason of
another” ( per aliud ), respectively, in the Summa theologiae (ST I, q. 41, a. 2, ad 5),
Thomas’s argument is the same.
85 ST I, q. 41, a. 2, corp.: “Respondeo dicendum quod, cum dicitur aliquid esse vel
fieri voluntate, dupliciter potest intelligi. Uno modo, ut ablativus designet
concomitantiam tantum: sicut possum dicere quod ego sum homo mea voluntate, quia
scilicet volo me esse hominem. Et hoc modo potest dici quod Pater genuit Filium
voluntate, sicut et est voluntate Deus: quia vult se esse Deum, et vult se generare
Filium.Alio modo sic, quod ablativus importet habitudinem principii: sicut dicitur
quod artifex operatur voluntate, quia voluntas est principium operis. Et secundum
hunc modum, dicendum est quod Deus Pater non genuit Filium voluntate; sed

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In the Summa theologiae and the Sentences Commentary, Aquinas
describes the will in desiring as being concomitant with an existing
reality and the will in causing as being the principle of an action.Thus,
the Father generates the Son by will only in the sense of concomitance.86 That is, the Father wills the Son in the same way that the
Father wills to be God. It is not because he wills it that he is God,
nor does he first discover that he is God before willing it. He
simply is God by nature and has always willed this pleasing truth
concomitantly.
In the De potentia, the Common Doctor adds more precisely
that “the generation of the Son can be related to the will as the
will’s object, for the Father wills both the Son and the Son’s
generation from all eternity.”87 That is, the Father loves the Son
with essential love, as the object of the concomitant divine will,
when he gives birth to him through the notional action of generation. The De potentia, which is more developed than the Summa
theologiae in its consideration of the concomitant will, describes
nature as the principle of generation and spiration.88 Thus, the
notional acts are acts of nature, whereas creation is an act of the
will. Even so, God wills the notional acts concomitantly. The
divine will is not a principle of generation or spiration, but generation and spiration are still objects of the divine will, willed
concomitantly. Aquinas distinguishes here between the will as a
principle and the will as a faculty with respect to its object.
Now, the fact that the Father wills generation only concomitantly does not mean that he begets the Son by necessity. In other
voluntate produxit creaturam. . . . Et ideo Ariani, volentes ad hoc deducere quod
Filius sit creatura, dixerunt quod Pater genuit Filium voluntate, secundum quod
voluntas designat principium. Nobis autem dicendum est quod Pater genuit Filium
non voluntate, sed natura.”
86 The Angelic Doctor refers to the distinctions among the concomitant will, the
agreeing or consequent will, and the antecedent will that theologians of his time
commonly observed (ST I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1; De potentia, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2; In I Sent.,
d. 6, q. 1, a. 2, corp.). He specifies that the agreeing will and the antecedent will
are not in God, because anything God ever wills he has willed from eternity.The
concomitant will, on the other hand, is said only according to the relation to the
will’s object, and thus it is in God with respect to the generation of the Son.
87 De potentia, q. 2, a. 3, corp.: “Dicendum, quod generatio Filii potest se habere ad
voluntatem ut voluntatis obiectum: Pater enim et Filium voluit et Filii generationem ab aeterno.” The Scriptum (In I Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 2, corp.) too speaks of
the Son as the object of the divine concomitant will.
88 De potentia, q. 2, a. 2.

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words, the Father is not in any way coerced to generate or in need
of generating in order to achieve some other purpose:
Something is said to be necessary either of itself or by reason
of another. Something is necessary by reason of another in
two ways: in one way, as by an efficient and coercive cause, and
thus necessary describes that which is violent; in another way,
as by a final cause, as when something is said to be necessary
as the means to an end, insofar as without it the end could not
be attained or at least not well attained. But divine generation
is necessary in neither of these ways, because God is not the
means to an end, nor is he subject to coercion. Now, something is said to be necessary of itself that cannot not be. And it
is necessary for God to be thus. And in this way it is necessary
for the Father to beget the Son.89

So, it is necessary that the Father beget the Son in that God necessarily is what he is, but not as if the Father is subject to some superior external principle. The concomitant will also explains how,
while the Father’s love for the Son is not the cause of the Son’s
goodness, neither is the Son’s goodness presupposed to the
Father’s love: the Father’s love for the Son is simultaneous and
concomitant with the Son’s goodness. In the Commentary on John,
Aquinas contrasts divine love with love among creatures, for
whom the Father’s will is the cause of goodness and for whom
goodness is presupposed to love.90
ii. Communication of the power to generate. Aquinas deals with the
question of the communication to the Son of the power to beget,
in the Summa theologiae, the De potentia, and the Scriptum.Although
he does show development in his understanding of generation by
the time of the writing of the Summa theologiae, Thomas had
already determined the problem and the outlines of his solution
in the Commentary on the Sentences.The discussion revolves around
the question whether the power to generate is essential or
89 ST I, q. 41, a. 2, ad 5: “Ad quintum dicendum quod necessarium dicitur aliquid

per se, et per aliud. Per aliud quidem dupliciter. Uno modo, sicut per causam agentem et cogentem: et sic necessarium dicitur quod est violentum.Alio modo, sicut
per causam finalem: sicut dicitur aliquid esse necessarium in his quae sunt ad
finem, inquantum sine hoc non potest esse finis, vel bene esse. Et neutro istorum
modorum divina generatio est necessaria: quia Deus non est propter finem,
neque coactio cadit in ipsum. Per se autem dicitur aliquid necessarium, quod non
potest non esse. Et sic Deum esse est necessarium. Et hoc modo Patrem generare Filium est necessarium.”
90 In Ioan. 5:20 (lec. 3, no. 753).

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John Baptist Ku, O.P.

personal. If it is essential, then it must be possessed by the Son,
who possesses the divine essence perfectly. If it is personal, then it
belongs to the Father’s incommunicable paternity. Now, there are
difficulties that accompany either position. If the power to generate is essential and is possessed fully by the Son, then it seems that
the Son himself should generate a Son. On the other hand, if this
notional power is personal and is not possessed by the Son, then
there would seem to be a difference in power between the Father
and the Son. The Dominican master settles the matter by determining that the power to generate is principally essential and indirectly personal. He affirms that this power is given to the Son, and
he espouses Albert’s distinction between power (of the essence)
and act (of a person) in order to explain how the Son can possess
this power and not generate a Son of his own.91 This solution is
already indicated by Lombard, who articulates the distinction in
terms of property rather than act.92 Thomas explicitly rejects
Bonaventure’s position that the power to beget is strictly relative.
In this section, after (1) considering the subtle evolution of
Aquinas’s view concerning the power to beget, we will (2) briefly
review Bonaventure’s position and Aquinas’s critique of it before
(3) moving on to Aquinas’s argument that the power to beget is
principally essential.
1. An evolution in Aquinas’s view of notional power. In God there is no
real distinction between power, person, and act; God simply is
his act and his power:
Generation is not something in between the Father and Son
in the real order, since generation taken passively in the real
order is filiation itself . . . ; and taken actively it is paternity
itself, which is in the Father and is the Father himself.93

But there is a logical distinction between the power of begetting
and the act of begetting, just as there is a logical distinction
between essence and notional act.
91 Albert, In I Sent., d. 7, a. 10: “The power is one under the aspect of a natural

power, but it is not one under the aspect of a power to act.”
92 Lombard, I Sent., d. 7, ch. 6: “For the Son has fully the same power as the Father,

by which the Father can generate and the Son can be generated. . . . But if you
say that the Father can have one property or notion by which he is genitor and
the Son a different property by which he is generated, then it is true.”
93 In I Sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4:“generatio realiter non est aliquid medium inter Patrem
et Filium, cum generatio secundum rem passive accepta sit ipsa filiatio . . . ; accepta
vero active est ipsa paternitas quae est in Patre et est ipse Pater.”

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Here again, the theologian’s task is to distinguish according to
the mode of signification.Aquinas explains that, on one hand, the
power of generation is not absolute, as are the essential attributes,
because “if the persons are mentally abstracted, the power of
generation does not remain,” whereas the essential attributes like
will and intellect would remain.94 On the other hand,“the power
to generate is not relational except under the aspect of being joined
to the act.”95 The Commentary on the Sentences describes the power
of generation as being between essence and operation, between
the essential and the personal, and between the absolute and the
relative.96 Although the De potentia suggests in one objection that
the power of generation is between essence and operation, the
Summa theologiae does not offer this description.97 In the Summa
theologiae,Thomas concludes that this notional power signifies the
essence principally and relation indirectly. In comparison to the
Sentences Commentary, the De potentia and the Summa theologiae
reflect a gradual shift in Thomas’s view of the power of generation. Emmanuel Perrier documents the de-emphasis of notional
power as a topic of discussion from the Sentences Commentary to the
Summa theologiae; the emphasis shifts toward “act” and away from
“power.”98 In the De potentia, Thomas more frequently refers to
the “act of generation” than to the “power of generation.”99 The
Sentences Commentary speaks of this notional power as the divine
essence insofar as it is a productive capacity “between essence and
operation,” but the De potentia and the Summa theologiae refer to it
as the essence insofar as it is a principle of operation. In the Sentences
Commentary, there is much more attention devoted to the power
to generate simply as a power; in ruling out any passion in God,
Thomas associates divine power with divine impassibility, going
so far as to suggest that divine power is not prejudiced by act but
is above it: “divine power is in no way passive, nor even truly
94 In I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1:“[potentia generandi] non remanet, subtractis perso-

nis.”
95 In I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2:“potentia generandi non est ad aliquid nisi ex parte

illa qua conjungitur actui.”
96 In I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 1 and 3; d. 7, q. 1, a. 2; d. 7, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3, respectively.
97 De potentia, q. 2, a. 4, obj. 10.
98 Emmanuel Perrier, La fécondité en Dieu: La puisance notionelle dans la Trinité selon

saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2009), 12. My analysis here follows
the conclusions of Perrier’s thorough and careful exposition; see Perrier, 12,
23–24, 27–28, 58, 89, 93–94.
99 Perrier, La fécondité en Dieu, 58.

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470

active, but above act.”100 In the De potentia, although Aquinas
repeats that divine power is “neither passive nor properly active,”
the power to generate is associated very clearly with the principle of operation:101
Therefore, if the common nature is the principle of some
operation that belongs only to the Father, the common nature
must be a principle insofar as it belongs to the personal property of the Father. And on account of this, in a certain way,
paternity is included in the meaning of the power [of generation],
even as far as it is the principle of generation.And on account
of this, we must affirm with the others that the power of
generation signifies essence and notion at the same time.102

As Thomas’s reflection on the person of the Father deepens, he
becomes increasingly sensitive to the danger that an emphasis on
generation simply as a power might lead one to view the essence
as a pre-relational fontal plenitude that comes to fruition in the
persons.103 Thus, although divine power must be said to be principally on the side of essence, Aquinas makes clear that the power
to generate is not the essence taken as some pre-paternal productive capacity.

100 In I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3:“potentia divina nullo modo passiva est, nec etiam

vere activa; sed superactum.”
101 De potentia, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1.
102 De potentia, q. 2, a. 2, corp:“Et ideo oportet quod si natura communis sit princip-

ium alicuius operationis quae solum Patri convenit, oportet quod sit principium,
secundum quod competit proprietati personali Patri. Et propter hoc in ratione
potentiae includitur quodammodo paternitas, etiam quantum ad id quod est
generationis principium. Et propter hoc cum aliis dicendum est, quod potentia
generandi simul essentiam et notionem significat.”We find the same idea affirmed
in the De 108 articulis, q. 21:“if [the divine essence] is understood to be the principle of the notional acts as that by which, then it concurs with the words of the
Master in I Sent., d. 7, where he says that the power to generate is the divine
essence” (si intelligatur essentia esse principium huiusmodi actuum ut generans vel
spirans; sed si intelligatur esse principium actuum notionalium ut quo, consonat
dictis magistri, in VII dist. Primi Lib., ubi dicit, quod potentia generandi est divina
essentia). For Lombard’s text, see Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed.
Fathers of St. Bonaventure College, 3d ed., Specilegium Bonaventurianum, vol.
1–2 (Rome: St. Bonaventure College, 1971–1981), bk. 1, d. 7, ch. 2 (p. 93, line 22).
103 Aquinas is sometimes accused of proposing such an “essentialism” by treating the
divine essence before the persons in the Summa theologiae. For a definitive rejection of this mistaken interpretation, see Gilles Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?,” The Thomist 64 (2000).

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2. Bonaventure on notional action. Aquinas’s subtle shift in articulation
concerning notional power in God is markedly anti-Bonaventurian.According to his hierarchical understanding, Bonaventure
holds that the Father does not communicate to the Son the
power to generate.Although he accepts that divine power is in the
divine essence, which of course is in the Son, Bonaventure asserts
that the power to generate is a personal reality, belonging properly
to the person of the Father.This accords with his understanding
of the Father as a fontal plenitude, distinguished as a hypostasis
even without reference to the Son. While Bonaventure recognizes the plausibility of the position that the power to generate
is essential and only exercised distinctly by distinct persons, he
settles in favor of the position that the generative power is a
personal power.104 Bonaventure thus distinguishes the power to
create, which he recognizes as an essential power, from the power
to generate, which he maintains is personal.105
Now, Bonaventure would agree with Thomas’s assertion that
“the divine essence is not more the Father’s than the Son’s.”106 As
to what concerns the divine essence, Bonaventure affirms the
perfect equality of the three persons; he clearly holds that all of the
persons are one numerically same divine essence. But he maintains
that the persons are related in a hierarchy.107 Bonaventure is thus
faced with a more strained explanation of the relationship
between the (hierarchical) personal properties and the (equally
shared) essence, whereby power must be divided into personal
power (to generate and to spirate) and essential power (knowing,
loving, creating, etc.).This demands an explanation of what gives
rise to the distinction of a “personal power.” In Thomas’s view,
only opposed relations (such as Father to Son) can account for
104 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 7, a. un., q. 1, sol., tert. opin. (p. 136, col. 1): “There was

thirdly the position of the more modern theologians who said that of itself the
power of giving birth expresses relation in God. And the reason for this is that
power expresses the relation of the original principle to the principled. . . .This
position is the more probable.” See Emery, La Trinité Créatrice, 185.
105 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 20, a. 1, q. 1, sol. opp. 1 and 3 (p. 369, col. 2).
106 ST I, q. 42, a. 1, ad 3: “essentia divina non magis est Patris quam Filii.”
107 Through the application of appropriation, Bonaventure will even associate a
different order of angels with each of the divine persons (highest to the Father,
middle to the Son, lowest to the Holy Spirit). Bougerol observes that with this
“dangerous move” Bonaventure has strayed far from the thought of Dionysius.
Jacques Guy Bougerol, “S. Bonaventure et la Hiérarchie dionysienne,” Archives
d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 36 (1969): 145.

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472

real distinction in the Trinity, and relative opposition does not
distinguish power; all power that the Father possesses is communicated to the Son. Furthermore, relative opposition can account for
distinction only by order of origin and not by order of hierarchy.
Thomas’s doctrine of relations defends the equality of the Son not
only as co-possessor of the essence but specifically as he is related
to the Father. That is, distinction by relation alone accounts for
how the one who receives everything in generation is equal to
the one who gives everything in generation but himself receives
nothing from anyone.The Son possesses the power of generation
as one who is generated and not as one who generates.108
At first glance, the evolution in Aquinas’s thought regarding
notional action might seem to move him closer to Bonaventure’s
position.That is, by describing generation less as simply a productive capacity and more as the principle of operation,Aquinas associates power more closely with the property of the person who
acts:“in a certain way, paternity is included in the meaning of the
power [of generation].”109 And this is to move notional power
more toward the relative and thus toward Bonaventure’s position,
which is that notional power is strictly relative and not essential.
But a closer examination reveals a sharpening of Thomas’s position against Bonaventure’s. For Aquinas, (1) innascibility is a pure
negation, (2) the Father is constituted by his paternity, and (3) the
divine person is a subsisting relation, whereas for Bonaventure, (1)
innascibility signifies primacy positively and (2) constitutes the
Father’s hypostasis in a certain way, and (3) relation manifests but
does not constitute the divine hypostasis. Because of this foundational difference,Aquinas’s closer association of notional power to
operation in fact develops a more certain rejection of the position, held by Bonaventure, that the Father possesses the power to
generate and the Son does not. Aquinas’s subtle shift in emphasis
toward the relative rules out even more decisively the idea of a
pre-paternal productive capacity in God, whereby the Father,
constituted as a hypostasis by his innascibility irrespective of the
Son, would alone possess the notional power of generation.
3. The power to beget is principally essential. In ST I, q. 41, Thomas
argues from basic metaphysical definitions to the conclusion
108 ST I, q. 42, q. 6, ad 3.
109 De potentia, q. 2, a. 2, corp: “in ratione potentiae includitur quodammodo pater-

nitas.”

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473

that the power of begetting must signify the essence principally.
He begins with a clarification of terms concerning how an
agent is said to act:
Some have said that the power to beget signifies a relation in
God. But this cannot be. For in any agent, that by which the
agent acts is properly called a “power.”110

Thomas continues the argument with the observation that
between the begetter and the begotten, there must be a likeness
in form:
Now, everything that produces something by its action,
produces something similar to itself with respect to the form by
which it acts, as a man begotten is similar in human nature to
the one begetting, by virtue of which a father can beget a man.
Therefore in anything that begets, it is the begetting power in
the begetter that makes the begotten like the begetter.111

Thus, since what makes the Son like the Father is the divine
essence and not the relation of paternity, which is incommunicable, that by which the Father begets the Son must be the essence
and not the relation of paternity. Consequently the power of
begetting is said to signify principally the essence and not, as
Bonaventure suggested, the property of paternity:
Therefore it ought to be said that the power of begetting
signifies principally the divine essence, as the Master says in I
Sent., d. 7, [ch. 2], and not relation only. . . . Hence neither
can paternity be understood as that by which the Father
begets, but as constituting the person begetting: otherwise the
Father would beget a Father. Now that by which the Father
begets is the divine nature, in which the Son is like him. And
110 ST I, q. 41, a. 5, corp.:“quidam dixerunt quod potentia generandi significat rela-

tionem in divinis. Sed hoc esse non potest. Nam illud proprie dicitur potentia in
quocumque agente, quo agens agit.”Aquinas has Bonaventure especially in mind
as one of the Parisian doctors identified here as “some.” See Bonaventure, I Sent.,
d. 7, a. un., q. 1.William of Auxerre, on the other hand, allows that the power to
beget is in the Son insofar as it is taken as an impersonal gerundive ( gerundivum
verbi impersonalis ). See William of Auxerre, Summa Aurea, ed. Jean Ribaillier, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, vol. 16 (Grottaferrata: St. Bonaventure College,
1980), bk. 1, tract. 8, ch. 3 (p. 130).
111 ST I, q. 41, a. 5, corp.: “Omne autem producens aliquid per suam actionem,
producit sibi simile quantum ad formam qua agit: sicut homo genitus est similis
generanti in natura humana, cuius virtute pater potest generare hominem. Illud
ergo est potentia generativa in aliquo generante, in quo genitum similatur generanti.” Cf. ST I, q. 41, a. 4, corp.

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John Baptist Ku, O.P.
for this reason Damascene [in De Fide Orthodoxa, bk. 1, ch. 8]
says that begetting is the work of the divine nature, not as if
the divine nature is the one begetting but as the divine nature
is that by which the one begetting begets. Therefore the
power of begetting signifies the divine nature directly and relation indirectly.112

Since an agent acts by its power, and in a true generation the
agent-begetter begets a son of like nature with the same power as
the agent-begetter, if the Father were to generate by his paternity,
then he would beget another Father! If the generation is perfect,
then the one generated must possess completely that by which he
is generated. Otherwise, we would be impelled to agree with the
Arians that the Father begets a Son imperfectly, that is, one who
does not have the same power as the Father. The only way to
account for both the incommunicability of paternity and the
Father’s perfect full self-communication to the Son is to recognize
that paternity is distinguished from filiation only as a relation of
origin.The power possessed by the Son is the same power possessed
by the Father; they possess the very same essence.Thomas advances
this particular argument only in the Summa theologiae.113 Appealing to authorities as diverse as Lombard and Damascene,Thomas
makes the case that the traditions of the East and the West stand
together on this point.
112 ST I, q. 41, a. 5, corp.:“Sic igitur dicendum est quod potentia generandi princi-

paliter significat divinam essentiam, ut Magister dicit,VII dist. I Sent.; non autem
tantum relationem. . . . Unde neque paternitas potest intelligi ut quo Pater
generat, sed ut constituens personam generantis: alioquin Pater generaret Patrem.
Sed id quo Pater generat, est natura divina, in qua sibi Filius assimilatur. Et secundum hoc Damascenus dicit quod generatio est opus naturae, non sicut generantis,
sed sicut eius quo generans generat. Et ideo potentia generandi significat in recto
naturam divinam, sed in obliquo relationem.” For Damascene’s text, see John
Damascene, Expositio Fidei, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von
Damaskos, vol. 2 = Patristiche Texte und Studien,Vol. 12 (New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1973), bk. 1, ch. 8 (p. 21, lines 67–68).
113 The same is stated in the De Concordantiis Suiipsius, also known as the Concordantiae “Pertransibunt Plurimi,” which though attributed to Thomas is of doubtful
authenticity:“Hence a personal property [like paternity] cannot be the principle
by which something is produced because its likeness is not made, since it is
incommunicable.” Thomas hints at this argument, in In Ioan. 16:15 (lec. 4, no.
2114), where he notes that that by which the Father gives and that which the Father
gives to the Son are the same in the real order; but he does not draw any conclusions concerning the communication of paternity. Gilles Emery, “La procession
du Saint-Esprit a Filio chez saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 96 (1996):
567–68, treats this question with respect to the Holy Spirit.

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Having established that the power of begetting signifies the
essence (principally), Thomas appeals to the Trinitarian order
without priority to explain how the Son possesses the power to
beget. Since all three persons share the same divine essence, all
share the same power, but each in the way that is proper to him.
The essence is in the Father as generation and in the Son as nativity. Thus, the terms for what is common and for what is proper
must be sorted out according to the mode of signification:
As the same essence that is paternity in the Father is filiation
in the Son, so is the power by which the Father begets the
same as that by which the Son is begotten. Hence it is manifest that whatever the Father can do, the Son can do. Nevertheless it does not follow that he can beget, barring substance
being changed into relation; for generation signifies a relation
in God.Therefore, the Son has the same omnipotence as the
Father but with another relation, because the Father has it as
the one giving; and this is signified when it is said that he can
beget. But the Son has it as the one receiving; and this is
signified when it is said that he can be begotten.114

Here Aquinas distinguishes generation,“which signifies a relation
in God,”115 from the power to generate, which “signifies the
divine nature directly and relation indirectly.”116 This explains
how the Father and the Son can have one same essence and
power despite the fact that the Father generates the Son but the
Son does not generate the Father.
Now, it might seem odd to describe omnipotence as the
power to receive the divine essence or to be begotten. Thomas
anticipates this difficulty in q. 41, a. 1.There he explains that the
assertion that the Son is begotten implies no passivity in the Son;
114 ST I, q. 42, a. 6, ad 3:“Ad tertium dicendum quod, sicut eadem essentia quae in

Patre est paternitas, in Filio est filiatio; ita eadem est potentia qua Pater generat,
et qua Filius generatur. Unde manifestum est quod quidquid potest Pater, potest
Filius. Non tamen sequitur quod possit generare: sed mutatur quid in ad aliquid,
nam generatio significat relationem in divinis. Habet ergo Filius eandem
omnipotentiam quam Pater, sed cum alia relatione. Quia Pater habet eam ut dans:
et hoc significatur, cum dicitur quod potest generare. Filius autem habet eam ut
accipiens, et hoc significatur, cum dicitur quod potest generari.”Thomas repeats
this argument in q. 41, a. 6, ad 1 and in q. 42, a. 4, ad 2. He offers a foreshadowing hint of the argument in ST I, q. 41, a. 5, ad 3.
115 In I Sent., d. 20, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1 and 4; De potentia, q. 2, a. 5, ad 8; ST I, q. 42, a. 6,
ad 3.We should recall that origin is signified by way of action, such as “generation,” but relation by way of form, such as “paternity” (ST I, q. 40, a. 2, corp.).
116 ST I, q. 41, a. 5, corp.

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John Baptist Ku, O.P.

rather, our grammar is not sufficient for describing the Son’s
nativity except in the passive voice. Instead of concluding that
such an assertion implies that the Son is somehow less than the
Father, we should instead recognize that the problem lies in our
limited ability to lay bare the Trinitarian mystery in human
language.The weakness should be ascribed to us and our mode
of signification, not to God the Son:
Action, insofar as it implies origin of motion, necessarily
involves passion; and action is not thus attributed to the divine
persons. Hence passions are not attributed here except grammatically, as far as the mode of signification—as we attribute
“to beget” to the Father and “to be begotten” to the Son.117

Thomas’s clear account of the analogous character of human
speech allows him to develop a theology that is respectful of
both the limitations of human language as well as its power to
assert the truth that has been revealed to us.
Conclusion
In ST I, q. 33, a. 2,Aquinas considers whether the name “Father” is properly the name of any divine person. Explaining that the Father is uniquely
identified by the name “Father” because his person is distinguished and
constituted by his paternity, Aquinas concludes that “Father” is the most
proper name for this divine person—better, for instance, than the “Innascible” or the “Genitor” or the “Spirator.” “Father” is the most perfect name
since paternity signifies the completion and the complement of the generation of the Son.The Angelic Doctor determines as well that the Father
is the prime analogate of fatherhood, in which all other fathers share to a
lesser degree. For that reason, the name “Father” applies more properly to
God than to creatures. That is, perfect paternity expressed in perfect
generation, in which the Father’s being is perfectly communicated to the
Son, best fulfills the definitions of paternity and generation.
In the replies to the four objections of this article,Aquinas purifies our
earthly understanding concerning four terms,“relation,”“father,”“word”
and “generation,” in order to show how they can apply to God. Regarding the first of these terms,Thomas shows that although relations among
creatures are merely accidental, the Father is the relation of fatherhood as
117 ST I, q. 41, a. 1, ad 3:“Ad tertium dicendum quod actio, secundum quod importat

originem motus, infert ex se passionem: sic autem non ponitur actio in divinis
personis. Unde non ponuntur ibi passiones, nisi solum grammatice loquendo, quantum ad modum significandi; sicut Patri attribuimus generare, et Filio generari.”

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subsisting. “Father” is a relational name. He is this relation. With respect
to the second term, Aquinas establishes that “Father” is the most fitting
name for the person who gives birth to the Son, because this name best
expresses the perfectly complete generation that takes place only in God.
As concerns “word,” Thomas refashions Augustine’s analogy of the
word to exploit the analogy of a human word so as to lay hold of the
mystery of the Trinity, insofar as possible.The Common Doctor deploys
the procession of the Word in order to illustrate what the birth of the Son
in God is. A comparison of the Scriptum to the Summa theologiae reveals a
gentle gravitation away from a double image of (1) generation as the
communication of the divine nature and (2) the procession of the Word
as a likeness in the divine intellect, toward the procession of the Word as
the best analogy for grasping divine generation. Since the procession of a
word is immanent and gives rise to a distinction of opposed relation
alone, the analogy of the word does not bear the physical and temporal
connotations that birth does. For that reason, it proves superior in helping us to conceive of divine generation in some small measure. Indeed,
in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas opines that the analogy of the word is
the best means we have for grasping the procession of the Word in God.
There is also an evolution in Aquinas’s thought as he comes to articulate the divine persons more clearly as the fruit of the notional processions.
In the Scriptum, Aquinas takes the Word as both essential and relative. In
the Summa theologiae, he distinguishes the Father’s (essential) understanding from his (notional) speaking, which signifies the procession of the
Word. The Father speaks his whole self (and all creatures) in his Word,
which is his perfect reflection, distinct from him only by opposed relation.
As regards “generation,”Aquinas purifies examples found among creatures in order to formulate a definition that can apply to God. In a true
generation, a son must be of the same nature as his father, who must be
“a conjoined living principle”; in divine generation, the perfect communication of the divine nature results in a distinction between the begetter and begotten of opposed relations only. Aquinas’s growing preference
for the analogy of the Word does not mean that he simply abandons the
description of the Son’s procession as a birth. In particular, there are two
questions regarding generation for which Aquinas does not appeal to the
word analogy.The first of these concerns the Father’s will in generation.
Thomas affirms that the Father’s will is concomitant in generation. The
divine will cannot be the principle of the action of generation, for then
the Son would be a freely willed creature. The generation of the Son
must rather be understood as necessary; the Son cannot not be and could
not not have been.This necessity does not, however, imply that the Father

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acts under any kind of coercion.The Father wills to generate as he wills
to be God.The Father is not forced to generate the Son, but he does not
freely choose to beget him either. He concomitantly desires the Son’s
generation; generation is the object of the concomitant will.
The second issue that does not lend itself to being exposited by the analogy of the word is the communication to the Son of the power to beget.
On this point, we witness a subtle shift in Aquinas’s thought from regarding the power to beget as a productive capacity in the Scriptum to viewing it
as the principle of action in the Summa theologiae.This shift sharpens the articulation of Aquinas’s rejection of the idea of a pre-paternal productive
capacity in God, such as the conception of the Father as an innascible fontal
plenitude. Aquinas settles on the opinion that notional power signifies the
divine essence directly and relation indirectly. This resolution explains how
the Son can have all the power that the Father has but not generate a Son
of his own: the Son receives the whole divine essence with all its power,
but he receives it according to his proper relation of filiation. So, the Son
possesses the power of generation as the one receiving.That is, in the Son, this
notional power is the power to be begotten. Despite our inability to express
it with an active verb, it is an action.The divine essence, and not the relation of paternity, must be that by which the Father begets. Otherwise, since
in a perfect generation all of the Father’s power is communicated to the
Son, if he were to beget by his paternity, he would beget another Father! But
the power to beget does signify relation indirectly, as in a certain way paternity is included in the power to beget—because the essence as the principle
of active generation belongs to the Father alone.
The two major theological observations Thomas makes in ST I, q. 33,
a. 2 are that the name “Father” is not only metaphorically but properly
attributed by us to this divine person and that the name “Father” applies
first of all to this divine person and only by analogy to creatures. In this
second article of the question in the Summa theologiae devoted to the
person of the Father in the Holy Trinity, Aquinas’s treatment is undertaken via an examination of the name “Father,” which has been given to
us by Christ in Sacred Scripture.
N&V

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Friendship Degree Zero: Aquinas on Good Will
K EVIN W HITE
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

W HEN WE FIRST meet someone, or first see someone, or even just
first hear about someone, we are rarely indifferent. A new person is
usually the occasion of a new liking or dislike, a new sense of harmony
or discord.The liking or dislike may soon be forgotten, of course, but it
seems to promise a development into something more, namely, friendship
or enmity respectively.What sort of promise is this?
Introduction: Thinking, Wishing, and Willing
The initial response of liking someone new can become differentiated into
a thought and a wish.To like someone is to think well of him, as we say,
and think well of is close to the root meaning of the ancient Greek word
eunoia, which literally suggests something like being well-minded toward
someone. Eunoia is the subject of a chapter in the treatise on friendship in
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.To like someone is also to wish him well, if
only in the silence of our thoughts, and well-wishing corresponds to the
etymology of the Latin counterpart of eunoia used by Cicero, benevolentia.
Liking someone is both eunoia and benevolentia, both a thinking and a wishing. It begins with thinking well of him, and the wishing follows closely, in
the realization that the thought puts us on his side, as it were, and makes us
prefer that things go well rather than badly for him, although we are not
yet prepared to do anything for him. We are simply, again as we say, well
disposed toward him, in a condition of what Aristotle calls idle friendship.
The subject of being well disposed toward someone has two “places”
in ancient philosophy, as the Aristotelian corpus indicates. One, just
mentioned, is in ethics, in the context of the theme of friendship. The
other is in rhetoric, in the context of the theme of the prologue, exordium,

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or introduction of a speech. In both places, the subject of being well
disposed toward someone is associated with beginnings. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that being well disposed toward someone is
the beginning of friendship; in his Rhetoric, he says, in keeping with
rhetorical tradition, that the beginning of a speech aims at making the
audience well disposed to the speaker.1 Later in this tradition, Cicero, in
his De inventione, describes this aim as benevolentiam captare, the “winning”
of an audience’s benevolentia.The term captatio benevolentiae, which is still
sometimes used as a name for the introduction of a speech, echoes
Cicero’s discussion of how to win over an audience in an introduction.
The double setting, ethical and rhetorical, for the theme of being well
disposed toward someone invites comparison between beginnings of
friendships and beginnings of speeches.
On the question of how to compose an introduction with a view to
making an audience well disposed, Cicero is both more elaborate and
more influential than Aristotle.2 The introduction, Cicero says, should
make the mind of the hearer ready to hear the rest of the speech, and this
is done by making his mind benivolum, attentum, docile : well disposed,
attentive, teachable. Cicero does not expect the introduction to bring
about all three dispositions in the hearer. Rather, the different kinds of
case (Cicero is thinking of judicial rhetoric) call for different kinds of
introduction that aim at one or another of these effects, depending on the
demands of the case. He distinguishes five kinds of case. (1) One is the
surprising kind (admirabile ), which is the kind from which the hearer’s
mind is alienated at the outset. In such a case, the speaker may begin by
trying to win benevolentia as long as the audience members are not
completely hostile; but if they are vehemently alienated and angry, any
transparent attempt to win their benevolentia will only increase their
hatred. (2) Another is the lowly kind of case (humile ), which seems to the
hearer unworthy of his attention; this calls for an introduction that will
make him attentive. (3) The ambiguous kind of case (anceps ) either
involves some doubtful point, and then the speaker should begin with the
1 Nicomachean Ethics 9.5.1167a3, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1962); Rhetoric 3.14.1415a34 (ed. R. Kassel; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976).
2 De inventione 1.15.20–16.22, in De inventione, De optimo genere oratorum, Topica

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 40–46; cf. Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica
ad Herennium 1.5.8, in Ad C. Herennium De ratione dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium)
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 14–16. Parts of Rhetorica ad Herennium, including the discussion of the exordium, closely resemble and are apparently based on parts of De inventione. In the present discussion, I will refer
exclusively to the treatment of the exordium in De inventione, and ignore the very
similar treatment in Rhetorica ad Herrenium.Aquinas was familiar with both works.

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481

point; or it seems to have both something honorable and something
disgraceful about it, and then it is necessary to win benevolentia, in order
to turn it into a case of the honorable kind (honestum ). (4) In the honorable kind of case, one may omit any introduction and get straight down
to business; or, if it is desirable to have an introduction, one should use it
to increase the benevolentia that is already present. (5) The fifth kind of
case is the one that is hard to understand (obscurum ), either because the
audience is slow or because the issue is complicated; in this kind of case,
the introduction should make the audience teachable.
Cicero describes four topics (loci ) on the basis of which we can win
an audience’s benevolentia in an exordium. (1) We do so on the basis of our
own person (ab nostra persona ) if we speak without arrogance of our good
deeds and services, or remove accusations against or suspicions about us,
or describe difficulties we have had or are still having, or make a humble
request. (2) We do so on the basis of the person of our opponents (ab
adversariorum persona ) if we turn them into objects of hatred, envy, or
contempt. (3) We do so on the basis of the person of the judges or hearers (ab iudicum persona, ab auditorum persona ) if, being careful to avoid
excessive flattery, we say how they have acted with courage, wisdom, or
gentleness, and show in what great esteem they are held, and how much
their judgment is awaited. (4) We do so on the basis of the case, or of the
matters under discussion (a causa, ab rebus ), if we extol our case with
praise, and put down that of our opponents with contempt.
Cicero’s advice on the winning of benevolentia in an exordium was
common knowledge among the learned during the long “age of rhetoric” that lasted until the eighteenth century.3 To Thomas Aquinas in the
thirteenth century, the advice was a “trivial” matter, in the sense that it
was something he and his educated contemporaries knew from their
elementary studies in the liberal arts, which included the trivium of
speech arts consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Etymologically,
3 In 1828,Thomas De Quincey announced that “the age of Rhetoric, like that of

Chivalry, has passed amongst forgotten things,” echoing Edmund Burke’s famous
statement, in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), that “the age of chivalry
is gone.” Perhaps De Quincey intended his remark to evoke the figure of Burke
himself (1729–97), whose “superb orations” he admired. See Selected Essays on
Rhetoric by Thomas De Quincey, ed. F. Burwick (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1967), 97, 334. Walter Ong also indicates the late eighteenth
century as an end point, arguing that “[u]ntil the modern technological age,
which effectively began with the industrial revolution and romanticism,Western
culture in its intellectual and academic manifestations can be meaningfully
described as rhetorical culture.” Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the
Interaction of Expression and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), 1.

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however, benevolentia implies the noun voluntas and the verb velle, and
between the time of Cicero and that of Aquinas these words underwent
a momentous transformation of meaning in Christian theology. Voluntas,
and the corresponding Greek word, boule sis,
˜ became technical names of
a God-like power in the human soul of choosing freely; and velle, which
originally meant simple wanting, came to mean—in a strong sense, eventually to be inherited by modern philosophy—willing.
The positing of will as a human power with this radically new meaning
is attributed by some to Augustine’s account of the origin of sin in human
beings, by others to Maximus the Confessor’s response to the monothelite
controversy.4 Writing well before this positing, in any case, Aristotle had
used boulesis
˜ with the meaning of wish, in the straightforward sense of “the
kind of wanting that rational animals, human persons, are capable of.”5
Writing well after it, Aquinas took the word voluntas, both in Latin translations of Aristotle and in his own usage, to refer to willing, or to the power
of will, the “rational appetite” that is the subject of the act of willing.6 For
us, there is a difference in meaning, not just tone, between the tentative
I wish to take a walk; my wish is to take a walk
and the peremptory
I will to take a walk; my will is to take a walk
—but it’s not clear that Aristotle or Aquinas could so easily express the
difference. Aristotle’s boule sis
˜ seems to be wish that is innocent of what
we mean by will; Aquinas’s voluntas seems to be will that has subsumed
what we mean by wish. Perhaps, if acquainted with the distinction in
4 Albrecht Dihle, in The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1982), makes the case that the concept of will derives from the
biblical tradition, but is not fully articulated until Augustine. Sarah Byers, in “The
Meaning of Voluntas in Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 37 (2006): 171–89, at 173,
takes issue with Dihle on the originality of Augustine’s notion of will. R.-A.
Gauthier, in the introduction to R.-A. Gauthier and J.Y. Jolif, L’Éthique à Nicomaque: Introduction, traduction et commentaire, 2nd ed. (Louvain: Publications Universitaires-Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1970), 1.1: 255–67, argues that Maximus is the
source of the new understanding of will.
5 This description of wishing is formulated by Robert Sokolowski in the course
of working out a distinction between needing, which is common to plants,
animals, and human beings; wanting, which is common to animals and human
beings; and wishing, which is peculiar to human beings. Phenomenology of the
Human Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 239.
6 See David Gallagher, “Thomas Aquinas on the Will as Rational Appetite,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1991): 559–84.

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483

English, Aquinas might say that voluntas is an ordinary language word
meaning a wish, but that it also has deeper senses according to which it
means an act of willing, or, at the source of this act, a power of will.
Yet such a power of will is an arduum arcanum,“not a normal phenomenon in human action.”7 It is not obviously distinguished among powers of
soul in Aristotle’s De anima, and it certainly seems far from his mind in the
chapter on eunoia in the Nicomachean Ethics.8 But eunoia became benevolentia
in the Latin translation of the chapter, with the result that Aquinas, who had
an ear for the roots of words, could not read the chapter without hearing
voluntas, with its specifically Christian import. Between the chapter as it
came from Aristotle, then, and its Latin translation as it was received by
Aquinas, the phenomenon of being well disposed toward someone was
relocated, so to speak, from nous to voluntas, from Greek mind to Christian
will, and the subordinate philosophical theme of being well disposed toward
someone came to contain in miniature the great theological theme of will.
The following discussion is an examination of some texts of Aquinas on
benevolentia.The discussion is divided into three parts, corresponding to the
ways in which good will, as Aquinas understands it, is considered in ethics,
theology, and rhetoric. In the first two parts, I attempt to isolate, and bring
out something of the significance of, the overtone of voluntas that Aquinas
heard in benevolentia, by considering two passages in which he builds on
Aristotle’s chapter on good will: one is his exposition of the chapter in his
commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, where he closely follows Aristotle’s
phenomenological analysis of the experience of being well disposed toward
someone; the other is an article of the Summa theologiae in which he introduces this analysis into the rarefied atmosphere of Christian theology.9 In
the third part, I point out some passages in which Aquinas makes use of
Cicero’s rhetorical account of good will. I include this third part as a
theoretical, not just a historical, complement to the first two parts. In the
7 Cajetan

on Summa theologiae I, q. 19, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 4:232), quoted by
Lawrence Dewan in “The Real Distinction between Intellect and Will,” in
Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2008), 125–50, at 125; Robert Sokolowski, review of Albrecht Dihle, The
Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, in The Review of Metaphysics 37 (1984): 625.
8 In his commentary on the De anima, Aquinas finds Aristotle referring to the
power of will at 414b2 and 432b3; see Sentencia libri De anima 2.5, 3.8 (Leonine
ed., 45.1: 89.155–57, 240.99–115). On the absence from Aristotle’s thought of
the notion of will in the scholastic sense, see Gauthier and Jolif, L’Éthique à Nicomaque 2.1: 170, 192–94, 205, 218–20, 249.
9 Both Sententia libri Ethicorum and Summa theologiae II–II seem to have been
composed in 1271–72. See R.-A. Gauthier, Quaestiones de quolibet,“Index scriptorum et operum” (Leonine ed., 25.2: 495–96); and J.-P.Torrell, Initiation à saint
Thomas d’Aquin, 2nd ed. (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 2002), 48.

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passages on good will in the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and
the Summa theologiae, Aquinas, under the guidance of Aristotle’s chapter,
presents good will as an event internal to the will of an individual. In
contrast, the Ciceronian account of how good will can be produced
when one person addresses others is concerned with speech as a cause of
good will and with the public context in which speech occurs. The
combination of the two perspectives, one private, the other public, will
allow us better to see how Aquinas understood good will than would the
former just by itself.
Usually I translate voluntas as will, but where it seems appropriate, I translate it as wish. I regularly translate benevolentia as good will, to reflect the presence, to Aquinas, of voluntas in benevolentia. Sometimes, however, I speak of
thinking well of someone, to suggest the sense of Aristotle’s eunoia; or, more
indeterminately, I speak of being well disposed toward someone, to indicate
a large area of understanding common to Aristotle and Aquinas.
I do not by good will mean goodness of will, as in the scriptural men of
good will, or Kant’s remark that nothing can be conceived as unqualifiedly
good except a good will. Nor do I mean by it the virtue of benevolence,
the cultivated habit of good will by which one is well disposed toward
human beings in general.10 Rather, I mean the well-wishing, the willing
of good, that arises when we first merely like someone, and that also
persists as the central feature of any friendship that ensues.
Occasionally I refer to, quote, or use terminology of, two phenomenological authors who share a way of seeing things, Thomas Prufer and
Robert Sokolowski. I do so because they also share a gift for presenting
ancient themes, including some themes touched on here, with fresh
insight and in engaging language.
Ethics: Good Will as Idle Friendship
What is the intention of Aquinas the expositor of Aristotle? Are his Aristotelian commentaries works of exegesis that simply present his understanding of what Aristotle says, or do they also imply agreement with what
he takes Aristotle to be saying? Where they seem to go beyond what Aristotle says, do they do so in order to draw out what he thinks Aristotle
means, or in order to add to what Aristotle says? Is their purpose pedagogical or speculative? Philosophical or theological?11
10 On this virtue, see Robert Spaemann, Happiness and Benevolence, trans. Jeremiah

Alberg (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 92–105.
11 For discussion of these questions see: Joseph Owens, “Aquinas as Aristotelian

Commentator,” in St.Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God:The Collected Papers of
Joseph Owens, ed. John R. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980),

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At least in passages of the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics dealing with good will, the identification of Aquinas’s thought with that of
Aristotle seems fairly complete: the Latin translation accurately reflects
what Aristotle says about being well disposed to someone; Aquinas closely
paraphrases Aristotle without disagreement or major digression; and he
seems to second Aristotle’s principal points in his own treatment of good
will in the Summa theologiae. On the other hand, small divergences between
expositor and author may be noted in these passages of the commentary,
both because of semantic shifts of the sort that occur in even the most
faithful translation—noteworthy here in this respect being the shift from
the thinking implied by eunoia to the wishing or willing implied by benevolentia—and because of brief comments that Aquinas inserts into what
seem, at first sight, to be little more than restatements of what Aristotle says.
I am going to paraphrase in English Aquinas’s paraphrases in Latin of
what Aristotle says in Greek about being well disposed toward someone.
It is customary to distinguish Aquinas’s expositions ad litteram from the
looser and fuller form of commentary that is sometimes called commentary by paraphrase, and that is used, for example, by Albert the Great; but
it is simply accurate to call the passages of Aquinas’s commentary I am
going to consider paraphrases. Paraphrase is an important part of Aquinas’s
technique of expositio, which involves the saying of something again, with
a difference, in order to clarify it. But to paraphrase suggests a greater
degree of difference in restatement than does to rephrase, and greater
scope for bringing out what the original statement obscurely implies, and
even for importing what it merely allows.
1–19; James A.Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life,Thought, and Works, with
Corrigenda and Addenda (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 272–85; Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin, 327–60;
Christopher Kaczor, “Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Ethics : Merely an
Interpretation of Aristotle?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 78 (2004):
353–78; Mark D. Jordan,“Thomas as Commentator in Some Programs of NeoThomism: A Reply to Kaczor,” ibid.: 379–86; Jordan, “Thomas’s Alleged Aristotelianism or Aristotle among the Authorities,” in Rewritten Theology: Aquinas
after His Readers (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 60–88; John F. Wippel, “Thomas
Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” in Metaphysical Themes in
Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2007), 240–71; and Leo Elders, “The Aristotelian Commentaries of St. Thomas
Aquinas,” The Review of Metaphysics 63 (2009): 29–53.
The epithet Expositor was assigned to Aquinas as commentator on Aristotle in
the late thirteenth century, in part, it seems, to distinguish him from the Commentator, Averroes; see A. Dondaine and L. J. Bataillon, “Le commentaire de saint
Thomas sur les Météores,” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 36 (1966): 81–152, at 100.

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I will note the divergences mentioned as they come up, but I should
say at once that I think Aquinas, by and large, accurately understands
what Aristotle, on the other side of the linguistic divide, says about being
well disposed toward someone. I also think that, in commenting on the
passages in the Ethics about being well disposed, Aquinas is taking what
Aristotle asserts to be true. My aim is to state what—with the exception
of small shifts and additions that I will flag by mention of Aquinas’s
name—Aquinas and Aristotle together take to be the truth about being
well disposed toward someone. For what it’s worth, I, too, take this to be
the truth—the obvious and interesting truth—of the matter.
In his prologue to the Nicomachean Ethics,Aquinas introduces the work
under the heading of order, of which he says there are two kinds: order of
parts to one another and order of things to an end. Moral philosophy, he
says, considers the order reason produces in properly human actions,
which are actions proceeding from the will of man; it considers such
actions as ordered to one another and to an end. The subject of moral
philosophy may be said to be either human action ordered to an end, or
man himself, acting by will for the sake of an end.12 On this account,
then, the Ethics is centrally concerned with the human will and its acts.
Friendship is treated late in the Ethics, after happiness, choice, and virtue
have been considered. Explaining its place in the work, Aquinas says that
friendship is founded on virtue as an effect of it.13 The discussion of friendship contains three chapters that deal with good will: Chapter 2 of Book 8,
which mentions good will as a constitutive part of friendship; Chapter 4 of
Book 9, which includes good will among the workings of friendship; and
Chapter 5 of Book 9, which shows how good will is different from friendship.14 Thus good will is gradually distinguished from friendship and shown
to have an intelligibility of its own. Let us consider each of these chapters.
Good Will as Essential to Friendship
In the second chapter of Book 8, Aquinas says, Aristotle investigates four
parts of a definition of friendship.15
1. The first part is taken from the object of friendship, which Aristotle
calls the amabile (phile ton
˜ ) (1155b17–26). Aquinas explains that the
12 Sententia libri Ethicorum 1.1 (Leonine ed., 47.1: 3.7–54).
13 Ibid., 8.1 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 442.5–6).
14 Aquinas’s chapter divisions of an Aristotelian text do not always match the

modern divisions, but there are happy coincidences in the cases of Nicomachean
Ethics 8.2, 9.4, and 9.5.
15 Sententia libri Ethicorum 8.2 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 445–47).

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amabile (“the lovable”) is the object of amatio (“loving”), from which
the word amicitia (“friendship”) is derived. As we will see when we
come to Aquinas’s commentary on NE 9.5, amatio can connote for
him a passion and an intensity that make it mean what we call being
in love ; but here he uses it as the nominal form of amare, the name of
any loving of anything.16 Aristotle says that the loveable is something
either good or delightful or useful, but that, since the useful is that by
which a good or a delight is brought about, only the good and the
delightful are loveable as ends.What Aristotle simply calls good,Aquinas
calls per se good or honorable (honestum). Aquinas says that if good and
delightful are taken as they usually are (communiter), they differ in ratio,
but not in subject; for it is the same thing that is called good according as it is in itself perfect and desirable, and delightful according as
appetite comes to rest in it. But here, Aquinas says, good refers to the
true good of man, that is, to what is congenial (conveniens) to man
according to reason; and delightful refers to what is congenial to man
according to sensation, namely, the pleasures of the body.
Aristotle raises the question whether people love what is good
simpliciter or what to them is good; sometimes these are not the same,
and the ambiguity extends to the delightful. Aquinas illustrates with
examples: philosophizing is good simply speaking, but not to one who
lacks the necessities; what is sweet is delightful simply speaking, but not
to one whose sense of taste is infected. Aristotle’s answer to his question is that each person seems to love what to him is good: as what is
simply speaking good is simply speaking loveable, so what to someone
is good, to him is loveable.Aristotle mentions some who say that what
anyone loves is not what to him is good, but what appears to him to be
good; but he finds the difference hard to see.The loveable is the apparent good.The point might be expressed in phenomenological terms:
anyone who loves anything or anyone is eminently what Prufer and
Sokolowski call a dative—that is, a recipient—of manifestation.17 What
is manifested to him is the goodness of the thing or person.
2. The second part of the definition of friendship,Aquinas says, pertains
to the quality of love in friendship (pertinet ad qualitatem amationis )
(1155b27–31). Aristotle says that love (amatio [philesis])
˜ of something
inanimate is not called friendship, first, because there is not the return
16 Cf. Expositio libri Peryermenias 1.5 (Leonine ed., 1.1: 26.56–72).
17 Prufer, Recapitulations: Essays in Philosophy (Washington, DC: The Catholic Uni-

versity of America Press, 1993), 75; Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 32, 65, and 161.

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of love (redamatio [antiphilesis])
˜ that friendship requires; and secondly,
because when we love something inanimate, we do not wish for its
good. It would be ridiculous to say we wish wine well. If we wish
some wine to be protected, it is so that we may enjoy it; but we wish
a friend well for his sake. This contrast between love of inanimate
things and love of persons is the basis of a scholastic distinction that
we will meet with later between, on one hand, love of concupiscence
and, on the other hand, love of friendship or love of good will.
3. The third part of Aristotle’s definition, Aquinas says, pertains to the
interchange of love in friendship (pertinet ad vicissitudinem amandi)
(1155b32–34). One who wishes to another what is good is said to be
good-willed, but not a friend, if the other does not do likewise, for
friendship consists in reciprocity.Aquinas adds the interesting comment
that friendship involves an exchange of love “according to the form of
commutative justice.” Friendship is commutative, not distributive. If it is
something higher than justice in buying and selling, it, too, has the form
of an order governing exchanges between private persons.18
4. The fourth part of the definition is taken according to a condition of
the mutual love (sumitur secundum condicionem mutui amoris ), namely,
that it not be hidden (1155b34–1156a3). Many, says Aristotle, are
well disposed toward someone they have never seen, because—on
the basis of what they have heard, Aquinas suggests—they think that
the person either is virtuous or might be useful to them.Two people
might be well disposed to each other in this way, but they cannot be
called friends if they are unaware of their mutual good will.
In short, friendship is (2) a well-wishing that is (3) mutual, (4) not
unnoticed on either side, and (1) due, on each side, to the appearance
of someone who seems in some way good. On the assumption of (1)
the appearance of such a person, (2) a wishing of good to him is the
first requirement of, even if insufficient to constitute, friendship.The
further requirements of (3) reciprocity and (4) mutual awareness
presuppose and build on the wishing of good, which is the first principle of friendship in one who is to become a friend.
In the Latin translation of this chapter, Greek words that signify
the wishing of good are rendered by voluntas (boule sis)
˜ and velle
18 Sententia libri Ethicorum 8.2 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 446.96–97): “habet enim [amici-

tia] quandam commutationem amoris secundum formam commutativae iustitiae.” On commutative justice as an order between two private persons, see
Summa theologiae II–II, q. 61, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 9:34).

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(boulesthai ); and Greek words that suggest thinking well of someone
are rendered by words that are cognate with voluntas and velle, namely
benevolentia (eunoia ), bene velle (eunoein ), and benivolus (eunos ). The
Latin, then, is even more insistent than the Greek on wishing, or, as
a scholastic reader would take it, on willing.
Good Will among the Workings of Friendship
From another point of view, in Chapter 4 of Book 9 Aristotle presents good
will as one of the features of friendship (amicabilia [ta philika ]), which
Aquinas variously calls friendship’s effects, acts, and works or “workings”
(opera ).19 These amicabilia toward friends, Aristotle says, seem to have
come—to have proceeded, Aquinas says—from those that are directed
toward oneself, a statement that Aquinas in other works repeats as
axiomatic.20 Here he rephrases it by saying that one man seems to be friend
to another if what he does for the other is the same as what he would do
for himself.21 An act of friendship that comes naturally to one who, for
example, likes sports—say, getting a ticket to a game for someone—is just
what he would do for himself.This implies that friends tend to be the same
kind of people, that is, people who like the same kinds of things.
Aristotle discusses three principal features of friendship: beneficence,
good will, and concord (9.4).22 Concerning the first, he says that a friend
is held to be one who wills and does what is good, or what appears to be
good, for the sake of his friend (1166a2–4). Both wills and does, Aquinas
comments, because one without the other is not enough for friendship.
Beneficence as a feature of friendship is not present if one either benefits

19 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.4 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 512.10–14): “primo point orig-

inem effectuum sive actuum amicitiae. . . . amicabilia, id est amicitiae opera” (emphasis added). Daniel Schwartz discusses the amicabilia in Aquinas on Friendship
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 6–21.
20 Scriptum super librum III Sententiarum, d. 29, quaestio unica, a. 1, ad 3 (ed. Mandonnet-Moos, 3:930); Summa theologiae I, q. 60, a. 3, s.c. (Leonine ed., 5:102); I–II, q.
99, a. 1, ad 3 (7:199); II–II, q. 26, a. 3, obj. 1 (8:211); II–II, q. 44, a. 7, obj. 2
(8:336); De caritate, q. 2, a. 4, obj. 2 (Quaestiones Disputatae, Marietti ed. 19498,
2:762); q. 2, a. 7, ad 11 (2:772); Quaestiones de quolibetV q. 3, a. 2 [6] (Leonine ed.,
25.2: 370.26–28).
21 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.4 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 512.13–18): “Dicit ergo primo
quod amicabilia, id est amicitiae opera, quibus aliquis ad amicos utitur et secundum quae determinantur amicitiae videntur processisse ex his quae sunt homini
ad se ipsum; sic enim videtur esse unus homo alteri amicus, si eadem agit ad
amicum quae ageret ad se ipsum.”
22 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.4 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 512.19–513.59).

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someone without wishing to, or fails to carry out into action one’s good
will toward someone.23
As to good will, a friend is said to be one who wishes his friend, for his
friend’s sake, to be and to live, which is how mothers feel about their children. It is also how friends who have quarreled still feel about each other;
desire for the friend’s good continues during the alienation caused by the
quarrel (1166a4–6). Aristotle refers to the status of mothers as exemplars
of love and friendship in an earlier chapter, where he says that friendship
consists more in loving than in being loved. A sign of this, he says, is the
pleasure mothers take in the very act of loving. Some mothers even give
away their children to be brought up by others.They love their children
in just knowing them to be their children, and do not seek to be loved in
return if this is impossible. It seems to be enough for them to see that their
children are doing well, and they love them even if they, in their ignorance, are unable to give back what is due to a mother (1159a27–33).24
The third of the amicabilia, concord, undergoes a shift of meaning
between the Greek homonoia and the Latin concordia comparable to the
shift from eunoia to benevolentia. Like eunoia, homonoia, which suggests likemindedness, seems to name something cognitive; like benevolentia, concordia,
which suggests a joining of hearts, seems to name something affective.Aristotle reports three opinions concerning concord (1166a6–9), which
Aquinas paraphrases as follows. With respect to external common life,
some say a friend is one who lives with his friend.With respect to choice,
some say a friend is one who chooses the same things as his friend.With
respect to passions, some say a friend is one who rejoices and is pained
by the same things as his friend. All these are things which, again, are
noted in mothers in relation to their children.25 As Aquinas does not say,
this sequence of the signs of concord—common life, common choices,
common emotions—proceeds from outer to inner.
23 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.4 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 513.24–28):“Dicit autem ‘volen-

tem et operantem’, quia unum sine altero non sufficit ad amicitiam; neque enim
videtur esse amicabilis beneficentia si unus alteri beneficiat invitus vel si voluntatem opera explere negligat.”
24 Nicomachean Ethics 8.8.1159a27–33; Sententia libri Ethicorum 8.8 (Leonine ed.,
47.2: 469.65–84).
25 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.4 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 513.47–55):“Quae quidem potest
attendi quantum ad tria: primo quantum ad exteriorem convictum; secundo
quantum ad electionem; tertio quantum ad passiones ad quas omnes sequitur
gaudium et tristitia. Unde dicit quod quidam determinant illum esse amicum qui
convivit, quantum ad primum, et qui eadem eligit, quantum ad secundum, et qui
condolet et congaudet, quantum ad tertium. Et haec etiam considerantur in
matribus respectu filiorum.”

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In this initial survey of the amicabilia on the basis of opinions, Aristotle also proceeds from outer to inner; that is, he starts with beneficence,
perhaps because it is the most visible of the amicabilia, involving as it does
both wishing and doing good. In the following chapters, however, he
gives a separate account of each of the amicabilia, and in doing so he starts
with good will, and then goes on to concord and beneficence. Aquinas
explains the progression from inner to outer in these chapters in terms of
affect and effect: good will consists in an inner affect with respect to a
person; concord also consists in an affect, but with respect to something
belonging to the person—presumably the shared life, choices, and
emotions just mentioned; and beneficence consists in the exterior effect
of the interior affect, namely, the doing of good to the friend.26 Good
will is an affect directed to an effect. It is the innermost of the workings
of friendship, but it is pointed outward, in the direction of doing good.
Good Will Distinguished from Friendship
Aquinas divides the chapter distinguishing good will from friendship (9.5)
into two parts: Aristotle shows what good will is not, then what it is. In
commenting on each part,Aquinas speaks of amatio. In commenting on the
first part, he discusses a distinction Aristotle makes between good will and
amatio ( phile sis).
˜ In commenting on the second part, he himself introduces
the term amatio while discussing a comparison Aristotle makes between
friendship and amare.27 Throughout Aquinas’s commentary on this chapter, amare and amatio do not, as they do in his commentary on NE 8.2,
refer to just any act of loving anything, but rather to the condition we call
being in love.The suggestion is that consideration of this condition is helpful for clarifying both what good will is not and what it is.
26 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.5 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 517.7–518.12): “Primo quidem de

benivolentia, quae consistit in interiori affectu respectu personae; secundo de concordia, quae etiam in affectu consistit, sed respectu eorum quae sunt personae . . . ; tertio
de beneficentia, quae consistit in exteriori effectu.”The chiming antithesis of interior
affectus and exterior effectus seems to derive from twelfth-century discussions of charity; see Peter Lombard, Sententiae III, d.29, in Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. I. Brady
[Grottaferrata, 1971–81], vol. II: 172.21–23 and note.
27 Amare is the Latin translation of the Greek verb era ñ, which is related to the noun
eros.˜ Moerbeke translates philesis
˜ and erañ, Greeks words with different roots and
connotations, by two Latin words that are cognate with one another, amatio and
amare.
On amatio as implying passion, as distinct from friendship, which implies habit,
see Sententia libri Ethicorum 8.5 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 458.102–4), on 1157b29. On
amatio as the act of friendship, see ibid. 8.3 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 450.31). On amatio
as adding to love an intensity that is like a fervor, see Scriptum super librum III
Sententiarum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 1, resp. (ed. Mandonnet-Moos, 3:874–75).

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Aquinas subdivides the first, negative part of the chapter in two: good
will is neither the habitus of friendship (1166b30–32) nor the passio of
being in love (1166a32–1167a3).28 Aristotle says that good will seems to be
something like friendship, inasmuch as friends must have good will toward
one another. But he gives two reasons why it is not friendship: we can have
good will toward people we do not know, and people toward whom we
have good will need not be aware of the fact. Neither is good will being
in love, again for two reasons. One is that it involves neither the distraction
of mind nor the desire that follow from being in love.Aquinas says that the
desire is a passion in the sense appetite that, by its impetus, distracts the
mind and moves it toward something as if by a kind of violence; and that
this does not happen in good will, which consists in “a simple movement
of will.”29 It is Aquinas, not Aristotle, who introduces will and its simple
movement here.The other difference between good will and being in love
that Aristotle mentions is that the latter originates and grows through
habituation—because,Aquinas adds, the mind is not usually moved in such
a vehement way all at once, but is brought from lesser to greater only by
degrees.We might think of a car or airplane accelerating from stillness to
great speed: it can happen quickly, but not instantaneously. Aristotle, and
Aquinas with him, seem, in their contrast between being in love and good
will, to be excluding the possibility of what we call love at first sight, but only
to introduce the possibility of what we might call good will at first sight.
Referring to will and its simple movement a second time,Aquinas explains
that it is because good will implies “a simple movement of will,” that it can,
as Aristotle says, arise suddenly.30 To illustrate suddenness of good will,Aristotle gives the example of spectators at a fight who immediately have good
will toward one of the fighters.They would be pleased by his victory, but
they would not do anything to help him win, because those who quickly
come to have good will love only superficially. Introducing will and its
movement into the discussion a third time, Aquinas glosses the adverb
superficially as follows: according to an isolated and weak movement of will
that does not break forth into action.31 With all these distinctions, good
28 Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 8.5.1157b29.
29 Sententia

libri Ethicorum 9.5 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 518.36–42), on 1166b33–34:
“Quarum prima est quod benivolentia non habet distensionem animi neque
appetitum, id est passionem in appetitu sensitivo, quae animum suo impetus distendit quasi cum quadam violentia ad aliquid movens, quod quidem accidit in passione
amationis, non autem in benivolentia, quae consistit in simplici motu voluntatis.”
30 Ibid. (Leonine ed., 47.2: 518.49–50), on 1166b35:“Sed quia benivolentia importat simplicem motum voluntatis, potest repente fieri.”
31 Ibid. (Leonine ed., 47.2: 518.55–58), on 1166b35–36: “homines fiunt repente
benivoli et diligunt superficialiter, id est secundum solum et debilem motum

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will is coming to light as something different from established friendship,
with its awareness of mutuality, and from falling in love, with its feeling of
attraction. Good will is self-contained, not reciprocal; and it is content to
admire from a distance.
Aquinas subdivides the second, positive part of the chapter in two:Aristotle shows that good will is the beginning of friendship (1167a3–12), and
he shows the kind of friendship of which it is the beginning, namely,
friendship of virtue (1167a12–21).To clarify the way in which good will
is a beginning, Aristotle presents an analogy and a metaphor. The analogy
is that good will is the beginning of friendship as delight in someone’s
appearance is the beginning of being in love. Aquinas specifies that the
object of being in love is a woman, and he speaks of her beauty and
form.32 No one begins to love a woman, he says in his paraphrase, who
has not first taken delight in her beauty; but even then, one does not love
her immediately, as soon as one enjoys the appearance of her form. (Here,
it seems, is another argument against love at first sight.) Rather, the sign
of being completely in love with her, signum amationis completae, is that one
longs for her when she is absent; one finds her absence hard to take, as it
were (quasi graviter ferens), and desires her presence. Analogously, it is
impossible for people to become friends unless they have first come to
have good will toward each other, but those who have mutual good will
cannot thereby be called friends.Their only distinguishing feature is that
they want or wish or will (volunt [boulontai]) good things for those toward
whom they are well disposed; they would not do anything for them or
undergo any trouble on their behalf.
Aristotle says that one might metaphorically call good will idle friendship, amicitia otiosa (arge ˜ philia), a transfer of meaning to the point of paradox, for friendship is by nature active. Aquinas speaks of an activity, or
active condition, that is specific to friendship (operatio amicabilis).Then he
mentions will a fourth time.When one persists in good will toward someone for a long time, he says, and gets used to wishing him well, one’s mind
“grows strong” in willing good, so that the will is no longer otiosa, idle, but
becomes efficax, efficacious or effective, and friendship comes into being.33
voluntatis non prorumpentem in opus.” Note the flexibility of the term opus :
good will is an opus of friendship, but one in which the will does not break forth
into an opus, that is, a bodily action (Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.4, 9.5 [Leonine ed.,
47.2: 512.20, 518.57–58]).
32 Cf. Albert the Great, Super Ethica Commentum et Quaestiones 9.6.802 (Cologne
ed., 14.2: 667.38).
33 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.5 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 518.82–86), on 1167a10–12:“sed,
quando diu durat homo in benivolentia et consuescit bene velle alicui, firmatur

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Aquinas takes the adjective idle, which Aristotle had attached to friendship
in his figure of speech, and applies it instead, literally and systematically, to
the power of will that he finds implicit in benevolentia.This allows him to
distinguish good will from friendship in a way that Aristotle did not,
namely, by the difference between an idle and an efficacious will.
At this point in his chapter on good will, Aristotle so emphasizes the
idle character of good will, and therefore, by implication, the contrastingly active character of friendship proper, that he neglects to mention
the reciprocal character of the latter. The crucial point about friendship
proper here is not its mutuality, but its energetic activity. Aquinas, in his
commentary, follows suit.
Incidentally, Aquinas’s choice of efficax as the adjective opposite to
otiosa is interesting in light of the Augustinian view, widely known in the
thirteenth century from the Book of Sentences, that the will of God is
“most efficacious” (efficacissima ) and “always efficacious” (semper efficax ).34
God could not have mere good will, good will without effect, toward
anyone. He could not merely like someone.The possibility we have of an
idle friendship that might or might not become efficacious is evidence of
our limited and temporal way of being.
Aristotle concludes his chapter on good will by saying that the kind of
friendship of which good will is the beginning, and to which it can lead,
is friendship not for the sake of the useful or the pleasurable, but for the
sake of virtue. Aristotle says nothing more about friendship of pleasure
here; but Aquinas adds that absence of good will is especially evident in
such friendship, in which what each wants is pleasure from the other for
himself. Aristotle does say that, in friendship of utility, there can be good
will in one who has received a benefit, and who, out of justice, returns at
least good will for what he has received; but someone who wishes another
to do well because he hopes to enjoy some of the profits evidently has
good will not toward the other, but toward himself; and someone who
animus eius ad volendum bonum ita quod voluntas non erit otiosa, sed efficax,
et sic fit amicitia.”
34 Sententiae I, dd. 43, 46, 47, ed. I. Brady, vol. I: 303.3, 313.17, 321.18. Of occurrences of otiosus and efficax elsewhere in Aquinas’s work, note in particular Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 23, a. 4, ad 15 (Leonine ed., 22.3: 664.371–74); and
Quaestiones disputatae de malo, q. 16, a. 4, obj. 18 (Leonine ed., 23: 297.148–49).
The former of these texts indicates a progression, in our understanding of willing, from mere willing to willing efficaciously (“Primo enim intelligimus voluntatem velle aliquid; deinde ex hoc ipso quod vult illud, intelligimus quod producat
ipsum in rerum natura si voluntas sit efficax”); in the latter text, an objection states
what is apparently an axiom, namely, that the nobler anything is, the less idle it is
(“Quanto aliquid est nobilius tanto minus est otiosum”).

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cares for the good of another because it is useful to himself is evidently not
a friend. In general, good will toward someone seems to arise because of
his virtue and character, that is, when he seems to be good or courageous—
or, Aquinas adds, to have some such quality for which people are usually
praised.This mention of praise, like Aquinas’s earlier suggestion that good
will can result from hearsay, is a reminder of the importance of opinions of
third parties as causes of good will.Aristotle ends by returning to his example of the fighters;Aquinas adds that it is because of their courage, or some
such quality, that we are caused to have good will toward them.35
The identification of an appearance of virtue in someone as the cause
of good will toward him invites us to revisit the analogy given earlier in
the chapter. Both pleasure at the sight of a woman and good will toward
someone are caused by sudden and arresting glimpses of what we might
call the admirable, to so name the genus of which virtue in action and
beauty are species.36 In both cases, the effect of the admirable is to
produce a condition that is the beginning of something. But the two
conditions require completion by further developments that are, in a way,
opposites, inasmuch as being in love arises from difficulty and desire in
the absence of the beautiful, but friendship from growth of strength in
willing good to the deserving. This difference between difficulty and
desire, on the one hand, and strength, on the other, shows why a lover is
a petitioner, but a friend is a benefactor.
Aquinas makes explicit the notion of voluntas implicit in benevolentia
four times in his commentary on Nicomachean Ethics 9.5. His mentions of
voluntas are no doubt made possible, if not actually provoked, by the translation of eunoia as benevolentia. Still, he is a willing participant in the process
of making Aristotle speak of good will.These mentions of voluntas share a
family resemblance. (1) Good will is not the passion of being in love,
because passion involves a forceful impulse in the motion of appetite, and
good will is a simple motion of will. (2) Good will is, again, not the passion
of being in love, because being in love requires habituation, and good will,
as a simple motion of will, can occur suddenly. (3) Spectators who want a
fighter to win would not do anything to help him, because they love with
35 Sententia libri Ethicorum 9.5 (Leonine ed., 47.2: 519.115–23), on 1167a18–21:“Et

dicit quod universaliter benivolentia videtur esse ad aliquem propter aliquam eius
virtutem et epiikiam, cum scilicet alicui videatur quod ille ad quem est benivolus sit bonus aut fortis aut aliquid huiusmodi, propter quae homines
consueverunt laudari, sicut dictum est de agonistis, quibus efficimur benivoli
propter fortitudinem quae apparet in eis vel propter aliquid huiusmodi.”
36 See Sokolowski’s discussion of the admirable in Moral Action: A Phenomenological
Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 186–89.

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an isolated and weak motion of will that does not break forth into action.
(4) In the transition from good will to friendship, a will that is idle
becomes efficacious. So the will in good will is idle, and its motion is
simple, as well as isolated and weak, four adjectives that convey negations.
Good will is free of the disturbance of passion, but it lacks the active
character of friendship. Neither disturbing nor active, neither passionate
nor energetic, good will is of itself a pure and inefficacious willing, a willing and nothing more, a velleity.
In a formulation that is as Aristotelian and Thomistic as it is phenomenological, Sokolowski describes friendship as the taking of the good of
another as one’s own.37 In the idle friendship that is mere good will, one
indeed takes another’s good as one’s own, but not seriously enough to do
anything about it. One takes the great good of another as a small good
of one’s own—nice if it happens, but nothing to trouble oneself about.
But when “the mind grows strong” in willing the other’s good, as Aquinas
says, and friendship is born, one comes to take the other’s good as seriously as the other does, as seriously as if one were the other.
We might speak of the growth of friendship proper out of good will
as a change of dramatis personae in the drama of willing someone’s good.
In simple good will, one says,“I wish him well; I will good to him; but I
do not want to be the one to do it.” In friendship, one says, “I will good
to you, and I myself want to do you good.” Yet a third case of willing
another’s good is that of the virtue of justice, which is more impersonal
than the case of one who is well disposed or a friend. In justice, one wills
a good not merely to a “him” or a “you,” but, in principle, to anyone; and
the good is specified as a iustum, something objectively due to a person
regardless of how one feels about him.
Theology: Good Will as a Simple Act of Will
In the foregoing, I have for the most part left aside Aquinas’s status as a
theologian and considered him simply as a philosophical expositor of the
philosophical Aristotelian text, even while suggesting that some of what
he says in this role can be traced to the language of theology.38 I now
turn to an article of the Summa theologiae in which, speaking in the first
person and as a teacher of the truth of the Catholic faith, Aquinas recapitulates Aristotle’s chapter on good will. I must begin by acknowledging
that I am moving beyond the philosophical into explicitly theological
37 “Friendship and Moral Action in Aristotle,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 35 (2001):

355–69; “Phenomenology of Friendship,” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (2002):
451–70; Phenomenology of the Human Person, 267–68.
38 See notes 26 and 34.

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territory, where philosophical materials are transformed in being given a
new setting and a new mode of presentation. The issues I have been
discussing, which have been subtle enough so far, become even more
nuanced and complicated. New distinctions appear; new terminology
must be introduced to accommodate them.
In this part, I discuss the new theological setting for the subject of
good will, the Summa theologiae’s article on good will, and some differences in detail between the account of good will in the commentary on
the Ethics and that in the Summa theologiae.
The Theological Setting for Good Will
In his commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate, Aquinas metaphorically
characterizes the alteration of philosophical materials in theological
discourse as a transubstantiation.The question is whether it is permissible
to use philosophical arguments and authorities in theology. On the negative side, an objection is made to teachers of theology who, like dishonest
bartenders, mix the “water” of philosophical proofs into the “wine” of
divine wisdom. Aquinas answers that those who use philosophical proofs
in sacred doctrine, bringing them into the service of the faith, are not
watering down wine, but rather changing water into wine.39 How, then,
does the water of Aristotle’s account of good will taste, so to speak, on
being changed into the wine of theology in the Summa theologiae?
The Summa theologiae is a classic treatment—some would say the classic treatment—of what Sokolowski calls “the Christian distinction,”
which he describes as follows:
Christian theology is differentiated from pagan religious and philosophical reflection primarily by the introduction of a new distinction,
the distinction between the world understood as possibly not having
existed and God understood as possibly being all that there is, with no
diminution of goodness or greatness.40

39 Super Boetium De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3, obj. 5 and ad 5 (Leonine ed., 50: 97.36–41,

100.213–16). Note in particular: “illi qui utuntur philosophicis documentis in
sacra doctrina redigendo in obsequium fidei, non miscent aquam uino, set aquam
conuertunt in uinum.” On the significance of Aquinas’s metaphor of transubstantiation, see R. E. Houser,“Trans-Forming Philosophical Water into Theological Wine: Gilson and Aquinas,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association 69 (1995): 103–16.
40 Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 23; cf. Prufer,
Recapitulations, 40.

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Aquinas says that the subject of the Summa theologiae is God, or, alternatively, all things considered under the ratio of God, because “all things”
either are God, or are ordered to Him as their beginning and end.41 In
the context of this vast subject, the philosophical understanding of virtue,
friendship, and good will is transformed.
The natural human goodness of naturally acquired moral virtue is
clearly an inadequate response to God’s infinite goodness, in particular, to
His infinite generosity toward human beings in the creation and the incarnation.42 Christianity teaches that a more adequate response is made possible by yet another divine gift, that of the supernaturally infused theological
virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Drawing on Aristotle’s account of friendship, Aquinas explains charity as friendship between man and God.There
are dangers of distortion in the shift from the natural perspective to the
theological one, and particular dangers with respect to understanding natural human friendship and virtue in the new context. Charity is both the
greatest of friendships, namely, friendship with God, and the greatest of
virtues, the one that in the highest degree brings to bear on human actions
the highest rule of action, which is God Himself.43 While this sublime
friendship and virtue is properly understood to enhance natural friendship
and natural virtue, it can easily, in its sublimity, seem to do the opposite, that
is, render its natural counterparts worthless by comparison.
Aquinas argues that charity is friendship at the beginning of the treatise on charity in the Summa theologiae, making reference both to Nicomachean Ethics 8.2 and to the scholastic distinction, based on this chapter,
between love of good will or love of friendship, and love of concupiscence.The terminology of this distinction is misleading. Love of concupiscence does not mean disorderly sensual desire, or even sensual desire as
such; and love of good will or love of friendship is more than good will (as
we will see, it involves an additional “union of affection”), but less than
friendship (it does not imply mutuality). As Aquinas understands it, the
distinction is between love of goods to be used or enjoyed, and love of
persons for their own sake.44
41 Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 7 (Leonine ed., 4:19): “Omnia autem pertractantur in

sacra doctrina sub ratione Dei: vel quia sunt ipse Deus; vel quia habent ordinem
ad Deum, ut ad principium et finem.”
42 See Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason, 69–87.
43 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 23, a. 6 (Leonine ed., 8:170).
44 See Guy Mansini, “Duplex Amor and the Structure of Love in Aquinas,” in
Thomistica, ed. Eugène Manning, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale.
Supplementa 1 (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 137–96; and David M. Gallagher, “Desire
for Beatitude and Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas,” Mediaeval Studies 58
(1996): 1–47, at 13–18.

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Not just any love has the ratio of friendship, Aquinas says, but only love
accompanied by good will, which occurs when we love someone in such
a way that we will good to him.There are some things we are said to love,
such as wine and horses, to which we do not will good, although we will
the good of them for ourselves. This is not love of friendship, but love of
concupiscence, for it would be ridiculous to say that someone has friendship for wine or a horse. (Perhaps Aquinas adds the example of the horse
as a more plausible friend than the wine mentioned by Aristotle.) But good
will is not enough for the ratio of friendship, which also requires that love
be mutual.A friend is friend to a friend: amicus est amico amicus.The mutual
good will of friendship is founded on a communicatio, a sharing of something; and there is a sharing of something between man and God, inasmuch
as God, as has been revealed, shares his blessedness with us.45 The strangeness of this friendship is shown by the fact that it is friendship not only
with God, but, by extension of the friendship with God, also friendship
with angels, friendship with the unvirtuous, and even friendship with those
who, in the natural dimension, do not cease to be one’s enemies.46 On the
45 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 23, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 8:163): “Respondeo dicendum

quod, secundum Philosophum, in VIII Ethic., non quilibet amor habet rationem
amicitiae, sed amor qui est cum benevolentia: quando scilicet sic amamus
aliquem ut ei bonum velimus. Si autem rebus amatis non bonum velimus, sed
ipsum eorum bonum velimus nobis, sicut dicimur amare vinum aut equum aut
aliquid huiusmodi, non est amor amicitiae, sed cuiusdam concupiscentiae: ridiculum enim est dicere quod aliquis habet amicitiam ad vinum vel ad equum. Sed
nec benevolentia sufficit ad rationem amicitiae, sed requiritur quaedam mutua
amatio: quia amicus est amico amicus.Talis autem mutua benevolentia fundatur
super aliquam communicationem.
“Cum igitur sit aliqua communicatio hominis ad Deum secundum quod
nobis suam beatitudinem communicat, super hanc communicationem oportet
aliquam amicitiam fundari. De qua quidem communicatione dicitur I ad Cor. I:
Fidelis Deus, per quem vocasti estis in societatem Filii eius. Amor autem super hanc
communicationem fundatus est caritas. Unde manifestum est quod caritas amicitia quaedam est hominis ad Deum.” Here Aquinas seems to imply that benevolentia and amatio, good will and the activity of loving, are the same, but a few
questions later, in q. 27, a. 2, he distinguishes the two.
On the sharing involved in love of friendship, see Mansini,“Similitudo, Communicatio, and the Friendship of Charity in Aquinas,” in Thomistica, ed. Eugène
Manning, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale. Supplementa 1 (Leuven: Peeters,
1995), 1–26. On the use of Aristotle’s account of friendship in Aquinas’s account
of charity, see Mansini, “Charity and the Form of Friendship,” in Ethics and Theological Disclosures:The Thought of Robert Sokolowski, ed. Guy Mansini and James G.
Hart (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 31–43.
46 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 23, a. 1, replies to objections, and q. 25 (Leonine ed.,
8:163–64, 197–208).

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other hand, the continuity of charity with natural friendship is shown by
what Aquinas, following Augustine, calls the order of charity, according to
which we are to have greater charity for those whom we naturally love
more in any case. In charity, we are to love God more than ourselves, as we
naturally do; the command to love our neighbor as ourselves implies that
we should love ourselves more than our neighbor, as we naturally do; and
among our neighbors, we should love more those who are closer to us, for
instance in the order of family relations—again, as we naturally do.47
If friendship is by nature active, and charity is a kind of friendship,
what are the acts of charity? Aquinas distinguishes between a principal act
of charity, which is love, and secondary acts that follow from this love. Of
the secondary acts, three are interior acts, namely, joy, peace, and mercy
(misericordia ), and one is exterior, namely, beneficence. In addition to
beneficence in general, Aquinas discusses acts of corporal and spiritual
“almsgiving,” or “works of mercy,” which are a special kind of beneficence, and fraternal correction, which is one of the spiritual works of
mercy.All these acts, we might say, are the amicabilia proper to the friendship that is charity, and they include the three principal amicabilia
discussed by Aristotle: good will, which Aquinas says is included in love;
concord, which he says is part of peace; and beneficence, which he says
is a consequence of good will.48
Good Will Distinguished from the Love
That Is the Principal Act of Charity
Aquinas’s discussion of the love that is the principal act of charity begins
by asking whether charity consists in loving or in being loved. He argues
that charity, as a virtue, essentially has an inclination to its corresponding
act, which is an act of loving, not a state of being loved.To emphasize the
point, he takes two examples from Aristotle. Friends are praised more for
loving than for being loved, and in fact are blamed if they are loved but
do not love in return. And mothers, who love to an outstanding degree,
seek more to love than to be loved; Aquinas repeats Aristotle’s remark,
which we noted earlier, that some mothers give their children away, still
loving them, but not seeking to be loved in return.49
Aquinas’s second question concerning the love of charity is whether
it is the same as good will (q. 27, a. 2). It might seem that, in devoting an
47 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 26 (Leonine ed., 8:209–23).
48 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 27, a. 2; q. 29, a. 1; q. 31, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 8:226, 236,

245).
49 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 27, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 8:224).

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article to this question, he is simply following Aristotle’s lead: as the
philosopher has distinguished good will from friendship in general, so the
theologian will distinguish good will from the supernatural friendship
that is charity. But perhaps there is a special reason for making the
distinction in theology. In a recent study of medieval thought about
friendship, Bénédicte Sère proposes that good will functions as a sort of
stand-in for charity in the commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics of
Albert the Great,Aquinas, and later medieval commentators.50 At least in
the case of Aquinas’s commentary on the Ethics, I do not think that her
proposal is correct, but she does make some interesting observations that
suggest why other commentators on the Ethics —why anyone, in fact,
whether medieval or modern, and whether Christian or non-Christian—might identify the love of charity with good will.As she points out,
good will, as described by Aristotle, seems to possess attributes of Christian charity. Because it does not require reciprocity, it can remain hidden
and is marked by interiority; and because it does not require intimate
knowledge of, or life in common with, its object, it can be extended to
anyone and even to everyone. She goes too far, however, in saying that
Aquinas, in the Summa theologiae, “systematizes the equivalence between
good will and charity more explicitly” than had previously been done
(italics mine), a claim that ignores the evidence of II–II, q. 27, a. 2.51
I said earlier that Aquinas recapitulates Aristotle’s chapter on good will
in this article. I had in mind the title of Prufer’s Recapitulations: Essays in
Philosophy, as well as remarks by Sokolowski that generalize from this title.52
These remarks shed much light on the way in which the thought of Aristotle comes to life again in the thought of Aquinas:
It seems to me that ‘recapitulation’ is a better category to use than
‘hermeneutics’ or ‘interpretation’ when we speak about the thought of
50 Bénédicte Sère, Penser l’amitié au Moyen Âge: Étude historique des commentaires sur

les livres VIII et IX de l’Éthique à Nicomaque (XIIIe–XVe siècle ) (Turnhout: Brepols,
2008), 252ff.This section of the book is titled “Dans l’ombre de la bienveillance, la
charité . . . .”
51 Ibid., 258: “Une génération après Albert, saint Thomas systématise l’équivalence
entre bienveillance et charité d’une manière plus avouée. Il se trouve autorisé par
le cadre théologique de la Somme à écrire: ‘Ergo sicut benevolentia non est alia
virtus a caritate, ita nec beneficentia.’ ”The sed contra of Summa theologiae, q. 31, a.
4 that Sère quotes here says that good will is not a virtue that is other than charity, but this is not to say that it is the virtue of charity. Good will as such is not a
virtue at all, although a certain good will is included in the virtue of charity.
52 For Prufer, see note 17 above; Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person,
78–79, n. 10.

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one person or one age coming to life again in another. . . . Recapitulation
is a fresh word, and it connotes public activities and syntactical action.To
recapitulate is to repeat, but also to select, to summarize, and to put into
hierarchic order, with the more important distinguished from the less.We
place the old material into new chapters or headings, capitula. . . .When
something is said to be recapitulated, it is obvious that it is still there in
the recapitulation, but it is also obvious that it has been abridged,
rearranged, and inevitably slanted.

Aristotle’s chapter on good will, according to Aquinas’s division of it in
his commentary, has this order of headings:
what good will is not:
-friendship
-being in love
what good will is:
-the beginning of friendship
-analogically, it is to friendship as enjoyment of a
woman’s beauty is to being in love with her
-metaphorically, it is “idle” friendship
- in particular, the beginning of friendship of virtue

In the article of the Summa, Aquinas recapitulates as follows:
what good will is:
-the act of will by which we will good to someone else
what good will is not:
-“actual” love
-in the sense appetite
-in the intellectual appetite, i.e. the will

Aristotle begins with what good will is not.Aquinas in the Summa begins
positively, and with a definition based on etymology, saying that what
benevolentia properly means is the act of will by which we will good to
someone else: proprie dicitur actus voluntatis quo alteri bonum volumus.53 This
proper sense of a Latin term unknown to Aristotle is presented in the
Summa as the basis of everything else to be said on the subject.
In the Ethics commentary, Aquinas calls good will a motion of will;
here, less metaphorically and more formally, he calls it an act of will. He
says that this act of will differs from “actual” love, whether in the sense
appetite or in the intellective appetite or will. He implies that good will
is, in contrast, unactual or potential.Aristotle distinguishes good will from
53 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 27, a. 2 (Leonine ed., 8:225).

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friendship and from being in love. Aquinas distinguishes good will from
love in the intellectual appetite and love in the sense appetite; and he
reverses the order of Aristotle’s discussion, proceeding not from higher to
lower (from friendship to being in love), but from lower to higher (from
love in the sense appetite to love in the intellectual appetite).
Aquinas restates what Aristotle says about being in love as follows.
Love in the sense appetite is a passion; a passion inclines toward its object
with a certain impetus; and love in the sense appetite arises not immediately, but through careful examination of the thing loved. He says that this
is why Aristotle, in order to show the difference between good will and
the love that is a passion, says that good will is without intensity and
desire, that is, without any impetus of inclination; rather, it is from an
isolated judgment of reason, ex solo iudicio rationis, that one wills good to
someone else. Aquinas gives the impression that Aristotle draws this
contrast between passion and an “isolated” judgment of reason, but in fact
Aristotle says nothing about a judgment of reason in his chapter on good
will; it is Aquinas who introduces judgment into the discussion. He does
not say what this judgment of reason that is the source of good will is;
perhaps he takes it for granted that it is the judgment that the object of
good will is deserving of the good willed to him. Returning to his paraphrase of what Aristotle does say, he adds that love in the sense appetite
arises from a habituation, but that good will sometimes arises suddenly, as
when we see people fighting, and want one of them to win.54
Aquinas’s shift from Aristotle’s being in love to love in the sense appetite is
a terminological precision. His other shift, from Aristotle’s friendship to
love in the intellectual appetite or will, is more than that. Love in the intellectual appetite, he says, implies a uniting in affection of one who loves
to what he loves, inasmuch as he regards what he loves as one with
himself, or as something belonging to himself, and is moved accordingly.
Good will, by contrast, is a simple act of will by which we will good to
54 Ibid.: “Hic autem voluntatis actus differt ab actuali amore tam secundum quod

est in appetitu sensitivo, quam etiam secundum quod est in appetitu intellectivo,
qui est voluntas. Amor enim qui est in appetitu sensitivo passio quaedam est.
Omnis autem passio cum quodam impetu inclinat in suum obiectum. Passio
autem amoris hoc habet quod non subito exoritur, sed per aliquam assiduam
inspectionem rei amatae. Et ideo Philosophus, in IX Eth., ostendens differentiam
inter benevolentiam et amorem qui est passio, dicit quod benevolentia non habet
distensionem et appetitum, id est aliquem impetum inclinationis, sed ex solo iudicio rationis homo vult bonum alicui. Similiter etiam talis amor est ex quadam
consuetudine: benevolentia autem interdum oritur ex repentino, sicut accidit
nobis de pugilibus qui pugnant, quorum alterum vellemus vincere.”

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someone, even without the supposition of any such affective union on
our part with the one to whom we will good.55 This “affective union”
that is the principal act of charity is not a union made up of the affection of the one who loves and the affection of the one who is loved.
Rather, it is a sense of oneness occurring entirely within the affection of
the one who loves. Mutual love involves two such affective unions.
Love as an affective union is a Platonic, not an Aristotelian theme.
Earlier in the Summa (I–II, q. 28, a. 1), Aquinas introduces it under the
authority of a remark by the neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius that love is
a virtus unitiva, a force of union. Aquinas explains that union is, in different senses, the cause, the essential nature, and the effect of love. (1) The
union that is the cause of love is either one’s substantial union with
oneself, in the case of love of self, or union by resemblance, in the case of
love of what is not oneself. (2) The union that is the essence of love is
union with respect to an “adjustment of affection” (coaptatio affectus ).This
is the “affective union”Aquinas mentions in the article on good will. One
who loves is related to what he loves either as he is related to himself, in
love of friendship, or as he is related to something belonging to him, in
love of concupiscence. (3) The union that is the effect of love is the “real”
union of living and speaking together that Aristotle, in the Politics,
suggests is a milder alternative to the total, melding union described by
Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium.56

55 Ibid. (225–26): “Sed amor qui est in appetitu intellectivo etiam differt a bene-

volentia. Importat enim quandam unionem secundum affectus amantis ad
amatum: inquantum scilicet amans aestimat amatum quodammodo ut unum sibi,
vel ad se pertinens, et sic movetur in ipsum. Sed benevolentia est simplex actus
voluntatis quo volumus alicui bonum, etiam non praesupposita praedicta unione
affectus ad ipsum.”
56 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 28, a. 1, ad 2 (Leonine ed., 6:197–98): “Ad secundum
dicendum quod unio tripliciter se habet ad amorem. Quaedam enim unio est
causa amoris. Et haec quidem est unio substantialis, quantum ad amorem quo
quis amat seipsum: quantum vero ad amorem quo quis amat alia, est unio similitudinis, ut dictum est.—Quaedam vero unio est essentialiter ipse amor. Et haec
est unio secundum coaptationem affectus. Quae quidem assimilatur unioni
substantiali, inquantum amans se habet ad amatum, in amore quidem amicitiae
ut ad seipsum; in amore autem concupiscentiae, ut ad aliquid sui.—Quaedam
vero unio est effectus amoris. Et haec est unio realis, quam amans quaerit de re
amata. Et haec quidem unio est secundum convenientiam amoris: ut enim
Philosophus refert, II Politic., Aristophanes dixit quod amantes desiderarent ex
ambobus fieri unum: sed quia ex hoc accideret aut ambos aut alterum corrumpi,
quaerunt unionem quae convenit et decet; ut scilicet simul conversentur, et simul
colloquantur, et in aliis huiusmodi coniungantur.”

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In the article on charity and good will,Aquinas concludes by saying that
good will is included in the love that is the act of charity, but that the love
adds an affective union; and that this is why Aristotle calls good will the
beginning of friendship.57 He apparently means that Aristotle does so
because good will provides the basis for the subsequent addition of affective
union. He does not note that he himself has introduced an un-Aristotelian
intermediary between good will and friendship, namely, love in the will, in
particular the love called love of good will or love of friendship, which goes
beyond the detachment of good will, but does not imply the mutuality and
mutual recognition of friendship.Aristotle identifies two degrees in the willing of good to another: idle friendship and friendship proper.Aquinas indicates three degrees: good will, the affective union of love in the will, and
friendship. Aquinas’s point that good will fails to achieve the affective union
of love indirectly draws attention to the significant residue of duality in mere
good will.This duality is clear in the valedictory remark “I wish you well,”
which inevitably reminds us that you and I remain two, not one.
One of the objections in II–II, q. 27, a. 2 quotes the statement in Aristotle’s Rhetoric that to love is to will good to someone, which would seem
to mean that the love that is the act of charity is good will. Aquinas
answers that the statement does define amare, but does not give its
complete ratio.What it describes is the part of the ratio in which the action
of loving is most manifest.58 Since good will need not be executed in an
act of beneficence, he might mean that good will is, of all the aspects of
love, the one that is most manifest to the one who loves, in a very interior sort of “manifestation.” Or perhaps he means that when love is manifested to others, what most manifests it to them is evidence of wishing
well, of willing good, to the one who is loved.
Aspects of Good Will
There is no theoretical disagreement between Aquinas’s accounts of good
will in Summa theologiae II–II, q. 27, a. 2 and in his commentary on Nicomachean Ethics 9.5, but there are a few differences in detail, three of which
are worth noting.

57 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 27, a. 2 (Leonine ed., 8:226): “Sic ergo in dilectione,

secundum quod est actus caritatis, includitur quidem benevolentia, sed dilectio
sive amor addit unionem affectus. Et propter hoc Philosophus dicit ibidem quod
benevolentia est principium amicitiae.”
58 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 27, a. 2, ad 1 (Leonine ed., 8:226):“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod Philosophus ibi definit amare non ponens totam rationem ipsius, sed
aliquid ad rationem eius pertinens in quo maxime manifestatur dilectionis actus.”

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1. In the commentary, Aquinas applies the term idle to the will that he
takes to be the subject of good will. He says that when a man continues for a long time in good will toward someone and gets used to
wishing him well, his mind grows strong in willing good, so that the
will is no longer idle, but effective, and friendship comes into being.
In the Summa, Aquinas does not speak of idleness. After defining
good will as the act of will by which we will good to another, he says
that this act of will differs from “actual love,” whether in the sense
appetite or in the will, implying that the act of will that is good will
is unactualized or potential love. He shifts the focus from the idle
friendship that good will, according to Aristotle, is, to the actual love
that it is not. Unactuality replaces inactivity as the distinguishing
feature of mere good will. By introducing the notion of actuality in
the article of the Summa, Aquinas makes the discussion of good will
more metaphysical; and by opposing good will to “actual love,” rather
than to the “effective will” of friendship, he moves the discussion
further inward, so to speak. In the commentary, he compares good
will with something external, the deed into which good will does
not “break forth.” In the Summa, he compares good will with something else that is internal, actual love in the will.
Combining the points made by the two texts, we might say that
good will is both unactual and inactive. It is both a potentiality waiting to be actuated and an idleness in which one has yet to act.
2. In the commentary, Aquinas calls the motion of will in good will
isolated and weak. In the Summa, he does not apply either term to the
act of will in good will, but he does call isolated the judgment of
reason at the origin of good will, meaning that it is a judgment uninfluenced by, and so isolated from, passion. This mention of a judgment of reason at the source of good will is a brief reminder that
Aquinas understands any movement of appetite, such as good will, to
follow on a prior act of apprehension.
Again, the commentary and the Summa may be seen as complementing one another: good will comprises a clear judgment,“isolated”
from passion, but also a weak movement of will,“isolated” from action.
3. In the article of the Summa, the adjective simple is applied, as in the
commentary, to good will, but for a different reason. The commentary says that desire is a passion in the sense appetite that, by its impetus, moves the mind toward something as if by a kind of violence; but
that this does not happen in good will, which is a simple movement
of will.The simplicity is freedom from passion. In the Summa, good

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will is said to be the simple act of will by which we will good to
someone, without presupposition of the affective union with the
object that constitutes love in the intellective appetite or will. Here,
the simplicity is absence of such affective union.
Once more, the commentary and the Summa make complementary points.The act of will in good will is simple because it is nothing but the willing of good to someone; it involves neither the
violence of passion nor the affective union of spiritual love. Being
without admixture of impulse or of affection, it stands apart from
both the lower and the higher kinds of love.
As he does in the commentary, Aquinas elsewhere distinguishes
passions, which involve physiological change, from acts of will, which
do not, and which are, in that sense,“simple.”59 But good will is also
simple among acts of will, in the sense that it is a mere willing, that
is, an act of will entirely directed to an end, as distinct from acts of
will that also involve consideration of means, acts such as the choosing of means, the consenting to means decided on by deliberation,
and the intending of an end in intending the means to it. David
Gallagher explains Aquinas’s view of the difference between intending and simple willing as follows:
The difference lies in the fact that intention is not “simple.” Intention is not directed to the end simply, but rather to the end as that
which will be achieved by means. Or, expressed less formally, in
intending an end a person is committed to actually carrying out
the actions needed to achieve that end. Simple willing, on the
other hand, is simply the willing of some good as perfective of me
(or those united to me by love) without any necessary reference to
whether I intend actually to acquire that good.60

This description of simple willing evokes the indolence of will in
simple, non-intending good will. Good will need not even go as far
as to determine what the good of its object is; and if it does, it need
not consider means for achieving it, although it might do so, in an
idle sort of way. Aristotle mentions the good will of spectators at a
fight, but anyone who is merely well disposed to someone else has
the Olympian detachment of an onlooker. A friend, on the other
hand, is someone who joins in the action.
59 For example, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 22, a. 3, ad 3 (Leonine ed., 6:171).
60 David M. Gallagher, “The Will and Its Acts (Ia IIae, q. 6–17),” in The Ethics of

Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
2002): 69–89, at 81. See Summa theologiae I–II, q. 8, a. 2 (Leonine ed., 6:70–71).

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Rhetoric: The Winning of Good Will with Speech
Both as an expositor of Aristotle, then, and as a teacher of Christian
theology, Aquinas developed an understanding of good will as the simple
movement or act of will by which we simply will good to others, a
movement to be compared and contrasted with the more forceful appetitive movements of sensual love and intellectual love. He did so against
the background of the very different consideration of good will that he
had encountered in his early study of Ciceronian rhetoric, which taught
him the importance of taking the exordium of a speech as an occasion
for evoking good will, as well as the topics suitable for this purpose that
I mentioned at the beginning.
In this part, I point out some passages in which Aquinas makes use of
this rhetorical doctrine to comment on introductions to books and
beginnings of prayers, and then I compare the ethical and the rhetorical
perspectives on good will.
Introductions to Books
Aquinas inherited medieval habits of extending Cicero’s directions on the
composing of public speeches to two other forms of composition in words,
books and prayers. Application of the art of rhetoric to these forms brings
similarities and contrasts to the fore. A book, like a speech, is a prepared
monologue. (Socrates compares long-winded speeches to books at Protagoras 329a.) But a speech involves a lively presence of speaker and audience
to each other, whereas a book—whether a book read aloud by a lector or,
all the more, one read alone and silently—proclaims its author’s absence.
(Electronic transmission and recording of speech complicate and obscure
the distinction between presence and absence.)
The exordium of a speech, according to Cicero, should make the audience good-willed, teachable, or attentive. In applying this principle to
introductions to books,Aquinas construes it to mean that an introduction
must have all three effects, and that an introduction must accordingly be
divided into three parts, one for production of each effect. At the beginning of his career, he understood the form of the three-part introduction
to be a matter of custom (mos). In one of his earliest writings, a commentary on Jeremiah, he says that Jerome, the translator of Jeremiah, adds an
introduction at the beginning, in which,“in the customary way,” he makes
the audience attentive, teachable, and good-willed.61 Later, he came to see
61 According to the nineteenth-century editions of Aquinas’s Super Ieremiam Expo-

sitio (Vivès 19:68; Parma 14:578), his commentary on Jerome’s prologue to Jeremiah begins as follows: “Hic autem libro Jeremiae, qui librum de hebraeo in
latinum transtulit, praemittit prooemium in quo more theorico tria facit. Primo

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the three-part structure not just as a matter of custom, but as an essential
feature of introductions. In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, he
says that Aristotle in his introduction does the three things that are necessary in any introduction, because one who composes an introduction
intends three things, namely, to make the audience good-willed, teachable,
and attentive.62 This way of putting it implies that Aquinas composed his
own introductions in three parts, and in this regard, it is interesting to
compare, for example, the three sentences that make up the prologue of
the Summa theologiae with the three effects of an exordium described by
Cicero.The first sentence expresses concern for the audience as beginners
in Christian doctrine, a gesture suited to winning good will.The second
sentence itemizes difficulties posed by current teaching practices, which
would seem to be a good way to make the beginners ready to be taught
by the new ordo disciplinae that Aquinas implicitly promises to follow. In
the third sentence, he expresses confidence in divine assistance, and then
says he will proceed briefly and clearly as far as the material will allow—
a mix of hopeful promise and cautionary reminder of limitation that
would be likely to make an audience attentive.
In commenting on Jerome’s introduction to Jeremiah and on Aristotle’s introduction to the De anima, and again in commenting on Peter
Lombard’s introduction to the Book of Sentences, on Boethius’s introduction to the De Trinitate, and even on a verse of Psalm 33 that he calls a
reddit attentos: secundo dociles facit . . . ; tertio benivolos” (emphasis added). It’s
not clear what mos theoricus,“theoretical” custom, would be. Adriano Oliva, O.P.,
President of the Leonine Commission, has discovered evidence suggesting that
the theorico in the nineteenth-century Parma and Paris editions of the opera omnia
may derive from a misreading of the morphologically similar but, in the context,
more intelligible word rhetorico. In an e-mail communication of March 5, 2005,
he indicates that the earlier editions (Rome 1570, t. 13, f. 1v; Paris 1660) and the
manuscripts (Firense, Laur. Plut. 26.25, f. 233va; Sevilla, Capitula y Colombina
7.6.3, f. 191vb;Vaticano, Urbin. lat. 472, f. 2ra) of Aquinas’s commentary on Jeremiah that he has been able to consult all have rhetorico, not theorico, at this point.
Among biographers of Aquinas, there is general agreement that his commentaries on Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Isaiah are very early works, probably
composed at Paris in the early 1250s. See Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin
(634 [46]); and Oliva, Les débuts de l’enseignement de Thomas d’Aquin et sa conception de la Sacra Doctrina: avec l’édition du prologue de son commentaire des Sentences de
Pierre Lombard (Paris: J.Vrin, 2006), 225–26.
62 Sentencia libri De anima 1.1 (Leonine ed., 45.1: 4.25–29): “primo ponit
prohemium, in quo facit tria que necessaria sunt in quolibet prohemio. Qui enim
facit prohemium tria intendit: primo enim ut reddat beniuolum, secundo ut
reddat docile, tercio ut reddat attentum” (emphasis added).The commentary on
De anima was written in 1267–68; see ibid., “Préface,” 287.

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sort of prologue (quasi prooemium ) to what follows it,Aquinas proceeds in
the same way, explaining the introduction by explaining how it is
composed: he divides it into three parts, assigns production of one of the
three effects to each part, and identifies the strategy by which each effect
is aimed at.63 This range of texts tends to support the view Aquinas
expresses in his commentary on De anima that any introduction to a book
must have three purposes and three corresponding parts.
Aquinas occasionally mentions one or more of the topics Cicero identifies for evoking good will—our own person, the person of our adversaries, that of the judges or hearers, and the case itself—and even
particulars of Cicero’s advice concerning what to say about each of these.
In his discussion of Jerome’s prologue to Jeremiah, for example, he says
that Jerome makes the audience good-willed on the basis of his own
person (ex persona sua ). He says that Jerome does this by means of three
topics, and his description of these is taken straight from the De inventione : first, he says, Jerome speaks of “the good deeds done by him without arrogance” (de bonis a se factis sine arrogantia ); then he “removes an
accusation against him” (crimen illatum diluit ); finally he “shows the difficulties he is having” (ostendit quae sibi difficultates instent ).64 Elsewhere,
Aquinas’s explanation of how an author wins good will is more loosely
related to Cicero’s advice. Lombard, he says, wins good will in the
prologue to the Book of Sentences by explaining the causes that move him
to compile the book, causes that show his affection toward God and his
neighbor. Boethius wins good will in the prologue to the De Trinitate by
explaining and excusing the difficulties and the imperfection of the
book.Aristotle wins good will in the prologue to the De anima by showing the usefulness and dignity of the knowledge conveyed by the book.65

63 Prologi Sententiarum diuisio et expositio (Oliva ed., 332.1–2); Super Boetium De Trini-

tate, Expositio Prohemii (Leonine ed., 50: 77.1–6); Postilla super Psalmos 33:12
(Parma ed., 14:267).
64 Super Ieremiam Expositio (Parma ed., 14:578). Cf. Cicero, De inventione 1.16.22
(Harvard ed., 44): “Benivolentia quattuor ex locis comparatur. . . . Ab nostra (sc.
persona), si de nostris factis et officiis sine arrogantia dicemus; si crimina illata . . .
diluemus; si . . . quae instent difficultates, proferemus.” (I have emphasized the words
of Cicero repeated by Aquinas in his commentary on Jeremiah.)
65 Prologi Sententiarum diuisio et expositio (Oliva ed., 332.4–5); Super Boetium De Trinitate, Expositio Prohemii (Leonine ed., 50: 77.3–5, 78.117–20); Sentencia libri De
anima 1.1 (Leonine ed., 45.1: 4.29–30, 34–35).
I discuss the points made in the last three paragraphs at greater length in “St.
Thomas Aquinas on Prologues,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 98 (2005):
803–13.

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Beginnings of Prayers
The same Latin word, oratio, means both a speech or oration and a prayer
or (as Hamlet might say) orison.66 In ways different from books, prayers
are also both like and unlike public speeches. Like the delivery of a
prepared speech or the reading of a book, the saying of a prayer such as
the Our Father is the recital of a pre-established composition. Like judicial oratory in particular, prayer is the stating of a case and the making of
a plea before a judge. In a speech, on the other hand, a speaker stands
conspicuously before a group that is also visible to him, whereas in
prayer, whether private or public, a speaker presents himself to an invisible but all-seeing audience of one. (Again, electronic transmission and
recording blur distinctions, to say nothing of the bizarrerie of electronically projecting prayer to God through a microphone.)
Augustine is a great exemplar both of rhetoric and of prayer for the
Latin middle ages. In De doctrina Christiana, he argues for the relevance of
the art of rhetoric to Christian preaching, saying that defenders of truth
should be no less armed than defenders of falsehood with the art that
knows how to use a prologue to make an audience good-willed, attentive, or teachable; he also quotes from Cicero’s Orator the remark that one
who is eloquent should speak so as to teach, to delight, and to “turn” or
persuade (ut doceat, ut delectet, ut flectat ).67 In the Confessions Augustine
provides a model for the medieval understanding of prayer as a strange
rhetoric with a divine “audience.” Prufer spells out the rhetorical situation in which Augustine, with acute awareness of the divine omniscience,
finds himself in the Confessions:
66 With reference to Summa theologiae II–II, q. 83, a. 1, Lawrence Dewan comments:

“Citing the saying of Cassiodorus ‘Oratio dicitur quasi oris ratio,’ which can be
rendered in somewhat Joycean English as ‘Orisons are oral reasons,’ St. Thomas
uses this as a cue for discussing ratio, reason, and more precisely, the causal character of practical reason.” “St. Thomas and the Ontology of Prayer,” in Wisdom,
Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics, 365–73, at 368–69.
67 “Nam cum per artem rhetoricam et vera suadeantur et falsa, quis audeat dicere
adversus mendacium in defensoribus suis inermem debere consistere veritatem, ut
videlicet illi qui res falsas persuadere conantur, noverint auditorem vel benevolum
vel intentum vel docile proemio facere, isti autem non noverint?” “Dixit ergo
quidam eloquens, et verum dixit, ita dicere debere eloquentem ut doceat, ut
delectet, ut flectat.” De doctrina Christiana 4.2.3, 4.12.27 (ed. W. M. Green, CSEL
80: 118.20–119.2, 137.11–12) The latter remark is quoted by Aquinas in Summa
theologiae II–II, q. 177, a. 1, obj. 1. See also Henri Marrou,“L’éloquence chrétienne,”
in Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris: Boccard, 1983), 505–40; and
Ernest L. Fortin,“Augustine and the Problem of Christian Rhetoric,” in The Birth
of Philosophic Christianity: Studies in Early Christian and Medieval Thought (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 79–93.

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There is no longer any privacy: man is because he is manifest to
another. But this publicity to God is as hidden as God Himself, unless
God’s eloquence manifests Him as our public.68

That God has so manifested Himself is, of course, both the premise and
the argument of the Confessions. Prufer goes on to characterize Augustine’s rhetoric in the Confessions as follows:
The Confessions are a dialogue between one man and God; they have
the form of solitary prayer overheard, not of speech with others about
being as it shows itself through city and cosmos. The Psalms are the
origin of the rhetoric of the Confessions, a rhetoric whose form is caritas: mutua redamatio cum quadam mutua communicatione et familiari conversatione. . . . God is spoken to with words first spoken by God to us
(prayer as quotation and appropriation of Scripture) and in the Word
spoken in common with us (Christ, human and divine, Mediator).69

The Confessions begin by invoking God in an elaborate exordium, initiating a strain of address that continues throughout the work. Both the
Psalms and the reciprocal friendship of caritas contribute to the rhetoric,
as Prufer says, but so does the Ciceronian art of rhetoric, of which Augustine was a master.
Scholasticism makes explicit and systematic what the Confessions imply
about the bearing of Ciceronian principles on speech addressed to God.
As we have seen, Aquinas’s early commentary on Jeremiah explains
Jerome’s prologue to the book with reference to Cicero’s topics for
winning good will from his readers. Aquinas uses these same topics to
analyze an address by Jeremiah to God in Chapter 12, where the prophet,
Aquinas says, “disputes” the justice of the Lord’s punishment in three
stages, each of which contributes to winning good will. First the prophet
uses the topics of the person of the judge (captat benevolentiam ex persona
judicis ) and the honorable character of his case (ex honestate causae ); then
he presents his case with reference to his adversaries ( proponit causam
quantum ad adversarios ), and with reference to himself and his justice (Ex
parte autem sua dat intelligere justitiam ); finally he makes a petition to show
the punishment due to his adversaries (ostendit poenam per modum impreca-

68 Prufer, Recapitulations, 28–29.
69 Ibid., 29. Prufer quotes the Summa theologiae’s Aristotelian description of charity

as “a mutual return of love with a mutual sharing and a common way of life”
(I–II, q. 65, a. 5). Redamatio translates antiphilesis
˜ in the Latin version of Nicomachean Ethics at 1155b28.

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tionis ), appealing to the Lord’s justice (quasi dicat: Quia iustus es . . . ).70
Aquinas here touches on all four of Cicero’s topics for winning good
will, suggesting that a prophet begins to address God in the way that a
skillful public speaker begins to address a human audience, that is, by
winning good will.
Aquinas also understands ordinary Christian prayer to God in rhetorical terms.71 As an objection in his commentary on the Sentences says,
however, God is not to be “turned” by words: non est verbis flectendus.72
What, then, becomes of the art of captatio benevolentiae in prayer? Aquinas
addresses this question in discussing the “prologues” to the two outstanding instances of Christian prayer, the Mass and the Our Father.
In the Sentences commentary,Aquinas says that just as the oratio of public
speakers has as its first part an exordium, so does oratio directed to God—
which is why the introit at Mass is sung. He distinguishes the two kinds of
exordium as follows. In the oratio of public speakers, the exordium is
included because of those to whom the speech is made, that is, with a view
to making them good-willed, teachable, or attentive; in oratio addressed to
God, an exordium is sometimes required, but for the purpose of arousing
in the one praying a desire to make his petition devoutly. Aquinas says that,
according to Cicero, there are four ways of proceeding in an exordium
meant to win good will: on the basis of the person of the judge (ex persona
judicis), when he is praised; on the basis of the business at hand (ex negotio),
when its dignity is shown; on the basis of the person of the petitioner (ex
persona petentis), when his merit in the eyes of those he is addressing is
shown; and on the basis of the person of his adversaries (ex persona adversariorum), when the minds of the hearers are moved against them. But in
oratio addressed to God, Aquinas says, we speak only in favor of ourselves,
and not so as to make any adversaries disliked; and “the business for which
we pray” (negotium pro quo oramus) is God Himself, to whom all our desires
70 Super Jeremiam Expositio 12.1 (Parma ed., 14:608). Another of Aquinas’s early

Scripture commentaries, on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, contains a similar
passage. In Chapter 3, he says, the author makes a prayer, in which he begins by
winning benevolentia, in three stages, using the topics of his own person and that
of the complaining people (ex persona sua, et populi conquerentis), the person of his
adversary (ex persona adversarii ), and the person of the judge (ex persona judicis).
Super Threnos Jeremiae Expositio 3.14 (Parma ed., 14:680).
71 Commenting on 1 Timothy 2:1, he says that, when we pray, we should do what
orators do when they make a case that a benefit should be granted:“sicut rhetores
faciunt, sic et nos in orando debemus facere.” Super primam epistolam ad Timotheum
lectura 2.1 (Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, ed. P. R. Cai [Marietti, 1953], 2:223).
72 Scriptum super librum IV Sententiarum, d. 15, q. 4, a. 3, obj. 1 (ed. MandonnetMoos, 4:743).

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are to be ordered. There are no “adversaries” in prayer, and there is no
“business” apart from “the judge.” In prayer, then, we may be moved to
devotion by “a sort of prologue” (quasi quodam exordio) on the basis of two
topics: God (the judge), when we praise him, and ourselves (the petitioners), when we call to mind our weakness.73 The four rhetorical topics
normally used for winning good will are reduced to two, and these two
have the purpose of affecting the speaker, not the hearer.
An article in the Summa theologiae on the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer
includes an objection to the words of invocation that precede the petitions, the words Our Father, Who art in heaven. The objection is that it
seems pointless to try to win the good will of one who “goes before us”
with his good will; and since God does go before us with His good will,
in the sense that He has loved us first, these first words of the prayer seem
superfluous. Aquinas answers that oratio is offered to God not in order to
“turn” Him (ut ipsum flectamus), but in order to arouse in ourselves confidence to make our petition; and this we especially do by considering two
things, namely, the charity toward us by which He wills our good, and
his exaltedness (excellentia ), by which he is capable (qua potest )—capable,
that is, of accomplishing the good He wills us. In saying Our Father, we
consider his charity toward us; in saying Who art in heaven, we consider
his exaltedness.74 In this “prologue,” then, the speaker’s concern for the
73 Ibid., a. 2 resp. (ed. Mandonnet-Moos, 4:744–45): “Ad secundam quaestionem

dicendum quod sicut oratio rhetorica habet exordium partem sui, ita et oratio
ad Deum fusa. Unde et introitus in Missa cantatur.—Sed hoc interest, quia in
oratione rhetorica exordium ponitur propter illos ad quos oratio fit, ut benevoli,
dociles, vel attenti reddantur. Sed in oratione de qua loquimur, exordium requiritur quandoque ad excitandum orantis desiderium ad devote petendum.—In
exordio autem quod ad benevolentiam captandam inducitur, quatuor modis
secundum Tullium . . . proceditur. Quia vel captatur benevolentia ex persona
judicis, dum laudatur; vel ex negotio, dum ejus dignitas ostenditur; vel ex persona
petentis, sicut dum ostenditur meritum ejus in quos alloquitur; vel ex persona
adversariorum, dum contra eos audientium animos concitant.—In oratione
autem quam ad Deum fundimus, pro nobis tantum intercedimus, non ut alii
offensam incurrant. Negotium etiam pro quo oramus, ipse Deus est, ad quem
sunt omnia desideria nostra ordinanda.—Unde dupliciter orantis affectus ad
devotionem quasi quodam exordio excitatur: scilicet ex parte Dei, dum ipsum
laudamus; et ex parte nostra, dum nostrum infirmitatem recogitamus.” On the
basis of these remarks,Aquinas goes to offer a rationale for St.Ambrose’s distinction of the different kinds of prayer.
74 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 83, a. 9, obj. 5 and ad 5 (Leonine ed., 9:201–2): “in
vanum videtur captare benevolentiam eius qui benevolentia sua nos praevenit.
Sed Deus nos sua benevolentia praevenit: quia ipse prior dilexit nos, ut dicitur I
Ioan. IV. Superflue ergo praemittitur petitionibus, Pater noster, qui es in caelis, quod
videtur ad benevolentiam captandam pertinere.” “Ad quintum dicendum quod

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good will of the hearer remains; but whereas the public speaker must
have the art to win his audience’s good will, one who prays the Our
Father begins with words that remind himself of the great good will that
his Audience already has toward him.
Beginnings of Speeches and Beginnings of Friendships
What does comparison of the ethical and the rhetorical perspectives on
good will suggest? On one hand, there is Aristotle’s speculative account
of what it is to be well disposed toward someone, which Aquinas interprets in terms of will as a power of soul and introduces into his discussion of charity in the Summa theologiae. On the other hand, there is
Cicero’s practical account of how to win good will from an audience at
the beginning of a speech, which Aquinas uses to comment on introductions to books and beginnings of prayers.Taken together, do the two
accounts result in a more comprehensive view, a logic or a metaphysics
of good will, so to speak, beyond ethics and rhetoric?
To return to a point made at the outset, in both accounts good will
has to do with beginnings. Itself the beginning of friendship, good will,
according to Aquinas, is one of three effects of a well-made prologue.
Related to the theme of beginnings is the suddenness with which good
will, according to both ethics and rhetoric, sometimes arises. Aristotle
suggests only that good will can occur immediately, at first sight of someone doing something; Cicero indicates that it must, in some cases, be
produced early in a speech, if it is not already present.Aristotle’s example
of the experience of coming upon people fighting, and immediately
wanting one of them to win, is perhaps more significant than it first
seems. Good will is especially provoked by sight of a contest. Cicero is
entirely concerned with a fight, specifically a verbal contest; but unlike
Aristotle, who is interested in how a spectator at a fight comes to have
good will, Cicero takes the point of view of a contestant, a contestant,
moreover, who competes precisely for the audience’s good will, and who
does so by using as topics the elements of his situation. There are no
adversaries,Aquinas says, in prayer; but prayer is an unusual sort of speech,
and opposition, contest, and competition for good will would seem to be
normal, rather than exceptional, in speeches and in speaking in general.
What rhetoric can contribute to philosophical reflection on good will is
its practical understanding of a situation in which good will is of paramount
oratio non porrigitur Deo ut ipsum flectamus: sed ut in nobis ipsis fiduciam
excitemus postulandi. Quae quidem praecipue excitatur in nobis considerando
eius caritatem ad nos, qua bonum nostrum vult, et ideo dicimus, Pater noster ; et
eius excellentiam, qua potest, et ideo dicimus, qui es in caelis.”

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importance, namely, the beginning of a public address. Rhetoric analyzes
this situation into speaker, adversaries, audience, and case, any of which may
be brought to explicitness at the start of the speech and articulated in such
a way as to evoke the audience’s good will.The situation might seem to be
so exceptional, and to involve so artificial an exercise of speech, as to be of
little use to consideration of good will as such; but perhaps the formal character of the situation is in fact advantageous for this purpose.
The art of rhetoric is keenly attuned to what Sokolowski calls reason
as public. Phenomenology, he explains, opposes the egocentric predicament of
modern philosophy, according to which the mind is closed in on itself
and its ideas. Phenomenology proposes instead the theme of the publicness
of mind, that is, the mind’s opening onto a world held in common with
others, in a life of shared reason, evidence, and truth.75 The distinctive act
by which one person addresses many obviously arises out of such a public
life of the mind and takes place in such a world held in common. It also
vividly dramatizes two of Sokolowski’s related themes: that predication,
the central activity in thinking, originally occurs between a speaker and
a listener; and that an exercise of grammar is both a signal that the speaker
is thinking and a signal to a listener to think.76
If one man is addressing a multitude, the one flow of grammatically
ordered words, the one articulated wave of sound, signals that the
speaker is thinking, and it signals everyone in that crowd to think, to
articulate the world, in the same way. The one stream of sound is the
basis for a chorus of thinking.77

This stream of sound and chorus of thought are the materials of rhetoric, an art that implicitly acknowledges, as the background to its particular concerns, the radical publicness of thinking. Among these particular
concerns of rhetoric are concerns about its publics or audiences, about
the public square of social and political life in which it operates, and,
today, about the publicity and public relations that are its contemporary
modes. It is out of such concerns that the art of rhetoric reflects on the
public way of being that is constituted by one person addressing many
and develops an account of the public evocation of good will that such a
person must attempt.78
75 Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 8–16.
76 Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person, 58ff., 68ff.
77 Ibid., 88.
78 Confirmation of the public reality and importance of good will is provided by

accounting practices, according to which good will is listed among the intangible assets of a business. I thank Alyce Ann Bergkamp for pointing this out to me.

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Aristotle’s spectators at a fight come to have good will because of what
they see one of the fighters doing.Aquinas says that many have good will
toward persons they have never seen, because of what they have heard
about them.79 The rhetorical analysis of the exordium brings to the fore
the point that good will toward someone can be caused by what he
himself says. It is, in fact, often on the basis of something someone says,
often on the basis of one of the first things he says in our hearing, and
often on the basis of what he says about himself, or us, or someone he
differs with, or some matter of dispute, that we begin to like or dislike
him. Suddenly liking or disliking someone can be almost indistinguishable from liking or disliking something he unexpectedly says. Unusual
and artificial though it is, then, the rhetorical situation is, recognizably, a
stylization of a very ordinary one. Heidegger calls the treatise on the
passions in Aristotle’s Rhetoric “the first systematic hermeneutic of the
everydayness of Being with one another.”80 The art of rhetoric illuminates essential features of our being and our being together, and among
these features are not just “passions,” but also the good will by which we
first incline toward another person while remaining yet detached.
Conclusion
Theology considers human nature with respect to its extreme limits and
conditions: its creation and final end, its salvation and damnation. In the
presence of theology, philosophy can be moved to intensify its own
search for ultimate horizons, but it can be conversely provoked, in a kind
of reaction, to intensify its contrary penchant for the everyday and the
overlooked. Even in such reaction, however, philosophy can benefit from
the company of Aquinas the theologian. The philosophical reader of
Aquinas may bring to his reading interests remote from those of his
author, but on many subjects, even such minor subjects as the one we
have been discussing, Aquinas responds generously, transmitting portions
of a common ancient wisdom, making refinements to that wisdom, and
providing points of departure for further reflection.
Philosophy, theology, and rhetoric consider good will on their way to
greater themes. What is it, after all, to will good, but not even want to
contribute to its accomplishment? Compared to friendship, whether natural or supernatural, the simple motion of will in mere good will is a small
79 Nicomachean Ethics 9.5.1167a18–21; Sententia libri Ethicorum 8.2 (Leonine ed.,

45.2: 446.103–4).
80 Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New

York: Harper and Row, 1962), 178.

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thing. Still, in the life of a friendship, it is a beginning. Good will is friendship degree zero, the null state of friendship, like absolute zero in temperN&V
ature: not the first unit, but the base from which units start.81

81 I am grateful to Robert Sokolowski for this image, for the Barthesian phrase I have

also used for my title, and for his comments on the foregoing. An earlier version
was read at a session on the thought of Aquinas held on May 9, 2009, during the
44th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University.
I would like to thank the organizer of the session, R. E. Houser, of the Center for
Thomistic Studies at the University of St.Thomas in Houston,Texas.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011): 519–538

519

Book Reviews
The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive
Virtue by Richard S. Briggs (Grand Rapids,MI: Baker Academic, 2010 ),
270 pp.
B AKER P RESS ’ S series Studies in Theological Interpretation, of which Richard
Briggs’s The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue
is a part, examines the new interests of “theological” or “canonical” interpretation of Scripture from the perspective of the biblical texts themselves. The issue Richard Briggs addresses in his book is specifically the
question of “interpretive virtue.” What kind of character must a person
have to be a faithful reader of the Bible? Can reading the Bible make one
virtuous? The Virtuous Reader looks to the Bible itself to shed light on
questions like these.The premise of this book is that the Bible, and specifically the Old Testament, teaches certain interpretive virtues that can help
Christians to read more faithfully.
Briggs begins with a brief look at the trend of “virtue ethics” in the
vein of Alasdair MacIntyre’s appropriation of Aristotle and Aquinas,
which Briggs connects to work by Kevin Vanhoozer and Stephen Fowl
on theological formation of Christian “good readers.” Briggs says that
Thomas Aquinas forms a key background to his thinking on interpretive
virtue and Scripture as well. He says further that the key insight that gave
rise to his book was John Boyle’s reflection that Thomas Aquinas “is more
interested in actually interpreting Scripture than in thinking about interpreting Scripture” (10). Although Briggs does little in terms of close
engagement with Aquinas in The Virtuous Reader, he says that this belies
“the hours spent exploring what was to me the previously undiscovered
treasure of the Summa.” Aquinas is present as an intellectual background
in the philosophical understanding of virtue ethics that underlies Briggs’s
book, and he often appears, along with Karl Barth, when Briggs deals
with broader theological questions.
Briggs then lays out his own plan to read the Old Testament to find interpretive virtues. Briggs focuses on five particular Old Testament narratives:

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Book Reviews

Numbers 12:3, 1 Kings 3:16–28, 2 Kings 18:13–37, Ruth 1:16–17, and
Isaiah 6:1–13. Briggs uses the notion of “implied reader” as a way to read
Old Testament texts for teaching on virtue without getting bogged down in
questions of philosophical hermeneutics. The five interpretive virtues he
discovers, corresponding to the five different Old Testament texts, are humility, wisdom, trust, love, and receptivity. He goes on to describe these in five
respective chapters that mix theology and biblical exegesis. Briggs usually
begins by posing a problem in theological interpretation regarding the
particular passage at hand; he then reads the text in question to find a solution through an interpretive virtue that it teaches.
The first interpretive virtue Briggs discusses is “humility,” with reference to Numbers 12:3,“Now the man Moses was very humble, more so
than anyone else on the face of the earth.” Briggs reads “humility” in
Numbers 12:3 to mean something more complex than “meekness,” the
older King James translation. He says that the narrative of Numbers
emphasizes Moses seeing God “face to face” in a way that leads up to
Numbers 12:3. Moses’ humility, in the context of the narrative, is a
contrast with the more mediated way in which Miriam and Aaron related
to God, and it has to do with depending on God for the speaking of an
authoritative word.The humility of Moses that appears in Numbers 12:3
is not modesty or meekness but close fellowship with God the revealer.
Briggs’s payoff for theological interpretation here is recognizing that
other aspects of the spiritual life, like prayer, are essential to being a faithful interpreter of God’s word. He references Aquinas and Karl Barth as
theologians who mix biblical exegesis with spirituality in a way that
mirrors his description of Moses’ “humility” as closeness to God (67).
The next interpretive virtue Briggs finds in Scripture is “wisdom” from
1 Kings 3, the text that relates the narrative of Solomon, in his dream,
asking God for wisdom. Briggs studies both Solomon’s dream and the
following scene of the two women before Solomon that serves as a showcase for his wisdom (1 Kings 3:16–28). Briggs reads the “wisdom” displayed
in Solomon’s discernment of the rightful mother in 1 Kings 3:16–28 into
the interpretive debates over this narrative in Old Testament scholarship.
He says that Solomon’s ability in 1 Kings 3 to hear competing claims, to
judge what can and cannot be known, and to find a way forward that
follows God’s justice, is an ideal model for wise Christian readers.
Next comes “trust,” in 2 Kings 18. Briggs begins this section with
reflections on biblical hermeneutics by Garrett Green and Hans Frei.
Briggs connects thoughts by Green and Frei to the story of the emissary
of Assyria, the “Rabshakeh,” who strangely calls on Israel to trust in their
God and not in the power of Egypt (2 Kings 18:19–22).The text seems

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to suggest that Hezekiah is in the right in opposing Assyria, although
there is some interpretive difficulty. Briggs uses the difficulties surrounding interpretation of this text to reflect on larger themes of hermeneutical trust from Paul Ricoeur, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Michel Polanyi.
The chapter on the interpretive virtue of “love” discusses the role of
Scripture in the life of local churches or parishes, particularly in the act of
teaching Scripture in Christian education. Briggs finds two different ways
to think about a “hermeneutic of love” in two different passages, Ruth
1:16–17 and 2 Kings 5. The first hermeneutic of love is a pledge to
“follow” the message or worldview of a text wherever it leads; the second
refers to interpreting a text somewhat badly to produce an interpretation
that better serves the needs of the community. Briggs says that Christians
need a developed understanding of the relationship between love and the
act of teaching Scripture in order to ascertain which hermeneutic of love
is appropriate for a particular context (162). He uses Augustine’s “rule of
love” from On Christian Doctrine to help address this issue in the context
of the connection between biblical scholarship and the life of the Church.
The final chapter looks at some contemporary theological “doctrines of
Scripture,” most notably John Webster’s book Holy Scripture, through the
virtue of “receptivity” or “being summoned” that Briggs finds in the temple
scene in Isaiah 6. Briggs applies “receptivity” to biblical interpretation by
describing receptivity as the ability of interpreters to have their perspectives
transformed by the text. He opposes this virtue to a tendency he finds in
some theological interpreters to ignore aspects of the text in order to make
a smoother theological reading. He offers an example of this tendency in
the fact that many interpreters tend to play down the more difficult part of
Isaiah 6, verses 9–10, which suggest that Isaiah’s ministry will be a failure.
Briggs says that, on a closer reading of Isaiah 6:9–10 in the context of the
book of Isaiah’s overall narrative arc, one can read this passage as describing
the period of exile while simultaneously pointing to a future redemption
fulfilled in Isaiah 40. Briggs’s point here is that theological interpretation
should avoid overriding the text with a preconceived theological framework. Theological interpreters must practice both careful attention to the
biblical text and engagement with the text’s theological ramifications.
In the overall picture of interpretive virtue that emerges, readers of
Scripture acknowledge the nature of Scripture as a witness to God’s
involvement with the world, and they come to this witness with a basic
attitude of trust.This same trust should lead the reader to attend to the text
closely, and even perhaps to ask difficult questions (with love and wisdom).
The Virtuous Reader demonstrates how bringing theological and philosophical interests to Old Testament texts—interests such as virtue ethics—

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can be done in a way that benefits understanding in all of the fields of
scholarship involved. Briggs shows how virtue ethics can impact the way
Christians read the Old Testament, and he shows this in a way that is
equally attentive to the needs of the classroom and to those of the local
church. Briggs demonstrates a real concern for Christians who are struggling with the questions that his book raises. Although the book is written for those who have at least some background in theology or biblical
studies, Briggs’s analyses of the five Old Testament texts could be useful
sermon or Bible study material. His work could be easily adapted to an
introductory Old Testament course, or to a church Bible study series on
“how to read the Bible.” The most valuable contribution of the book,
however, is that Briggs has brought together biblical studies and theology
N&V
in a way that does justice to both.
Matthew Archer
University of Dayton
Dayton, Ohio

A Biblical View of Law and Justice by David McIlroy (Milton Keynes,
UK: Paternoster Press, 2004 ), xiv + 238 pp.
A Trinitarian Theology of Law: In Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann, Oliver O’Donovan and Thomas Aquinas by David McIlroy
(Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, 2009), xxii + 262 pp.
T HE PROBLEM with much political theology, both on the left and on
the right of the political spectrum, is that all too often political theory
appears to provide the hermeneutical framework for an engagement with
the biblical narrative. In A Biblical View of Law and Justice and A Trinitarian
Theology of Law, David McIlroy reverses this approach, allowing a theology of human law to emerge out of the biblical narrative, and demonstrating a refreshing refusal to view that narrative through the prism of
modern debates about law, politics, and morality.
In the first half of A Biblical View of Law and Justice, McIlroy presents a
lively and wide-ranging account of the Old Testament understanding of
law, which he examines in relation to such Old Testament themes as the
character of God, creation, the fall, the Law of Moses, kingship, and the
prophetic call to justice.While the emphasis in these chapters is historical, the author is constantly alert to the theological implications of the
texts with which he engages. This theological engagement can be characterized as Christological and pneumatological—Christological in the
sense that the author has a profound (and highly patristic) understanding

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of Christ as fulfilling Torah, Temple, and the Old Testament roles of
prophecy and kingship, and pneumatological in the sense that his
dialogue with modern theologians (most especially those concerned with
political theology) is grounded in his conviction that a proper understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit is integral to all such debate. In the
second half of the volume the emphasis shifts from the historical toward
the theological, and here McIlroy sketches the outlines of a theology of
law built on these Christological and pneumatological foundations.
Fundamental to McIlroy’s Theology of Law is the insight that “Christianity’s vision of the ultimate good . . . is not susceptible of enforcement
by human laws” (34). However, while the ultimate good (knowing God)
cannot be legally enforced, “there is also a Christian vision of what is
‘naturally’ good as a basis for a good society,” and this natural good is “that
people might have their material and relational needs sufficiently
supplied to be able to enjoy life in this world, and the opportunity to
respond freely to the gospel, so that they might be able to enjoy life in
the next world” (35). McIlroy believes that the “incarnation, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ demonstrate that legislation is not God’s final
answer to the problem of human sinfulness,” and that law is necessarily
limited in what it can accomplish (138). Hence there are “limits to what
human law, even if guided by Christian principles, can be expected to
achieve in restraining human sinfulness,” and “limits on the extent to
which Christian law makers ought to be seeking to enforce Christian
behaviour and Christian belief,” inasmuch as “that people have a
genuinely free opportunity to accept the lordship of Christ has to be paramount over the enforcement of Christian morals” (138–39).
The pivotal chapter of A Biblical View of Law and Justice —indeed, the
pivotal chapter of the two volumes taken together—is the one entitled
“Law and the Spirit,” in which McIlroy draws on the key texts of Jeremiah 31:31–34 and Ezekiel 11:19–20 and 36:26–27, in which the
prophets “were given visions of a new covenant in which God himself
would cleanse his people, and give them a new heart and a new spirit”
(150). These promises are fulfilled in Jesus and are the background to
Paul’s teaching on law and justification. Law—even God-given law in the
shape of Torah—cannot justify, and legal systems cannot produce what
McIlroy terms “deep justice,” although, under the guidance of the Spirit,
they can be God’s providential means for producing that “shallow justice”
which in turn creates an environment in which, by the grace of the Spirit
working in human hearts, deep justice is allowed to flourish.
McIlroy attributes the severely limited capacity of law to achieve “a
just, righteous, peaceful and holy society” to a range of interconnected

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factors: “the paradoxical nature of Christ’s kingdom, the absence of the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the inability of law to make human beings
truly moral, and the temptations and evil lurking in the power structures
of our world” (156). In particular, he argues that political and legal authorities “are not exempt from sinfulness that affects humanity as a whole,”
with the result that “Christians should support the rule of law, the limited
state and the separation of powers, as all being instruments apt to mitigate
the effects of the Fall” (182). Accordingly, “Christian legislative initiatives
must recognise that the presence of sin and the absence of the (indwelling
presence of the) Holy Spirit limit what it is possible to achieve through
legislation. Law making can only constrain and encourage; it cannot
change hearts” (185). McIlroy’s Pauline thesis that law is not grace-bearing is one that he makes repeatedly and to great effect, but his additional
point that original sin infects lawmakers and human laws themselves is
equally important. Human laws, created as they are by human beings
affected by original sin, are not immune from the virus of sin, and so
cannot act, except (at best) in a limited and restricted sense, as a remedy.
Law, in short, far from solving the problem of human sinfulness, tends to
compound it—even in the case of God-given law, as St Paul makes clear.
Indeed, what McIlroy says about human law in general reflects the structure of Paul’s contention (most notably in Romans 5–7) that Torah is
inherently bound up with sin, that its ability to hold sin in check is
severely limited, and that it is neither grace-bearing nor life-giving.
McIlroy argues convincingly that this limited function of law is brought
into focus by a properly developed eschatology. Human law is provisional—only at the Last Judgment will human judgments be revealed in
their true light—and, even at its best, it can be no more than an imperfect
reflection of God’s justice.The question we need to ask ourselves is “will
the legal systems we have been participating in be recognised as a reflection or a shadow, however faint, of divine justice or merely as a parody of
it?” (199). Resisting those political theologies that seek to present redemption in terms of political solutions to problems of social injustice, McIlroy
affirms that “human justice cannot be redemptive as such; the most it can
do is to point beyond itself to the redemption available through the justice
of God” (202). Pace the proponents of theologies of liberation, there is no
equation between political and social justice and redemption, though
there is a strong emphasis on the obligation of Christians to work toward
creating a society in which human justice is a reflection (however imperfect) of divine justice rather than a parody.
McIlroy’s insight that an attentive reading of the biblical texts reveals
the need for a Christological and pneumatological approach to under-

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standing human law is the inspiration for A Trinitarian Theology of Law. He
begins by distinguishing between the kind of classic western Trinitarianism that has tended toward a monarchical emphasis on the unity of the
one God, and the kind of modern western Trinitarian theology that has
focused on the “social Trinity.”The latter he categorizes as “the programmatic use of a particular model of the Trinity from which there are direct
correlations to tangible social conclusions” and which “privileges the
immanent Trinity as the resource for social theory” (2).The classic model
tends “to reflect on the biblical narrative which reveals the Trinity and to
reflect on the Trinity which illuminates the biblical narrative and so to
situate present societies within the biblical narrative and in relation to the
triune God,” thereby privileging the economic Trinity. McIlroy views the
classic approach as preferable, partly because it is rooted in the biblical
narrative, and partly because it is less prone to projectionism—that is, to
the tendency to project some modern political or social agenda back
onto the Trinity in such a way that the immanent Trinity becomes the
theological rationale for an agenda that is not itself a natural corollary of
the narrative of Scripture.
The dangers and deficiencies inherent in the social model are illustrated
in Chapter 2 by McIlroy’s acute analysis of the political and Trinitarian
theology of Jürgen Moltmann. Moltmann’s social Trinitarianism informs
(or is informed by) his antipathy toward political hierarchies and power
structures, though, paradoxically, in spite of his deep suspicion of authority and its ability to promote social justice, Moltmann’s own solutions
seem dependent on the appropriate political action being taken by likeminded authorities. McIlroy also portrays Moltmann’s theology (accurately) as tending toward panenthesim, inasmuch as the perichoresis of the
divine Persons extends to a perichoresis of the Trinity and of the human
spirit which finds expression in a soteriology of “deification” that is far
removed from the Eastern Orthodox understanding of this term. Mindful
of Moltmann’s inclination to look to human solutions to the problem of
injustice and to blur the distinction between the Holy Spirit and the
human spirit, McIlroy contends that if the Old Testament is read “as
demonstrating the fallenness and inadequacies of human legal systems,
even if their laws are God-given (as opposed merely to being seen as
such), then the prophecies about the Holy Spirit in Jeremiah and Ezekiel
are seen as promising a change of heart through the giving of the Spirit
which will make justice, righteousness, holiness and social virtue possible”
(85–86). He adds,“This aspect of the work and person of the Holy Spirit
presupposes the inability of law alone to create a just society and reveals
that in terms of law/morality it is through the agency of the Spirit that

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justice/righteousness is promoted. It is not primarily legal systems and
power structures but rather human beings that are indwelt by the Holy
Spirit and given future orientation through the Spirit’s presence” (86).
McIlroy now turns his attention to the work of Oliver O’Donovan,
whom he describes as “the pre-eminent contemporary political theologian,” whose work is characterized by “careful attention to the biblical
narrative,” a revival of the “tradition of Western Christian political theology,” and an appreciation that “political theology has a Trinitarian structure” (2). Fundamental to O’Donovan’s understanding of political theology
is the insight that the fact of Christ’s having ascended “means that he needs
no earthly ruler to establish or to confirm his rights,” and that to “claim
such a vocation is to blaspheme” (107). McIlroy quotes O’Donovan to the
effect that “[F]ollowing the triumphal Ascension of Christ . . . political
authorities can either obediently accept their limited function of judgment or idolatrously reject their rightful place and assert themselves
against God” (107), and he notes that whereas Moltmann risks “elevating
our particular vision of justice into universal or divine status,” O’Donovan is “constantly aware that seeking ultimate peace and or ultimate
justice in the present age is what leads to Antichrist” (123). O’Donovan
sees the Holy Spirit as “performing the key action of providentially
sustaining human regimes” (149), but, arguing (in the light of the biblical narrative, and, in particular, of the witness of Jeremiah and Ezekiel)
that the role of the Spirit is not only providential but also prudential and
sapiential and grace-bearing, McIlroy suggests that what he describes as
the “anti-totalitarian elements in O’Donovan’s theory” would be significantly strengthened “by an account of the way in which the Spirit acts
beyond human law in effecting the conversion of human hearts, transforming them into agents who are enabled to become truly free as they
apprehend their God-given place within the moral orders of creation and
God’s kingdom” (150–51). McIlroy praises O’Donovan for recognizing
that political theology needs to possess a Trinitarian structure, but criticizes his Trinitarianism as lacking balance, inasmuch as its strong and
clearly defined Christology is accompanied by a comparatively weak and
underdeveloped pneumatology.
In the next section, McIlroy selects Aquinas as the prime example of
“a theologian who prioritises the biblical narrative and the economic
Trinity in his understanding of the role of human law in social relations”
(3). Drawing on the work of Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, he
correctly rejects the view that for Aquinas the Trinity is “nothing more
than an appendix to his monotheism,” and presents Aquinas as a
profoundly biblical and Trinitarian thinker.What follows is an exemplary

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and enlightening account of Aquinas’s teaching on the Old and New
Law, which is discussed in relation to soteriology, grace, virtue ethics,
natural law, politics, and the overarching theme of glorification—McIlroy’s preferred term for deification, which he understands in a fully
Orthodox sense (to be contrasted with Moltmann’s panentheistic sense).
In the light of the classic study by A. N. Williams on deification in
Aquinas and Palamas, McIlroy rightly perceives deification as central to
the theology of Thomas. In consequence, he contends that to view
human relationships (or law or politics) in a Trinitarian way is not (as it
is for Moltmann) to extrapolate from the immanent Trinity a model for
how humans should behave, but is to see the human as a participation in
the divine—more specifically, in the Trinity—and hence as “deification.”
One of McIlroy’s achievements in A Trinitarian Theology of Law is to
demonstrate the extent to which Aquinas is not only a Trinitarian but
also a remarkably pneumatological theologian who understands law,
grace, deification, and other related concepts in a deeply pneumatological way. Aquinas shares O’Donovan’s view that the Spirit operates
through human law in order to “achieve God’s providential purposes,”
but he goes beyond O’Donovan to emphasize the prudential, sapiential,
and grace-bearing role of the Spirit who works in Christians through the
New Law, “guiding and empowering them to obey God.” Aquinas’s
teaching on the New Law and the role of the Holy Spirit is very much
grounded in Jeremiah 33:31–34, which, as has been said, is a key text for
McIlroy, whose very evident sympathy with Aquinas’s way of thinking in
this volume may be accounted for by the fact that both the author and
his subject are drawn to precisely the same passage of Scripture as their
starting point for understanding the meaning and function of law in the
post-incarnation era. Even so, McIlroy (who draws a distinction between
Thomas and subsequent Thomism) feels that, by emphasizing the role of
the Spirit still further,Aquinas could have obviated the later development
of the “two storey nature and grace model of Tridentine Catholicism,”
which, he argues, needs to be collapsed into a unified “nature-graceglory trilogy” in which the various “moments” in grace—“creating
grace, sustaining grace, providential grace, redeeming grace, sanctifying
grace and glorifying grace . . . must be understood in triune fashion as
actions ordained by the Father, ordered to the Son and accomplished by
the Spirit” (202).
This highly pneumatological understanding of grace informs the
concluding section of A Trinitarian Theology of Law, in which McIlroy builds
on Aquinas’s account (utilizing some of the insights of Moltmann and
O’Donovan), exploring the Christian mysteries from creation through to the

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eschaton from an Irenaean perspective in which the role of the “two hands
of God”—the Son and the Holy Spirit—is always prominent. Human law
is presented as “ordained as a means of shallow justice but incompetent to
produce deep justice and the conversion of hearts to Christ” (233). This
“shallow justice” is precisely what the triune God wills to work through
human law by the Spirit, but it “is not ordained to produce deep justice
because the triune God who loves in freedom seeks to draw human beings
into relationship with Godself through their own free decision to love
God” (234). McIlroy concludes, “It is the Holy Spirit, not human law,
which is the means through which God achieves deep justice, as the Father
transforms human beings by the power of the Spirit, into the likeness of
the Son” so that, filled with the grace of the Spirit, they might “foster a
level of social morality which law alone cannot maintain” (234).
Edward Schillebeeckx famously insisted that “all theology is politics,”
in the sense that theology is (or should be) at the service of—and an
expression of—political engagement. David McIlroy successfully puts the
case for what might be termed a more “sceptical” approach to political
theology. Informed by a proper understanding of biblical teaching on sin,
grace, and the Holy Spirit, Christian politicians and law makers need to
be constantly aware not only that political engagement and legal structures (which can never be grace-bearing) possess a limited capacity for
good, but that, even when God-inspired, they are (as a result of the Fall)
inherently sinful. McIlroy’s contention that, in view of original sin, political theology needs to be fully Trinitarian—and, in particular, pneumatological—is powerfully argued in these volumes, as is his proposal that an
appropriately pneumatological reading of Aquinas on the Trinity, grace,
and deification points the way toward a theology of law and politics
designed to take seriously both the shape of the biblical narrative and the
reality of the human condition.
N&V
J. Mark Armitage
Durham, England

The Apostles’ Creed:Articles of Faith for the 21st Century by Brian
Schmisek (Washington, DC: National Catholic Education Association, 2008 ),
xiv + 119 pp.
T HIS BOOK is part of a series titled For Religious Educators, intended as a
resource for teachers, catechists and other interested readers. The author
explains that his “book is written primarily for Catholic school teachers,
parish catechetical leaders, and Catechists who desire a basic knowledge
of Catholic faith as articulated in the Apostles’ Creed” (xi). He intends to

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explain “the meaning of the twelve articles of faith, their roots in apostolic faith, and their applicability and meaning for today’s religious educator, and Catholic school teacher” (xi).
The book is well organized, and in the preface Brian Schmisek describes
the basic structure of his book:“The introduction covers background issues
pertaining to the Apostles’ Creed. . . . Following the introduction are twelve
chapters, each covering an article of the creed. Each chapter begins with
the article itself, how its roots are present in Sacred Scripture . . . what the
article meant for early Christians . . . how the article may have been understood later, and how the article can be understood today, looking variously
at the new catechism, the US Catholic Catechism for Adults, and some
contemporary theologians. Each chapter concludes with a summary of the
theological import of the article. Discussion questions are also posed for
those who study this material in a group. . . . The questions are designed
not only to review some material, but also to apply it, by thinking about
its relevance and meaning for today” (xi–xii).
In the introduction the author explains well the purpose and origin of
creedal statements in general and of the Apostles’ Creed in particular,
noting its origin in the “Old Roman Creed.” Schmisek also provides a
clear and concise conclusion to the book. In between the introduction
and conclusion each chapter succeeds in providing background information to an article of the Apostles’ Creed, assisting the reader to understand
these articles in historical context.There are chapters treating individual
articles of the Apostles’ Creed that are edifying, like the chapter on Article XI dealing with the resurrection of the body and the chapter on Article XII dealing with life everlasting. However, other chapters, like those
on the seventh and eighth articles of the Creed, dealing with judgment
and belief in the Holy Spirit respectively, provide little to help the reader
appreciate the import of these statements for the life of the believer.
There are a few inaccuracies in the text. One minor inaccuracy in the
introduction is that the author seems to equate the “rule of faith” referred
to by Tertullian (and other early Church Fathers) with a creedal statement
(5), instead of more broadly as the faith as it has been handed down from
the Apostles. Another point lacking precision is his loose definition of
docetism as “an early heresy that stressed the divinity of Jesus to the detriment of his humanity” (27), without further explanation.A third inaccuracy
can be found in the statement “The person of Jesus as divine and human is
one of the central mysteries of Christian faith” (27). In fact, Jesus’ personhood is not both human and divine, but only divine.The accuracy of the
author’s treatment of Article IX of the Creed can also be questioned when
he states, “When the Apostles’ Creed mentions the catholic Church, it

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Book Reviews

means not so much the Roman Catholic Church but the universal church”
(76). His subsequent discussion does not adequately clarify this ecclesiological statement for his readers, and it could actually be misleading.
There are also some inadequacies in the text. One minor inadequacy is
that although the author provides a good definition of Mystery (28), he
leaves the reader wondering what is to be gained from pondering mystery.
Schmisek’s discussion of the first article of the Apostles’ Creed is another
example of inadequate treatment. Ending his discussion of the significance
of calling God “Father” in the Creed, Schmisek states: “While some
modern theologians are raising our awareness of the issues surrounding
paternal images of God, the image of God as father is dominant in the
scriptural, liturgical, and theological tradition” (12). At the end of his
discussion of the first article, Schmisek does note, “The Catechism tells us
that the Father language is used to express authority and loving care” (15).
However, he goes on to state, “Father image expresses the love, and the
power (authority) of God” (15).The author needs to be careful not to give
the impression that calling God “Father” is mere language or imagery, as
the reader could mistakenly conclude that this language and imagery is
subject to change. He needed to state clearly that “Father” is the identity
of the First Person of the Trinity, and then explain why this is so in light
of theological development subsequent to the Apostles’ Creed. He ultimately does not provide enough information for the reader to answer the
discussion question pertaining to this first article: “What in particular
makes the first person of the Trinity unique?” (15).
At several points in his book, Schmisek makes vague and potentially
misleading statements about Church dogmas. For instance, Schmisek’s
discussion of the second article of the Apostles’ Creed is problematic,
because nowhere in his explanation of it does he clearly state that Jesus
is God. Instead, he makes statements about Jesus such as:“His relationship
with God is so unique that he can be called God’s only son ( John 1:18).
With respect to humanity, he is our Lord, on par with Y HWH ” (22).
Again, in his commentary on the third article of the Creed, Schmisek
states,“Jesus incarnated God. Jesus fully expressed the love of God in the
world in a way that nobody else could, for he and the Father are one”
(27).Yet, these statements lack the clarity of the basic Christian claim that
Jesus is God incarnate. Therefore, in these parts of the book the author
did not succeed in explaining what the article meant for early Christians
as well as for Christians later in Church history.
In his comments on the third article of the Creed, Schmisek states,
“The reference to the “ever Virgin” Mary, or her perpetual virginity, is a
theological idea whose origins go back to Epiphanius and Jerome. Both

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the New Testament and the Apostles’ Creed say that Mary was a virgin
when she gave birth (Matt 1:25)” (25–26). To refer to the dogma of
Mary’s perpetual virginity as merely a “theological idea” is potentially
misleading, and more needed to be said in a book that targets religious
educators and catechists.
Throughout the book, Schmisek refers to aspects of historical-critical
Scripture scholarship. For instance, the author asserts that Matthew’s
Gospel was written in Greek (24), without mentioning or addressing the
tradition attested by early figures like Irenaeus of Lyons that it was the
first Gospel written and that it was written in Hebrew. In the introduction the author states,“The New Testament itself does not agree on the list
of the twelve apostles.We are forced to follow either the Markan/Matthean
tradition, or the Lucan tradition. The Gospel of John, with its fierce and
overriding emphasis on Jesus, does not even bother to give us the list of
the twelve” (7–8).While these statements may be true, Schmisek needs to
nuance his statements so as not to promote skepticism with regard to Scripture.This is especially so, since his intended audience is religious educators
and school teachers.
In addition to providing insufficient information for the reader to
adequately answer some discussion questions, Schmisek poses several
discussion questions that are not clearly focused. Some examples include:
“What other names do you use to address God?” (15).“What do [the titles
Messiah and Lord] mean to you?” (22).“Where do I stand on the issue of
capital punishment?” (37).These questions do not provide enough direction for a focused reflection on the articles of the Creed, but instead could
provide the opportunity for the reader to elaborate a “personal” creed to
supplement the Apostles’ Creed. Before each set of discussion questions
the author does list paragraphs of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that
pertain to the subject at hand. However, the material in the Catechism is
not adequately integrated into the narrative of the text in every case.
On the whole, this book provides some good historical information
and biblical background pertaining to the Apostles’ Creed. However, the
book might have been expected to provide more basic knowledge of the
faith as expressed in the articles of the Creed.Also, more could be offered
to help religious educators apply the Apostles’ Creed in a way that conveys
the beauty of the Catholic faith. Religious educators and school teachers
should reference this book in tandem with the Catechism of the Catholic
Church and the Compendium—Catechism of the Catholic Church.
N&V
Perry J. Cahall
Pontifical College Josephinum
Columbus, Ohio

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The Liturgical Subject: Subject, Subjectivity, and the Human
Person in Contemporary Liturgical Discussion and Critique, ed.
James G. Leachman, O.S.B. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2009 ), xx + 268 pp.
I F SOMEONE proposed that we study the elements that make up a liturgy,
what would come before our attention for study? The liturgy is often
enough put under the microscope by one group or another, for one reason
or another, and its compositional ingredients are laid out. Texts, music,
architecture, art, the presider’s ars celebrandi, the rubrics guiding the liturgy
director’s preparations, the cantor and choir, lector and organist, furnishings
like the altar and ambo and font, the seating arrangement, the sacramentary book, and books of hymns are laid out for observation like butterflies
mounted with pins. But this collection of essays startles us with the observation that something is missing.There is one more thing in contemporary
liturgical discussion and critique deserving our attention, and that is the
liturgical subject. It is true that the role of the assembly en masse is often
discussed, abstractly, but the individual personhood of the subjects that
make up that assembled community receives only glancing attention.
Until now. The subject of each of these twelve essays is the liturgical
subject.“In this volume we have tried to gather a collection of articles that
would examine understandings of the subject, of subjectivity and of the
human person which lie behind both contemporary liturgical discussion
and critique” (xx). It is the seventh volume in a series called “Faith in
Reason,” sponsored by the St. Catherine of Siena Society and published
by SCM Press/Notre Dame University Press. The series is a scholarly
response to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Fides et Ratio, and when
the society’s co-founders, Laurence Hemming and Susan Parsons, asked
James Leachman, O.S.B. to edit a collection of essays on the subject, he
gathered content in the form of a colloquium called Ecclesia de Eucharistia
held in 2004 at Heythrop College, University of London.
The term or idea of “subjectivism” could be blurred by equivocation
if the addition of “ism” has brought the snake round to bite its own tail,
but that is not how the term “subject” is used in this volume. Indeed, that
kind of subjectivity is frequently criticized here for exaggerating the role
of subjectivity in theology and worship. Instead, the words of Pope Benedict XVI inspired both the colloquium and this volume. He suggested
that a means should be found “to overcome the boundless superiority of
the [philosophical] subject and to recognize once more that a relationship with the Logos, who is from the beginning, saves the subject, that is
the person, and at the same time puts us into a true relation of commu-

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533

nality which is ultimately grounded in the Trinitarian life” (The Spirit of
the Liturgy ).
Where else but in the liturgy does the action of the Logos work more
powerfully to save a subject, by establishing him in communal relation
grounded in Trinitarian life? Here in the worshiping Church is to be
found a subject who does liturgy, a subject who is formed by the liturgy,
an ecclesial person whose identity derives from the liturgical rhythms of
the Church joining herself to Christ; Catholic intellectuals would do well
to offer the liturgical life as an alternative to the various philosophies of
subject that reign in the relativist marketplace. The essays in this book
consider the formative power of liturgy upon a subject. It is difficult to
review a collection of essays, and give the reader a sense of the book’s
content, except by treating them serially.
Laurence Hemming critiques the effects of a rationalism that made
reason the standard to which faith is to be reformed and which theology
is to serve. One effect of rationalism is that liturgy increasingly comes to
be seen “as an essentially sociological arena within which the subject
attains to a certain kind of self-understanding,” and once that happens,
“theology may rearrange the self-understanding of the subject through the
reconstruction of the liturgical event” (8). The tail now wags the dog.
Emphasize active participation because liturgy has increasingly come to
be undersood as something I can accomplish for myself. Hemming’s
thesis, to the contrary, is that “the meaning of the body of Christ
disclosed through the Liturgy supersedes and completes any understanding of the human being arrived at by philosophy, and not the other way
round” (11). In short, “it is we who are to be made present to God, not
God to us” (15).
Robert Barron proposes to look at the Eucharistic liturgy to discover
a description of the Christian. He pauses before the various parts of the
liturgy, like the sign of the cross, the Kyrie Eleison and Gloria in Excelsis,
opening up the biblical world, the offertory, and the sending, and looks
at how the Christian self is constituted by them.The community begins
by a de-centering of the self, signaling that minister and people are not
self-disposing, not in control of their lives; sin unmoors the self from its
properly divine origin and telos, so a moment of grace coincides with a
moment of judgment; we no longer take the scriptural world as exemplifications of our experiences, but rather are formed by being immersed
in “a distinctive manner of thinking, choosing, acting and reacting” (24);
we discover that every creature is, at the core of its existence, received,
and that in the liturgical sending “to love and serve the Lord” the liturgist is receiving personhood, not simply instructions for actions.

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Angelo dos Santos Cardita offers a dense chapter on post-modern
anthropology. “In the context of post-modernity, the self-awareness (as
self-consciousness) of the subject has pervaded all the traditional independent positive and human sciences that had previously regarded the
human being as a theologically oriented being, a being ‘for’ God” (34).
The modern concept grounds the subject on the principle of comprehension of the world; liturgy offers us a different way to ground the
subject. In making his case, this author summons Levinas, Marion, Ricoeur,
Rahner, Rouvillois, etc. He arrives at the conclusion that “the liturgical
subject is the ‘real man’ who participates in Church ritual” (45).“The birth
of faith cannot be achieved through the intellect or even through ethics,
but only through religion and ritual . . . ” (55).
Laszlo Dobszay observes that any rite is multilayered, and if we would
speak about its totality, we are addressing not a sum of randomly collected
texts but a living organism.“To the best of my knowledge, Litugiam Authenticam is the first document in recent liturgical legislation that has dared speak
of the ‘identity and unitary expression’, or the ethos, of the Roman Rite”
(59). What is the ethos that held together an historical accumulation of
facets? Dobszay pauses for some detailed work in the history of the Roman
Rite, its sacramentaries and structures and Gallican additions, and so forth,
to conclude that the unchanging essence of the Roman Rite “came about
as a result of prioritizing certain elements” (63). He thus defines “Roman
Rite” as “that common and 1200-year-old heritage continuously evolving
and organically developing throughout history” (67).This backward glance
has payoff for our discussion about identity and discontinuity.
Eduardo Echeverria builds directly on the foundation laid by Benedict
XVI when the Holy Father said, “[T]here is a loss of focus on the liturgical subject, as a result of a crisis of Christian faith” (74). Forget that the
subject of the liturgy is God’s saving deeds, and one would start the
liturgy revolving round ourselves. Indeed, Benedict writes that if “there
is no already bestowed gift of redemption to convey, but only instructions
for our self-redemption, then the Church . . . is an absurdity” (82). So
Echeverria synthesizes Benedict’s various works on liturgical themes,
summarizing the transcendent basis for liturgy, the cosmic drama being
played out, sacramental realism, and Christian personalism and transformation. He is a fine tour guide.
Bruce Harbert writes about “liturgies within the liturgy.” Always the
wordsmith, he begins with a history of leitourgia, which generally refers to
the activity of a group. But in the Septuagint, although “the Levites are
spoken of collectively, as sharing a single leitourgia, elsewhere each Levite is
said to have his own liturgy” (116). The post-conciliar period has stressed

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535

only the collectivist understanding of worship, such that one would rarely
hear talk of “my liturgy,” or “the Bishop’s liturgy,” but Harbert notes that
there are liturgies within the liturgy. He examines the translation of certain
prayers into English, from Cranmer to the 1973 ICEL translation (pausing
at examples in between), and sees a pressure for changing “they” prayers into
“we” prayers, even though “we” is not in the Latin. He reminds us that the
second term in Liturgiam Authenticam doesn’t mean “authentic” in the
English sense of “real, true, genuine,” it means “in accord with the original.”
Zsolt Ilyes gathers material from philosophers and classic liturgical studies that defended the capacity to play. Borrowing from Huizinga and Caillois, he presents two baseline definitions of play that identify it as a free
action outside of ordinary life that derives no advantage, a carefree activity
that is undetermined, not productive, yet regulated. If cultic ritual has been
identified with utilitarian means, the liturgy, as an exception,“has a gratuitous dimension, as liturgy is also a feast, a dance, a form of play” (136). Rite
and play are conjoined; liturgy has both a ludic and a ritual dimension.
“Two mysterious acts, human play and ritual, are wed in a third, the liturgy,
to become mystery itself ” (138).This reflects the gratuitousness of God.
Peter Kwasniewski gives one of the best introductions to sacraments
in Thomas this reviewer has ever read, arranging those scholastic categories within the category of ecstasy. “[T]he dissolution and re-creation
of the ‘I’ is shown forth in sacramental signs through which the Eternal
High Priest touches bodies and souls with his power, effecting in the
recipient a share in his life, death and resurrection” (154).Thomas understands extasis as a standing-outside-oneself, a going beyond oneself, going
beyond what one is to become literally altered. A friend is another self.
In the Christian case, God’s friendship redefines the “I.” “In Aquinas’s
view the most basic function of the sacraments is to place man in vital
contact with the crucified and risen Lord” (156), configuring us to
Christ, and being an occasion of extasis. The paschal mystery becomes
ours; my “I” is inserted into the “I” of Christ, and consequently joined to
the “I” of my neighbor; through love the lover becomes one with what
is loved; charity is such that it brings about ecstasy; charity is divine
friendship with God, and the Eucharist is the divinely given sign and
agent of charity.The themes circle round and round, in and out.
James Leachman and Daniel McCarthy offer together an analysis of
the formation of the ecclesial person through the RCIA. They present
the collect prayers for the scrutinies and then give an exegesis usually
reserved for scriptural passages upon the texts of these collects. Noting (a)
the literary form (such things as verb forms, imperative voice, passive
participles, etc.) and historical sources of the prayers, and (b) the motive

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and purpose shown in the structure of the prayer, they provide the reader
with a theology of each scrutiny prayer based on its deep structure.
Enrico Mazza isolates an anthropological question within the
baptismal rites. After reviewing the structure of the rites and the content
of select mystagogical catechists, he identifies two anthropologies at work
around the fourth century.“There are two principle elements that influence the birth of pre-baptismal rites: Gnostic anthropology with its
opposition between the devil and the Lord, and Greek anthropology
with its opposition between slave and free” (201). As a result of the first,
he concludes that pre-baptismal anointings are above all exorcisms, or
have been drawn into the orbit of exorcisms; that understanding is
corroborated by the second anthropology, which sees baptism as the
move from slave to free man. The liturgical person is created by passing
from slavery to the devil into the lordship of Christ.
Simon Oliver asks the question, “How are we to understand the relationship between human corporeal subjectivity as it is constituted in the
liturgy of the Church, and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity?” Objecting
to a group of theologians whom he identifies as “social Trinitarians,” who
project human relationality onto the Trinity, he offers a Thomistic understanding based more on apophatic doctrine. The Trinity is not a threesome of personalities that look like us; rather the Trinity is the source of
power that “flows from the divinity of Christ through his humanity into
the sacraments and their recipients” (237). The liturgy is therefore not
simply our work, it is God’s work in Christ realized by the Spirit.This is
the proper reason for referencing the Trinity when considering a person’s
formation in liturgy.
Denis Robinson, O.S.B., looks at competing notions of communio
and uses Newman to arbitrate among them. He identifies three uses of
communio: the Church as people of God, a vertical ideal that functions
almost like an alternative Magisterium, and the Ratzinger–von Balthasar
school, which does not discount the horizontal nature of human
communities but does not see it as primary. Newman’s remarks on truth
seem helpful to Robinson.Truth is complex, an active principle of action;
it takes place within the context of the community; it is manifested in
living a life of faith. After pausing to describe how Newman got this
across in his preaching, Robinson offers Newman’s model as a dynamic
interaction of the vertical and horizontal manifestations of divine Truth.
Examining the questions of liturgical subjectivity from numerous
perspectives, this collection of essays offers the reader much reward,.
Forming a liturgical subject is not the only thing a liturgy is for, of course;
but if we paused to examine the way in which a liturgy forms a subject ,

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537

we would discover that the liturgy’s effect on the individual is life-changing and empowers the person to progress toward deification
David W. Fagerberg
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

N&V