Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 865–81

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Relinquishing the Principle of Private Judgment
in Matters of Divine Truth: A Protestant
Theologian’s Journey into the Catholic Church*
R EINHARD H ÜTTER
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, NC

“I BELIEVE and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes,
teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” On December 28, 2004,
the Feast of the Holy Innocents, after the profession of the Nicene Creed,
my wife and I spoke these words to the Catholic priest and the faithful
gathered at what would momentarily afterwards be our first Eucharist.We
were about to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church and
receive the sacrament of confirmation. I vividly remember the strong
sense of joy, awe, and conviction with which I spoke these words: joy,
because after a long quest I had reached the goal; awe, because I sensed
that embracing the faith of the Church was like embarking on a borderless ocean of truth with unfathomable depths; conviction, because I made
an act of assent about which I was certain after much theological searching, probing, and reflecting. And it was precisely this long theological journey that made me keenly aware on this Feast of the Holy Innocents in
2004 of the two essential features that are comprised in the speech act of
saying: “I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes,
teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.”
The first essential feature is an act of intentional assent to the Church’s
teaching and simultaneously a surrender to the Church’s judgment in
matters of divine truth; and the second feature, enclosed in the first, is an
act of equally intentional renunciation. By assenting to the divine truth
* Originally delivered in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the Ignited By Truth Catholic

Conference, February 26, 2011.

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as believed, taught, and proclaimed by the Catholic Church, I renounced
myself as the supreme and final court of deciding matters of divine truth.
In what follows I will call this act of deciding, this individual arbitration and adjudication of matters of divine truth, the principle of private
judgment.1 But there is no renunciation without a prior affirmation. As
the thunder-clap follows upon the flash of lightning, renouncing the
principle of private judgment in matters of divine truth follows upon the
act of surrendering to the judgment of the Church. It follows upon
accepting all that the Church proposes and teaches to be revealed by
God, explicitly and implicitly. And it follows, last but not least, upon
accepting the magisterium of the Catholic Church to be the infallible,
divinely created and ordained instrument of communicating, expounding, defining, and defending the divine truth.
It took me another almost seven years as a Catholic-theologian-in-themaking to come to understand that this intentional assent and surrender
are properties of the fullness of the one “divine faith” which is a gift of
grace.2 Believing the one, holy, and catholic Church to be God’s infallible
instrument of conveying divine truth, “the Church of the living God, the
pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15; RSV), and surrendering to
her judgment in matters of divine truth are intrinsic and indispensable
features of the fullness of the one divine faith, that is, the Catholic faith.
However, I arrived at this crucial theological insight quite some time
after I had reached the end of my quest for the fullness of the Catholic
faith.What stood at the beginning of this quest was the slow but sure realization that the principle of private judgment in matters of divine truth,
1 Nota bene: It is not only legitimate, but unavoidable, to use private judgment in

penultimate matters that involve the use of the virtue of prudence in choosing
particular means in order to achieve specific ends. In ultimate matters of divinely
revealed truth, to exercise private judgment in principle is nothing but the intentional strategy of avoiding the need to submit to the authority of the divine truth
in its fullness and to the authority of the divinely instituted infallible instrument
of proclaiming, defining, and defending this truth.
2 Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, “Dei Filius,” chapter 3, “On
faith”: “And so faith in itself, even though it may not work through charity, is a
gift of God, and its operation is a work belonging to the order of salvation, in
that a person yields true obedience to God himself when he accepts and collaborates with his grace which he could have rejected. Wherefore, by divine and
catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word
of God as found in scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the
church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn
judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium” (Norman P. Tanner, S.J.,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. II [London: Sheed & Ward; Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990], 807).

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and hence in matters of the faith, is a burden and a bane inescapably
embedded in all versions of Protestantism. And what sent me eventually
on the road to the Catholic Church was my increasing realization that as
a Protestant theologian I could not escape from abiding by the principle
of private judgment. Because I am narrating the journey of a theologian
into the Catholic Church, it does not come as a surprise that my story has
a theological plot: the more I understood the principle of private judgment as the hidden center of my existence as a Protestant theologian, the
more strongly was I drawn to the faith of the Catholic Church.
Many other factors, for sure, were contributing to my finding my way
into the full communion of the Catholic Church, but none of them were
sufficient reasons on their own. I could speak about growing up in
Germany as part of a sizable Lutheran minority in a largely Catholic area
graced by a beautiful countryside that is still soaked with the signs of
Catholic piety. I could speak about my youth in a valley framed by the
most gorgeous Baroque churches, with the Benedictines, who long ago
brought the faith to the area, on one side and, on the other, the Cistercians who cultivated the wilderness. I could speak about an important
journey to Rome after having graduated from high school; about an even
more important visit to the ecumenical community of Taizé as a college
student, and about two memorable visits to a famous Benedictine
monastery as a university student. I could speak about regular encounters
with Catholic theologians during my years of teaching Lutheran ethics
in Chicago; of my encounter with the work of Thomas Aquinas; and of
visiting the Easter vigils of a most remarkable Catholic parish in Hyde
Park, Chicago, three minutes walking distance from our apartment.
All of this contributed, but in the end was not sufficient and decisive.
For me, as a theologian, the crisis that sent me onto my theological quest
had to come from the very heart of theology itself. Three theological
areas turned out to come together and form the critical mass of the catalyst: first, moral theology; second, justification, church, and Eucharist; and
third, the question of an incontrovertibly authoritative and, indeed, infallible magisterium. In each one of these areas I came to understand the
principle of private judgment to be a reality as inescapable as it was detrimental for me as a Protestant theologian, a principle that made it impossible to entrust myself fully to the guidance of the light of divine faith.
I. Moral Theology
My first teaching position found me at a Lutheran seminary in one of the
largest urban centers of the United States. My primary task was to teach
Christian ethics in a Lutheran key to future Lutheran ministers. After

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only a short while of teaching, I realized that I was in trouble. I felt as if
I was on a small boat without rudder, paddle, sail, or compass, tossed
about on a rough sea by strong winds and high waves. I had expected
rudder, paddle, sail, and compass to be provided by the four normative
points of reference on which a proper teaching of Christian ethics had to
rest: Scripture, God’s law—natural and revealed—conscience, and ecclesial teaching authority. I quickly discovered that most, if not all, of these
four normative points of reference had been eroded more or less for my
students by the time they reached my class. The required ethics course
that I was to teach was scheduled for the third and final year of the
Master of Divinity program required for Lutheran ordination, and by the
time the students reached this course, they were profoundly shaped by
the ways they had been taught biblical exegesis and Lutheran church
history and theology. After the students had been thoroughly trained to
deconstrue and reconstrue the meaning of biblical texts according to the
latest trends of historical-critical exegesis, there was not much left that
could serve as one of the normative pillars for a Lutheran ethics that
traditionally was grounded in the witness of Scripture. Scripture itself had
become the victim of a mode of hypercritical historical exegesis that
resulted in an understanding supposedly guided by the objectivity of
historical science, but de facto governed by the principle of private judgment. Having been encaged in their respective historical, social, and
political contexts, that is, having become products of and responses to
these contexts, biblical texts could only in the widest sense, if at all, bear
upon contemporary moral matters. It was left to the students to adjudicate among the multiple, variant, and often contradicting interpretations
they encountered in their courses on the Old and the New Testaments
and whatever significance they might have for the Christian life.
What then about conscience as a normative point of reference?
Conscience exists in Lutheran faith and theology, but not as an internal
guide in matters of good and evil. Lutheranism regards conscience as part
of a human nature that is totally corrupt after the fall; Lutheran theologians, therefore, usually take conscience to be inherently troubled, to be
constantly accusing the person, and hence to be in continual need of
assurance and peace. For this reason, the more traditional Lutheran
students did not seek guidance from their conscience, and the students
who regarded themselves as progressive and “with it” unsurprisingly
followed the secular culture at large and—after having embraced the
Enlightenment notion of the inherent goodness of human nature—
simply identified conscience with the principle of private judgment.

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What then about God’s law, natural and revealed? According to traditional Lutheran theology, intellect and will are both profoundly affected
by the fall. And natural law, which relies upon reason to understand the
natural order and telos—or goal— of human life, can therefore not function as a reliable guide.
What about the divine, revealed law? According to traditional
Lutheran teaching the primary and proper function of God’s revealed law
is to convict humanity of its sinfulness and to drive it to the Gospel
promise of forgiveness and justification by faith alone. Unsurprisingly,
most of my students understood Christian freedom predominantly as a
freedom from God’s law, a spiritual freedom that, again unsurprisingly, was
guided by the principle of private judgment. The technical term for this
particular Lutheran denigration of God’s law is “antinomianism,” and
“antinomianism” did reign sovereignly among most of my students.
In sum, the dominant default position I found solidly in place in the
minds of most of my students by the time they took my ethics course was
one of “private judgment” or arbitration that was ultimately guided by
individual sentiments and desires, self-constructed identities, and the utilitarian principle of the greater good for the greater number. The more
traditional students embraced this or that aspect of Martin Luther’s own
teaching as a normative guide for their lives. But the particular selection
and combination of aspects of Luther’s teaching was at best the result of
their exercise of the principle of private judgment.
Scripture, ecclesial teaching authority, God’s law—natural and
revealed—and conscience (according to my best understanding at that
time, the four pillars on which a proper teaching of Christian ethics had
to rest) found hardly any traction with most of my students. They had
experienced the dissolution of Scripture’s authority by the acids of
hypercritical exegesis; they had witnessed the happy embrace of the secularizing spirit of the times by the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America (ELCA); they had embibed the teaching that natural
law had to be rejected on Lutheran dogmatic grounds and that on the
same grounds conscience was either treacherous or a barely camouflaged
celebration of moral subjectivity.
In this situation I found myself confronted with an exceedingly ironic
alternative. The one alternative was to embrace the principle of private
judgment as tragic but unavoidable. Was I not myself constantly forced to
exercise it in my teaching of ethics and then impose it upon the students
by way of my personal teaching authority? The other alternative was to
encourage the students to cultivate their own private judgment in
matters of faith and morals so that through my action as a “midwife” they

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would develop their own, authentic, considered, and hence what some
would call “theologically mature” arbitrations of faith and morals. I
regarded the second alternative to be nothing but a subtle capitulation to
the cultural forces of moral relativism. Hence, I chose the first alternative
and decided to swim upstream on my own by reasserting the four
pillars—Scripture, ecclesial tradition, God’s law (natural and revealed),
and conscience—but it was a matter of my own private judgment to do
so. And what I offered to the students, of course, was my own personal
construal of an ethics in a Lutheran key. The goal of the ethics I taught
according to my own best lights, as informed by the four pillars, was to
battle the enemy whose name was “antinomianism.” For especially in the
area of what we now call the “ethics of life,” this Lutheran antinomianism was beginning to take on rather dramatic forms.
In the early 1990s, the ecclesiastical leadership of my Lutheran body, the
ELCA, had begun to soften, and eventually it abandoned, the once rather
strict Lutheran opposition to abortion. Abortion became for the pregnant
woman increasingly a matter of private judgment (of course, of a “responsibly informed” private judgment); while she was encouraged to listen to
God’s Word, seek advice, and search her conscience, in the end her choice,
the result of a sheer act of will, was the final and decisive authority, and for
that, a legitimate moral authority. What happened now in regard to abortion—namely, exchanging properly formed conscience for the principle of
private judgment, and foregoing objective natural and revealed norms—
had already happened decades earlier in regard to contraception and to
divorce and remarriage. The same was eventually to happen regarding
matters of sexual relationships between consenting adults, whether of the
opposite or the same sex. Neither divine truth as witnessed in Scripture,
nor right reason, nor natural law, nor the tradition that has informed Christian thinking about these matters for almost two millennia, guided the
ELCA in these matters. The guiding norm was the principle of private
judgment exercised individually under the culturally dominant misnomer
of “conscience,” extended managerially by way of particular strategies and
initiatives of the church headquarters, and collectively by way of the instrument of assembly voting. I found myself already at that time profoundly
troubled and deeply disconcerted by a development that was fully to
unfold as logically as regrettably only in recent years.
It was into this desolate and at points desperate situation that in August
1993, at the end of my third year of teaching Christian ethics in a
Lutheran key, Blessed Pope John Paul II promulgated his encyclical letter
Veritatis Splendor, The Splendor of Truth. I still vividly remember my first
reading of it. I was struck as by lightning. Here the Church spoke in her

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authoritative voice, interpreting the Scriptures in a way that was as
powerful as it was beautiful, affirming the reality of conscience and simultaneously instructing it in view of God’s law, natural and revealed. And in
the very core of the encyclical, I encountered a rich account of the
ontology and teleology of moral action that was as illuminating as it was
profound. I suddenly saw all four pillars of the Christian ethics I had
envisioned not only affirmed but powerfully at play! I found myself in
vehement agreement with all that Veritatis Splendor taught. At the same
time I was greatly confused: for all this wonderful teaching was obviously
Roman Catholic and not Lutheran—but I was a Lutheran ethicist! Was
my vehement agreement leading me into the traps of legalism and
works-righteousness, that is, into what Lutherans would see as exchanging the freedom of the Gospel for ecclesially imposed laws and as
exchanging salvation by faith alone for meriting salvation by way of religious works? I was unable to discover any of these traps in Veritatis Splendor —but how could this be?
I began—for the first time in my life—seriously to study Catholic
moral theology, and I especially threw myself into the study of Thomas
Aquinas’s ethics, for his voice and vision seemed to me to inform what
was most centrally at stake in Veritatis Splendor.When, two years later, the
encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life, came along, it only
affirmed the initial and overwhelming impression I had when I read Veritatis Splendor for the first time: here the Church was teaching authoritatively and truthfully, and in such a way that it became possible to teach
Christian ethics in accord with Scripture, the ecclesial tradition, God’s
law (natural and revealed) and the voice of conscience—and if need be,
against the spirit of the age, and the winds of the times, and most importantly, in a way that made private judgment not the final arbiter of truth
in matters of faith and morals. Embracing this teaching meant freedom
from the seemingly interminable necessity of individual theological
wrestling over the truths and norms of the Christian life. What seemed
to be called for now rather were fidelity and prudence, the faithful application of these truths and norms to one’s own life of discipleship and, for
the moral theologian, to the specific task of teaching ethics. Instead of
constantly changing the rules of the game according to one’s own best
liking or latest whims, it had become a matter of finally playing the game
on a clearly circumscribed playing field with clear rules. And the fact that
an authoritative magisterial encyclical letter opened my eyes to these
truths, taught me for the first time that there indeed is a referee on the
playing field of moral theology and that his presence is indeed indispensable for moral theology to remain accountable to the truth of the faith!

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To the degree Veritatis Splendor became a decisive point of reference
for my thinking and writing, I became estranged from the project of a
Christian ethics in a Lutheran key. And—needless to say—my estrangement did not go unnoticed. Less than well-meaning colleagues, especially
in Germany, began to characterize me as “crypto-catholic” and “Romefriendly,” synonyms for “unreliable” and “deviant.” But this did not matter
too much to me, since other parts of my research and writing had carried
me increasingly from ethics to dogmatics and fundamental theology. I had
begun to become preoccupied with the question of what theology itself
was and how “to do theology” accountable and in fidelity to the Church.
By asking this question, I had to pursue the question of the nature of the
Church and of the Church’s doctrinal tradition and teaching authority.
Unsurprisingly, but at that time unforeseen by me, it was here that the
Catholic question caught up with me most forcefully.
II. Justification, Church, and Eucharist
Six years after the promulgation of Veritatis Splendor, in the year 1999, the
President of the Council for Christian Unity of the Roman Catholic
Church and the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation
signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The vast majority
of German Lutheran theologians hotly debated and contested earlier
drafts and—in open defiance of their own ecclesial authorities—rejected
the final draft. Again I found myself in a position of profound estrangement, especially from my German Lutheran colleagues in theology.
Unlike most of them, I warmly welcomed this declaration; for it officially
removed the one central theological and doctrinal obstacle that kept me
from even beginning to contemplate full communion with the Catholic
Church. Now I heard it officially from both sides of the Reformation
divide: in the core of the understanding of justification by faith through
grace, there is substantial agreement between the current teaching of the
Catholic Church and the current teaching of the Lutheran bodies that
are part of the Lutheran World Federation. (In recent years, the World
Methodist Council also adopted and affirmed this declaration.) For most
of the Lutheran theologians who supported the Joint Declaration on the
Doctrine of Justification, this agreement meant that irrespective of all
remaining differences one could and should move to immediate
Eucharistic communion that would celebrate and acknowledge a state of
reconciled difference. In a nutshell: because we agree in the one point
that truly matters, we are free to differ in everything else; we simply cease
to regard these other differences as church-dividing. Again at odds with
most of my German Lutheran peers—this time the small group of

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supporters of the Joint Declaration —I drew quite a different conclusion
from the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: I was not only entitled but now indeed mandated to explore and consider the fullness of the
teachings of the Catholic Church.While others mainly inferred that now,
for sure, there was no need to consider the Catholic faith more closely,
because the Catholic Church seemed to have come around to the
Lutheran position on the one issue that according to the Lutheran point
of view really matters, I inferred the opposite: if there ever was a mandate
upon the Lutheran theologian to consider most carefully and attentively
the Catholic doctrine, it was now, after the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine
of Justification had been signed, and the one obstacle had been removed
that might have stood in the way of such a consideration.
This conviction became deeper and deeper in the years after 1999 and
formed the silent background of most of my theological work. The foreground, however, was not that silent; rather, I found myself increasingly troubled, if not annoyed, in the context of the life of faith most central to me:
the kinds of treatment that the remaining elements suffer after the completion of the celebration of what Lutherans usually call the Lord’s Supper.
During the years of my childhood and youth in a liturgically rather
conservative German Lutheran body, hosts, wine, and kneelers had been
in regular use; now in my adopted U.S. setting, not only were the kneelers gone in most places, but in many places grape-juice had replaced the
wine, and in all places a loaf of bread had replaced the communion hosts.
These matters were irritating, but not detrimental.What I came to regard
as increasingly disturbing and eventually detrimental to the authenticity
of the faith in Christ’s real presence, however, was a most troubling lack
of respect, let alone reverence, after communion for the remaining
elements. It was a common practice to throw out the remaining bread as
food for the birds and to pour the wine into the ground outside the
church building. There was no consumption, let alone reservation, in any
shape or form. I do not even want to mention what the carpets around
the communion rails looked like when only too often the bread turned
out to be too dry and crumbled or when the distribution had been insufficiently careful. All that was left of Luther’s own intense personal reverence for Christ’s real presence in the elements was the aroma of an empty
bottle. And where the sacramental piety was gone, the practice seemed to
go awry, too.
Being greatly disturbed about this practice, I began to investigate more
closely what various Protestant bodies, primarily Lutheran, Anglican,
Methodist, and Reformed, taught about Christ’s presence in the blessed
bread and wine. For I rather naively thought that in this way a greater

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clarity might be gained about how to treat the elements with reverence,
not only during but also after communion.The findings were thoroughly
sobering. Anglicans allow for at least three ways to conceive of Christ’s
presence in the elements, and these three views entail considerably different attitudes about the practice of treating the remaining elements.
Lutherans and Reformed have disagreed about these matters fiercely
since the Reformation; and only after the Second World War did they
reach an ecumenical agreement in Germany, the so-called Leuenberg
Concord, that was, in a nutshell, simply the agreement not to disagree
anymore on the issue and to abstain from all too-precise teachings about
it, but to commune together and acknowledge each other’s differing
theological construals of the event.
The various construals, of course, unavoidably become a matter of
one’s theological predilection, or taste; in short, a matter of private judgment. And, of course, the question as to how the remaining elements
were to be treated after communion do equally become a matter of one’s
theological predilection, that is, a matter of private judgment. And even
inside the older Lutheran tradition there did not seem to be unanimity
about so central a question. The dominant doctrinal notion seemed to be
that Christ’s real presence in, with, and under the elements ceases to
obtain with the end of communion, a notion that had no clear warrants
from Scripture or the theological tradition. Treating the elements that
remained after communion in the way I have described seemed to be
driven largely by the rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation. As a
justification for the post-liturgical vacuuming of the remaining elements
from the carpet around the altar rail, I was once told by a Lutheran
pastor: “If He can get Himself in, He surely can get Himself out.” This is,
in nuce, the Lutheran doctrine of “consubstantiation,” and the practice of
vacuuming seems to be quite consistent with it. I should emphasize
explicitly, though, that by no means all Lutheran pastors followed this
practice; some rather were eager to treat the remaining elements in reverent ways. In short, there simply was no authoritative doctrinal teaching
and disciplinary ruling on it that was binding for all theologians and
pastors. Luther’s own position was invoked by some, if not many, but it
was expressed in texts of his that were not regarded as authoritative by all
Lutheran communions. In short, the matter was left to the individual
private judgment of each pastor, or the collective private judgment of a
congregational council, or of some synod, the authority of which was
ambiguous at best. Because the Lutheran ecclesial teaching of Christ’s real
presence lacked clarity and definition, the practice of treating the
elements remaining after communion was left to the arbitration of vari-

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ous groups of individuals, an inescapable mode of exercising private judgment in a matter at the core of the faith.
Where to turn in such a situation? Thanks to God’s good providence,
I was not tortured for too long by this question. For on April 17, 2003,
Blessed Pope John Paul II promulgated what was to be his last encyclical
letter: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. And again I encountered a teaching as consistent as it was convincing that answered all of my questions and troubles
definitively and so freed me from the need to submit this most central
mystery of the faith, Christ’s Eucharistic presence, to the lights of my
own or my pastor’s private judgment. Moreover, I encountered more in
Ecclesia de Eucharistia than I had bargained for—an account of the
Eucharistic sacrifice that most satisfyingly addressed all lingering misconceptions, concerns, and reservations Lutherans had entertained since the
Reformation. What had seemed to be intractable problems on Protestant
dogmatic, liturgical, and practical terms, suddenly received surpassingly
beautiful solutions in an authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church,
an answer that opened a path to the very heart of the mystery of Christ
and His Church. There was a striking fittingness between the doctrinal
teaching of the encyclical letter on the Eucharist and the Church and the
normative practical guidelines given in great detail and care in Redemptionis Sacramentum, The Sacrament of Redemption, an important instruction
issued on March 25, 2004 by the Congregation for Divine Worship and
the Discipline of the Sacraments.3
III. Magisterium
Things were obviously coming to a head. In my own teaching and writing as a Lutheran theologian I increasingly realized the burden hidden
deep in the identity of the Lutheran theologian: a tangible vacuum of
magisterial authority and guidance. I came to understand this vacuum as
caused by a systemic lack of clarity about the question as to whether a
proper magisterium—an authoritative teaching office—exists at all in the
3 The instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum expresses explicit concern about the

phenomenon closely connected with private judgment in matters of divine
truth: “[7.] Not infrequently, abuses are rooted in a false understanding of liberty.
Yet God has not granted us in Christ an illusory liberty by which we may do
what we wish, but a liberty by which we may do that which is fitting and right.
This is true not only of precepts coming directly from God, but also of laws
promulgated by the Church, with appropriate regard for the nature of each
norm. For this reason, all should conform to the ordinances set forth by legitimate ecclesiastical authority” (www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/
documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html),
accessed on May 6, 2011.

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various Lutheran, let alone other Protestant, bodies; and if such a teaching
office exists, whom it encompasses, how far it extends, and with what kind
of authority it is equipped. The individual theologian was to fill this
vacuum of magisterial authority with his or her own best theological
judgments. But the particular selections of normative sources on which
the individual theologian’s most considered theological judgments rested,
were unavoidably the result of his or her own private judgment: sundry
passages from Scripture (judged to be most in accordance with Luther’s
teaching and forming the truly normative canon in the wider canon of
Scripture), combined with the Trinitarian and Christological doctrines of
the first ecumenical councils (Luther happened to affirm these doctrines
as ultimately biblical and to emphasize at the same time that the councils
could and did err in matters of doctrine and morals), and finally a selection of what were regarded as the normative writings of the Reformation
period. There was no unanimity as to how these sources related to one
another, nor was there an authoritative office to clarify definitively how
they were to be ordered and ranked; and there was no authoritative, let
alone infallible, instrument that was in a position to adjudicate between
variant theological and quasi-magisterial construals. I slowly realized that,
in order to ease this quandary somewhat, many if not most Lutheran
theologians tended to take what Luther regarded as the most central theological tenets (that were supposedly directly received from Scripture) as an
infallibly normative point of reference. The ironic result of this pervasive
tendency was the fully functional but not at all acknowledged infallibility
that was granted to Luther himself and his capability to open up the true
meaning of the Scriptures. The tacit assumption was that by faithfully
following the central tenets of his theology, under no circumstances could
one wander from the truth of the faith and fall into error.
Once I became fully aware of this, the functional infallibility granted
to the central tenets of Luther’s theological teaching turned into a serious theological problem. For whence should such a gift of infallibility
come? From Scripture, from the Church, or by way of a special divine
gift of prophetic inspiration? The latter, the special gift of a prophetic
inspiration, was the only possible option, but upon closer inspection an
utterly unsustainable one. It was not claimed consistently by Luther, nor
was it a universally shared conviction, let alone an emerging and eventually accepted tradition in Lutheranism. But if, bereft of such an alleged
divine gift, Luther was just one theologian among many; and even if we
were to grant him to have been a unique genius of religious intuition and
imagination, gifted with the most exceptional rhetorical powers and zealous for the truth as he understood it, he was indeed as fallible a theolo-

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gian as I was. Hence he had no superior claim upon my allegiance to his
teaching. My allegiance or non-allegiance to his teaching, rather, was
again a matter of my private judgment. For what other criterion integral
to the faith and superior to the principle of private judgment could lay
a claim upon my allegiance and fidelity? The Protestant canon of Scripture as interpreted in light of Luther’s own fallible theological tenets?
Hardly so. A contingent consensus of Lutherans gathering in one place at
one time and agreeing upon a particular expression of the faith based on
a reading of Scripture in light of said tenets? Hardly so. A Lutheran selection of the ecumenical councils—whose doctrinal decisions, according to
Luther and Lutheran teaching, are not infallible—and a Lutheran selection of the teachings from the Church fathers? Hardly so. Individual
Lutheran theologians of great standing? Hardly so. An accumulative
combination of all the above? Hardly so.
I had finally reached the end of a road that turned out to be a cul-desac. Short of some subtle mode of self-deception or a foregoing of the quest
for truth in this crucial matter, there was no way forward in the direction
taken by the Reformation theologians. I was faced by a simple alternative,
as plain as it was painful. Either I had to bite the bullet and posit—based
on my private judgment—the tacit functional infallibility of Luther as the
authoritative magisterium in identifying the normative canon in the canon
of Scripture and in the most central matters of faith and morals, or I had
to accept the reality of a fallible, collective magisterium made up of sundry
Lutheran church leaders, synods, and theologians from whose fallible
teachings I would accept what I, according to my own fallible lights, would
regard as right. At the end of either alternative, what stared back at me was
the ugly face of the seemingly inescapable principle of private judgment in
matters of divine truth.
In light of these equally unacceptable alternatives internal to Lutheranism I became increasingly aware that I was in a theological and spiritual position impossible to sustain over time. Contemplating the
theological contours of the quandary I faced, it dawned on me slowly but
surely that I was faced with a much deeper and more fundamental
“either-or” than the one internal to Lutheranism: One could embrace
the principle of private judgment as the tragic, but unavoidable, last resort
and acknowledge once and for all that Christ had not given to his followers an infallible instrument by means of which they were to be protected
from error in all the central truths of faith and morals. This alternative
further entailed that the truth of the faith in its integral fullness was only
eschatologically available. What is available now is some sort of promise
together with small fragments of a pledge that takes shape in various and

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often contradictory forms. But that again would entail that Christ, who
called Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life, was Himself only an
eschatological promise and by no means present among His disciples
through that divine Paraclete who would lead His followers into all
Truth. But such a reduction of the most central tenets of the faith to a
merely eschatological promise would contradict Christ’s own promise.
Traveling further down this road of an increasing evacuating of the faith’s
content would eventually mean opening oneself to an ever so subtle
skepticism regarding the truth of the faith itself and hence would make
oneself at first vulnerable and eventually subject to unbelief.
Was there an alternative, an “or” to this stark “either,” and if so what
was it? Well, obviously the relinquishment of the principle of private
judgment in matters of divine truth! But how was this to be done? Had
I not been guided to this very impasse and hence to this insight by my
own private judgments? How could one relinquish private judgment on
the basis of one’s private judgment? Could one pull oneself by one’s own
hair from sinking ever deeper into the quicksand?
It was not all too long after I had become a Catholic that I came across
a text by now Blessed John Henry Newman, in which he describes the
conundrum I faced. To the objection that converts must use their own
private judgment in the act of conversion, Newman responds that “they
use it in order ultimately to supersede it; as a man out of doors uses a
lamp in a dark night, and puts it out when he gets home. What would be
thought of his bringing it into his drawing room? . . . if he came in with
a great-coat on his back, a hat on his head, an umbrella under his arm,
and a large stable-lantern in his hand?”4
Newman assumes that after a long search in the darkness of the night
relying on the light one has, one might find indeed one’s way back home.
But before entering the drawing room, one puts out one’s own light. The
convert uses private judgment right up to the act of assent, but the act of
assent itself is neither motivated nor informed by private judgment. And
so it happened to me.
In the summer of the year 2004 I taught as a guest professor in a
German university in a traditionally Protestant area. There was no
Catholic theological faculty in this university, and the Catholics in town
were a tiny minority. The theological faculty on which I taught for this
semester was thoroughly and decidedly Protestant. But the oldest part of
the university—its heart, so to speak—was the remnant of a Dominican
convent, dissolved during the Reformation, shortly after which the
4 Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1988), 335.

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university was founded as an intentionally Lutheran bulwark of higher
learning. On the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord, a state holiday
in Germany, I planned to attend the Lutheran worship service in the main
medieval church downtown. When I arrived, just on time, to my great
surprise I came upon closed church doors and a note informing me that
the worship service was taking place somewhere in the woods. It was, after
all, a beautiful spring day and gathering for worship somewhere outdoors
was a customary practice, especially on this holiday, among Protestants. I
did not have a car and in addition had no familiarity with the geography
of the surrounding areas. After a brief moment of being lost about what
to do, it occurred to me that the Catholics must have mass on this feast
day and I happened to know that a Catholic parish was less than ten
minutes walking distance away. Upon my arrival there I learned that mass
would start in half an hour. So I put myself into the very back bench and
waited in the beautiful silence of the sanctuary. Slowly the sanctuary filled
with the faithful, young and old, rich and poor, and with a surprising
number of children. And eventually the sanctuary was packed; standing
room only. And then I forgot everything, including myself. For from the
very beginning of the liturgy on I was overwhelmed with the most
powerful sense of having simply arrived home, sitting now in the bright
light of what was, in the English of Newman’s nineteenth century, the
drawing room of my home. Here, obviously, I was no longer in any need
of my own lights that had assisted me before in finding my way home.
Mother Church, here she was ever so gently embracing me in a liturgy
that was virtually identical with what I had grown up with more than
thirty years ago in Bavarian Lutheranism; with a homily that was illuminating Christ’s ascension in a simple but profound way; and with a most
reverent and at the same time joyful celebration of the Eucharist. Here was
the Catholic Church in all its humility and glory, in all its poverty and
richness, in all its simplicity and beauty, a heavenly treasure in earthen
vessels. I wept from the beginning to the end of mass—tears of joy and
gratitude. I had come upon the one pearl and suddenly I understood what
Augustine might have felt when he exclaimed in his Confessions: “Late
have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!”5 I
had been so close to Mother Church all these years without realizing it
and without heeding the gentle but persistent beckoning of her teaching.
Now I had arrived in the place that disclosed fully the teaching of Ecclesia de Eucharistia. And it was here, in the gentle embrace of the liturgy of
5 Confessions, Book 10, 26. (Translation from St. Augustine, The Confessions, intro-

duction, translation and notes by Maria Boulding, O.S.B. [Hyde Park, NY: New
City Press, 1997], 262.)

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the mass that I was able, as peacefully as joyfully, to relinquish the principle of private judgment in matters of divine truth and let myself be guided
into the fullness of divine faith by Mother Church.When I left this Ascension Day mass I had become a Catholic without fully realizing it yet.
While I had not yet received explicit answers to all the questions lingering in my still largely Lutheran mind, I had encountered Mother Church
in the core of her life as described so beautifully in Ecclesia de Eucharistia;
in this celebration of the mass I had been able to relinquish the principle
of private judgment in an existential act of assent, which was as fundamental as it was comprehensive, an act of assent simply to receive the
whole as it was explicitly and implicitly present in the celebration of the
Eucharistic liturgy, as proposed to me by the Catholic Church. This assent
was identical with realizing that I had found my way back home and
arrived in the drawing room. My own lights had become superfluous; I
could leave the principle of private judgment outside the door.
It took me the remainder of my time in this German university town
to digest this dramatic, life-changing experience. I was not able to speak
to anyone about it, because I was still dazed and dazzled by the weight of
the encounter, and in need of God’s guidance as to the next step forward.
It might hardly come as a surprise that from this Ascension Day on I
sought God’s guidance primarily in prayer in front of the tabernacle in this
particular Catholic church. I was loath to return again to the principle of
private judgment and simply follow my own best lights. And so I asked
God for the grace of an incontrovertible sign that would signal to me
God’s approval to move forward; and after my return to the United States,
several weeks into the fall semester at Duke University, during one memorable night, I received the grace of such an incontrovertible sign. From this
moment on I was in a state of great inner clarity and peace, and things
began to unfold almost by themselves. And on December 28, the same
year, on the Feast of Holy Innocents, with a strong sense of joy, awe, and
conviction I was able to say: “I believe and profess all that the Holy
Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.”
My wife, not working in an academic institution and therefore not
burdened with the particular challenges of the academic theologian, was
less, if at all, infected by the principle of private judgment. In fact, being
gifted with a very strong spiritual instinct, she had been ready, a number
of years before I was, to enter into the full communion of the Catholic
Church, but had patiently waited for me to be granted the theologian’s
way of relinquishing the principle of private judgment in matters of
divine truth. After this had finally happened in a place far away, we were
able to move forward again together. My life has not exactly become

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easier since then (and no Catholic would expect this), but there never has
been more peace and joy in my heart and soul.
As a Catholic theologian I am freed from carrying the Protestant
burden of private judgment in matters of faith and morals; I am also freed
from the correlated necessity to act as a quasi-magisterium; rather, encouraged and guided by Mother Church, I am constantly discovering and
exploring truths old and new in the inexhaustible treasure chest of the
deposit of the faith. It is a daunting responsibility to be a Catholic theologian, but this responsibility becomes an ever lighter yoke the more the
Catholic theologian exercises his responsibility in fidelity and docility to
the magisterium of Mother Church. In the same degree also the joy
increases over the extraordinary privilege to assist in teaching and defending the divine truth. Again Augustine’s words capture this joy best: “Late
have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!”
Is there sadness? Yes. Caused by well meaning and committed Protestant colleagues who just cannot see the path I have traveled let alone the
profound problem of private judgment in matters of divine truth. They
think I have abandoned them. There is no way for them to realize that
by letting myself be embraced by Mother Church I have come much
closer to them than I otherwise ever could have. But this sadness is nothing in comparison to the pain caused by encountering lukewarm
Catholics, so indifferent about the treasure they have received that they
willingly exchange it for a poor dish of pottage, for the mere exercise of
private judgment in matters of divine truth. The pain only increases by
encountering the numerous Catholic theologians who conceal their
unremitting commitment to the principle of private judgment in matters
of divine truth behind the label and attitude of a supposedly faithful
dissent from the Church’s teaching.
But all these pains I gladly accept, for they weigh nothing in comparison to the divine treasure I received in earthen vessels, the fullness of the
divine faith together with the gift of an infallible instrument that protects
it from error. What more can a theologian ask for? “I believe and profess
all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be
revealed by God.” Thanks be to God!
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 883–92

883

How the Liberal Arts Opened My American Mind
B ENEDICT M. A SHLEY, O.P.
Aquinas Institute
St. Louis, MO

I N 1933 I came by train from the little town of Blackwell, Oklahoma
to Chicago, the first big city I had ever seen. Until I entered and won a
competition to attend the University of Chicago, I had never heard of it.
I found life in its gray towers strange indeed. Young President Robert
Maynard Hutchins and razor-sharp Mortimer Jerome Adler were battling
the faculty for their program of educational reform. As a freshman I
learned what was at issue for the first time when a fellow student took
me to a lecture by Adler that, as we say today, “blew my mind.”
Adler’s title was “Have There Been Any New Ideas since the Middle
Ages.” He said he could name only three, as I recall: Spinoza’s idea of modes,
Marx’s idea of the class struggle, and Freud’s idea of the unconscious. I
already was enamored with Spinoza by way of Will Durant and had guiltily
read Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, but how could this professor of the
University of Chicago place so low an estimate on modernity?
Looking back I would say that the ongoing debate centered on the
evaluation of tradition.The faculty as a whole was imbued with the educational program of its former star, John Dewey. For Dewey, genuine thinking was democratic cooperation in practical problem solving by use of
the methods that had proved successful in the empirical sciences. Therefore, Dewey urged the social sciences and the humanities to adopt this
same progressive methodology. For him, “tradition” was the dead weight
of received dogmas blocking the solution of new problems. Hutchins and
Adler, by contrast (by no means enemies of either democracy or empirical science), were convinced that science and democracy had their living
roots in that very tradition they tried to sell under the neat label of the
“One Hundred Great Books.”

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884

Today when Western culture is set beside other cultures, they would
have argued, I think—as later Allan Bloom argued in his The Closing of
the American Mind—that whatever the merits of other cultures, it is the
West that produced the modern university, academic freedom, and
modern science. Therefore, only those trained in Western culture can be
democratically open to other cultures and scientifically objective in their
study. Oddly, as Professor Edward Shils said in an article defending
Hutchins1 (Shils thought Adler indefensible), the faculty’s main attack on
Hutchins came from the social science department. Certain of its faculty
accused the two of being propagandists for Roman Catholicism and
Fascism! These factions prevented Hutchins and Adler from fully realizing their educational reforms in the University of Chicago. They had to
settle for “The New Plan,” already initiated. It established a college with
professors hired for teaching ability rather than publication, a system of
comprehensive syllabi by which students could move at their own pace,
and delayed specialization by the prior requirement to pass comprehensives in four surveys in the Physical, Biological, and Social Sciences and
the Humanities. It was difficult to get through the college in less than
four years.
Disappointed that they could not have a straight Great Books curriculum, Hutchins and Adler began to gather a faculty for St. John’s College
in Annapolis that they hoped would implement their views more thoroughly. In the meantime, they continued to debate their reforms in the
University and run an honors seminar on the Great Books. This running
debate received a rather crude but effective formulation in the studentedited The Maroon as the “The War between Facts and Ideas.”
This war was not the only one on campus. The niece of Charles
Walgreen, the drug store tycoon, breakfasting one day with her uncle, let
slip that in an English course she had been assigned the Communist Manifesto. This was a fact, though it was also a fact that the Manifesto was being
read only as an example of effective propaganda. Uncle Walgreen, however,
was greatly alarmed, and before long the World’s Greatest Newspaper had
made so much of it that the Illinois State Legislature launched an investigation of subversion at the Red University of Chicago. It only turned up
a couple of professors with socialist leanings and the existence of an antiwar, or rather anti-draft, movement which foreshadowed that before the
Vietnam War, but which then, of course, was directed at the beginnings of
World War II. The National Student League was active on the campus,
1 Edward Shils, “Robert Maynard Hutchins,” The American Scholar (Spring 1990):

211–35.

How Liberal Arts Opened My Mind

885

though at most it interested only about 200 students. Furthermore, this fell
under the control of a still smaller but very active Young Communist
League, which was also battling a still smaller Young Socialist League,
which was also more radical and less effective, since it supported the Trotskyite rather than the Stalinist version of Marxism.
I avoided the World War draft but was a recruit in both campus wars.
On the one hand I joined the Great Books Seminar and continued in it
for two years. I will say more about this in a moment. Originally not the
least interested in politics and determined to write poetry and teach
English literature, I now became fascinated with the radical movement
and eventually ended up a card-carrying member of the Trotskyite
Socialist Workers Party. Whatever one might say for this commitment, it
did have the benefit for me that it saved me from the hyper-dialectical
attitude that all this intellectual debate tended to generate in students at
that time. They could argue any side of any question without committing themselves to anything but academic advancement. But for me the
experience of commitment to a cause eventually led to baptism in the
Catholic Church, once the Great Books Seminar had introduced me to
the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. But that is another story.
Let me now say something about Hutchins’s and Adler’s methods in
teaching the Great Books Seminar, where Aquinas and Marx were given
equal time. They never lectured but pursued a rigorous Socratic method,
usually beginning with the question, “What kind of book is this?” Adler,
whose manner was considered by many a bit too much like an aggressive
prosecuting attorney whose questioning was precise, penetrating, and
relentless, pursued a logical line of questioning as long as the victim
would keep striving to formulate a reasonable counter position. When
things got too thick, Hutchins, very handsome, cool, devastatingly witty,
would intervene and take a different, more ironic line.
The very first book was the whole Bible! The question “What kind of
a book is this?” received many answers from the participants, most of
which amounted to saying the Bible is “great literature.” One Jewish
young man said he was very surprised what was in it, since he had never
opened it before. None, however, could give an answer that stood up to
examination until, after long questioning, it somehow emerged that the
Bible claims to be the Word of God. To most of us students, I think, the
idea that God could reveal himself was so extravagant that it never
occurred to us even to consider such a claim. Of course the prophets all
say, “The Lord God says,” but isn’t that just a literary formula? But our
mentors forced us to at least consider whether this claim was a clue to
understanding how to read this particular book, or for that matter the

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Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

Qur’an, intelligently. The same method was followed with Augustine,
Newton, and Marx.
I know now that I really did not understand any of these great books.
How could one in a week apiece? But what we were doing was exercising the method that Adler later formulated in his How to Read a Book,
which I regard as a classic.2 We were learning to read, and in reading to
suspend judgment on the value of the book under scrutiny until we at
least knew what it said, not what others said about it. I later learned this
lesson more thoroughly by exercising it in the Committee on Comparative Literature, where I continued my studies and eventually got my
Master’s under Ronald Crane, a supporter of the Hutchins-Adler
program. He was the leading light of what became known as the Chicago
School of Criticism, which emphasized the text as against the historical
approach then in vogue. This approach to literature had something in
common with the later Formalism and Structuralism in critical theory
and, oddly, even with deconstructionist hermeneutics. This, however, was
before Leo Strauss came to the University and initiated that “hermeneutic of suspicion” which dominates so much current thought. Yet Marxism was already giving me some suspicions about ideologies and I had
begun to have my doubts about the ideology of our academies so
exposed by the debate that Hutchins and Adler had initiated.
Let me now say something of my own evaluation of the views of these
two educators from my subsequent experience as a philosopher, a theologian, and an administrator of the training of Catholic priests, which was
what I became. As I have already said, I think the strength of this Great
Books approach as Hutchins and Adler promoted it was that it returned
to the roots of the modern scientific culture that now dominates the
globe.The importance of such a ressourcement is that it exposes the original questions and the original insights out of which this cultural tradition was born before they became confused by a thousand conflicting
half-truths at battle with each other. When Socrates, as Plato reports him,
asked, “What is justice?” and Thrasymachus answered, “Might makes
right,” the problem is inescapable. When Jeremiah thunders, “The Lord
God says,” I have to ask, “Is the man mad? Or is it the unforgivable sin
to shut my ears to the voice of the Holy Spirit?” Or when Newton asks,
“Why does the earth go round the sun?” can I suppose that I really
know? Once I really see the problem, I cannot take any of these answers
for granted. No matter how advanced science becomes, we have to ask
these questions again, as Einstein did, and again.
2 Reissued, edited by Carl Van Doren (New York: Fine Communications, 1992).

How Liberal Arts Opened My Mind

887

The second value is learning to read, not just for facts, but for arguments that find meaning in these facts. I have shown how effective Adler
and Hutchins were in exemplifying and inculcating these skills.Yet I now
think that there was a serious defect in their method. The liberal arts, in
the strict sense of that term, were formulated by Greeks and passed down
to the medieval universities out which all modern universities came, as
the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. This neat sevenfold list, however,
was very inadequate. It was Aristotle who developed an adequate theory
of the liberal arts, but before saying a word more about it, I think the Marxists’ suspicion that his theory had a certain ideological bias in defense of a
slave society cannot be ignored. It requires a certain correction to which
I will later refer and which might have made John Dewey give it a more
favorable consideration.
For Aristotle, natural science, mathematics, and ethics are real sciences
and “first philosophy” (later called metaphysics) is a meta-science that coordinates the findings of the sciences and arts in an interdisciplinary manner.
For any of these sciences to be critically constructed, however, requires
logic, which is also a meta-science but one that deals not with real relations
between real things, but mental relations between concepts of things.Yet it
is not some kind of analytic a priori cognition, as it was for Descartes, Kant,
and most modern philosophers, but it is developed from an analysis of
successful scientific thought. Nor can it be reduced to the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Instead, Aristotle distinguishes sharply between
logic and grammar or linguistics, and he holds that linguistic analysis is
only preliminary to logical analysis. Hence the logical positivists were
more correct in turning to logic to heal the ills of philosophy and science
than are the analytic or ordinary language philosophers whose concerns
Aristotle takes up within logic itself.
Logic, for Aristotle, is not the symbolic logic of the logical positivists.
Instead it has several levels.3 First, and closest to non-critical but directly
experiential thought, is the level of literature, poetics, in which all aspects
of language including imagery and emotions as well as abstract concepts
are mingled and which can be used to represent actual human life as
action with meaning—beginning, middle, and end. At a second, more
specialized level is rhetoric, the art of persuasive argument, with its “audience-response” analysis, which retains imagery and emotion, yet not as
representing reality but as motivating action. At a third, still more refined,
3 A historical discussion can be found in Pierre Conway, O.P., and Benedict M.

Ashley, O.P., St.Thomas and the Liberal Arts (Washington, DC: The Thomist Press,
1959; reprinted from The Thomist 22 [1959]).

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Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

level is dialectic (to which we can join sophistic or the exposure of fallacious arguments). Dialectic is the necessary preliminary of all scientific
thought, since science begins with truths that are directly evident from
experience, not achieved by argument. Depending on the science to be
constructed, these so-called “self-evident” truths require a more or less
extensive analysis before their evidence acquires a critical precision.
Moreover, Aristotle firmly rejects the idea that one can deduce new
knowledge from a few principles and maintains that in every step of our
reasoning we must introduce new and more specific principles based on
more refined observation. Hence dialectic is required at every new step
in research to obtain these new and more specific principles. Thus for
Aristotle, dialectic does not result in wider and wider generalizations
which ultimately fade away in vaguer and vaguer analogies, as they did
for Plato, but in ever more narrow and specific insights.
Finally, at the highest level of logical analysis comes logic proper, which
analyzes the demonstrations or theorems that constitute the substance of
any science in order to test whether they are certain and necessary. This
goal of thought is, of course, seldom obtained, but it is the goal of science,
and only to the degree that science builds up a fund of such established
truths can it be said to make real progress. Moreover, it is at this highest
level of logic that logic itself is verified and that the lower forms of analysis receive their ultimate accreditation. Thus a poetic analysis that fails to
get down to the ultimate truth content of what a piece of good literature communicates lacks the clue to its unity as a work of fine art. Or a
rhetorical analysis that does not deconstruct the surface appeal of an
argument in order to expose and test its specious surfaces by sound practical criteria is useless. Strict logic, however, is not merely the study of
valid forms of inference as it is usually presented today, but also a theory
of the logical construction of the sciences, each of which also has its own
logic and epistemology of critique. In the Aristotelian conception, logic
is a discipline of learning and communication essential for one to have
the tools of thinking, reading, writing, and speaking. As such it is the
indispensable basis of a true education, and so also is the quadrivium of
mathematical studies that most clearly manifest the methods of strict
logic. In my opinion, the Great Books procedure of Hutchins and Adler
failed to do justice to the Aristotelian conception.
Aristotle did not accept Plato’s Pythagoreanism, according to which
mathematics is the gateway to the world of ideas. Neither could he have
accepted the Galilean attitude of modern science in which mathematical
models rather than changing physical reality become the object of natural science. Yet he also held, against some modern mathematicians, that

How Liberal Arts Opened My Mind

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mathematics is a science about reality and not, as logic is, merely about
mental constructs. Hence it cannot be reduced to logic, as Whitehead and
Russell tried to do.Yet it deals with reality only in an abstract manner, so
that it is a great deal of knowledge about very little reality. As such it has
the quality of beauty, that is, a close fit to our human mode of cognition.
In mathematics, relations stand out in all their clarity and elegance.
Hence mathematics has both pedagogic and epistemological advantages.
It enables students to experience the joy of really seeing necessary truths
without requiring them to have extensive experience or to have accumulated much information. It also provides clear models by which more
obscure complexities can be represented and mentally handled. Hence
the quadrivium also prepares the learner with tools of further learning. I
am convinced, therefore, that the ancients were right in believing that,
before learners seek to attack more difficult problems of learning and
communication, they should be equipped with the liberal arts of logic in
the broad sense and mathematics, at least in its fundamental theorems.
Now let us return to John Dewey and his alternate view of education
as skill in cooperative problem-solving. Today Dewey is not often
mentioned, but it is perfectly clear that he has triumphed in American
education, which is more and more technologically oriented.The pressures
are enormous to put the emphasis on training students for business and the
professions that are themselves conceived as problem-solving technologies.
Even in the pure sciences and the humane and historical disciplines, the
thrust is to prepare students to do research that will be well funded. But
“research” in this sense is more and more conceived as ingenuity in obtaining new information that can somehow be used to solve problems of practical life. The notion that the goal of thought is the illumination of
meaning, in short the contemplation of truth, has been marginalized. I
might note, however, that even Dewey finally wrote a book on esthetics in
which he admitted the value of contemplation.4 Yet, to fit this into his
general scheme, he was forced to reduce the joy of contemplation to the
joy in making a work of art, shared even by the mere spectator.
Since Dewey thus made a step toward Aristotle, let us make a step
toward Dewey.We can agree with him that in a democratic society contemplation and practical work need not stand in opposition. After all, the examples of Jesus the Carpenter and of the monks who joined contemplation to
farming long ago overthrew the contempt for manual work that corrupted
the slave culture in which Plato and Aristotle lived. If, therefore, we grant
to Dewey that cultural achievements must be a social task of theoretical
4 Art as Experience (New York: 1934).

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Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

and practical persons acting democratically to solve a common problem,
then a great “felt need,” as Dewey would say, emerges. Jürgen Habermas has
recently shown that there cannot be intellectual cooperation without what
he calls “civil discourse.” Such discourse is dialogue in which mere selfinterest, ideology, prejudice, and semantic confusion is overcome and
genuine communication and exchange of insights are fostered. Now
what is skill in civil discourse but the liberal arts? Was not that why they
were called “liberal,” because in Greece they were thought necessary for
free men to carry on fruitful communication, mutual learning, and
prudent decision? Thus it seems to me that even from the viewpoint of
Dewey, skill in the liberal arts of learning and communication is the
foundation of good education.
Might Dewey not respond, however, that even if this be granted, the
learning of these skills of civil discourse ought to be freed from the traditionalism with which, for example, Hutchins and Adler burdened them by
their emphasis on a canon of the Great Books? To a degree I have
conceded this objection. I have agreed that what is more educationally
fundamental is not textual acquaintance with the classics, but the acquiring of the liberal arts as skills for learning and communication. I have long
believed that this should begin early, indeed at the high school level, and
I once wrote a textbook for high schools entitled The Arts of Learning and
Communication. I have had frequent requests from high school teachers and
others for a copy, and I am happy to report that it is now freely available
on the Internet and has also recently been made available in print.5
Nevertheless, this point of disagreement with my revered teachers
Hutchins and Adler about putting primary emphasis on the Great Books
does not mean that these classics can be left on the shelf. Because some
of these are masterpieces of the liberal arts of learning and communication, they are needed as the best models for acquiring the arts. Furthermore, many have not been surpassed as expositions and solutions of
fundamental questions that we all have to face. If there is a better text in
geometry than Euclid’s, let us use it, but is there a more rounded discussion of the problems of justice than Plato’s Republic? If there is, please
show it to me! Every academic field has facts and theories that are really
new and it would it be absurd not to profit from this new information.
Yet in most fields the classics still lay out the broad picture better than the
newest publications, which contribute only some detail that may be
misleading without the classical context.
5 Just reprinted by Wipf and Stock in Eugene, OR; available online at www.op.org/

domcentral/study/ashley/arts/.

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Let me now move to a different level, a consideration not of the liberal
arts as the indispensable tools of higher learning, but to that of the integration of learning, the wisdom that is the ultimate goal of a life of
thought. Without some vision of this goal, the arts that are the means to
achieve it cannot be rightly acquired, since their purpose is not understood. For Aristotle this goal was what he called “First Philosophy,” or
sometimes “Theology.” By “First” he really meant “Last” or final. Aristotle
vehemently disagreed with his teacher Plato that certain truth about the
parts of reality can be achieved only when one has achieved the truth
about the whole of reality in the vision of the One.Yet Aristotle also realized that the understanding of part and whole are mutual and correlative.
We cannot understand the whole perfectly without knowing its parts,
and vice versa, in what is called the “hermeneutic circle.” Educationally
that means that an educational curriculum, while it is made up of many
courses, must have an overall design and unity. It means also that a university must be a unity in diversity, an in pluribus unum. How is that possible
in the midst of our knowledge explosion in the Computer Age?
One attractive way (and it was, I believe, seriously considered by Aristotle as well as Plato) is to reduce all the variety of disciplines to some
single supreme discipline. We all know that in the modern university
there is a powerful gravitational attraction by which the department with
the best funding and prestige, whether it be nuclear physics or computer
science or economics, pulls all others to its center. The way to avoid this
collapse is to be competitive for funds, prestige, and students. Such a
tyranny of one specialty over all the others, however, can only distort
objective truth and produce students who in the next shift of intellectual
fashion are left out in the void like homeless comets.
Somehow, therefore, a university must have a First Philosophy, a capacity to foster interdepartmental communication and research, and an ethos
of developing a broader vision in which the various disciplines have relatively stable relationships and balances. The University of Chicago has a
noble tradition of interdisciplinary committees that strive to accomplish
this, but necessarily only within a limited scope. Aristotle believed that
such a unification of all human knowledge cannot be achieved by a
reduction to universal, univocal terms, but by the analogical exposition of
similar concepts and principles and the search for more universal causes.
He rightly said that, since this attempt presupposes considerable acquaintance with the findings of all disciplines, it cannot be the task of the
beginner, but is proper to the educator who is to guide the beginner
toward such a broader vision.Yet, since Aristotle says that some notion of
the whole must precede the examination of the parts, even from the start

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Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

this problem of finding a larger context, a large vision, must be kept
before the student of the liberal arts.
A university philosophy or theology department might undertake this
interdisciplinary task.That is why Aristotle called this discipline both First
Philosophy and Theology; both are concerned with choosing a worldview and a value system. Students must know from the beginning that
they cannot evade the life problem of choosing a worldview and a value
system within which to organize all they learn and all they do. Not to
choose is to accept blindly a tradition in the bad sense in which Dewey
rightly denounced it, whether this mindless traditionalism is derived from
the Great Books or Dewey or Adam Smith or the pundits of TV. Sadly,
philosophy departments today are on the margin of university life and
theology is ghettoized in a divinity school or department of religious
studies or is simply absent. This, I believe, is what Hutchins and Adler
were really trying to overcome and what they were trying to say through
the slogan of the One Hundred Greatest Books. For me personally, it was
solved first by Marxism and then much more soundly and comprehensively by Thomas Aquinas and the Christian faith in its catholic fullness.
Obviously, secular universities cannot consciously propose a special
worldview or value system, though I suspect they do so unconsciously.
Today, even professedly Catholic universities seem unable to propose the
Catholic worldview and value system. But what the secular university
could do is to promote truly civil discourse, train all its students in the
liberal arts that make such civil discourse possible. They must not be held
back by economic and cultural factors from seriously confronting the
competition of worldviews and value systems, and thereby preparing
their students to make informed commitments.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 893–928

893

God, Notre Dame, Country:
Rethinking the Mission of Catholic Higher Education
in the United States
M ICHAEL J. B AXTER
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN

Introduction: “God, Country, Notre Dame”
T HESE three words are chiseled in stone above the east entrance to
Sacred Heart Basilica at the University of Notre Dame. The words are
flanked by two statues etched into Gothic-style stone buttresses; on the
left (as one faces the door), St. Joan of Arc, and on the right, St. Michael
the Archangel. Just beneath the words, also chiseled in stone, is a shield
emblazoned with a cross and anchors, the emblem of the University’s
founding order, the Congregation of Holy Cross; and also the Greek
letters chi rho, calling to mind Constantine’s vision at the Milvian Bridge
when he received divine assurance of victory in battle that day (a vision
which is said to have precipitated his conversion). Perched behind and
peering out from either side of the shield are two eagles. Beneath the
shield and just above the lintel of the doors are carved the words “In
Glory Everlasting.” At the top of the entire display, written in florid
script, are the words “Our Gallant Dead.” On either side of the doors,
emblazoned on bronze plaques, are forty-six names, the names of the
Notre Dame students who died in the Great War.
It was in honor of these forty-six former students that this memorial
was built under the sponsorship of the Notre Dame Post of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars. On January 21, 1923, the membership approved the
building of this “War Memorial,” as it was called. If things went according to the plans announced in a special bulletin that January, the portico
was dedicated on Memorial Day 1923, in conjunction with that year’s

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Michael J. Baxter

Memorial Field Mass. The V.F.W. bulletin urged veteran soldiers to attend
the celebration because this would be the last year that there would be
enough veterans on campus to observe a Memorial Field Mass. By this
time, the war had been over more than four years and its memory seems
to have been fading, so it was time to erect an enduring monument to
Notre Dame’s former students turned fallen soldiers.
What is striking about the memorial built into the portico of the east
door of Sacred Heart is its blending of religious and national symbols: on
the one hand, the chi rho, the cross and anchors, the saints, and the reference to everlasting glory; on the other hand, the eagles, the busts of the
military personnel, and the reference to the gallant dead. And the memorial is built with gothic-style stone so as to blend in with the overall
church structure, which it does so well that most people do not notice that
it was added later—representing a fusion of church and nation so well
integrated that it goes unnoticed to this day, as if it were normal, natural.
This memorial was erected under the instigation of the acting
commander of the Notre Dame branch of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
George Shuster.1 A portrait of Shuster is provided in a book entitled The
Survival of American Innocence: Catholicism in an Era of Disillusionment:
1920–1940, by William Halsey, who spells out in vivid detail the ideas and
vision of Catholic intellectuals in the decades after the Great War.2 Demurring from Henry May’s The End of American Innocence, who maintained that
influential intellectuals in this period succumbed to a sense of disillusionment, Halsey shows that Catholics remained untouched by it, and indeed
promoted an intellectual agenda to counter it by infusing society, politics,
and culture with their own distinctive intellectual vision. In their minds,
Catholicism offered a rich intellectual heritage that could provide America
with a much-needed sense of order and purpose. Halsey devotes an entire
chapter to Shuster’s romantic vision of Catholicism and the role it played in
the Catholic intellectual world in the United States in the post-war years.3
1 See the “Special Bulletin” from Lewis J. Murphy, Commander, to members of

the Veterans of Foreign Wars, U.S.A., Notre Dame Post No. 286, recounting the
minutes of a special meeting, January 21, 1923, and also the letter from George
A. Bischoff to comrades, January 27, 1923, Notre Dame President’s Records
(UPWL: President Matthew Walsh, C.S.C.) Box 22, Folder 6, University of
Notre Dame Archives.
2 William M. Halsey, The Survival of American Innocence: Catholicism in an Era of
Disillusionment, 1920 –1940 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1980). For a more detailed and straightforward account of Shuster, see Thomas
E. Blantz, C.S.C., George N. Shuster: On the Side of Truth (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1993).
3 Halsey, Survival of American Innocence, 84–98.

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Shuster matriculated to Notre Dame as a student in 1912, served in the
Great War, and returned to campus as an English professor in 1919. He
came back from Europe and the war having found God amid the suffering he had witnessed. He understood how so many of the “lost generation” of returning veterans had forsaken all vestige of religious belief, but
he himself had discovered in the Catholicism of Europe “an ancient and
unifying tradition” that brings together the antinomies of life—beauty and
sadness, good and evil, spirit and flesh, soul and body, material and ideal—
while affirming the dignity and freedom of humanity in striving for the
divine. This was not a Catholicism of rules or abstract truths, but a
Catholicism that entered fully into the life of the world.4 Shuster, Halsey
points out, was inspired by Emerson, whose optimism and vitality he
regarded as an antidote to the fatalism and materialism into which postwar intellectual life had been absorbed. But for Shuster, Emerson was only
an individual embodiment of a much larger force, “the Catholic spirit.”5
Catholicism was unique in that it was social; it possessed a capacity to
meet the collective needs of day. Accordingly, Shuster took great hope in
a pamphlet issued by a newly formed, standing organization of the
Catholic bishops of the United States, the National Catholic War Council. The pamphlet was issued on February 12, 1919 (Lincoln’s birthday)
under the title “Social Reconstruction: A General Review of the Problem
and Survey of Remedies.” Crafted by Msgr. John A. Ryan, the “Bishops’
Social Program,” as it was known, called for state-sponsored actions that
would protect workers from the deleterious effects of the free market,
offer unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation, and impose
regulations such as the eight-hour day. Shuster considered it a magnificent
document, marking a turning point in U.S. Catholic history. We have
broken our “fast of silence,” he wrote, “we have discovered our existence
and the time in which we exist.”6 Catholics were finally coming of age,
in Shuster’s view, and none too soon, for their spirit was desperately
needed in the great struggle against the lifeless and cold materialist intellectual vision of the times. A war was underway, waged not on the battlefields of Europe, but on the home front, in classrooms, journals, books. At
one point, Shuster called it a “war for Christendom.”7
At the heart of Shuster’s vision of an intellectual “war for Christendom” was a romanticized version of Catholicism combined with an
equally romanticized version of America. The connection between these
4 Ibid., 85–86.
5 Ibid., 87, 89–91.
6 Ibid., 86–87.
7 Ibid., 87.

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896

seemingly estranged intellectual impulses lay in Shuster’s understanding
of the Middle Ages as a time of flourishing for the human spirit, one that
saw the achievement of what he called “the spirtualization of democracy.”8 This democratic spirit of medieval cultural and intellectual life was
not a mere matter of nostalgia, for in Shuster’s view, it had taken root in
America, thus bestowing on the United States a pivotal role in preserving and defending the cultural heritage of the Christian West. It made
perfect sense for him to see Catholicism and America working hand in
hand for the benefit of civilization, and to see Notre Dame’s mission as
part of this momentous task, providing its students with the moral and
intellectual vision needed to serve both God and country.
In this essay, I tell the story of this dual mission, symbolically represented
in the War Memorial attached to Sacred Heart Church and also very much
alive in the minds of Catholic scholars in the twentieth century. In part
one, I portray the mission of Catholic higher education over the course of
the four decades after World War I, 1920–1960, at Notre Dame and in the
nation at large, paying special attention to the central role of Neoscholastic philosophy in carrying out the mission and then briefly describing how
the vision fell apart during the 1960s and brought an end to the so-called
Neoscholastic synthesis. In part two, I use the work of Alasdair MacIntyre
to show how we need to rethink the mission of Notre Dame and of
Catholic higher education in the United States generally. In conclusion, I
argue that, in rethinking it, we will need to re-order the University’s longstanding missionary priorities: God, Notre Dame, Country.
1. “The Scholastic Synthesis” at Notre Dame
As an English professor at Notre Dame, George Shuster was only beginning to fulfill his vision of fighting an intellectual “war for Christendom.”
In 1924, he left Notre Dame for New York and soon joined a group of
lay people who had recently founded a journal for that purpose called
The Commonweal. It was while serving on the staff of The Commonweal
that he wrote an editorial chiding Catholic institutions of higher education for promoting personal piety and “excellence in football” on their
campuses (a jab at his alma mater) at the expense of genuine intellectual
pursuits. But his most provocative critique appeared in the Jesuit journal
America. It was entitled “Have We Any Catholic Scholars?”9
Published in 1925, the article ignited a storm of controversy among
Catholic educators in the United States. At the time, Catholic colleges
8 Ibid., 91.
9 George Shuster, “Have We Any Catholic Scholars?” America 33 (August 15,

1925): 418–19.

God, Notre Dame, Country

897

and universities were under pressure from two directions at once. On the
one hand, they were struggling to revise the standard Catholic curriculum to conform to a modern model that was being imposed by newly
established accrediting agencies. On the other hand, they were struggling
to meet the demands of their own self-appointed mission of bringing
Catholicism’s intellectual vision to America by imparting it to their
students, who would disseminate it and restore the nation to its original
and true philosophical foundations—or so they believed. Given these
two pressures, it is not surprising that the question posed by Shuster,
pointing to a dearth of high quality Catholic scholarship, left some
Catholic educators feeling unduly chastised. Others welcomed it as an
honest assessment of the challenges to be faced. The tensions involved in
this controversy are recounted by Philip Gleason in Contending with
Modernity.10 Masterfully and in great detail, Gleason narrates the developments in Catholic colleges and universities from the 1920s to the
1960s, a period during which they adapted to a modern, secular curriculum while maintaining the unity of knowledge within the standard
Neoscholastic framework. It is in large part the story of impressive
achievements, although it concludes on a wistful note, “The End of An
Era,” leading one to ask if the self-understood mission of Catholic educators was ever really attainable. To this question I return in part two of this
essay. But first, I want to describe this mission as it was pursued in the
four decades after World War I, drawing on Gleason’s account and supplementing it in order to show how Catholic scholars and educators envisioned their mission in terms of a complementary, indeed a symbiotic
relationship between God and country.
This widely accepted symbiotic relationship between God and country
is vividly reflected in a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the National
Catholic Educational Association in June 1920 by the newly appointed
president of the University of Notre Dame, Fr. James Burns, C.S.C.11 Burns
adverted to both the intellectual and the institutional challenges facing
Catholic higher education in these years, placing them in the context of the
world situation that was to take shape in the wake of the war. “The effects
of the World War,” he explained, “have wrought great changes in the relation of the United States to the rest of the civilized world.” In both politics
10 Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twenti-

eth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
11 James Burns, C.S.C., “A Constructive Policy for Higher Education,” Catholic

Educational Review 18 (October 1920): 458–68. This paper was also published in
Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 17 (November 1920): 46–56. For another
summary of the paper, see Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 78–80.

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Michael J. Baxter

and international finance, “the center of gravity has shifted from Europe to
this side of the Atlantic,” and a corresponding shift was underway in education. “Before the war,” Burns explained, “Germany was the school-mistress
of the world. Students from every civilized land thronged to her universities.” But “the United States has now become the new international Mecca
for university students. Students are flocking to us from every quarter of the
globe,” signifying “the beginning of a new educational era for the United
States.” Burns reported that the leading institutions of higher education in
the United States were expanding their capacities to ensure the highest
academic standards. He exhorted Catholic educators to do the same by
expanding their recruitment for graduate and professional programs, offering substantial scholarships to talented students, and upgrading the quality
of teaching. While these were familiar refrains among educators in the
United States in general, Burns urged his colleagues to take up these challenges for distinctly Catholic reasons: “If America is to become the center
of intellectual life of the new civilization which is arising out of the cataclysm of the Great War, it will occur only through the superior power and
intellectual productivity of American scholars.” The problem was that “as a
nation we have devoted ourselves chiefly to the practical side of human life,”
and most colleges and universities had followed suit, had allowed their
schools to be shaped by a pragmatic spirit. This was where Catholic educators had something unique to offer in U.S. higher education, in that their
schools focused on “the higher things of the mind,” philosophy, literature,
poetry, pure science, and art. According to Burns’s diagnosis, the nation was
confused due to an intellectual and cultural vacuum, and Catholic colleges
had the wherewithal to fill it. This would not have been possible twenty
years earlier, he pointed out, but in recent years, at long last, Catholic educators had developed their colleges and universities into institutions capable of
meeting the challenge. “It remains,” Burns declared, “only to breathe into
them this breath of the higher academic life which is necessary to give them
name and place as essential units in the new intellectual order within the
nation.”12 In other words, with the United States on the ascendancy in the
world, its colleges and universities would shape its intellectual vision, and
Catholics had the duty of injecting into this vision the depth and wisdom
of their tradition. For Burns, Catholic education thus had a mission to both
God and country.
Burns’s exhortation would have struck most educators and scholars in
the United States as fanciful and bizarre. But to Catholic educators, it
made perfect sense, owing to the constellation of ideas that shaped their
12 Burns, “A Constructive Policy,” 467.

God, Notre Dame, Country

899

self-understood mission. As Gleason explains, this mission was shaped by
the “Neoscholastic Revival” sparked by Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni
Patris (1878). In the United States, this revival did not catch on until after
the Great War. But when it finally did catch on, it quickly pervaded every
facet of Catholic intellectual life, infusing it with the confidence of
missionary zeal.13 This confidence was founded on the philosophy
Catholics espoused, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, which established
seven interrelated intellectual convictions: (1) that the existence of God
can be known through reason, providing us with a natural theology and
the preambles of faith; (2) that the mind conforms to external objects
such that it is capable of discerning order and intelligibility in the
universe; (3) that people are capable of discerning a divine purpose to the
universe by virtue of its being implanted in creation and imprinted on
the human heart, which thus provides a reliable basis for a stable, practical philosophy of life; (4) that this divine purpose provides the foundation for a philosophy of the whole of society as well, of morality, law,
politics, economics, society, and culture; (5) that these aspects of life can
be brought together into a unified, harmoniously ordered intellectual
vision; (6) that this intellectual vision is centered on God, so all that all
things must be viewed, not only through reason, but also under the aspect
of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis), thus infusing this intellectual vision with
a religious dimension that can only be grasped by means of prayer,
worship, and contemplation; and (7) that this religious dimension unites
the philosophical, literary, aesthetic, and even mystical elements of life,
thereby infusing this intellectual vision with a sense of personal piety and
communal membership in the Mystical Body of Christ.14 In the years
after World War I, these seven features characterized the Catholic intellectual vision worldwide, but as Catholic scholars in the United States
disseminated this vision, they shaped it with a distinctly American
agenda: providing the nation with the intellectual and moral foundations
that alone could enable it to flourish.
In taking on this agenda, philosophy held pride of place as the centerpiece of the Catholic curriculum, the core discipline that establishes the
principles and places into proper perspective all knowledge gained in the
liberal arts, the natural sciences, and the newly emerging social sciences.
In light of the intellectual convictions enumerated by Gleason, it is easy
to identify the philosophical opposition: figures such as Descartes, Hume,
Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Dewey, and James; and schools of thought such as
13 A general account of the intellectual agenda of Neoscholasticism is provided in

Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 105–23.
14 Ibid., 118–123.

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Michael J. Baxter

rationalism, skepticism, naturalism, empiricism, pragmatism, and, worst of
all, atheism. Against these figures and schools of thought that dominated
the intellectual scene, Catholics brought forth the philosophy Aquinas
and his scholastic successors, Cajetan, Bellarmine, and Suarez, to counter
the deleterious currents of modern thought. For this purpose, several
academic journals were founded: The Modern Schoolman in 1925, Thought
in 1926, and The New Scholasticism in 1927, each dedicated to injecting
Neoscholastic principles and methods into the intellectual mainstream of
the nation.15 The preponderance of articles published in these journals
set forth Neoscholastic views on a number of technical philosophical
matters, in keeping with the comprehensive agenda. At the same time,
these journals allotted considerable space for addressing ideas and issues
pertaining to what was then referred to as “social reconstruction,” what
we now call “Catholic social thought” or “Catholic social ethics.”
The broad purpose of such articles was three-fold: to show that these
modern philosophies were alien to the American spirit; to show that, if
unchallenged, they would undermine the intellectual foundations of the
nation; and to show that Neoscholastic philosophy can restore the intellectual principles upon which the nation was founded. On this last point,
a sampling of titles of journal articles reflects the vision pursued during
this period: “The Monroe Doctrine and Scholastic Ethics,” “The Constitution and Natural Law,” “Natural Foundations of the Political Philosophy
of St. Thomas,” “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Constitution.”16 As Catholic
philosophers of the 1920s and 1930s saw it, a fundamental harmony exists
between Scholasticism and what Gleason terms “Americanism.”17
How, one might ask, could Catholic scholars imagine that the dusty,
medieval philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas would restore the founding
principles of the novus ordo saeculorum of the United States? How could
Neoscholasticism be reconciled with the central tenets of a nation that was
obviously established on Reformation ecclesiology, Enlightenment philosophy, or both? The answer was provided by Catholic scholars in another
academic discipline, the most powerful of all for shaping the imagination
of Catholic scholars in the United States: the discipline of History.
15 Ibid., 135–36, 127. See also Halsey, Survival of American Innocence, 143–45.
16 Patrick

J. Holloran, “The Monroe Doctrine and Scholastic Ethics,” Modern
Schoolman 5 (May 1929): 9–10; Lawrence Chiminatto, “The Constitution and
Natural Law,” Modern Schoolman 9 ( January 1932): 30–32; Walter Farrell, O.P.,
“Natural Foundations of the Political Philosophy of St. Thomas,” Proceedings of
the American Catholic Philosophical Association 7 (1931): 75–85; J. Moss Ives, “St.
Thomas Aquinas and the Constitution,” Thought 12 (December 1937): 567–86.
17 Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 125.

God, Notre Dame, Country

901

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Catholic historians had
been busy gathering the facts that made up the grand narrative of Catholicism in the United States. Typically, the narratives begin with the Spanish
and French missions in America, but then they turn to the British
colonies, one especially: Maryland. Why Maryland? Because there the first
laws protecting religious freedom were enacted, in the Act of Toleration
of 1649, which, in the causal sequences established by the narrative, prefigured the Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned by Thomas Jefferson,
which in turn laid the groundwork for the Declaration of Independence.
A unique cast of characters populates this typical plot line: Christopher
Columbus, enterprising missionary of the Faith; Bartolome de las Casas,
Dominican defender of human rights; George and Cecil Calvert, founders
of Maryland and architects of religious freedom; Charles Carroll, Catholic
signer of the Declaration of Independence; his cousin John, first archbishop in the new nation and founder of Georgetown University; and
countless others who worked for the welfare of the nation and fended off
its enemies in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War,
the Civil War, and the Spanish American War.
This narrative was standard among Catholic thinkers. But the historical narratives themselves were judged by professional historians to be
amateurish in quality. Catholic historians sought to rectify this problem
by establishing the American Catholic Historical Association in 1915.
Under the leadership of Fr. Peter Guilday at Catholic University, they
dedicated themselves to applying the methods of professional history to
bolster this narrative with objective, scientifically verified facts, while at
the same time showing how these facts displayed the past power and
future promise of Neoscholastic philosophy. A central theme was that
Neoscholastic political philosophy was at work in founding the United
States. Catholic historians in the post–Great-War years used the most upto-date methods to highlight a story line that goes as follows: in erecting
a government based on popular sovereignty, separation of powers, and the
Bill of Rights, especially the free exercise of religion, the Founding
Fathers worked unwittingly under the influence of Aquinas and the
scholastics Bellarmine and Suarez, whose philosophy was passed on to the
English Whigs, then to Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and other U.S.
founders, who designed a limited state the laws of which would conform
to the antecedent authority of the natural law.18 In a real yet hidden way,
therefore, the U.S. founding was a Catholic achievement, a Catholic
18 For a summary of this general movement and some of the representative texts

involved, see Michael J. Baxter, “In Service to the Nation” (Ph.D. diss., Duke
University, 1996), 200–247.

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Michael J. Baxter

production. Given the logic of this narrative, it made sense—philosophically sound, historically verified, common sense—for Catholic scholars
to argue that their philosophy was needed to restore the principles on
which America was founded.
Historians of Catholicism in the United States often describe the
Church in the post–World War I years as a ghetto or subculture set apart
from the mainstream, and they often include Catholic scholarship under
this description. While there is ample evidence for such a description on
sociological grounds, surely it must be granted, in the name of historical
empathy, that Catholic scholars saw themselves as moving into the mainstream. This was the attitude they took in expanding their institutions,
especially on the graduate level, which, in Gleason’s words, reached “mass
production levels” in granting master’s and doctoral degrees.19 Moreover,
this period saw the proliferation of Catholic professional societies: the
American Catholic Philosophical Association (1926), the Catholic
Anthropological Association (1928), the Catholic Poetry Society of America (1931), the American Catholic Sociological Society (1938), and the
Catholic Economic Association (1941), among others.These organizations
supplied professionally trained teachers and scholars who, as a 1928
National Catholic Education Association report on graduate education
put it, would disseminate the “Catholic viewpoint” as “an indispensable
factor in our civilization and culture.”20 “An indispensable factor”—that
is, American civilization needs “the Catholic viewpoint,” the two merging
into a mutual, symbiotic relationship of God and country.
The rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and the onset of the World War
II only confirmed Catholic scholars and educators in their self-appointed
mission. In this period, not surprisingly, the attention of Catholic scholars was directed with urgency to matters of political philosophy and
democratic government. But here Catholic scholars faced a serious problem. In Catholic doctrine, church-state separation was seen as a concession to unavoidable historical circumstances rather than the preferred
political arrangement. The preferred political arrangement was one in
which the Catholic Church receives direct and official support from the
government while other denominations and religions are merely tolerated. Needless to say, this doctrine was not welcomed by advocates of
U.S. democracy.The Church was perceived as an enemy—as the enemy—
of political freedom. In the nineteenth century, liberal-minded Catholic
thinkers in Europe held that while this teaching must be endorsed in
19 Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 172.
20 National Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 26 (November 1929): 71–81,

quoted in Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 175.

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903

principle, it need not apply in fact, a strategy derived from a pamphlet by
Felix Doupanloup, bishop of Orléans, France, who affirmed the teaching
in theory (en thèse) but not in practice (en hypothèse). In the early twentieth century in the United States, this strategy was deployed by Msgr.
Ryan in a book on church and state published in 1922. He argued that
the teaching does not apply in the United States since Catholics do not
constitute a majority of the population, and to the charge that Catholics
could one day claim a majority, owing to their propensity to produce so
many children, Ryan simply dismissed the prospect as fanciful. In such
ways, official Catholic teaching on church and state could be dismissed as
an unworkable ideal, relegated to the realm of pure theory. But by the
mid-twentieth century, it had become clear that these evasive strategies
were woefully inadequate in the face of critics of Catholicism such as
Paul Blanchard. Moreover, this doctrine was seen as woefully inadequate
in the light of the experience of Catholics in the United States, where
government had long protected their right to religious freedom.21 So
Catholics set out to revise Catholic teaching on church and state.
This shift in the thought of Catholic political theorists is most vividly
exemplified in the life and thought of John Courtney Murray. A Jesuit
theologian and philosopher at Woodstock in Maryland, founding editor
of Theological Studies, and a leading light for the Catholic intellectuals of
his generation, Murray is often regarded as the most important Catholic
political thinker of his generation, and with good reason. For a quarter
century, from the early 1940s until the mid 1960s, in a string of scholarly
articles in Theological Studies and in scores of popular essays, Murray
argued that the church-state relationship codified in the Constitution is
not in conflict with Catholic political theory, as official teaching held, but
is in fact in continuity with it. This is because the Constitution articulated in written form the ancient principles that hitherto had been set
forth merely in medieval British common law: the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal order, the obligation of government to provide for
the freedom of the church, and the limited competency of the state in
religious matters. The official teaching, set forth by Leo XIII in 1884 in
the encyclical Immortale Dei, was designed to preserve these principles
amid the church’s struggle against the oppressive monarchies of Europe
on the one hand and the tyrannical revolutionary regimes on the other.
But here in the United States, Murray argued, a third political alternative
had emerged, a government shaped by the moderate liberalism of the
British Western constitutional tradition, a tradition that posited two
21 John McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and

Company, 2003), 166–88.

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realms, the sacred and the secular, within which both church and state
could operate unimpeded by the other. In this arrangement, Catholics
were free to pursue their religious practices and beliefs, and also free to
participate in civil affairs and contribute to the public philosophy of the
nation, guided by the principles of natural law which, Murray held, are
not derived from Catholic presuppositions and thus could provide a basis
for public philosophy and policy in a religiously pluralistic society. Here
was a new constitutional arrangement, without precedent, made possible
by humanity’s growth into political maturity, marking a turning point in
history. Indeed, for Murray, the U.S. founding was providential.22
Murray’s work has often been portrayed as groundbreaking in the area
Catholic political thought, owing in large part to the opposition he
encountered by his opponents Francis Connell and Francis Fenton and
to his being prohibited by Church authorities to publish on the vexed
matter of church-state relations. But anyone familiar with the work of the
Neoscholastics in the United States of 1920s and 1930s will see that his
ideas were prefigured by his predecessors. The same scenario is envisioned, the same actors receive the same parts to play in the drama. The
United States was founded on principles derived from medieval political
theory, assimilated and transmitted by the English Whigs to the founding
fathers (at one point, Murray repeats Lord Acton’s description of Aquinas
as “the first Whig”).23 But the nation is now in crisis because of the influx
of philosophies alien to the American spirit, materialism, pragmatism,
skepticism, atheism. Therefore Catholics, with their rich tradition of
learning and scholarship, now have a duty to infuse the nation with the
intellectual principles that are needed for its restoration and well-being.
Given the pervasiveness of this drama of national crisis and Catholic
mission, it is no surprise that the argument and agenda taken up by Murray
was pursued, less directly and controversially, by other Catholic scholars of
this period. Most prominent among these were Jacques Maritain, Yves
Simon, and Heinrich Rommen, who brought a renewed and more
compelling version of Thomism to the task of demonstrating a natural-law
basis for democratic government. As refugees from European fascism, they
saw the urgency of the task. At the same time, having confronted first hand
the legacy of the French Revolution, they understood the dangers of
22 For a summary of Murray, see Baxter, “In Service to the Nation,” 372–414; see

also Michael J. Baxter, “John Courtney Murray,” in The Blackwell Companion to
Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 150–64.
23 John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 43–57, 47.

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popular sovereignty in the context of a multitude not properly formed in
the virtues of citizenship. 24 Along with these was a host of scholars in the
United States, such as Walter Farrell, O.P., who (with Mortimer Adler)
pursued various aspects of this large project of showing how natural law
provides a sound philosophical basis for democracy. 25
This broad project was at work in several efforts at Notre Dame
during these years that can only be mentioned in passing. There was, for
example, the founding of The Review of Politics in 1939, with a lead article by Maritain on the crisis facing the West.26 In the years to come,
many articles on the philosophy of government would appear in its
pages.27 There was also the founding of the Notre Dame Law School’s
Natural Law Institute in 1947 and The Natural Law Forum in 1956, a
journal of jurisprudence dedicated to showing the relevance of natural
law in the theory and practice of civil law. And there was the work of
political theorists, mainly in the departments of philosophy and government too numerous to mention, whose work took up this comprehensive agenda of establishing the link between Neoscholastic philosophy
and the political arrangement on which the nation was founded and must
be governed. But I want to draw attention to the work of an historian
during these years at Notre Dame, namely, Fr.Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C.,
author of The Great Crisis of American Catholic History, 1895–1900.28
24 See for example Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism, trans. Joseph Evans (New

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968); idem, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); idem, Reflections on America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958); Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1951); idem, A General Theory of Authority (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962); idem, The Tradition of Natural
Law (New York: Fordham University Press, 1965); Heinrich Rommen, The State
in Catholic Thought (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1945).
25 See for example Mortimer J. Adler and Walter Farrell, O.P., “The Theory of
Democracy,” The Thomist 3 ( July 1941): 397–449; “The Theory of Democracy,
Part II,” The Thomist 3 (October 1941): 588–652; “The Theory of Democracy,
Part III,” The Thomist 4 ( January 1942): 121–81, and (April 1942): 286–354; “The
Theory of Democracy, Part IV,” The Thomist 4 ( July 1942): 446–522, and (October 1942): 692–761, and The Thomist 6 (April 1943): 49–118, and ( July 1943):
251–77; “The Theory of Democracy, Part V,” The Thomist 6 (October 1943):
367–407, and The Thomist 7 ( January 1944): 80–131.
26 Jacques Maritain, “Integral Humanism and the Crisis of Modern Times,” The
Review of Politics 1 ( January 1939): 1–17.
27 An excellent collection of these articles can be found in The Crisis of Modern Times:
Perspectives from The Review of Politics, 1939–1962, ed. A. James McAdams (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).
28 Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895–
1900 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1957).

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McAvoy’s book is still regarded as the definitive history of the events
leading to Pope Leo XIII’s condemnation of “Americanism” in 1899. It
lays the basis for viewing Leo’s action as resulting more from his concern
with the Church’s political position in France than with genuine misgivings about U.S. culture and politics, thus demonstrating that Americanism was a “phantom heresy.” The upshot of this interpretation was that
Catholics need not hesitate to take on fully American identities and roles.
Indeed, just as the Americanists, Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop
John Ireland, and their allies, had insisted half a century before, Catholics
now, in the post–World War II era, must work their way into the American mainstream. McAvoy’s work, along with that of historian John Tracy
Ellis at Catholic University and also the work of Ellis’s many students,
provided an historical precedent that freed Catholics to do so.29 As
McAvoy saw it, the stakes were high, as he makes clear at the end of his
book. Noting the unfounded basis for the condemnation of Americanism and the crucial contribution of American Catholicism to the
Church’s mission worldwide, he writes:
To have hoped that the conservative and more traditional—as some
might say sacristarian—Catholicism of western Europe would accept
the practical, rough, and democratic notions of American Catholicism
in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, probably was too
much to ask. It was unfortunate that there was not a better exchange
of ideas between these two Catholic peoples. Only after fifty years,
despite continuing agreement on essentials, have European Catholics
been urging the social and practical reforms which Americans have
always found rather easy. And American Catholicism is growing in
theological awareness, in liturgical splendor, and in the appreciation of
the high cultural inheritance of the older Catholic communities of
western Europe. The exchange has only begun even in this day. May
this study of the past failures do away with a few obstacles which had
little to do with the essentials of religion and promote a union of Western Christendom in the present battle against the great atheistic heresy
of the age.30

That was written in 1957, at the height of the Cold War.
By this time, it had been five years since Fr. John Cavanaugh reached
into the pocket of his cassock, pulled out his office key, and handed it to
his successor, with the words: “By the way, I promised to give a talk
29 For more on what he calls the “phantom heresy historians,” see William L.

Portier, “Americanism and Inculturation: 1899–1999,” Communio 27 (Spring
2000): 139–60.
30 McAvoy, The Great Crisis, 366.

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907

tonight to the Catholic Family Movement over at Veterans Hall. Now that
you’re the president, you have to do it. Good luck. I’m off to New York.”31
So began the presidency at Notre Dame of Fr. Ted Hesburgh, C.S.C., as
recalled in his memoir. The title of the memoir is taken from the motto
with which our story began. Walking out from his ordination in 1943, Fr.
Hesburgh recalls pausing “at the sculptured east door of Sacred Heart, a
memorial to the Notre Dame men who had given their lives in World War
I” and reading “the dedication above the door: GOD, COUNTRY, NOTRE
DAME. I would dedicate my life to that trinity, too.”32 After studies at
Catholic University, Fr. Hesburgh returned to Notre Dame to teach,
counsel students, serve as chaplain to the veteran-students and their families on campus, and eventually to serve as vice-president for three years,
before becoming president. While settling into his office and new position, he asked, “What did I want to accomplish for Notre Dame?” The
answer came back “silently as a kind of vision”: Notre Dame as a great
Catholic university, the greatest in the world! There were many distinguished universities in our country and in Europe, but not since the
Middle Ages had there been a great Catholic university. The road was
open for Notre Dame, I told myself.”33 The rest, so they say, is history.
The Hesburgh years were years of monumental growth. The goal of
developing Notre Dame into a “great university” meant developing great
faculty, students, facilities, Fr. Hesburgh relates, all of which meant developing a great endowment. So his newly assembled team initiated the
Notre Dame Foundation and sought funds from leaders in the business
world and from various foundations. It also meant replacing or reorganizing departments, colleges, and institutes, and starting new ones. So his
team went to work developing various departments (physics and math),
colleges (engineering and business), institutes (history and economic
research) and other “units,” as they are now called, such as the law school
and the bacteriology lab. It was a time of “tremendous progress”; “year
after year,” Hesburgh recalls, “we attracted better people, bigger grants,
more endowed chairs, and raised admission standards for students.”34 At
the same time, Hesburgh became a leader in education beyond the Notre
Dame campus, serving on the board of numerous associations and foundations. The watchword in education at the time was “excellence.” When
the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik in 1957, political and public
31 Theodore M. Hesburgh (with Jerry Reedy), God, Country, Notre Dame:The Auto-

biography of Theodore M. Hesburgh (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 60.
32 Ibid., 38.
33 Ibid., 64.
34 Ibid., 70.

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Michael J. Baxter

leaders in the United States issued reports and established funds for, in the
name of a Rockefeller Fund report, the pursuit of excellence.35 Hesburgh
brought this pursuit of excellent to his efforts at Notre Dame.The aim was
to raise the level of its scholarship to that of the Ivy Leagues. Noting its
focus on undergraduate education and its small but prestigious graduate
programs, Hesburgh admits: “we wanted to be a Catholic Princeton.”36
Both words were important. The goal was a Catholic Princeton, but also a
Catholic Princeton. With this latter goal in mind, only a few months after
taking office, Fr. Hesburgh initiated a self-study aimed at integrating the
College of Arts and Letters around a core of courses in Neoscholastic
philosophy and theology.37 Moreover, as in most every Catholic college
and university, Notre Dame students were required to take a pre-set order
of courses in philosophy, and the department, of course, was overwhelmingly Thomist in orientation. It was assumed, taken as a premise, that Notre
Dame’s educational mission would be shaped by the Neoscholastic vision.
This dual understanding was also central to the efforts of Catholic
educators to upgrade their institutions in these years. In 1955, Fr. John
Tracy Ellis rocked the Catholic intellectual world with a broadside
critique of the low level of scholarship at Catholic institutions of higher
learning, chiding them for failing in “their responsibilities to the incomparable tradition of Catholic learning of which they are the direct heirs.”
Catholics, he maintained, are the bearers of “the oldest, wisest, and most
sublime tradition of learning that the world has ever known.” As such
they are uniquely situated to contribute to the effort already underway
in the nation “to restore ‘religious and moral values . . . [to] the honored
place they once occupied.’ ”38 As Gleason notes, Ellis’s point was that
Catholic scholars should produce and disseminate scholarship in keeping
with their unique intellectual tradition, which the nation needed. A similar assumption was operative in a controversial talk given two years later,
by Fr. John Cavanaugh, C.S.C., predecessor to Hesburgh. Echoing Shuster’s question in 1925 (“Are there any Catholic scholars?”), Cavanaugh
asked, “Where are the Catholic Salks, Oppenheimers, Einsteins?” Both
Ellis and Cavanaugh shared the same assumption of their predecessors in
the Twenties and Thirties enhancing the level of Catholics scholarship
would contribute to the welfare of the nation.
Catholic educators in the Fifties were confident that their institutions
would be able to rise to the challenge. In 1960, the election of Kennedy
35 Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 295.
36 Hesburgh, God, Country, Notre Dame, 70.
37 Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 295–96.
38 This summary, the wording as well as the content, is taken largely from ibid., 290.

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909

as president only bolstered their confidence. Moreover, shortly thereafter,
the Second Vatican Council convened and deliberations indicated far
reaching changes and renewal in the Church. By the end of the Council, it was clear that the Catholics in the United States had had an unmistakable impact. The Declaration on Religious Freedom, issued on
December 8, 1965, seemed to affirm what they had been saying for
decades. Indeed, Murray himself penned much of the document. All of
this gave Catholics in the United States good reason to believe they were
entering the U.S. mainstream, and Catholic educators on the university
and college level had reason to believe that they had facilitated this
process. Like the Church in general in the United States, Catholic higher
education was “coming of age.” And yet, it was precisely in this period
that tensions emerged between the traditional Neoscholastic curriculum
and the claims of academic freedom, leading to, in Gleason’s words, “the
splintering of the Scholastic synthesis.”39
As Gleason explains, the synthesis was undergoing serious internal
tensions already, because of conflicting schools of thought in Thomism—
existential, personalist, transcendental, and so on—but the primary factor
was the emergence of new conceptions of freedom. Individual departments
called for more autonomy. More and more scholars called for more freedom in the Church. Debates erupted on Catholic campuses, sparked by
controversies involving theologians such as Hans Kung and Charles
Curran. Moreover, in the nation at large, the civil rights movement and the
war in Vietnam gave added urgency to calls for more latitude in ecclesial
and political affairs. “Freedom” became the watchword. All this spilled over
onto Catholic campuses, where calls for freedom were seen as part of the
post-conciliar movement toward a world-embracing posture on the part of
the Church. This trend led educators to work purposely toward secularizing their institutions, laicizing them, turning them over to lay boards of
trustees.The leader here was Fr. Hesburgh, who gathered a group of educators to formulate the widely noted Land O’Lakes statement, calling for
“institutional autonomy and academic freedom” of Catholic colleges and
universities. This marked a drastic institutional break with the past. Virtually all Catholic colleges and universities in the nation had been founded
by religious orders. Now they would be juridically detached from their
founding religious communities. Along with this legal separation, the intellectual movement in favor of academic freedom led to a clear break with
the Neoscholastic synthesis that had shaped the mission of Catholic higher
education for four decades.40
39 Ibid., 297.
40 Ibid., 297–304.

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910

Gleason’s history concludes on a wistful note. The last chapter, “The
End of An Era,” reports on a search for identity of Catholic colleges and
universities that began in the 1960s and continues to this day.41 But in
Gleason’s concluding reflections, a clue can be found for a way forward
amid this search for identity. He writes that “the task facing Catholic
academics today is to forge from the philosophical and theological
resources uncovered in the past half-century a vision that will provide
what Neoscholasticism did for so many years—a theoretical rationale for
the existence of Catholic colleges and universities as a distinctive element
in American higher education.”42 In the second part of my essay, I will
argue that the resources needed to accomplish it are found in the work
of Alasdair MacIntyre, but employing them entails reordering the
missionary priorities of the motto on the Basilica’s east door.
2. Thomistic Aristotelianism and the Mission
of Catholic Higher Education Today
Gleason’s history shows that throughout the twentieth century, leaders in
Catholic higher education in the United States struggled mightily to adapt
a Scholastic intellectual vision to the standard modern curriculum, and that
their efforts eventually failed. In the concluding chapter of God, Philosophy,
Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition, Alasdair
MacIntyre observes that these efforts were bound to fail, not because
Catholic educators did not try hard enough, but because it was simply not
possible, owing to the nature of the modern research university.43
In making this observation, MacIntyre notes that the modern research
university has been successful in three ways. First, it has succeeded in the
area of research, bringing researchers together so their skills and expertise can be used to solve the problems that are put before them by the
agencies that fund the research. Second, it has succeeded in providing the
professionalized human resources needed in an advanced capitalist society: research scientists, physicians, economists, lawyers, MBAs, engineers,
advertising and public relations experts, and so on.Third, it has succeeded
in becoming richer, because of the massive funding provided by governments, corporations, and wealthy donors, and more expensive, because
universities charge what the market will bear.44 Anyone familiar with
MacIntyre’s longstanding disdain of capitalism and the modern liberal
41 Ibid., 305–22.
42 Ibid., 22.
43 Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic

Philosophical Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).
44 Ibid., 173–74.

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911

state knows that these successes are, from his perspective, symptomatic of
far more serious moral failures, such as embracing the vice of acquisitiveness or succumbing to the repressive bureaucratic power. But for
MacIntyre, these moral failures are entailed in a serious intellectual failure as well. The failure is this: the modern research university lacks a
single, albeit complex, unitary intellectual vision, an integrated conception of all knowledge, of the whole—in which case, the modern research
university is actually not a university at all.
MacIntyre explains the condition of the typical modern research
university as follows:
What disappears from view in such universities, and what significantly
differentiates them from many of their predecessors, is twofold: first, any
large sense of and concern for enquiry into the relationships between
the disciplines and, second, any conception of the disciplines as each
contributing to a single shared enterprise, one whose principal aim is
neither to benefit the economy or to advance the careers of its students,
but rather to achieve for teachers and students alike a certain kind of
shared understanding. Universities have become, perhaps irremediably,
fragmented and partitioned institutions, better named “multiversities,”
as Clark Kerr suggested almost fifty years ago. I remarked of Aquinas,
and I could equally well have remarked of Newman [here MacIntyre is
referring to earlier chapters in the book], that his conception of the
university was informed by his conception of the universe. By contrast
the conception of the university presupposed by and embodied in the
institutional forms and activities of contemporary research universities
is not just one that has nothing much to do with any particular conception of the universe, but one that suggests strongly that there is no such
thing as the universe, no whole of which the subject matters studied by
the various disciplines are all parts or aspects, but instead just a multifarious set of assorted subject matters.45

As a result, MacIntyre goes on to observe, knowledge gained from the
various academic disciplines remains disintegrated. What we know about
human beings from intellectual inquiry in, say, physics, chemistry, biology,
history, economics, literature, and the arts is not brought together into a
unified whole. No sustained, systematic effort is made to see how knowledge gained from the different disciplines is interrelated and can contribute
to a conception of ourselves and our place in nature and the universe.
Attempts to do so are initiated by individual or small groups of scholars,
usually in a piecemeal fashion, but not in a systematic, institutionally
sponsored, university-wide manner. Questions about the human person,
45 Ibid., 174.

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Michael J. Baxter

nature, the universe, God, often go unheard or are never even really posed
in a serious way.46
To anyone familiar with how the modern research university functions—not how it is depicted by administrators, fund-raisers, and public
relations officers, but how it in fact functions—MacIntyre’s observations
are unremarkable, nothing more than an accurate description of present
conditions. But his observations become very remarkable when set
against the history that he narrates in the previous eighteen chapters of
his book. In this history, MacIntyre shows that philosophy has long
performed a central role in the intellectual life of universities, and that,
when it comes to universities shaped by Catholic faith and tradition, it
must perform this central role. The central figure in this history is, of
course,Thomas Aquinas, whose importance he conveys by explaining the
context within which he worked and the conflicts he sought to resolve.
In the thirteenth century, MacIntyre explains, the texts of Aristotle had
only recently been translated and introduced to the Latin West. Not
surprisingly, given the novelty of these texts, controversies arose among
theologians over whether or not, or to what extent and in what ways,
Aristotelian philosophy could help in understanding the natural world and
the human mind’s engagement with it without contradicting the truths
revealed by God and affirmed in Church tradition. Many Augustinian
theologians stoutly rejected Aristotelianism for positing philosophical
standards and methods that operate independently of theology and for
advancing what they held to be erroneous claims concerning the eternity
of the universe, the relationship of soul and body, and human happiness.
In response, many Aristotelians, following the Islamic philosopher Averroes, propounded a doctrine of two truths, one pertaining to the realm of
philosophy, the other to theology, thus making it possible to affirm seemingly contradictory claims of Aristotle and Augustine. Against both these
positions—the Augustinians’ outright rejection of Aristotelianism and the
Averroists’ evasive endorsement of it—Aquinas argued for a unitary
concept of truth, one that allowed for distinct domains of inquiry, each
with its own standards for determining what is true and false; yet he also
argued that what is true in each domain must be related to what is true
in the others and to what is known to be true by revelation. In working
out this unitary concept of truth comprehensively and in detail, Aquinas
refuted the Averroist attempt to insulate theology from philosophy and the
natural sciences, and he refuted it on Aristotelian grounds, yet without
undermining the Augustinian framework to which he subscribed. In this
46 Ibid., 174–75.

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913

way, Aquinas integrated the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of
Augustine. His detailed accounts of nature, of the causes of finite things,
of the proper methods of rational deliberation, and of the cardinal virtues,
indicate the importance of reason for understanding the created world and
our place in it. His accounts of the eternal, natural, divine, and positive
law; of our last end; and of the theological virtues, especially charity as the
form of the virtues—these show that a purely secular understanding of the
moral and intellectual life is inadequate and incomplete.Thus for Aquinas,
there is an intrinsic interdependence among what we know of the natural world, of human nature, and of God.47
MacIntyre maintains that this integrated intellectual vision was
reflected in the curriculum of the University of Paris as it developed over
the course of the thirteenth century.The older liberal arts curriculum was
gradually transformed into a course of study structured by the assumptions and methods of Aristotelian philosophy. Not that all students
became proficient philosophers. Students then and there, like students
today, often pursued their studies in order to qualify for a future career,
and for that reason alone. Nevertheless, at the University of Paris (and at
Oxford, where similar developments took hold), students could engage
in university study so as to be directed toward achieving their final end
as human beings, a perfected understanding. For Aquinas, there was a
prescribed order to this study, beginning with grammar and logic, then
mathematics, then the natural sciences, then moral and political philosophy, and then metaphysics and theology. This was meant to correlate
students’ studies with their readiness, intellectually and experientially, to
learn what they needed to learn at a given stage (or age). Moral philosophy, for example, requires a degree of reflectiveness about one’s passions
that younger students typically do not yet possess; and only after that
stage do students possess the strength of intellect required for metaphysics
and theology. The purpose was to develop not only students’ knowledge
of the various subjects, but also their ability to continue learning after
leaving the university, that is, to become self-teachers, to become independent theoretical and practical reasoners. The crucial aspect of this
understanding of a university is that it entailed a definite understanding
of reality, of the purpose of life itself. “The ends of education,” MacIntyre
notes, “can, on Aquinas’ view, be correctly developed only with reference
to the final end of human beings and the ordering of the curriculum has
to be an ordering to that end.We are able to understand what the university should be, only if we understand what the universe is.”48
47 Ibid., 66–95.
48 Ibid., 95, 93–95.

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Michael J. Baxter

MacIntyre is careful not to exaggerate the influence of Aquinas in his
own day or subsequently. Several propositions held by him were
condemned shortly after his death. Most Augustinian theologians, especially those in the Franciscan tradition, regarded him as just another Averroist. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Aquinas’s thought was one
among many approaches to philosophy and theology, an important one
in Dominican circles but overshadowed in other settings by Scotus or
Ockham.49 The sixteenth century saw further developments in Thomist
thought, most notably in the work of Vitoria, who used it to engage
disputed questions on law and politics. But that century also saw an
expansion of the philosophical traditions of Scotus and of Ockham.
Moreover, Suarez, often considered the most representative Scholastic
figure in this era, advanced a philosophy that was not Thomist, nor for
that matter was it in line with Scotus or Ockham. Moreover, because of
the many unresolved disagreements among these various philosophical
traditions, this period also saw a strong revival of skepticism, the leading
figure being Montaigne. In response to the uncertainty of skepticism
regarding things theological, philosophical, and scientific, the need arose,
in the minds of some, to ground truth claims in the foundations of
reason.50 This was the task taken up in the seventeenth century by
Descartes, whose rationalist attempt at certitude generated opponents,
such as Pascal and followers such as Arnauld, both of whom were
Catholics.51 But by the beginning of the eighteenth century, Catholic
thinkers ceased to respond to the challenges of modern philosophy, and
thus ceased having an impact on its development, and this led to their
marginalization—or more accurately, their self-marginalization—which
continued into the mid-nineteenth century. Thus MacIntyre depicts the
historical interval 1700–1850 with the subheading “The Catholic
Absence from and Return to Philosophy, 1700–1850.”52
The “return,” as MacIntyre tells the story, was initiated by two philosophers who responded systematically to the Cartesian and Kantian philosophy at the time, Antonio Rosmini-Serbati and John Henry Newman.
Rosmini argued that the idea of being carries with it an objectivity, unity,
and intelligibility that provides the basis for the necessity of divine existence. His argument failed to convince skeptical philosophers, and at the
same time drew charges of pantheism from theologians.53 Newman
49 Ibid., 97–102.
50 Ibid., 105–11.
51 Ibid., 113–28.
52 Ibid., 131–36.
53 Ibid., 133.

God, Notre Dame, Country

915

argued that all fields of knowledge are governed by philosophical claims
and that it is the task of philosophy as a distinct field to understand the
interrelationship of knowledge in the other fields and to show how they
all can be related to knowledge of God. But while his argument did
much to define the tasks confronting philosophy, it did not identify the
philosophical resources needed to carry out those tasks.54 “The problem,” MacIntyre writes, “was that far too much of the Catholic philosophical past had been effectively forgotten by Catholics. What was
therefore needed was first to remedy their philosophical loss of memory.
That remedy was to be supplied by someone who was—an unlikely and
rare conjunction—both a pope and a philosopher, Leo XIII.”55
The reference here is to Leo XIII and his encyclical Aeterni Patri, calling for the revival of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. MacIntyre
regards the promulgation of Aeterni Patri as a monumental event in the
history of philosophy because it identified the errors of modern philosophy, called for rebutting them on the basis of reason, and argued that
reason operates rightly only when it presupposes and is guided by faith.56
This agenda, he explains, was taken up by some Catholic philosophers
with little competence and imagination in the manner of the textbook
or manual approach; but others took up the task in a manner worthy of
the philosophical tradition they sought to advance. Jacques Maritain,
Emmanuel Mounier, Gabriel Marcel, Edith Stein, Elizabeth Anscombe—
each of these philosophers engaged one or another version of Thomism
with key aspects of modern philosophy, resulting in an extended conversation attending to questions about the place of humans within nature,
the nature of the human good, humanity’s final end, and the existence of
God. In addressing these questions, the Thomist tradition exposes the
errors of schools of modern philosophical thought—materialism, naturalism, idealism, relativism, and so on—and at the same time shows that
reason confirms what we know to be true about human life as revealed
by God and taught by the Catholic Church. This philosophical task is
affirmed by John Paul II in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, the publication
of which marks the final chapter in MacItnyre’s brief history of Catholic
philosophy. It is only at this point that MacIntyre describes the modern
research university, thus making clear that the present task of Catholic
philosophy is daunting to say the least, requiring nothing less than a full
scale reconstruction of the university curriculum so that it may again
sponsor inquiry into the relationship of knowledge in the arts, the social
54 Ibid., 136–50.
55 Ibid., 150.
56 Ibid., 151–54.

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Michael J. Baxter

sciences, and the natural sciences, to philosophy, and knowledge in
philosophy to what we know by revelation in the discipline of theology.
In many respects, MacIntyre is taking up the intellectual agenda pursued
by the Thomists at Notre Dame and elsewhere in the decades after World
War I. Consider the continuities: his appeal to Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni
Patri; his critique of figures and philosophical schools of thought dominating modern intellectual life (Descartes, Kant, Nietschze, pragmatism, utilitarianism, and so on); his view on the interrelation of faith and reason; and
his claims about the authority of the Church. At the same time, MacIntyre
is arguing for serious revisions of the Thomism of the twentieth century in
calling for an historicized philosophical realism, for a tradition-dependent
account of rationality, for a critical analysis of the social context within
which moral and intellectual inquiry occurs, and for a more probing and
rigorous critique of capitalism and the modern state.These revisions derive,
in large part, from what MacIntyre learned from Marx and Marxist
thinkers before his embrace of Thomistic Aristotelianism.
This raises a question about the Thomists in the United States from the
1920s to the 1960s and their self-appointed task of bringing Neoscholastic philosophy to the nation. In particular, it raises a question about their
claim that the Founding Fathers were heirs of a philosophical lineage tracing back to the English Whigs, to the scholastics, and to Aquinas, and
about using this philosophy to restore the United States to its intellectual
and moral foundations. Can this argument be made on the basis of
MacIntyre’s revised account of Thomism?
The short answer is no, for a reason often overlooked, even by strong
adherents to MacIntyre’s project. The reason is that the politics of the
modern nation-state cannot sustain the virtues and forms of communal
life needed for genuine human flourishing in the Aristotelian polis. This
argument is advanced by MacIntyre in After Virtue, extended and
expanded in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, and partially restated in
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.57 It is also set forth in usefully
distilled form in an inaugural lecture delivered by MacIntyre marking his
appointment to the McMahin/Hank Chair in Philosophy at Notre
Dame. Later published in The Review of Politics, the lecture is titled “The
Privatization of Good.”58
57 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

Press, 1981); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1988); Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
58 Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Privatization of Good,” The Review of Politics 52
(Summer 1990): 344–61.

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917

MacIntyre begins the lecture by setting forth a Thomistic-Aristotelian
conception of the good as that toward which members of species move
in achieving their specific perfection, including the species of rational
animals, humans. This entails rules for right action, derived from the end
which obedience to them serves; not contingently, as if actions are externally related to the end, but necessarily, as partly constitutive of a form of
life that brings one happiness. To disobey such rules in any way or degree
is in that way and to that degree to separate oneself from one’s good. It
follows from this that rational agreement on moral rules presupposes
rational agreement on the nature of the good. A political society that
enjoins upon its members such rules is committed to an adequately
determinate and rationally justifiable conception of the human good.
But this, MacIntyre observes, is not how things are in the advanced
societies of Western modernity. In these societies, moral rules that are
shared are not and cannot be rooted in a commonly held conception of
the human good, because disagreements as to the good are too numerous
and too fundamental. Indeed, political liberalism is predicated on the existence of such disagreements. Government is designed to remain neutral as
to the rival conceptions of the good. Rules are upheld where there exists
substantial public agreement, but not on the basis of an agreed conception
of the good, and where there is no agreement, these are left to the free,
rational, privately held, individual preference. Therefore, MacIntyre
concludes, in liberal society, the good has been privatized.59
MacIntyre identifies Virginia Held, Ronald Dworkin, and John Rawls
as thinkers who theorize this liberal arrangement in various ways.60 But
he pays particular attention to Jeffrey Stout, arguing that the agreements
in liberal society which Stout says are based on basic notions of right and
wrong, what Stout calls “platitudes,” are actually not fundamental agreements. As an example, he brings up lying; when one looks at specific
cases, he notes, the practical reasoning involved leads to indeterminate
results. Lying is permitted in some cases, not in others, and there is no
agreement as to when it is and is not permitted. Nor is there any way
publicly to adjudicate these agreements within the context of liberal
institutions, because these institutions preclude the extended rational
debate needed to do so.61
The same is true, MacIntyre argues, regarding two other issues of practical importance in our society: caring for the young and caring for the
old. These issues can be adequately addressed only in light of their roles
59 Ibid., 344–47.
60 Ibid., 347.
61 Ibid., 348–51.

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Michael J. Baxter

within families, within the other institutions in society, and within an
overall purpose of human life. But in liberal society, these broader matters
are kept out of public discussion and debate, as they must be, for they
entail a single, unitary, albeit complex, conception of the good.62 So too
with abortion, another issue which can be adequately treated only within
broader contexts of the purpose of family life, the upbringing of children,
and the relation of these to other social ties. Abstract the practice of abortion from these contexts and the matter gets obscured. And so it is with
many important issues that cannot be adequately addressed in the public
forums of liberal political order. If one wishes to present an argument
from a Thomistic-Aristotelian perspective, then the argument must be
translated into terms that have currency within the public forum. But
what gets lost in translation is the full scope of the moral vision. As a
result, important matters are discussed in a piecemeal fashion at best.63
In pressing this point, MacIntyre entertains the notion that although
liberal society today does not allow for full, rational debate among
conflicting viewpoints on important issues, our society can sponsor such
debates and has done so in the past. But this notion he dismisses as “a piece
of false mythology,” and he likewise dismisses the prospect of such debates
occurring now or in the future, for three reasons.64 First, institutions of
liberalism, such as the media and academia, allow debate only in a fragmented way. Second, the limited debate that does occur is controlled by
procedures that are themselves shaped by liberal assumptions about the
inaccessibility of the good. Third, and most importantly, “fundamental
disagreement over the nature of the good is not only a matter of theoretical contention, but also and essentially of practice. . . . And practical claims
cannot be made in exclusively theoretical ways.” Theorizing on practice is
crucial for MacIntyre, but such theorizing is always a reflection of the
practices at issue, so that “there can be no genuine abstract, merely theoretical debate between rival conceptions of the good. Such conceptions
only confront one another in any decisive way, when presented within the
embodied life of particular communities which exemplify each specific
conception,” the embodied life, for instance, of families, parishes, schools,
clinics, work places, local neighborhoods, and so on. In other words,
“genuine debate between rival conceptions only occurs when the actualities of one mode of social life, embodying one such conception, are
matched against the actualities of its rivals.” 65
62 Ibid., 352–53.
63 Ibid., 353–54.
64 Ibid., 354.
65 Ibid., 355.

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919

To illustrate this point, MacIntyre returns to two issues already
mentioned, lying and truth-telling, and the relationship of the young and
the old—which turn out to be one and the same issue, or at least closely
interrelated. Beginning with Aquinas’s claim that lying is unconditionally
prohibited as a sin against justice, he argues that this prohibition, like all
natural-law prohibitions, is a constitutive part of all the virtues and essential
to the flourishing of any human community. Much like a scientific community that imposes penalties for falsifying data, to ensure that it may engage
in practical scientific inquiry, all human communities, in the Thomistic view,
rely on truth-telling because without it a community cannot engage in
genuine conversation and so will not progress in practical inquiry as to
living the good life. This is true in families, farming and fishing villages, and
any number of communities seeking to impart to the young what has been
learned through experience and reflection by older members. In this sense,
it is important that the young know how to learn, initially under the guidance of teachers but then eventually as lifelong learners who, in turn, can
impart what they have learned to the young. This task is done by telling
stories, by performing important, time-worn tasks, and by reading so as to
render the past present to the next generation. It is here that education,
including higher education, has an important role to play.
Accordingly, MacIntyre calls for rethinking the mission of education in
schools, colleges, and universities, “not primarily as a preparation for . . . a
life of work, which terminates when that life of work begins, but rather
as itself the beginning of . . . a life-long education directed towards and
informed by the achievement of the good.”66 We need to teach students
to read, so that they read books that enrich their familial and communal
lives, and do so throughout their lives, at age forty, sixty, seventy-five. Thus
students can learn the wisdom that their elders have to pass on to them
and can learn the importance of what to pass on to their own children.
Moreover, they can learn particular forms of practice that constitute our
local community, and bring these practices into their encounter with the
practices of liberal society where there may arise sharp conflict. We can
teach them how to engage and debate with the practitioners and theorists
of rival theories of the good in U.S. society, especially with practices and
theories that, in effect, privatize the good. MacIntyre concludes his lecture
by pondering the possibility of Catholic higher education accomplishing
this task. “Notice,” he writes,
that the remaking and sustaining of our own local institutions and practices, which, on the view which I have been developing, is a necessary
66 Ibid., 359.

Michael J. Baxter

920

first step in the transformation of public debate, let alone of public
moral practice, are primarily activities worthwhile in themselves and
immensely so, and only secondarily a means to further outcomes. As to
whether we can even contrive a reopening of genuine public debate
about rival conceptions of the good in contemporary America, let
alone bring such a debate to an effective conclusion, the evidence, as I
understand it, suggests we ought to be as deeply pessimistic as is
compatible with a belief in Divine Providence. But as to the remaking
of ourselves and our own local practices and institutions through a
better understanding of what it is that, in an Aristotelian and Thomistic
perspective, the unity of moral theory and practice now require of us,
we have as much to hope for as we have to do, and not least within the
community of this university.67

It is important to understand what MacIntyre is saying here. He is
saying that the first task of education is to impart the practices and virtues
needed to guide students so that, by apprehending and moving toward
the good, they may reach their final end, which is God. He is also saying
that students formed in this way can work to transform public debate in
the United States, though the prospects are dim. Most importantly, he is
saying that this task is secondary to the primary task of educating students
into living the good life, which is a good in itself. MacIntyre thus argues
for re-ordering the mission of higher education so that the primary task
of forming students in the good life precedes the secondary task of transforming liberal society, so that the mission of “Notre Dame,” so to speak,
precedes any self-appointed mission to “Country.”
All of which is to say that in MacIntyre’s view, the “country”—that is,
the United States of America—is more alien to the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition than our predecessors at Notre Dame imagined. It is
more alien than George Shuster supposed when he decided to erect the
War Memorial at the east door of Sacred Heart Church; more alien than
Fr. McAvoy thought when he wrote the closing paragraphs to his book
on the Americanists; more alien than Fr. Hesburgh assumed when he
pursued for Notre Dame an excellence defined by the prevailing U.S.
culture of higher education; and more alien than the advocates of
academic freedom believed when they insisted on a more “American”
approach to higher education at Notre Dame. Our country is also, to
bring these remarks up to the present, more alien than the preponderance of students, faculty, and staff members assumed when they supported
either John McCain or Barak Obama in the 2008 presidential election,
because neither candidate, nor the party elites who chose them, operates
67 Ibid., 360–61.

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921

out of anything like a single, unitary, albeit complex, moral scheme in the
Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition. And yet, as four-year national election
cycles merge one into the next, the Notre Dame community grows more
and more divided between liberals and conservatives, as does the Church
in the United States at large—both divisions being signs of Catholicism’s
increasing absorption into the partisanship of U.S. political culture.
One consequence of this absorption is that students take on the
virtues associated with pragmatic politics in a religiously and morally
pluralistic society—the virtues of tolerance, civility, and cooperativeness—as their primary virtues, whereas the traditional primary virtues—
justice, fortitude, temperance, and prudence—are subordinated to a
secondary place in their moral lives. This is a familiar pattern in capitalist
society, as MacIntyre noted more than forty years ago in Secularization and
Moral Change.68 Examining the shifts in mores of middle- and workingclass members of churches in England in the late nineteenth century,
MacIntyre observed that the social and economic changes created by the
Industrial Revolution included a moral change as well, with a new
emphasis on what he called “the secondary virtues,” that is, virtues characteristic of a pragmatic approach to problems: “co-operativeness, fairplay, tolerance, a gift for compromise, and fairness.”69 These virtues are
“secondary,” according to MacIntyre, because
their existence in a moral scheme of things as virtues is secondary to, is
if you like parasitic upon, the notion of another primary set of virtues
which are directly related to the goals which [people] pursue as the
ends of their life. The secondary virtues do not assist us in identifying
which ends we should pursue. The assumption made when they are
commended is that [people] are already pursuing certain ends, and that
they have to be told to modify their pursuit of these ends in certain
ways. The secondary virtues concern the way in which we should go
about our projects; their cultivation will not assist us in discovering
upon which projects we ought to be engaged.70

MacIntyre maintained that these secondary virtues became the “public
virtues” of British life in the late nineteenth century. Their distinctive
feature is that they “rule out any kind of metaphysical exclusivism. They
are virtues which express an attitude to the world in which the making of
cosmic and universal claims for one’s own group, or against other groups,
68 Alasdair MacIntyre, Secularization and Moral Change (London: Oxford University

Press), 1967.
69 Ibid., 24.
70 Ibid., 24.

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Michael J. Baxter

is no longer possible.”71 In capitalist societies, and in the liberal political
orders that accompany them, these distinct sets of virtues become
inverted: the secondary virtues—the virtues that enable one to undertake
a pragmatic approach to problems—become primary, while the primary
virtues—those that enable one to pursue the good—become secondary.
Indeed, they become private, leading to “the privatization of good.”
The connection between this inversion of the primary and secondary
virtues and higher education becomes clearer in the light of another essay
of MacIntyre’s from this early period. In “Breaking the Chains of Reason,”
MacIntyre criticized British academics for disregarding the ends of their
inquiry, and for providing reasons for doing so, reasons that limit intellectual inquiry to providing the means for attaining success and freedom in
British society without scrutinizing the ends to which these means are
ordered.72 At one time, he argued, an integrated study of the whole of
society and of human flourishing as such made it possible to apply a standard for critically examining the ends to which scientific research and
technological advances are used. But now [in 1960], without an integrated
social vision and conception of the human as such, modern universities
cannot resist the “moulding pressures of industry and the state.”73 Modern
academics therefore get trapped within “bureaucracies of the mind”
whereby professionalized and specialized modes of inquiry mask a deadening intellectual conformism. The problem is not only that there are no
solutions, but also that the problem itself is never recognized. Thus a key
feature of modern academics is their intellectual blindness to the pressures
under which they labor; their lives and careers are “shaped by events and
decisions which are not of their own making.”74 In much the same way
as members of the working classes of the later nineteenth century,
academics of mid-twentieth-century Britain allow inquiry about the ends
of their work to become marginalized, privatized.
These parallel developments of late-nineteenth-century members of
the working and middle classes and mid-twentieth-century academics are
not, of course, coincidental. Both developments result from bureaucratic
forces that arise with capitalist markets and liberal political orders, forces
that impose pressures on cultural institutions such that the virtues traditionally associated with metaphysical schemes of life get supplanted by
71 Ibid., 25.
72 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Breaking the Chains of Reason,” in Alasdair MacIntyre’s

Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings 1953–1974, ed. Paul Blackledge and
Neil Davidson (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 135–66.
73 Ibid., 144.
74 Ibid., 137.

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923

the virtues accompanying a more pragmatic approach to life. The fact
that MacIntyre offered these diagnoses during his Marxist period, well
before his famous turn to Aristotle and his subsequent turn to Aquinas,
only goes to show the depth of his concern over the loss of primary
virtues to secondary virtues that pervades liberal political culture in
advanced capitalist societies. It also goes to show the importance of his
eventual conclusion that the most effective intellectual antidote to this
disturbing loss is to be found in Thomistic Aristotelianism.
It hardly need be said that these same bureaucratic forces of capitalist
markets and liberal politics have been at work in the United States, so it
is no surprise that a similar inversion of the primary and secondary
virtues can be found at a modern university such as Notre Dame. Many
of us who teach see this in the way our students treat their moral and
religious viewpoints—not so much as matters of truth but as matters of
opinion and preference, so much so that it is difficult to get students to
enter into genuine debate over such serious matters. This tendency to
reduce moral matters to matters of opinion underscores the importance
of a Catholic university in providing curricula that can sponsor sustained
debates among Thomist and other versions of moral inquiry as they
pertain to various disciplines and fields of inquiry. In the final chapter of
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, MacIntyre outlines how such debates
among rival versions of moral inquiry would occur in an Augustinian
university under the carefully constructed conditions of what he calls
“constrained disagreement.”75 His inaugural lecture was one instance of
the kind of debate that could occur regarding politics. His other work
indicates that similar debates can and should be conducted concerning
matters of economics, sociology, history, as well as, of course, philosophy.
A clue as to how such debates would occur concerning the story I
have told about Notre Dame can be found in Three Rival Versions, where
MacIntyre notes that Aquinas synthesized the work of Augustine and
Aristotle so as to provide the resources needed to guide people as
members of a community with a sacred history—Israel and the Church—
and as members of communities with secular political histories.76 Placed
in the context of his critique of capitalist societies and liberal political
orders, the history of Notre Dame that I have sketched suggests that the
sacred and secular histories of Catholics in the United States come into
deeper conflict than was assumed by most Catholic scholars from the
1920s to the 1960s. But this argument can be advanced only with the
help of theology. In conclusion I will suggest how.
75 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 216–36.
76 Ibid., 141–42.

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Michael J. Baxter

Conclusion: “God, Notre Dame, Country”
Throughout the history I have told, admittedly in cursory form, some
Catholic scholars argued on the grounds of theology, or “sacred history,”
that the political and cultural order of the United States is more corrosive
of the Faith than most Catholic scholars imagined. As Gleason shows, there
were some Catholic educators who resisted changes in Catholic curricula
of higher education.77 There were also the traditionalist or “supernaturalist” critics of John Courtney Murray, who feared that his endorsement of
liberal democracy would generate widespread religious indifferentism
among Catholics.78 At the same time, there was also a cluster of theologians associated with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker who argued
or implied that the United States was and is incapable of adhering to key
principles of the natural law that most other Catholic social theorists maintained, theologians such as Paul Hanly Furfey, Virgil Michel, and John J.
Hugo, among others.79 But as the preponderance of Catholic scholars
pushed Catholic scholarship into conversation with the U.S. intellectual
mainstream, these figures were marginalized, left behind, more or less
forgotten as genuine Catholic scholars in the twentieth century.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a similar version of what John Hugo called
“Radical Christianity” was articulated by two theologians at Notre Dame,
John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. As Protestant critics of the
accommodations that most Protestant and Catholic social ethicists were
making to the nation-state, Yoder and Hauerwas challenged the Constantinian assumptions shaping Christian social ethics since the turn of the
twentieth century, arguing that the church itself embodies a social ethic.80
But here too, these critiques were dismissed by Catholic scholars who were
77 The most robust voice along these lines was Fr. George Bill, S.J. See Gleason,

Contending with Modernity, 205–6.
78 For a summary of these figures, see Baxter, “In Service to the Nation,” 428–35.
79 On Furfey, see Baxter, “In Service to the Nation,” 436–43. On Virgil Michel, see

ibid., 357–68, and Michael Baxter, “Reintroducing Virgil Michel: Towards a
Counter-Tradition of Catholic Social Ethics in the United States,” Communio 24
(Fall 1997): 499–528. On Hugo, see Benjamin Peters, “Nature and Grace in the
Theology of John Hugo,” in God, Grace, and Creation: College Theology Society
Annual, vol. 55 (2009), ed. Phillip J. Rossi (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010),
59–78. A helpful account of Hugo’s theology is now to be found in Benjamin
Peters, “John Hugo and American Catholic Theology of Nature and Grace”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Dayton, 2011).
80 The writings of these two theologians are voluminous, but the following are
representative of what they were writing at the time: John Howard Yoder, The
Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972). Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).

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925

striving, yet again, to move Catholic scholarship—in this case, the discipline
of Catholic social ethics—into the intellectual mainstream of the nation,
this time by branding any scripturally, ecclesially based social ethic as “not
Catholic,” as “sectarian.” Shaping this critique of Yoder and Hauerwas was
the assumption, derived from John Courtney Murray, that a Catholic social
ethic must be dedicated to conversing with other religious traditions in a
pluralist society on the basis of the principles of the natural law.81
On this score, two observations can be made. First, this critique was
reinforced by a concept of society inherited from Reinhold and H.
Richard Niebuhr and the liberal Protestant agenda that by this time was
already decisively shaping the discourse of Catholic social ethics.82 Thus
the debate between Yoder and Hauerwas, on the one hand, and the majority of Catholic social ethicists on the other hand, was bound to be shaped
by a tradition of social ethics that was itself both liberal and Protestant—
as indeed it was. Not surprisingly, the debate remained unresolved in the
1980s and 1990s, and remains largely unresolved to this day. Second, the
natural-law critique of Yoder and Hauerwas was advanced by Catholic
social ethicists who themselves were in sharp disagreement about Murray
(Hollenbach and Hehir, for example, versus Novak and Weigel), but who
nevertheless shared Murray’s agenda of transforming public discourse in
the United States with natural-law principles. Rarely, if at all, have the
liberal and conservative adherents of “the Murray Project” considered the
possibility that the U.S. public discourse cannot be transformed by principles of the natural law.83 Nor have they seriously entertained the possibility that their attempt to do so is itself a form of co-optation by and
81 Articulations of this general position can be found in Richard A. McCormick,

S.J., Notes on Moral Theology: 1981 through 1984 (Lanham, MD: University Press
of America, 1984), 21–27, 124–28; David Hollenbach, Justice, Peace, and Human
Rights: American Catholic Ethics in a Pluralistic Context (New York: Crossroad,
1988), 74–79, 168–72; Michael J. Himes and Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M., Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993),
2–27, 186; and the unsigned entry for “Sectarianism” in Encyclopedia of Catholicism, ed. Richard P. McBrien (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995), 1180.
82 Stanley Hauerwas, “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological,” in Against the
Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1985), 23–50; “Christian Ethics in America (and the Journal of Religious Ethics):
A Report on a Book I Will Not Write,” in A Better Hope: Resources for a Church
Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos
Press, 2000), 55–69.
83 Stanley Hauerwas, “The Importance of Being Catholic: Unsolicited Advice from
a Protestant Bystander,” in In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 91–108, see especially 94–97,
100–106.

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Michael J. Baxter

subordination to the nation-state. In response to this second observation,
Catholic social ethicists typically reply that this observation is fideistic,
based on faith claims unsupported by reason, whereas a Catholic social
ethic is based on both faith and reason. And yet, this response assumes that
the non-Constantinian stance advanced by Yoder and Hauerwas cannot be
supported by right reason. Is this assumption true?
Here is where MacIntyre’s version of moral inquiry is crucial. For on
his account of the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition, the natural law does
not provide a public ethic for the modern liberal state, as assumed by
Murray and his successors. Rather, it provides a means of resisting the
modern liberal state, and of the practical reasoning needed to deal with
it without being co-opted by its false claims of “community.”84 In this
sense, the natural law is subversive to the modern liberal state. Just as for
Aquinas, so MacIntyre has argued, it was subversive in relation to the
centralization of political power under reigns of the Frederick II in Sicily
and Louis IX in France, so too in our day, the natural law is subversive to
the centralized, bureaucratically established political power of the United
States.85 But because the repressive mechanisms of the modern state are
exerted not so much by coercive measures, although they do include
those, but by the means of co-optation of subordinate groups in “our
country,” Catholics have been ideologically blinded to its consensusfabricating dynamics.
One way that Catholic scholars succumb to this ideological blindness
is in narrating their own story along the ghetto-to-mainstream plot line
that has dominated histories of Catholicism in the United States at least
since the Fifties. As we have seen, a key episode in that story is “the Americanist crisis” of the late nineteenth century. Recall that McAvoy depicted
Americanism as a “phantom heresy,” a condemnation of theological tenets
that had more to do with Leo XIII’s anxieties about church-state relations in France than with any reservations about developments in
Catholicism in the United States. This reading allowed McAvoy and
other “phantom-heresy” historians of the Fifties to assert that the political and culture mores in the United States posed no threat to the beliefs
and practices of Catholics, and that therefore they could and should move
uninhibitedly from the ghetto into the mainstream, from the sacristy, so
84 Alasdair MacIntyre, “A Partial Response to My Critics,” in After MacIntyre: Crit-

ical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair MacIntyre, ed. John Horton and Susan
Mendus (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 302–3.
85 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Natural Law As Subversive: The Case of Aquinas,” in Ethics
and Politics: Selected Essays,Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
41–63.

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927

to speak, into the social life of the nation. But this reading glosses over
the extent to which the theological propositions condemned by Leo
were part of a broad, international effort to reform the Catholic Church
and render it more conducive to the modern age, including the modern
liberal state as it was instituted in the United States.86 And if that is the
case, then this reading assumes, without saying so, that political community as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas can be adapted to politics in
the United States without distortion or corruption. On this, McAvoy
agreed with fellow historian John Tracy Ellis at Catholic University and
they both agreed with John Courtney Murray.87 But on my reading,
Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s understanding of political community comes
into sharp, perhaps indeed irreconcilable, conflict with liberal democracy
as instituted and practiced in the United States. Elsewhere I have argued
this position on theological grounds.88 In this essay, guided by MacIntyre’s account of the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition, I am saying that
this should be argued on philosophical grounds as well. On both theological and philosophical grounds, then, on the basis of both faith and
reason—two distinct avenues to truth in Catholic teaching—one can,
and should, criticize McAvoy’s reading of the Americanist crisis.
It would be gratuitous to expect a mid-twentieth-century U.S.
Catholic historian such as McAvoy to share the skepticism toward the
politics of the modern liberal state of a late-twentieth-century philosopher such as MacIntyre. But this skepticism was evident in some Thomist
philosophers at the middle of the century, including one at Notre Dame,
namely, Yves Simon. In articulating a philosophy in which democracy
and political authority are based on natural law, Simon envisioned the
prospect of renewing politics in the United States, but he was more
circumspect than Maritain, who seemed willing to give his newfound
homeland the benefit of the doubt, and certainly more so than Murray,
whose optimism about renewing political life in the United States was
unexhaustible. The difficulties in reaching common agreement without
consensus on explanatory principles, the risk of individualism being
86 William L. Portier, “Americanism,” s.v., Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed.

Daniel G. Reid et al. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 53–56.
87 For the way in which both Ellis and Murray worked within the Americanist

tradition, see Michael J. Baxter, “Writing History in a World without Ends,” Pro
Ecclesia 5 (Fall 1996): 440–69, 443–52.
88 Michael J. Baxter, “Notes on Catholic Americanism and Catholic Radicalism:
Toward a Counter-Tradition of Catholic Social Ethics,” in American Catholic
Traditions: Resources for Renewal, College Theology Society Annual, vol. 42 (1996), ed.
Sandra Yocum Mize and William Portier (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997),
53–71.

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Michael J. Baxter

raised to an ideology, the problem of aristocratic vice being distributed to
the masses, the challenges of technology, and the waning of rural life as a
reliable means of virtuous self-government—these were key problems
with democratic government of which Simon was acutely aware. His
careful account of these problems led to a more chastened view of the
prospects of genuine political community within modern democratic
states.89 There are resources, therefore, within the history of scholarship
at Notre Dame in the twentieth century, for arriving at conclusions
consonant with MacIntyre’s.
In concluding his inaugural lecture in 1990, MacIntyre noted that the
central duty of educators is to pass on to students the lessons we have
learned from the past, that they may gain wisdom as they move into the
future. At the heart of my argument, the wisdom is this: those who attempt
to manage the state end up getting managed by the state.We need to teach
students the skills and virtues needed to know this and to recognize it
when it is happening. Admittedly, this is high-sounding rhetoric, whereas
the actual, concrete task requires the scholarly work of correcting the
errors of the past so as to avoid repeating them in the future. Given the
corrosive dynamics of the modern state on communities whose institutions, practices, and virtues are aimed at realizing the good, it is not clear
whether a university such as Notre Dame is capable of the task. MacIntyre leaves this question unanswered, perhaps because the answer would
have been too pessimistic for the occasion of an inaugural lecture. Accomplishing this task would be monumental, but no less monumental than the
tasks accomplished in the past. If we have the courage to pursue this present task with resolve and imagination equal to that of our predecessors,
we may be able to impart the wisdom we have acquired to our students.
If so, when they pass by the War Memorial of the east door of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart or pass through its doors, they may get into the
habit of re-thinking the mission of the University in keeping with its
properly re-ordered priorities: God, Notre Dame, Country.
N&V

89 See Russell Hittinger, introduction to The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher’s

Reflections by Yves Simon (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), xxxii, n. 10.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 929–46

929

The (Lost) Idea of the University*
D OUGLAS FARROW
McGill University
Montreal, Canada

I N HIS seminal Political Theory article of 1984, Michael Sandel lamented
“the gradual shift, in our practices and institutions, from a public philosophy of common purposes to one of fair procedures, from a politics of
good to a politics of right, from the national republic to the procedural
republic.”1 The university, we may say—and the two facts are certainly
connected—has undergone an analogous shift, to the point where it is no
longer reasonable to think of it as a universitas, a single community with
a common center and purpose. By 1963 Clark Kerr had already redubbed it the multiversity: “a series of processes producing a series of
results—a mechanism held together by administrative rules and powered
by money.”2 It has come to resemble, in Cardinal Newman’s words, “a
sort of bazaar, or pantechnicon, in which wares of all kinds are heaped
together for sale in stalls independent of each other.”3
This is not all bad, let us admit, for its wares and results are often impressive, as Kerr observed in his Godkin lectures. A good “multiversity” (I
gratefully work at one) is still a fine place, or can be, both for students and
for professional scholars, not to speak of the many others it employs. There
is a moral vacuum at its heart, however, into which raw utilitarianism has
* I would like to thank my colleague, Daniel Cere, for his helpful comments on

this essay, and the McGill Newman Centre for inviting me to give the 2010
Newman Lecture.
1 Michael J. Sandel, “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” Political Theory 12 (1984): 81–96, at 93.
2 Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1963; 5th ed. 2001), 20.
3 John Henry Newman, Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education,
1852 (E-Texts for Victorianists, ed. Alfred J. Drake, 2001), Discourse V, 139.

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Douglas Farrow

for some time been rushing. “American higher education,” wrote Kerr
more recently, “began as an effort at moral uplift. It continues as an effort
to get a good or better job. A life of affluence is replacing a philosophy of
life as the main purpose of higher education.”4
Now we ought to exercise caution concerning this talk of moral uplift
and a philosophy of life. Was not Michael Oakeshott essentially right in
describing more modestly the university’s distinctive gift to the undergraduate as “the gift of an interval”5 for the purpose of developing the art of
conversation? This art, or rather this conversation, might lead to a philosophy of life, but the immediate object of education is simply “to enable a man
to make his own thought clear and to attend to what passes before him.”6
That was also Newman’s view:“Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply
the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less
than intellectual excellence.”7 The characteristic virtues of the university,
therefore, must be those that create space and opportunity for patient attention and for undistracted scrutiny. But of course this supposition requires
precisely that we resist a utilitarian approach to university education and that
we reject the indiscriminate multiplication of specializations. If it does not
permit us to expect the university to provide students with moral integrity
or a coherent worldview, it does require that the university maintain the
communal virtues conducive to the art of conversation and that it repudiate “that most dismal of all sentiments: scientia propter potentiam”—the pursuit
of knowledge merely for the sake of power.8
On the other hand, it should be observed that this repudiation is
already a turning towards the good and, as such, a moral turning. Though
moral uplift and moral formation and the achievement of a philosophy of
life require higher resources than the university can provide—though it be
entirely true that, even when the university introduces students to some
4 Kerr, The Uses of the University, 221. Insofar as that is the case, it helps to explain

a declining interest in the humanities, though the decline of the humanities
themselves provides a more immediate explanation. Whether it helps to explain
a decline in our democracy too (cf. Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit:Why Democracy Needs the Humanities [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010]) is
more difficult to say; perhaps it works the other way round.
5 Michael Oakeshott, “The Idea of a University” (1950), in The Voice of Liberal
Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1989), 101.
6 Oakeshott, “The Universities” (1949), in The Voice of Liberal Learning, 133.
7 Newman, Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, Discourse VI, 196.
8 Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning, 128. “The problem of the universities
today is how to avoid destruction at the hands of men who have no use for their
characteristic virtues, men who are convinced that ‘knowledge is power’ ” (130).

The (Lost) Idea of the University

931

of those resources in their literary form, it is powerless to render them
effective against human frailty and sin9—the decision against mere utility,
and in favor of a liberal education as the university’s main object, is itself
a moral decision shaped by our Hellenic and Judeo-Christian heritage.10
To this we must advert again lest we prove, not to be over-cautious,
but to be cautious in the wrong way. Meanwhile, let us ask what follows
from the advance of utilitarianism and from the decline of the university’s
characteristic virtues—the communal virtues that make for good scholarly conversation and for a universitas.
A Brief Pathology
Among the consequences I want to mention are the following:11
First, a decline in autonomy; that is, a new susceptibility to the political and economic and ideological forces that seek to manipulate or even
dictate the terms of the university’s work. While such forces have always
been in play (recall, say, Cromwellian Oxford) the weakness of the modern
university makes it easier, perhaps more willing, prey.12 Neither as a universitas scholarum nor as a universitas scientorum can it claim the degree of
integrity, internal accountability, or fortitude necessary to resist subduction
as it engages the greater and lesser causes of the day.The difficulty in maintaining its independence from state and market has even led some to speak
of a crisis of the university.13 While that may be an exaggeration—crises,
9 “Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk;

then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride
of man” (Newman, Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, Discourse VI, 196).
10 To repudiate raw utilitarianism is not, of course, to repudiate utility as such, but
through affirmation of the good to place means in proper relation to ends, and
ends in proper relation to each other. Oakeshott, unlike Newman, takes too little
account of this in his rendering of the good of the university, though that is
understandable in view of the provocation provided by Sir Walter Moberly.
11 The list might be much longer, and the list of remedial steps much longer yet;
when it comes to the latter, I intend to concentrate on one only.
12 The failure of Berlin, the prototypical modern university, to resist either the
Kaiser or the Führer is frequently cited in this connection.
13 Cf. William Neilson and Chad Gaffield, Universities in Crisis: A Mediaeval Institution in the Twenty-First Century (Montreal: The Institute for Research on Public
Policy, 1986). Bill Readings’s The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996) is more pessimistic, but the object of his consideration has
a brief lifespan of but two centuries. Mark Taylor has proclaimed a quite different kind of crisis, and a solution attuned to the global marketplace, in Crisis on
Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities (New York: Knopf,
2010). Taylor’s book, I think, is susceptible to the same critique with which

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Douglas Farrow

in any case, “ye shall always have with you” and it is a great mistake to
over-react—it is safe to say that the peculiar good of the university that
determines its proper activity, and its autonomy in that activity, is not as
clear as once it was.
Second, creeping bureaucratization. Behind the still impressive mediaeval façades, featuring “provosts” and “deans” and other remnants of an
almost forgotten symbolic world,14 is a growing army of administrative
officers whose task is more managerial than academic; who indeed find
reason, or are given it by their counterparts in the Ministry of Education,
to bury their colleagues in procedural considerations and in the paperwork that apparently holds the whole contraption together. In short, the
tendency of the multiversity—the diverse ends of which are not ordered
to a common goal—is to undermine the communal life on which a good
education, like a healthy republic, depends,15 and to replace it with
committee life. Such is the price of elevating procedure over purpose, and
form over content.16 What is to be rationalized in the modern university,
and reduced to order, is first and foremost the university itself. But the
bazaar that the university has become is not really capable of any persistent order; hence the endless rounds of tinkering that keep everyone busy
with matters managerial.
Third, disciplinary inflation—by which I mean the tendency of a discipline to become indistinct, not knowing its own limits. What Benedict
XVI referred to in his Regensburg lecture as “attempts to construct an
ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology” is
one rather important example.17 A different example might be drawn
from English or other literature departments, say, which these days do
double service as departments of post-modern philosophy. Or from geography and environmental units, which may go so far as to fancy themselves
saviors of the world.This, of course, is what Newman foresaw and warned
Oakeshott demolished Moberly’s The Crisis of the Universities (London: SCM,
1949)—a “peculiarly faithless” book, according to Oakeshott, having “the hysterical atmosphere of a revivalist meeting” (109).
14 Cf. Patrick J. Deneen, “Science and the Decline of the Liberal Arts,” The New
Atlantis No. 26 (Fall 2009/Winter 2010): 60f.
15 Cf. Sandel, “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” 93.
16 And of unitarian over trinitarian theology, which preceded this; but I am getting
ahead of myself. On the ascendency of the bureaucrat over the professor, see
Readings (pp. 3, 8), who refers us to Alphonso Borrero Cabal’s The University as
an Institution Today (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1993).
17 Such attempts are “simply inadequate” (“Faith, Reason and the University:
Memories and Reflections,” Lecture of the Holy Father, 12 September 2006,
University of Regensburg).

The (Lost) Idea of the University

933

against, when in his Fifth Discourse he pointed out that “one science is
ever pressing upon another, unless kept in check; and the only guarantee
of Truth is the cultivation of them all.” Such, he insisted, “is the office of
a University.”18
Fourth, sliding standards and grade inflation. Need it be said that far too
many students today, even at elite universities, have a remarkably narrow
range of historical reference points, miss most literary allusions, are unable
to recognize and avoid standard fallacies in argumentation, and haven’t the
faintest idea how to use a semi-colon—that their primary and secondary
education, in other words, has not brought them even as far as an elementary mastery of the trivium? These same students are bemused by the
expectation that they should learn to inhabit the library; in spite of their
failure to do so, they nonetheless find the awarding of a C or even a B
(leaving aside the D or F they may deserve) an enormous insult. All of this
goes quite naturally, however, with the consumerism that characterizes the
multiversity and with the democratization of higher education.19
Fifth, disoriented students. The shift from a politics of good to a politics of right has unhinged an entire civilization. The analogous shift in
education from the pursuit of wisdom, or at least of some knowledge of
the good, to the mere provision of degrees has unhinged recent generations of students. Our best universities may aspire, as McGill does, to be
“research-intensive and student-centered,” but that begs the question as to
what they can contribute to the student’s own centeredness or integrity.
Can they help their students, even indirectly, to discover what a human
being is and what makes for human flourishing? If not, how can they help
them decide what research is worth pursuing and under what conditions?
In this connection it is worth noticing that we now have ethics committees to oversee almost everything done in the university, but (vague
gestures in the direction of human dignity notwithstanding) these
18 Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, Discourse V, 136. (This

discourse, unfortunately, was not included in the The Idea of a University, in which
the Fifth Discourse is actually Newman’s sixth.) Oakeshott makes his approach
from the other side but observes the same shallowness: “the real defect of a
specialism does not spring from its failure to be the whole, or [even] its failure
to know its place in the whole to which it belongs, but when it succeeds in being
no more than superficial within its own limits” (The Voice of Liberal Learning, 132).
19 If there is a crisis in the university today it has something to do with “the altogether excessive number of undergraduates” (Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal
Learning, 117). To immerse oneself in a great crowd is not the way to develop the
art of conversation, nor is everyone fitted for the kind of conversation the
university seeks. The reintroduction of challenging entrance exams would go
some way towards addressing this problem.

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Douglas Farrow

committees seldom rise to the challenge of wrestling with fundamental
questions. Shall we conduct research on human embryos, modify germ
lines, harvest fetal matter, etc.? Such questions are not addressed because
we no longer have the necessary confidence to address them; and we do
not have the confidence because in ethics, too, we are no more than a
procedural republic. In the procedural republic such matters are left to
lobbyists, not ethicists, or to ethicists who are but lobbyists. And the lobbyists know their business. They know how to turn “right” into rights, and
“rights” into wrongs20—which is just what happens when right is
detached from good.21
Sixth, academic hucksterism. One problem with the pantechnicon is
that it carries the counterfeit as well as the real, the imitation as well as the
genuine article; and this is increasingly the case in the multiversity as it
rumbles down the road from one stop to the next. Take, for example, the
multiplying artifacts of the social constructionists, who proffer their wares
these days throughout the entire spectrum of the humanities. Gender
studies and sexual diversity programs are their bread and butter, but in
various other ways they promote the anti-scientific notion that the
universe has no order but the order we choose to give it—in short, that
there is no such thing as the universe but only the kaleidoscopic, quickly
collapsible, and ultimately unintelligible worlds that we choose to make
for ourselves.22 Is it not time to acknowledge that this notion, however
partnered with genuine insights in social psychology, is inimical to the
20 Indeed, into what would be plain silliness—witness, for example, the “all-comers”

policy of the Hastings School of Law, recently upheld by the Supreme Court (561
U.S. 2010)—were it not an evil kind of silliness.
21 Perhaps in this paragraph I sound more like Moberly than like Oakeshott, who
rightly worries that too much emphasis on acquiring a philosophy of life risks turning the university into a worthless “forum for the discussion of ideologies”
(Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning, 122). But we must place this worry in the
context of the latter’s broader concerns:“A university will have ceased to exist when
its learning has degenerated into what is now called research, when its teaching has
become mere instruction and occupies the whole of an undergraduate’s time, and
when those who came to be taught come, not in search of their intellectual fortune
but with a vitality so unroused or exhausted that they wish only to be provided with
a serviceable moral and intellectual outfit; when they come with no understanding
of the manners of conversation but desire only a qualification for earning a living
or a certificate to let them in on the exploitation of the world” (104). What
Oakeshott is trying to avoid—utilitarianism—can be avoided only if moral development (as opposed to a moral “outfit”) is recognized as something essential.
22 This view we are presently in danger of incorporating into law via “gender identity” legislation; cf. Farrow, “Blurring Sexual Boundaries,” First Things (March
2011): 17–19.

The (Lost) Idea of the University

935

whole idea of the university and toxic to society as such? On the part of
the physical sciences, we might mention the global warming débâcle,
complete with peer review cartels and manipulated data, but there is no
need to go into that. Suffice it to say that the manners of scholarly conversation have been violated here as well, under pressure of ideologies that
have insinuated themselves into the university. Disoriented students, it may
be added, are easily misled by sophists and their pseudo-disciplines, as they
are easily misled by the provocations of Frosh Week; and they get no help
from those who can only shrug their shoulders when faced with the question “What is good?” or wash their hands at the question “What is truth?”
Seventh, the elevation of the art of conversation into “a separate
techne,” as Oakeshott puts it;23 that is, into a discipline in its own right,
perhaps even into a master discipline presiding over the circle of learning—as if the medium really were the message (something literally true,
as McLuhan knew, only in the case of Christ). Here the classroom also
becomes a procedural republic, in which more and more importance is
ascribed to the process of communication and less and less to what is
communicated. Call it attending to attending, rather than attending to
what passes before a man. I do not deny that there is something to be
gained from this; but it nurtures the narcissistic tendency in contemporary education and concedes too much to its (open or hidden) anthropological assumptions. But we must not embark now on that topic.24
Building the Bazaar
If we pause to ask how the shift whose consequences we have been tracing came about—that is, how Newman’s bazaar was built—we might
begin with Newman’s own analysis: it was built by disjoining education
from religion.25 “You will soon break up into fragments the whole circle
of secular knowledge,” claimed Newman, “if you begin the mutilation
with divine”; for “Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition
of general knowledge.”26 It is a portion, in that God gives himself to be
23 Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning, 126
24 I have said something about it in my expert’s report in Loyola and Zucchi v.

Courschesne (Québec Superior Court No. 500-17-045278-085), available at
www.mcgill.ca/prpp.
25 That disjunction, argued Newman (Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, Discourse II, 37f.), was the consequence of the Lutheran tendency
to reduce religion to a matter of private judgment, and of the pragmatic decision of liberal statesmen that if, for the purpose of public education, society
cannot have one religion, it shall have none.
26 Ibid., 45 (Discourse II) and 101 (Discourse III). With this statement Charles
Taylor would seem to agree, if I am not misreading A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA:

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Douglas Farrow

known by the creature, and the science of God is therefore a positive
science, analogous to other sciences.27 It is a condition, in that the science
of God, though but one science among others, is necessary for the
completeness and perfection of the rest.While this is true of every science,
it is especially true of theology, to remove which is to unravel the whole
web of liberal education, making it “a mere fortuitous heap of acquisitions
and accomplishments.”28 Only theology can underwrite the unity of
knowledge, for only theology deals with the first and final cause of all that
is. In other words, it was no accident that the university was originally a
religious institution, built round the great cathedrals and chapter houses of
Christian Europe. For the universitas depends upon some grasp of the
universum, and that is ultimately a theological achievement.29
From this perspective, the unraveling of the university began already
in the era of the philosophes, who had (with some justification) a very low
view of theology and a very high view of their republic of letters.30 It
began just as “the education of the human race” was coming into focus
and the first encyclopedias were being written. There was then much
Belknap Press, 2007) at 768; but it is interesting that neither Newman nor the
university merits an entry in the index of this very large book. Is there some
Illichian instinct that steers Taylor away?
27 We cannot take up the different ways in which it is a positive science—or their
sometimes controversial relation—though these are generally considered under
the rubrics of natural and revealed theology.
28 Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, 141 (Discourse V); cf.
100f.: “I say then, if the various branches of knowledge, which are the matter of
teaching in a University, so hang together, that none can be neglected without
prejudice to the perfection of the rest, and if Theology be a branch of knowledge,
of wide reception, of philosophical structure, of unutterable importance, and of
supreme influence, to what conclusion are we brought from these two premises
but this? that to withdraw Theology from the public schools, is to impair the
completeness and to invalidate the trustworthiness of all that is actually taught in
them. . . . In a word, Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of
general knowledge. To blot it out, is nothing short, if I may so speak, of unravelling the web of University Education. It is, according to the Greek proverb, to take
the Spring from out the year; it is to imitate the preposterous proceeding of those
tragedians, who represented a drama with the omission of its principal part.”
29 We may concede to Oakeshott that it is not always necessary to have consciously
before us, whether individually or institutionally, this dependence and this
achievement. Moreover, we may admit that “the world of knowledge never has
been integrated by a Summa” (The Voice of Liberal Learning, 133), nor can be.
Nevertheless, I think we must agree with Newman that the relation of dependence exists and find Oakeshott’s analysis wanting insofar as it fails to treat of it.
30 Even of Plato’s call for properly rational forms of God-talk (tupoi peri theologias,
Republic 379a) they were suspicious, though Kant somewhat grudgingly repeated
that call in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793).

The (Lost) Idea of the University

937

enthusiasm for universal knowledge, but that enthusiasm was distinctly atheological and even anti-metaphysical. Theology, having lost touch with
its own fundamentals, was in no position to defend itself.31 It was
discredited in the eyes of many by the unresolved disputes of the Reformation, and by the wars of religion that followed the Reformation. The
mutilation of the divine had preceded the mutilation of Europe itself, and
the mutilation of Europe seemed ample reason to lop the theological
head off the body of human knowledge.32
Hobbes struck an early blow by attacking “Aristotelity,” by which he
meant, not merely Greek or Christian teleology, but any reification of the
virtues that might undermine civil peace by permitting religious obligations (backed by the transcendent) to trump or transform political obligations.33 Other blows were struck later by the likes of Rousseau, Lessing,
and Kant. That the so-called wars of religion were really power struggles
between the great families of Europe, once religion (being itself divided)
was no longer a restraining force, was conveniently overlooked. So too
was the fact that the new physics and other experimental sciences, which
were touted by some as the fruit of independence from theology—the
Galileo myth was invented for that purpose—had their roots deep into
the very doctrine that fundamentally distinguishes the Christian idea of
the universum from its Greek and Enlightenment counterparts: creatio ex
nihilo.34 But with the mention of creatio ex nihilo, we should be reminded
that the unraveling actually began much earlier than any of this. In fact,
the malaise of the multiversity must be traced back into the late middle
ages; that is to say, to a point much nearer its origins. That point was the
rise of nominalism, without which any subsequent reformation would
doubtless have looked quite different.
31 See Michael Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1987).
32 Since philosophy aspired to take its place, it was not yet understood what had

been lost. Indeed it was not yet understood in Newman’s time: “A philosophical
comprehensiveness, an orderly expansiveness, an elastic constructiveness, men
have lost them, and cannot make out why.This is why: because they have lost the
idea of unity: because they cut off the head of a living thing, and think it is
perfect, all but the head” (Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, 142f., Discourse V).
33 Of Aristotle himself Hobbes retained only enough—a modified hierarchy of
disciplines corresponding to his re-evaluation of virtue in the absence of any
summum bonum other than worldly “peace”—to provide a pedestal for his new
political science. Cf. Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 37ff.
34 Cf. Gerhard May, Creatio ex nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early
Christian Thought (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984).

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A quick explanation: Creatio ex nihilo, though well articulated by the
end of the second century, was dogmatized in the thirteenth against
another kind of “Aristotelity”—an Averroist kind that threatened to draw
the West back into some form of determinism.This ecclesiastical decision
in favor of contingency over necessity helped pave the way for the experimental sciences and for the discovery, inter alia, of the first law of
motion.35 It also paved the way for nominalism, but the way the nominalists construed God’s freedom was deeply flawed. They rejected the
extra-mental reality of forms or essences on the grounds that, even if
brought into existence by God, such entities would then limit God’s own
freedom. Their emphasis on what Scotus called haecceitas certainly helped
to cultivate the attention now being paid to the particular in its contingency and otherness—the sine qua non of modern science. But their stress
on the arbitrariness of divine power, the unpredictability of divine decisions, and the discreteness of divine acts, profoundly weakened confidence in the unity of knowledge and of the universe itself.36
Confidence in the unity of knowledge was already in jeopardy, of
course, before nominalism became prevalent in the fourteenth century.
When Bishop Stephen (d. 1279) accused certain scholars in Paris of holding the notion that there are two distinct realms of truth—one theological and the other philosophical or natural—realms that need not and
perhaps could not be harmonized, he rightly suspected that this notion
was a threat not only to theology but to all sound learning. From the
notion that there were two truths would eventually come the notion that
there are many truths, or rather a return to the skeptic’s notion that there
is no truth at all. That indeed has become an astonishingly popular view,
despite the fact that it is fatal to all science and to civil politics as well, as
it is to the idea and function of the university. Its popularity has been fed
by a related feature of nominalism, viz., an attraction to mind–body dualism and hence to an unseemly exaltation of the human will,37 which
now finds its god-likeness in an equally arbitrary kind of freedom: freedom from nature rather than for nature; or at all events freedom to see
“nature” as something posited by us as an expression of our own autonomy or will to power.
35 See Stanley L. Jaki, The Saviour of Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press,

1990), chap. 2, though a fuller pre-history of Newton’s first law can be given.
Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009), chap. 1. Regrettably, this highly stimulating
book on the role of nominalism is marred by its Procrustean tendency.
37 Cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic
Philosophical Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2009), chap. 12.

36 Cf. Michael Allen

The (Lost) Idea of the University

939

Today we are a long way down this road, which helps to explain why
the humanities, which for a time tried to ape the physical sciences, are
growing ever more alienated from them, as indeed from one another.That
is the inevitable consequence of their propensity for the arbitrary, and of
their susceptibility to this or that form of social constructivism. Theology,
in many universities, is the most alienated of all, even where it does its best
to ape the constructivism that now dominates the humanities. If it is to
recover its own vitality, and so also its proper role in academia as a minister of unity, it will have to recognize again its own character as a positive
science.38 It will also have to show that nominalism and its offspring
represent the perversion of a sound idea. Who told the nominalists that
God could not remain God (that is, genuinely free) if in his act of creation
he bound his world, and so also himself as guarantor of that world, to real
forms and solid laws and unbreakable promises? Who told their postReformation heirs that freedom is incompatible both with law and with
promise? Who told their late-modern progeny that man, whether to be
like God or perhaps even to be God, must exalt his will above all things,
and only so be free? Who told them that not only society, but even the
university, must abandon any pursuit of a comprehensive or universal
truth? That it must cease being, not only theological, but a university?
Rediscovering the University
The search for the universitas is not quite dead in today’s multiversity, even
where theology evinces few signs of revival. It shows up, for example, in the
creation of inter-disciplinary programs that attempt, as it were, to do theology’s work. This was brought home to me in a recent committee meeting
at my own university, during which a new inter-faculty major in “Sustainability, Science, and Society” came up for consideration. At first glance the
proposal seemed almost Newmanesque in its commitment to combine
science and technology with economics and governance, and both with
ethics and justice, creating a partnership that spanned the sciences and the
humanities in its pursuit of “a transition to sustainability.” Of course, I had
my usual qualms about the word “sustainability”—an adjective clumsily
masquerading as a noun that sits awkwardly alongside “science” and “society.” I was also a little worried that this partnership between Geography and
the School of the Environment seemed blissfully unaware of two supposed
partners of the latter, namely, Philosophy and Religious Studies. But what
really gave me pause for thought were its apocalyptic premises and soteriological aspirations—both articulated with a confidence few theological
38 Signs

of this revival have been apparent from the pontificate of Leo XIII
onwards, and, in Protestant circles, from Barth (if not from Kierkegaard) onwards.

940

Douglas Farrow

programs would dare emulate.“At the dawn of a new millennium, we stand
at a critical juncture in human history,” began the rationale. “In the face of
multiple threats,” it asserted, “the grand challenge of the twenty-first
century is Sustainable Well-Being.”39 And Sustainable Well-Being (capitals
and all) is what the program meant to help deliver. Indeed, its supporters
spoke quite happily about wanting to “save the world.”40
I wish them well, of course, as one who also lives in the world. But I
found myself having to object to their appeal to apocalyptic worries and
millennarian dreams, since these are not appropriate foundations for an
academic program, and having to point out that some of the offerings
were not properly based in recognizable disciplines, particularly where
the important “justice, equity, and ethics” pillar was concerned (which
seemed a rather shaky attempt at moral uplift). Moreover, I had to point
out that the program was likely to encourage intellectual dilettantism
among crusading students and instructors41—in short, that it appeared to
be an example not so much of genuine inter-disciplinarity as of that
disciplinary inflation against which Newman had warned.
Genuine inter-disciplinarity, as a function of the universitas, is something with which theology can help, I believe, because it can help with
the very idea of the university. Here let it be said that I do not subscribe
(as my readers may think) to some Platonic or Romantic myth of a true
universitas from which we have fallen and to which we may now aspire
to return. Nor do I mean to suggest that Newman’s proposals for a more
authentic universitas are achievable under present conditions, or to imply
that increasing the ranks of the theologians must substantially change
present conditions. But I do think that Newman is right that there is, or
ought to be, such a thing as a university; and that what at first approximated a university has less claim now to that designation than it did
before.To correct its course we will have to take up again, not an attempt
to save the world, which was never the university’s purpose, but a determined pursuit of the good as the proper ground of all our talk about the
common good, or even about private goods. Which means that we will
have to take theology seriously once again in the university.
39 A later defense of the document appealed to the university’s Sustainability Policy,

which aims at making McGill “a leader in research and education, creating and
communicating the knowledge required for humans to live sustainably at the
local, regional and global scales.”
40 The university that marginalizes theology will not eradicate soteriological interests; it will merely be uncritical of them.
41 Mark Taylor’s proposals (abolishing departments in favor of problem-oriented
joint projects, etc.) would seem to court the same danger. Newman, by the way,
makes no appearance in Crisis on Campus.

The (Lost) Idea of the University

941

Theology, as Daniel Cere observed some years ago, “is a discourse
which moves the God question, the question of the ‘supreme good,’ to
center stage.”42 Newman, he argued, was convinced that “the renaissance
of a more enriched and substantive debate on the question of the good
is dependent upon one crucial requirement—the revival of a vibrant
theistic discourse within the academy.”43 The university that welcomes
such a revival is a university committed to the unity of knowledge as well
as the diversity of disciplines. This commitment will be reflected both in
the standards it maintains and in the students it attracts and produces.
Belief in the unity of knowledge immediately declares the need for
competence in things necessary (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) to
sound communication within and between disciplines. In other words, it
lends significance even to the humble semicolon. At the same time, it
makes a rudimentary knowledge of history and literature, math and
science, art and music, philosophy and theology, indispensable as the
prerequisite to specialization or to the higher vocations. Neither in
secondary nor in tertiary education is this broad, rudimentary knowledge
still common, however, or the necessity thereof commonly upheld. Sliding standards are both a cause and a consequence, in a vicious cycle mediated by our faculties of education. Another consequence is declining
interest in the humanities, especially among men, who at the undergraduate level are now outnumbered in Arts faculties two to one.44
42 Cere, “Newman, God, and the Academy,” Theological Studies 55 (1994): 14;

reprinted as “Theology to the Rescue” in The Wilson Quarterly (Summer 1994).
43 Cere, “Newman, God, and the Academy,” 23. This crucial requirement, he noted,

was missing in Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (New York:Touchstone Press, 1987), which “implicitly raises, then delicately begs . . . the fundamental question, the question of the ‘supreme good’ or the ‘universal end’ ” (3).
Ironically it was missing also in the postmodern project of John Milbank, whose
Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell 1990) refused to confine theology
to the place afforded it by the likes of Weber, Durkheim, and Troeltsch, but
instead took it to the azure heights of an almost Nietzschean superiority. Cere
highlights Milbank’s differences with Newman and with MacIntyre—differences
that are undoubtedly as real as his differences, say, with Slavoj Z∑ izek.
„ But mention
of the Milbank–Z∑ izek
„ debate (see The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?
ed. C. Davis [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009]) may serve to remind us just
how dated Newman’s idea of a “vibrant theistic discourse” must seem today. In
its way, it may also serve to raise fruitful questions about Newman’s conception
of theology and its place among the disciplines, about which Milbank and even
Z∑ izek
„ have their own ideas.
44 At McGill, Theology (like Law and Science, e.g.) has achieved an almost even
balance, slightly favoring men, while Education runs at almost three to one in
favor of women.

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Douglas Farrow

The courage to confront such problems can only come from a reaffirmation of the unity of knowledge; that is, from a commitment—already
theological—that strikes at the heart of the relativism and pragmatism to
which the multiversity has fallen prey. Where that courage is not found,
even the good multiversity, in its steady decline from the idea of the
university, will in due course cease to be good, or good at very much.
And this will be true of its students as well, unless they are able to draw
on sources of goodness alien to the institution that purports to educate
them. The university, let us not hesitate to admit, has a very raw sort of
material with which to work; those entrusted to its care need both direction and discipline, as do those who do the caring. (Here another ecclesiastical intervention in Bishop Stephen’s time comes to mind—the
proclamation of A.D. 1269 “against Clerks and Scholars who go about
Paris armed by Day and Night and commit Crimes”!) But this also
requires courage. Where that courage is lacking, as so often it is among
the priesthood of the bureaucrats, the field is left open to predators who
find in the university endless opportunity for mischief. Among these may
be numbered those who prey on the bodies of the naïve or the disillusioned, heedless of the betrayal of their persons. More subtle are those
who prey on gullible minds, who cultivate what Whittaker Chambers
called “the treason of ideas,” dedicated as they are “to the purpose of
betraying the institutions they live under.”45
With all of this, theology can help, if we let it. That is because theology, while tempered by philosophy and by its dialogue with other key
disciplines, has resources deriving from a community higher and greater
than the university. It therefore transcends, without sublating, the main
object of liberal education. In the regular conduct of its own peculiar
disciplinary tasks, it participates both in the work of disciplining the mind
for the art of scholarly conversation and in the work of cultivating a
philosophy of life that does not stop short of moral and spiritual formation.46 That is to say: theology, particularly where it is committed to the
axiom gratia non tollit sed perficit naturam, provides not only a bridge
between disciplines but also a bridge between the university as an institution of the “interval” and the social institutions (including especially
45 Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington, DC: Regnery Press, 1980), 524.
46 Theology, in abstraction from the liturgy in which it has its foundations, cannot

provide that formation or enable the university to provide it, which in any case
is not the university’s task. But if, as Christopher Dawson argues in The Crisis of
Western Education (1961; 2nd ed. Princeton 2010), a renewed awareness of the
spiritual component in culture is necessary for the recovery of the university,
theology can certainly help with that.

The (Lost) Idea of the University

943

religious institutions) that structure the whole of life. It was traffic across
this bridge that created the university in the first place. What is more,
theology can mediate between the university’s primary task of offering a
liberal education (think “student-centered”) and its secondary task of
advancing the disciplines themselves (think “research-intensive”). It can
help keep these in their proper relation, which is necessary in order to
distinguish a university qua university from independent research establishments, without diminishment of either.47
But is the rejoining of education to religion, even to the limited extent
of restoring theology to an active role in the university, thinkable today?
Would that not entail a deepening of the problem of autonomy that has
already, at least in some minds, reached crisis proportions? Would it not
offend the dearest principles of secularism and of pluralisme normatif ? A
lot of water has passed under the bridge since the founding of the
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in A.D. 1809 as the prototypical modern
university, or of University College London in 1826, or of McGill about
that same time,48 or of Johns Hopkins in 1876. Theology may have had
a prominent place in the first of these, which retained the traditional four
faculties (Theology, Law, Medicine, and Philosophy), but even there it
was set on a new trajectory determined by revisionist forces.Today Berlin
does not list theology among its topic areas.49 Most public and private
47 Jaroslav Pelikan pushes Newman in the right direction in The Idea of the Univer-

sity: A Reexamination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992)—a book, I
confess, I have only just begun to read—but Newman, for his part, doubted the
capacity of the university to offer a liberal education if it really intended to be
research-intensive. (Cf. Michael J. Hofstetter, The Romantic Idea of the University:
England and Germany 1770–1850 [New York: Palgrave 2001], 130ff.) It seems to
me, however, that theology itself requires a research-intensive approach, albeit
one that effectively resists the temptation to isolation and de-personalization. At
the same time, it must certainly confront the tendency produced by the complex,
large-scale operations that are necessary in managing the physical and social
sciences to strip the university of its conversational character, and to impose on
other disciplines inapposite funding, accountability, and organizational structures.
48 McGill was chartered in 1821 and became operative in 1829.
49 Schleiermacher, who helped found the University of Berlin, drafted the charter
for theology’s capitulation to the new order, while attempting to preserve a place
for his dethroned discipline by putting it into the service of the cult of progress.
That place, however, like the cult of progress itself, shrunk dramatically in the
second half of the twentieth century. The reasons for that are as much systemic
as circumstantial. For in Protestant realms, as I have observed elsewhere, there has
been a pronounced tendency in theology to self-evisceration, turning “eschatology into utopianism, ecclesiology into a branch of secular politics or of social
history, sacramental theology into semiotics, and doxology into ethics. Academia

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Douglas Farrow

universities, even where theology is still taught, have divested themselves
of formal theological commitments (as of ecclesiastical oversight) in the
name of academic freedom. Those that have not tend to be viewed with
deep suspicion.50
This is the place, however, to point out that the foundations of
academic freedom were laid by the mediaeval universities, the prevalence
today of ignorant remarks about the Inquisition and of much nonsense
about the Galileo affair—most recently at La Sapienza in Rome, where
certain members of the science faculty made fools of themselves in their
ignorance of history and theology—notwithstanding.51 Which is to say:
academic freedom was not invented by modernity but merely reminted
with an anti-theological cast that has proved injurious both to the
concept and to its application, and with a preference for new parameters
set by the state52 or by ideologues within the university itself, which
today is regularly flooded by waves of political correctness and other
conformist torrents that undermine academic freedom. The nature of
academic freedom is not our present topic, but we can hardly avoid
observing that no meaningful theory or practice of academic freedom
can be sustained where commitment to truth and to the unity of knowledge is lacking, and that no such commitment can be sustained without
has responded to this by inventing the modern university, with its disciplinary
instruments (called by the Germans Religionsgeschichte and Religionswissenschaft )
for dissecting and classifying the remains: a university with no soul for a society
with no church” (Ascension Theology London: T&T Clark 2011], 81). Such a
university cannot but lapse into the hollow culture of “excellence” lamented by
Bill Readings. It was already set on that course by Kant, who in The Contest of
Faculties (1798) turned the university upside down, and indeed inside out, by
mistaking “reason” for the immanent ordering principle of the university, much
as he mistook “pure religious faith” for the immanent ordering principle of religion in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.
50 In Canada, witness the recent CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) controversy around Trinity Western University and other such institutions.
51 I refer to the protests in 2008, at a university founded some 700 years earlier by
papal charter, that prevented Pope Benedict from giving his planned address that
touched on the relation between science and theology. Regarding the Inquisition,
see e.g. William Courtenay, “Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in
Medieval Universities,” Church History 58.2 (1989): 168–81; on the Galileo affair,
cf. the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Galileo and also Rivka Feldhay, Galileo and
the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press, 1995). See also William Hoye,“The Religious Roots of Academic
Freedom,” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 409–28.
52 Witness Humboldt University’s fascist period, for example, which was more a
permutation than an aberration.

The (Lost) Idea of the University

945

treading on theological ground. “The truth shall set you free” is the true
principle of freedom, in academia as elsewhere.53
Where that is acknowledged, the rejoining of education to religion is
indeed thinkable, and what has been lost in the idea of the university
recoverable. Where it is not acknowledged, education tends to become
either a substitute for religion (as in Dewey and his heirs) or a lackey (as
in Comte and Mill) to the not quite moribund Religion of Humanity.
Faith in the perfectibility of man, untempered by a doctrine of the fall,
seduces us down the path of false optimism and thence into the bogs of
a weary pragmatism, from which the cynicism that has already overtaken
the humanities is the only apparent escape. Meanwhile the university
becomes prey to forces greater and more determined than itself, which is
why loss of autonomy rightly stands at the head of any list of the consequences that follow from its once immodest, now increasingly uncertain,
purpose. Benedict, who last year presided over Newman’s beatification,
provided the pathology—or would have—in his censored La Sapienza
lecture: “Today the danger of the Western world . . . is that man, precisely
in the consideration of the grandeur of his knowledge and power, might
give up before the question of truth. And that means at the same time
that reason, in the end, bows to the pressure of interests and the charm
of utility, constrained to recognize it as the ultimate criterion.”54
Permit me in conclusion to repeat myself: I am not such a fool as to
think that the moral vacuum at the heart of the university, into which
utilitarianism, shadowed by cynicism, has been rushing, can be overcome
merely by a new commitment to theology. That in any case would beg
the question “What kind of theology?”—which cannot be further
addressed here. But any new commitment on the part of the university
to theology will have to come from a new commitment to pursuit of
knowledge of the Good, which the theologian will want to say is another
53 John 8:32. In Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), Martha Nussbaum expounds
this principle in her own inimitable way. Unfortunately she tends to get it backwards, since she leans not on Jesus but on a “Socrates” that is actually J. S. Mill in
disguise. (See William Gairdner’s trenchant remarks on Mill in The Trouble with
Democracy [Toronto: Stoddart, 2001], 298ff.) Nussbaum, it should be said, rejects the
caricature of the contemporary academy that she finds in critics like Bloom; like
Bloom, however, she fails to invite theology to the disciplinary table—and a broad
table it is!—since “true world citizenship” is about as close to the universal good
as she wants to get, given her uncertainty “about metaphysical belief ” (262).
54 “The Truth Makes Us Good and Goodness is True” (www.zenit.org/article21526?l=english).

946

Douglas Farrow

name for God.55 Letting the theologian make his case for saying that is
what the university owes itself.
N&V

55 Aquinas, knowing God and man better than Plato did, preferred “happiness”

even over “goodness” when considering the anthropological implications (cf. ST
I–II, q. 3), which is one of many reasons why the Summa theologiae is a still more
promising place than the works of Plato ( pace Allan Bloom) to look for help in
rebuilding the university. But the conclusion to the present paragraph, and to this
article, represents a conscious attempt to affirm the kind of theological relativism
that Newman was operating with in his original fifth discourse—of which his
superiors in the Church, it seems, were unnecessarily suspicious (see further
Cere, “Newman, God, and the Academy,” 17, n. 98).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 947–66

947

The Research University in Crisis (Again):
MacIntyre’s God, Philosophy, Universities
T HOMAS S. H IBBS
Baylor University
Waco, TX

“The emptiness and triviality of so much of the rhetoric of official
academia is a symptom of a much deeper disorder.”
—Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry1

I N God, Philosophy, Universities, Alasdair MacIntyre offers both a critique
of the research ideal in the modern university and a corrective in the
form of a Catholic account of the unifying end of liberal education.
Amid the many contemporary voices decrying this or that vice of the
modern university, MacIntyre’s book stands out, not so much for its
critique, as for its attempt to articulate a set of founding philosophical
principles that might inform our thinking about the university.This focus
explains what might otherwise seem surprising in MacIntyre’s book,
namely, that it has so little to say explicitly about the university. It is
primarily a book of philosophy and intellectual history. Implicit in
MacIntyre’s critique of the modern university is thus a critique of
contemporary jeremiads against the university, which rarely, if ever,
provide a philosophical account of the ends of human inquiry. To see the
significance of MacIntyre’s book, it might help to put it in conversation
with the famous and hugely influential 1955 essay of John Tracy Ellis,
“American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” in which Ellis urges
Catholic universities to embrace the research ideal.2 Putting the two in
1 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy,

and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 227.
2 John Tracy Ellis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” Thought 30

(1955): 351–88.

948

Thomas S. Hibbs

conversation highlights, from a Catholic perspective, the most important
questions about the research university. In light of that conversation, we
will turn to MacIntyre’s philosophical analysis of the university and to the
surprising centerpiece of his Catholic account of higher learning: the
recovery of the Thomistic understanding of soul and body.
I. The Tasks of the Catholic University: Ellis and MacIntyre
In his essay, Ellis, a highly regarded historian at the Catholic University of
America at the time he wrote the essay, lamented the current state of
Catholic higher education and admonished Catholics to raise standards and
expectations.3 Alongside a plea for greater scholarly rigor in Catholic
universities, Ellis urged Catholic parents to inculcate habits of reading in
their children. Because his essay focused on research and castigated Catholics
for their ghetto mentality, the piece is often seen as initiating the process of
secularization whose effects we can witness at those Catholic universities
that have most enthusiastically embraced the research ideal of the great secular schools.4 Indeed, the essay is sometimes envisioned as a first draft of the
1960s Land O’ Lakes statement—the statement that initiated the separation
of Catholic universities from ecclesiastical governance.5 But Ellis’s essay is
nothing of the sort. Aside from the fact that there is no juridical element in
the various theses Ellis propounds, the essay strikes, in its expressed hopes for
American Catholic intellectual life, a distinctively countercultural note.With
Tocqueville and Orestes Brownson, Ellis takes aim at the leveling features of
American egalitarianism, at what Brownson called the “American practice
of dethroning all distinctions.”6 Even more striking is this passage:
There is not a man of discernment anywhere today who is unaware
that the intellectual climate of the United States is undergoing a radical change from the moribund philosophy of materialism and discredited liberalism that have ruled a good portion of the American mind
for the better part of a century.7
3 For analogous analyses in the Evangelical world, see Carl F. H. Henry’s The

Uneasy Conscience of American Fundamentalism (1949) and Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994).
4 The essay has become part of the standard liberal narrative about conservatism
and anti-intellectualism because it was quoted in a section of Richard Hofstadter’s
famous Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. For a balanced assessment that sees
Ellis’s essay as one of the sole attempts at uniting Catholic revivalism with assimilation, see Philip Gleason’s Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in
the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 287–91, and 322.
5 On this, see Gleason, Contending with Modernity, 314–17.
6 Ellis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” 356.
7 Ibid., 387

The Research University in Crisis

949

The danger for Catholics is that they will simply go with the flow. So,
Ellis is critical both of a siege mentality and of conformity to the dominant cultural trends. These are, of course, the two great temptations for
any immigrant population, especially one that had often suffered from
virulent bigotry. Catholics combined a defensive stance with a longing
for success as conventionally understood in American society. It is easy
from this perspective to see the way in which anti-intellectualism could
become normative. The only significance of the intellectual life would be
instrumental, as a means of career advancement or apologetics.8 For Ellis,
the mid-century crisis of Catholic universties is one of delayed maturity,
a failure to become fully fledged research universities.
Over the years, some have raised questions about the accuracy of Ellis’s
assessment of mid-century American Catholicism.9 Whatever might have
been the case at the time, it is certainly not now the case that Catholics
inhabit a cultural or intellectual ghetto or that Catholics are not producing scholarship recognized as top notch in nearly every field imaginable.
A number of Catholic universities now rank in the top tier of national
research universities. Indeed, one might wonder whether Ellis was not in
8 In “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” Ellis comments: “While it is

gratifying to learn that so many of the graduates of Catholic institutions pursue
their studies beyond college by fitting themselves for the legal and medical
professions, it is to be regretted that a proportionately high number do not manifest a like desire, or find a similarly strong stimulation, to become trained scholars in the fields where the Catholic tradition of learning is the strongest” (360).
Furthermore, he observes, “More damaging than its direct effect on the intellectual shortcomings of American Catholics, has probably been the fostering by
this historic bias of an overeagerness in Catholic circles for apologetics rather
than pure scholarship” (361).
Initially Ellis cites anti-Catholic bias as a source of Catholic underachievement. But then toward the end he dismisses that excuse and argues that, really, lack
of industry has been the chief problem. He writes: “But who, one may rightly ask,
has been responsible in the main for its inadequacy? Certainly not the Church’s
enemies, for if one were to reason on that basis St. Augustine would never have
written the City of God, St. Robert Bellarmine the Tractatus de potestate summi
pontificis, nor would Cardinal Baronius have produced the Annales ecclesiastici. In
fact, it has been enmity and opposition that have called forth some of the greatest monuments to Catholic scholarship” (367). From this list of what are simultaneously great works of scholarship and polemics, it is clear that mere assimilation
to secular standards is not what Ellis has in mind for Catholic scholarship.
9 Ernest Fortin raises questions about the methods and the data that undergird
Ellis’s conclusions. He is also skeptical about some of the philosophical assumptions of the essay. See Fortin, “Do We Need Catholic Universities?” in Human
Rights, Virtue, and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics,
ed. J. Brian Benestad (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996), 61.

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Thomas S. Hibbs

some ways deeply naïve about the unmixed blessing that would result
from pursuing the research ideal. Ellis seems innocent of an awareness of
a rival type of crisis, one that could result precisely from the fulfillment
of the ideals of the research university—the crisis already articulated by
Robert Hutchins early in the century, reiterated by the likes of Jacques
Maritain at mid-century, dissected with great fervor by Allan Bloom late
in the century, and now—with the advent of another century—a popular theme among administrators of Ivy League universities.
Just over a half century after Ellis made his argument, Alasdair MacIntyre, perhaps the most influential living philosopher, a convert to Catholicism and a Thomist, supplies a strikingly different assessment of higher
education, Catholic and non-Catholic. In many ways, MacIntyre embodies Ellis’s highest hopes for Catholic intellectual life: a Catholic philosopher whose works are eagerly read at the best secular universities and
who defends a specifically Catholic account of philosophy.10 Yet, in God,
Philosophy, Universities, MacIntyre does not look on the successes of the
modern research university as unadulterated blessings. MacIntyre thinks
the research university is overly specialized, that it fails to give students
any sense of the unity and purpose of the curriculum, that it fosters
quantity over quality in scholarship, and that it lacks imaginative vision
concerning the distinctive shape of undergraduate education.
An exclusive reliance on the research ideal generates neglect of certain
important questions about how to introduce students to the intellectual
life and what sort of appreciation of the whole ought to be nurtured in
them. Indeed, the research ideal typically leads to an unnoticed exclusion
of the question of what ought to distinguish undergraduate from graduate education. The result, in practice, is a trickle down approach, in which
the best undergraduates are eventually initiated into the research programs
appropriate to graduate students while the remaining students are offered
the privilege of sitting in on reports of the results of that research.
Although he does not allude to it in the recent book, his critique in
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry of the modern research university is
pertinent. There MacIntyre argues that the key task for universities
concerns the identification of the peculiar set of goods pursued and
fostered in a university, goods whose cultivation distinguishes the university as an institution from other institutions. What are the goods? How
are they ordered in relation to one another? What virtues are needed to
10 It would be significant, for Ellis, that MacIntyre was not educated in Catholic

institutions, and that he rose to prominence not as a Catholic philosopher and
while teaching at non-Catholic universities.

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pursue these goods? How are these virtues to be cultivated?11 In an
instructive irony, the very institutions that claim to provide an arena for
sophisticated debate about important questions, issue nothing but “stuttering ineptitudes” when asked to describe the nature, goal, and unified
parts of the university itself.
Despite its celebrations of diversity, the current research university is
an increasingly homogenous institution. MacIntyre argues that the
modern research university embodies a distinctive account of rationality,
that of encyclopedic rationality, a conception at odds with both a
genealogical and a Thomist conception of rationality. So MacIntyre asks
a question that never seems to have dawned on Ellis: is the Catholic
conception of reason and enquiry likely to be distorted by conformity to
the encyclopedic model of the university? MacIntyre’s approach is much
more attuned to the significance of institutional diversity than is that of
Ellis, who suffers from a kind of encyclopedic blindness, an insufficient
imaginative awareness of alternative pedagogical possibilities.
Part of the problem with Ellis’s essay is that it contains numerous,
somewhat inconsistent, lines of argument. On the one hand, Ellis seems
to long for a future time when the Church might boast of a Catholic
Einstein. On the other hand, he castigates Catholics for not cultivating
excellence in spheres proper to Catholic intellectual life. In stark terms,
Ellis describes one of the obstacles to Catholic academic excellence: selfbetrayal. He writes:
Part of the reason why American Catholics have not made a notable
impression on the intellectual life of their country is due, I am convinced,
to what might be called a betrayal of that which is peculiarly their own.
The nature of that betrayal has been highlighted during the last quarter of
a century by such movements as the scholastic revival in philosophy
which found its most enthusiastic and hard-working friends on the
campuses of the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, Princeton University, and St. John’s College, Annapolis. Meanwhile the Catholic
universities were engrossed in their mad pursuit of every passing fancy
that crossed the American educational scene, and found relatively little
time for distinguished contributions to scholastic philosophy.12
11 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 222.
12 Ellis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” 374. He adds: “Woefully

lacking in the endowment, training, and equipment to make them successful
competitors of the secular universities in fields like engineering, business administration, nursing education, and the like, the Catholic universities, nonetheless,
went on multiplying these units and spreading their budgets so thin—in an
attempt to include everything—that the subjects in which they could, and
should, make a unique contribution were sorely neglected.”

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There is a lot in this passage, some of which could apply to Catholic
universities that have escaped the Catholic ghetto and achieved widespread scholarly recognition, but in the process have become multiversities and neglected distinctively Catholic areas of research. The list of
schools at which, according to Ellis, scholasticism has found “enthusiastic
and hard-working friends” is intriguing, especially the inclusion of St.
John’s College. St. John’s and its famous great books program were
offshoots of the Hutchins project at the University of Chicago.13 Chicago
and St. John’s inspired some of the earliest attempts at integrated, primarytext, liberal education in Catholic institutions. The Chicago program
influenced the University of Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies,
whose first incarnation was in the Law School,14 while the St. John’s
model was adopted at the Integrated Program at St. Mary’s College in
California, which in turn spawned Thomas Aquinas College.15 It is striking that the curricular influence here runs in one direction from secular
to Catholic, but the intellectual influence is reciprocal. Partly through the
influence of his friend and colleague, Mortimer Adler, Hutchins developed a conception of the goal of education as formation in intellectual
virtue, a conception he borrowed from the writings of Newman and St.
Thomas, even if he misunderstood important parts of that teaching.16
Ellis quotes from Hutchins’s 1937 address to Catholic educators at the
Midwest Regional meeting of the National Catholic Education Association.17 The president of the University of Chicago issued what he
termed a “scandalous accusation”: “In my opinion . . . you have imitated
the worst features of secular education and ignored most of the good
ones.” He went on to propose that the “best service Catholic education
13 The Hutchins project is often misunderstood as an attempt to impose a great

books curriculum upon an entire university. Instead, it was an attempt to create a
true intellectual community. “By posing fundamental questions about the aims of
education and the purposes of the university, he kept the campus in turmoil, and
this differentiated Hutchins’ University, 1929–1951, from other institutions of
higher learning more sharply than has since been the case” (William H. McNeill,
Hutchins’ University [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007], viii).
14 pls.nd.edu/about/history/documents/PLS_History.pdf “PLS: The First Fifty
Years,” Nicholas Ayo, Michael Crow, and Julia Marvin.
15 Other examples of the curricular influence could be cited. For example, a
version of a great books program at Boston College, entitled Perspectives, arose
in part from the vision of Ernest Fortin and his friendship with yet another
Chicago faculty member, Allan Bloom.
16 See Robert Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1936), 63–68.
17 Ellis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” 375.

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can perform for the nation and all education is to show that the intellectual tradition can again be made the heart of higher education.”18
In quoting him, Ellis fails to note Hutchins’s deep suspicions of the
modern research university. No doubt Ellis hits upon widespread and
systematic deficiencies in current Catholic institutions and intellectual
life. But his remedy is naïvely optimistic. Rather than marking an advance
in the discussion of Catholic Higher education, Ellis himself would seem
to embody the sort of “amnesia” that MacIntyre thinks afflicts contemporary Catholic thinking about the university.
This is not to say of course that MacIntyre is opposed to research or
that he is a protégé of the so-called great books movement, promoted by
Hutchins and Adler. MacIntyre has in fact two serious objections to great
books curricula. The first is that such curricula suppose a false unity in
“our cultural heritage” and thus overlook the deep disagreements within
that heritage. These books need to be read “against one another.”19 The
second is that they overlook the fact that there are different and incompatible ways of reading the books. This is a hermeneutic question of
course, but it points up the impossibility of an impartial reading or even
of an impartial selection of texts. What looks like relativism in MacIntyre’s account is in fact a counterweight against it. Acknowledging the
philosophical suppositions informing different curricular visions allows
one to examine the arguments in a quest for clarity and truth. The naïve
supposition of impartiality in fact sets students up to become relativists,
as they are invited to treat the great texts as embodying a series of irresolvable opinions about the big questions.
MacIntyre does not deny the virtues of great books curricula. But he
does not consider the possibility of constructing such curricula with
explicit philosophical and theological commitments in mind. In fact, such
curricula, even where they remain naïve about their ultimate commitments, have sometimes proven quite successful in promoting precisely the
kind of learning MacIntyre thinks the research university fails to foster.
18 Robert M. Hutchins, “The Integrating Principle of Catholic Higher Education,”

College Newsletter, Midwest Regional Unit, N.C.E.A. (May 1937), 1 and 4. See
also Hutchins, The Higher Learning. Surveying the incoherence of the standard
university curricula in America, Hutchins boldly proclaims that “without theology or metaphysics a university cannot exist” (99).The only type of unity evident
in the modern university is that of an encyclopedia and its “alphabetical arrangement”; what is needed is a “hierarchy of truths” (95). He calls for an “evangelistic movement” that would aim at the “conversion” of individuals and of the
teaching profession itself to the “true conception of general education” (87).
19 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 228–29.

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Prior to the Chicago project, there was Columbia’s general education
curriculum, which began in 1919 and flourished under the leadership of
John Erskine and which has been dubbed “the most famous course ever
in the history of American curriculum.”20 The initial forms of this
curriculum were inspired not by antiquarianism but by a felt need to help
students address contemporary problems, particularly in the wake of
World War I. The goal was not to guide students into careers but to “help
them see life broadly.” Erskine traced the genesis of his course to a widespread concern within the faculty about “the literary ignorance of the
younger generation.”
One of the students who profited from Columbia’s curricular innovations and the faculty who formed its distinctive culture was a young
Thomas Merton.When Merton began his studies at Columbia in 1935, he
found himself in an English literature course taught by Mark Van Doren,
whose pedagogy had a transformative effect on Merton. “Who is this man
who really loves what he has to teach, and does not secretly detest all literature, and abhor poetry, while pretending to be a professor of it?”21 Merton
was drawn to the course because it addressed the most important questions
and spoke to the deepest longings of the human soul and it did so in a way
that crossed standard disciplinary divisions into literature, philosophy, and
theology: “It was the only place where I ever heard anything really sensible about any of the things that were really fundamental—life, death, time,
love, sorrow, fear, wisdom, suffering, eternity.”22 It was also at Columbia
that Merton would encounter a group of students who had a passion for
books, a love of conversation, and a commitment to probing the most
important questions about their lives. It was here that he became familiar
with the writings of Maritain, Gilson, St. Thomas, and a host of medieval
authors, who were being read enthusiastically by faculty and students alike.
To discover the unifying telos of his quest, Merton would have to move
beyond the reaches of his Columbia education, to the Catholic contempla20 W. B. Carnochan, The Battleground of the Curriculum (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-

sity Press, 1993), 71. Harry Carman put it even more directly. “In introducing the
general survey course,” he said, “Columbia has operated on the assumption that
it is not the fundamental business of the College to turn out specialists in a
narrow field, and that an individual is, after all, not well educated unless he or she
has at least some conception of the broad field of intellectual endeavor” (Harry
J. Carman, “The Columbia Course in Contemporary Civilization,” an address
delivered before the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and
Maryland at Bryn Mawr, 2 May 1925, published as a booklet by the Columbia
College dean, p. 2).
21 Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1948), 141.
22 Ibid., 178.

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tive life, articulated in theology by Thomas Aquinas and practiced in the
Trappist monastic community. Yet, in what he did find at Columbia, we can
discern certain key elements of a truly liberal education. First, it responds to
the most important questions of human life, questions posed at least implicitly by all human beings at one time or another. Second, it understands itself
as responding to a felt need, a lack, a longing in the soul. Third, it reflects,
and helps students to reflect upon, the relationship of the parts of their
education to one another and to the unified whole and end of the curriculum. Fourth, it embodies and cultivates a community of inquirers in which
faculty converse with one another and with students and students converse
with one another both inside and outside the classroom.
What Merton found at Columbia was a protreptic, an introductory turning of the soul to the most important things and an initiation in the activities constitutive of the life of intellectual virtue. This is more than academic
training, or the mastery of rudimentary skills. What students need today is
what they have always needed. They need to see themselves as heirs of a
great tradition of learning that they could delightfully spend the rest of their
lives trying to master and barely make a beginning.This may involve not just
learning, but, as Augustine indicates, unlearning.The answer to the problem
is paideia, as the Greeks called it, an initial training in the various disciplines
or sciences with an aim of enabling the student (a) to understand parts in
relation to one another and to the whole, and (b) to distinguish different
sorts of proof, and to demand of a subject matter, as Aristotle puts it, the
degree and type of certitude proper to that discipline.23
Much of what Merton found at Columbia is simply absent from our
contemporary research universities. In God Philosophy, Universities, MacIntyre argues “neither the university nor philosophy is any longer seen as
engaging the questions” of “plain persons.” These questions include:
“What is our place in the order of things? Of what powers in the natural
and social world do we need to take account? How should we respond to
the facts of suffering and death? What is our relationship to the dead?
What is it to live a human life well? What is it to live it badly?”24
The university is silent about the fundamental questions of human life,
even as administrators issue “stuttering ineptitudes” concerning the relationships of means to end and part to whole. MacIntyre writes: “In
23 See Ernest Fortin, “The Paradoxes of Aristotle’s Theory of Education in the Light

of Recent Controversies,” in The Birth of Philosophic Christianity: Studies in Early
Christian and Medieval Thought, ed. J. Brian Benestad (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1996), 209–22.
24 Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic
Philosophical Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 9.

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contemporary American universities each academic discipline is treated
as autonomous and self-defining, so that its practitioners, or at least the
most prestigious and influential among them, prescribe to those entering
the discipline what its scope and limits are. And in order to excel in any
one particular discipline, one need in general know little or nothing
about any of the others.” Although MacIntyre does not state it explicitly,
there are two dimensions to his account of the goal and structure of the
university. It ought to be an arena for the investigation of the most
important human questions and it ought to initiate the student into the
history and current state of inquiry in a set of disciplines in the natural
sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and theology. Great books
curricula are much better at the former than at the latter; research universities are better at the latter than at the former. One of the virtues of
MacIntyre’s book is to treat these as interconnected tasks for the university. He also underscores the philosophical question of the unifying end
or goal of all of human inquiry. That is the significance of the inclusion
of “God” in the title.
II. Diagnosing the Afflictions of the Research University
Focusing on a set of distinct disciplines raises the question, “To whom then
in such a university falls the task of integrating the various disciplines, of
considering the bearing of each on the others, and of asking how each
contributes to the overall understanding of the nature and order of things?
The answer is ‘No one,’ but even that answer is misleading. For there is no
sense in the contemporary American university that there is such a task, that
something that matters is being left undone.”25 About the last point MacIntyre seems simply wrong. There is a mounting awareness of the importance
of this task and of how much is being left undone. Where MacIntyre
improves upon these critiques is in the areas of diagnosis and prognosis.
In the early twenty-first century, in America’s elite universities, institutions renowned across the globe, there is growing unease. Having become
increasingly skeptical about knowledge itself, our most prestigious educational institutions now find themselves ill-equipped to educate youth for
the common good. Or so an emerging consensus would have us believe.
Two books from Harvard administrators are signs of this spirit of self-criticism. Derek Bok, former president at Harvard, has written Our Underachieving Colleges; and Harry Lewis, a former dean at Harvard, has just
published Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education—a central contention of which is the dismal judgment that the “ideal
25 MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 15–16.

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of liberal education lives on in name only.”26 Some of the complaints for
which Allan Bloom was once reviled are now common in higher education. Many are now pondering Hutchins’s question from the 1930s: Why
is it that the “chief characteristic of higher learning is its disorder”?27
Many of the tasks imposed on the research university encourage
forgetfulness of the university’s core mission: offering a unified vision of
the intellectual life. A variety of ends, more or less desirable, more or less
connected to the fundamental aims of the university, can come to replace
the pursuit of truth. Aquinas, Newman, Hutchins, Ellis, and MacIntyre
concur in the judgment that instrumentalization is one of the great
enemies of a truly liberal education.28 Careerism is the standard target
here. But instrumentalization can occur in a variety of ways, as, for example, when the chief role of education is expressed in political terms as
preparation for citizenship or in moral and religious terms as making
good persons or effective apologists. But there is a more pervasive structural problem with university life; in MacIntyre’s terms, it has to do with
the tension between practices and institutions, the latter of which grow
out of the need for the organization of a complex set of practices and out
of the desire to sustain practices over time. But what is a practice? In After
Virtue, MacIntyre defines a practice as a “coherent and complex form of
socially established cooperative human activity through which goods
internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to
achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and
26 Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

2006); Harry Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education (Washington, DC: Public Affairs, 2006). One would need to add to these, books
by Anthony Kronman, former dean of the Yale School of Law, a forthcoming book
and numerous essays by Andrew Delbanco of Columbia, and essays by New York
Times columnist David Brooks. See Anthony Kronman, Education’s End: Why Our
Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven, CT:Yale
University Press, 2007); see the interview with Delbanco on his forthcoming book:
“The State of Liberal Education,” in The Cresset 74 (2008), available online at
www.valpo.edu/cresset/2008/Michaelmas08/Interview1_M08.pdf. For Brooks,
see “The Organization Kid,” The Atlantic Monthly (April 2001).
27 Hutchins, The Higher Learning, 94.
28 We might put this point in terms of a distinction from Alasdair MacIntyre
between goods internal and external to a practice. Internal goods are constitutive of the practice itself; without them, the practice could no longer exist. External goods are extrinsic to the practice itself but may be closely allied to it as
consequences or antecedent conditions. The problem with modern education is
that it is far too beholden to the external goods. For a quite different defense of
the goods intrinsic to university education and an excoriation of the practice of
politicizing the curriculum, see Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human
powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and
goods involved, are systematically extended.”29 A practice involves a
complex set of activities; it is principally ordered to the pursuit of goods
internal to, and constitutive of, the practice; and the appraisal of how well
those goods are achieved invokes standards of excellence, chiefly articulated in terms of a set of virtues. Much more than practices, institutions
are about the fostering of goods that are external to practices, goods that
may indeed serve the continued existence of the practice but may also
undermine the cultivation of the virtues constitutive of a practice.
The goods internal to the practices constitutive of a university have to
do with the pursuit of truth in a variety of disciplines. In a book published
not long before he died, Truth and Truthfulness, the stridently secular British
philosopher Bernard Williams noted that we live in a time when the
demand for truth has never been greater.30 But, he added, we have never
been more doubtful about our ability to reach the truth or even whether
there is truth to be had. Williams saw the cultural, and particularly
academic, despair over truth as a troubling sign. He criticized the ironic
distance from which many academics, particularly in the humanities,
approached truth. If we lose our hold on the truth, he observed, we risk
losing everything. Williams was principally concerned with the way in
which skepticism about truth in the humanities rendered the study of the
humanities pointless and fostered in faculty puerile political correctness
and desultory careerism. MacIntyre focuses on the way in which goods
external to practices, the sort that entice institutions, come to substitute
for the internal goods. Among the external goods of a university are rankings and various other types of prestige and, of course, money in the forms
of grants and donations.
Although MacIntyre readily admits that practices cannot be sustained
over time without the development of institutions to perpetuate them,
he is also wary of the way in which institutions suffer from forgetfulness
of the practices for the sake of which they were initiated. Institutions tend
to focus on external goods, that is, on the goods of effectiveness rather
than the goods of excellence. What MacIntyre has to say about institutional forms that foster common goods is especially pertinent to the
university: “The institutional forms through which such a way of life is
realized, although economically various, have this in common: they do
29 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

Press, 1981), 187.
30 Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2004).

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not promote economic growth and they require some significant degree
of insulation from and protection from the forces generated by outside
markets.”31 One does not have to adopt the Socratic stance that no fees
ought to be taken for teaching to see that the community of teachers and
learners is not a community grounded in economic motives. MacIntyre
of course still retains much of his Marxist animosity against the market
economy. Yet, the following claim seems entirely within the mainstream
of Catholic thinking about economics and the common good: “Market
relationships can only be sustained by being embedded in certain types
of local nonmarket relationship, relationships of uncalculated giving and
receiving, if they are to contribute to overall flourishing, rather than, as
they so often in fact do, undermine and corrupt communal ties.”32
Indeed, Catholic educational institutions would seem to be proper arenas
for the teaching of precisely such a lesson about the limits of the market.
In defending, as we should, the notion that knowledge is its own end,
that wonder is proper to human nature, and that the university ought
never to lose sight of its own internal goods, we ought to be careful not
to obscure the link between the good and the useful. Newman was careful to avoid this.33 He found a place for professional education in his
university and noted that what is desirable for its own sake can be
productive of other goods. The good, as Dionysius puts it in a line much
beloved by medieval thinkers, is diffusive.34
31 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago: Open Court Press,

2001), 145.
32 Ibid., 117.
33 In his remarkable defense of liberal education as an end in itself, W. E. B. DuBois,

for his part, insists that the goal of education is “not to inspire human hearts with
a vision of the true, the good, and beautiful without pointing the practical way
of realizing some of these dreams here and now in their own lives.” See The Souls
of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Classics, 1989). Education, he argues, must
balance ideals with the “greater need of specialization and technique.” The vast
majority of black as of white Americans will devote themselves to technical
education, not liberal education. For all of his emphasis on the intrinsic desirability of liberal education, he does not hesitate to speak of its practical, political
and social ramifications. One of his chief arguments against Washington’s willingness to limit education to the rudiments of knowledge followed by specialized training in a trade is that it leaves out of account the question who will teach
the teachers, who will teach them how to understand their own work in relation to the whole of learning. Another argument concerns education as preparation for virtuous citizenship. “No secure civilization can be built in the south
with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat” (ibid., 73).
34 In this context, Stanley Rosen’s reading of Plato in terms of a theoreticoproductive conception of the intellect is pertinent. See my article “Modern
Ancients: Stanley Rosen’s Achievement,” Weekly Standard, November 25, 2002.

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Some such account of practice-based pursuits of the common good
would seem to be necessary to recover a Catholic understanding of the
university. The accent, in God, Philosophy, Universities, on the Catholic
understanding of philosophy, the intellectual life, and theology counters
the tendency in thinking about the Catholic university to undervalue the
core task of the university: the complex and unified pursuit of truth. But
there is another danger: that of neglecting the relationship between the
core task and the other tasks of the university. This too is a result of the
bureaucratization and specialization of the university.
The task for the university is not just to foster the goods internal to
the various practices included within it but also to order the various
practices in relation to one another and in light of the unifying end of
the institution. Lack of integration—of student life or dorm life with
academic or classroom activity, of the various disciplines themselves, of
the research pursuits of faculty with the needs of undergraduates—afflicts
the contemporary university.
By contrast, Newman, to whom MacIntyre turns at a crucial point in
God, Philosophy, Universities, supposes that students and faculty interact
both in and out of the classroom, indeed, that they live among one
another. This points us to an underappreciated or, to be more precise,
misunderstood, component of the university: student life. Certainly if
student life, encompassing what occurs on campus but outside the classroom, fosters habits of self-indulgence, moral relativism, and anti-intellectualism, then it will matter very little what occurs in the classroom.35
There is a huge opportunity here for partnerships between student life
and the academic units of the university, the goal of which would be to
integrate academic and student life, what goes on in the classroom and
what occurs in the dorm—in short, to raise the level of conversation and
thus to create a true community of learning. (We might in the process
want to consider eliminating the term “dormitory” as the place where
students retreat to sleep or not, from our vocabulary.) Of course, the
propaganda about the university as a community or even a family permeates our marketing to high school students. But most universities are at
best a set of mostly isolated and occasionally interactive communities:
academic communities in the form of departments and institutes and
administrative communities in divisions of human resources, legal counsel, student life, campus ministry, public relations, athletics, central administration, and regent governing boards. A university governed by the
Catholic understanding of the common good would require a much
35 Curbing the sort of collegiate bacchanalian reverie depicted in Tom Wolfe’s novel I

Am Charlotte Simmons is not the only or the primary goal of an office of student life.

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greater degree of mutual interaction and shared governance among these
various communities. It would require mutual accountability across the
lines that divide athletic departments from faculty and both of these from
regents and administrators.
If we focus just on the properly academic core of the university, even
here a community of learning cannot be present without the ability of
faculty and students to talk to one another across disciplinary specialties.
A useful thought experiment for those of us in universities is to imagine
how the following conversation, real-life versions of which were actually
conducted at Chicago under Hutchins, might go: In order to earn its way
into the core, each department must defend its role before faculty from
all other departments in the university in a public conversation about the
contribution of that discipline to the education of undergraduates. At
most universities, such a conversation would result in mutual recrimination and paralysis.
One promising, although problematic, recent curricular innovation
that merits attention as an attempt to address the problem of lack of integration is interdisciplinarity, which is all the rage nowadays on many
campuses. As Louis Menand convincingly argues in his recent book, The
Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, interdisciplinarity is mostly a negative notion, a postmodern frustration with
the constraints of disciplinarity, a way of overcoming disciplinarity.36 But,
as Menand also points out, the movement simply recreates the problems
of disciplinarity at a higher level. This is certainly not the impetus for the
sort of integrated education that Newman articulates. This approach is
not opposed to disciplines; it affirms them and seeks to find ways to integrate them. Of course, if you are allergic to saying what the ends of
education are, you will likely have trouble saying how the parts fit
together. Newman has a classical sense of ends and of the part/whole
relationship. He also has a supple account of what we might call cognitive development, an account that lends itself to, and might provide a
corrective to the weaknesses in, contemporary interest in interdisciplinary curricula. He writes:
We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but, as it
were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental process, by going
round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual
correction, the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, by the
employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and
36 Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American

University (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010).

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exercises of mind. Such a union and concert of the intellectual powers,
such an enlargement and development, such a comprehensiveness, is
necessarily a matter of training . . . of discipline and habit.37

Enlargement, development, adaptation, and the habituation of the
intellect in the discernment of the integrated complexity of the objects
of knowledge—all these are fitting objects of a truly liberal education.
Newman provides us with principles for thinking anew about an interdisciplinary approach to education. Newman provides what other proponents of interdisciplinarity lack: an account of human knowing, cognitive
development, and human nature.38 Standard interdisciplinary programs
suffer the same shortcoming that MacIntyre detects in great books
curricula: the suppressing of the question of the philosophical assumptions of the curriculum.
III. Taking Soul Seriously
As we have noted, God, Philosophy, Universities has very little to say about
universities; yet, in his analysis of the philosophical principles that undergird a Catholic conception of the intellectual life, MacIntyre focuses on
the central role of the Aristotelian and Thomist understanding of soul and
body. At the center of a Catholic university, according to MacIntyre,
would be the articulation and dialectical development of the Catholic
account of human nature. He writes:
Such an account will have to integrate what we can learn about the
nature and constitution of human beings from physicists, chemists, and
biologists, historians, economists, and sociologists, with the kind of
understanding of human beings that only theology can afford.39

As MacIntyre notes, atheists and theists disagree not just about God
but also about nature.40 Philosophy, on this view, is required not only to
articulate the Catholic understanding of nature and human nature but
also to bring that understanding into conversation with the conceptions
of human nature, often only implicit, in the natural and social sciences.
Catholic philosophers need to be involved in ongoing dialogue with
ancient, medieval, and modern rival philosophical understandings of
37 Newman, The Idea of a University (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

Press, 1982), 114–15.
38 As MacIntyre notes, Newman and Aquinas share certain general commitments

to Aristotelian principles in philosophy, but they also differ on important points.
39 MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 177.
40 Ibid., 46.

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human nature. The locus of the conversation is not just within philosophy and theology departments but also between these departments and
the natural and social sciences. Moreover, if the university is to be seen as
addressing the questions of “plain persons,” it must find a way of engaging that culture with the initial goal of making clear what assumptions
about human nature are operative in it.
It may well be that classical liberal education presupposes and embodies a distinctive philosophical and theological anthropology.41 Might it be
that forgetfulness of soul is the source of what Hutchins identifies as the
chief characteristic of the higher learning in our time, namely, disorder?
That there is a need for such an account of human nature and its relationship to debates in the natural and social sciences comes from the tradition of liberal education itself, which stretches from Socrates to W. E. B.
DuBois, who in his famous Souls of Black Folk penned the most eloquent
defense of liberal education ever composed by an American. DuBois is
best known for his debate with Booker T. Washington over post-Reconstruction civil rights strategies. A consequence of Washington’s more
conservative approach is the acceptance of the continued exclusion of
African-Americans from higher education.
Although ignored in contemporary retellings of this standoff, DuBois
makes higher education the centerpiece of his argument. For DuBois,
this was about more than simply equal opportunity. To refuse AfricanAmericans access to a truly liberal education, to relegate them to training in trades, was to deny their full humanity. Every other sort of
education renders human beings fit to perform this or that role in business or society; it makes them serviceable, as we say. But this is to treat
education—and human beings—in a merely instrumental fashion.
DuBois shares Socrates’ objections to a citizenry that gives no thought
to true education, to what DuBois calls the “riddle of existence,” or to the
cultivation of what Socrates indentifies as the “best possible state of the
soul.” DuBois asserts: “The true college will ever have one goal—not to
earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes.”
As Socrates insists in a number of places, the Athenians give no
thought to true education, to the state of the soul, to the consideration
of what DuBois calls the “riddle of existence.”42 In response to the statement of the god at Delphi, Socrates asks, “Whatever does the god mean?
What is his riddle?”43 This is precisely the language DuBois uses in his
eloquent description of the nature of true education.
41 See ibid., 177 and throughout.
42 DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, 58.
43 Plato, Apology, 21b.

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Thomas S. Hibbs
The riddle of existence is the college curriculum that was laid before the
Pharaohs, that was taught in groves by Plato, that formed the trivium and
quadrivium, and is to-day laid before the freedman’s sons by Atlanta
University. And this course of study will not change; its methods will
grow more deft and effectual, its content richer by toil of scholar and
sight of seer; but the true college will ever have one goal—not to earn
meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes.44

One way to express DuBois’s argument is to say that he, like Socrates,
takes the term “soul” seriously, as indicating a sense of what is higher and
lower, better and worse, in human life. The word “soul” also figures in the
title of Harry Lewis’s book about Harvard. But what does Lewis mean by
“soul”? Can contemporary academics use the term without putting it in
scare quotes to indicate its status as a relic from a bygone age of religious
primitivism? Without snickering, can we seriously pose to our students
the challenge Socrates posed to the Athenians, who in this case are a
pretty good stand-in for Americans? Can we issue the challenge to give
more care to the soul than to the body?45
Of course, one of the reasons for the decline in language about the
soul is the aversion in the contemporary university to theology, understood
as something more than the comparative study of cultural constructs. In
The Chronicle of Higher Education, in a piece entitled “One University
Under God,” Stanley Fish notes the increasingly intellectual interest in
religion among students, even at secular campuses. Fish notes that the old
cultural assumption, especially prevalent in academia and the media, that
we could “quarantine the religious impulse in the safe houses of the
church, the synagogue, and the mosque” is coming undone. And he
44 DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, 58.
45 These questions bring us back to Tom Wolfe’s satire, which seizes on the prob-

lematic status of the soul in the contemporary university. Mr. Wolfe’s title character, Charlotte Simmons, brings with her to the fictional Dupont University a
conception of soul she inherits from her devoutly Christian mother, who uses
the word soul without any hint of irony or doubt. By contrast, one of Charlotte’s
professors, a Nobel winner for his work in neuroscience, uses the term “soul”
advisedly. The self, he asserts, is “nothing more than a ‘transient composite of
materials from the environment.’ ” In an interesting convergence between the
sciences and the humanities, the dissolution of the self into a series of intersecting impersonal forces is also a prominent feature of an influential postmodern
philosophy. There is, at the heart of the modern university as experienced by
Charlotte, a nihilism concerning human nature and human purpose.
Mr. Wolfe’s book suggests a subtle link between the demotion of the soul to
a ghost in a machine and the exhaustion of young adult life in a series of activities—work, study, drinking, sex—lacking any overarching sense of mission.

The Research University in Crisis

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wonders whether the university is in a position to take seriously what is
fast becoming the most important topic in the cultural and intellectual
life of Americans. In so doing, he makes an important distinction: “It is
one thing to take religion as an object of study and another to take religion seriously. To take religion seriously would be to regard it not as a
phenomenon to be analyzed at arm’s length, but as a candidate for the
truth.”46 MacIntyre would concur, but he focuses our attention on the
philosophical question of the existence of God, as the ultimate and unifying aim of inquiry. Thus, the question of the truth about God is not just
a question to be investigated in the university; the answer to the question
bears upon the university itself, upon whether there is any unified end to
human inquiry. For MacIntyre, that question cannot be approached
directly. Following Aristotle and Thomas, he holds that, at least in philosophy, God is not the point of departure for inquiry, but its culmination.
The results of investigations into nature and human nature will determine in large part whether philosophy reaches God at all.
As MacIntyre notes, materialism and dualism, the two early modern
substitutes for Aristotelian unity of soul and body, radically alter the
conception of the human person, by undermining the teleological
account of human nature. Coincidentally in the early modern period, the
desire for consensus and the project of mastering and possessing nature
supplant the notion of human life as characterized by open-ended
wonder, by a quest for the highest good. Philosophy inevitably loses what
John Paul II has called its “sapiential dimension,” its quest for wisdom
about the whole. As he puts it in Fides et Ratio (1998):
It is necessary not to abandon the passion for ultimate truth or the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in the search. It is
faith that stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and willingly to run
risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful, good, and true. Faith thus
becomes the convinced and convincing advocate of reason.

The Pope’s recalling of the Church’s universities to their Catholicity is
simultaneously a reminder of what makes them universities. Indeed, it
now looks as if the most likely hope for the restoration of the university
to its proper self-understanding is the religious university.While not quite
making that claim, MacIntyre’s God, Philosophy, Universities advances the
contemporary debate about the university by returning the conversation

46 Stanley Fish, “One University Under God,” The Chronicle of Higher Education

( January 7, 2005).

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Thomas S. Hibbs

to a discussion of philosophical principles and by articulating a coherent
Catholic and Thomistic response to the question of the nature and goal
of intellectual inquiry and how we might recover a unified conception
of the disciplines that constitute the university.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 967–89

967

Marxist and Christian:
MacIntyre and the Postmodern University
DAVID LYLE J EFFREY
Baylor University
Waco, TX

I T IS of more than passing interest that Alasdair MacIntyre has been
notably identified in his life with two sharply distinguished ethical perspectives, both on the world in general and on the university in particular.
MacIntyre began as a Marxist; he has ended as a Christian.
Forty or fifty years ago it would have seemed highly improbable that any
forms of Marxism and Christianity should have found common ground,
either in critique or defense of existing culture. Then came liberation theology. Perhaps particularly in Latin America it had a profound impact, especially in the last quarter of the twentieth century. While liberation theology
gained less of a foothold in Europe and the United States—not least
because of the political deterioration of Marxism and the social marginalization of Christianity in Europe—in Britain, Canada, and the United
States more recently, especially in intellectual culture, a certain type of
Marxist critique of institutions has found allies both among traditional
liberals and among more radically (biblically) orthodox Christians. Much
of the best of it—one thinks of MacIntyre in After Virtue and Three Rival
Versions—has drawn on Marxism in quite different ways than did the liberation theologians. Although generally marginal to the main drift of Western university culture, a more rigorous and idealistic Marxism and the
rigorous Catholicism of Thomistic tradition have come together engagingly in the life and work of the philosopher whose work this volume
honors. The result has been mutually reinforcing for both his intellectual
and his cultural criticism. In this most recent work, God, Philosophy,
Universities, we see his synthetic critique emerging in reference to what
many others likewise regard as a significant intellectual crisis in Western

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David Lyle Jeffrey

universities. For our purposes I will attempt to discuss both the crisis and
what I take to be an emerging Marxist/Christian critique for which MacIntyre is a particular exemplar, doing so with reference to the humanities
disciplines other than theology and philosophy, namely, the case with which
I am most familiar, literary studies. But I shall conclude by noting briefly
on this model certain possibilities for a more general convergence of Marxist and Christian perspectives that are now developing in “communist”
China, not merely as a critique of culture, but in relation to a deeper intellectual fruitfulness of dialogue about the future of humanistic studies. My
essay will thus be less a formal analysis of MacIntyre’s book than an appreciation and application of its insights for a related but deeply ailing sector
of university culture internationally.
1. Intellectual Crisis in the Humanities
Readers of Nova et Vetera are familiar with the now-general criticism from
within the American university itself that—as Harry Lewis, former dean at
Harvard, and John Sommerville, historian and professor at Florida State
University, have variously put it—American universities are now failing to
deliver value for money. The perception is not merely that we have become
too expensive for the actual cultural and educational contribution we are
making.1 Part of the reason for this deficit, they and many others now
argue, is the failure of contemporary university faculties to possess and
continue to articulate a coherent sense of cultural mission. This abdication
is matched by a worrying degree of anarchic licentiousness and self-serving
parochialism in the student body. Summarily, critics are saying that there
is too much pursuit of private or coterie agendas, and too little in the way
of thoughtful concern for the common good in our university communities. In many disciplines it has become normative for fashionable but
narrower agendas—for example, “new-wave” feminism, gender-political
advocacy, and environmental criticism—to have displaced large sections of
the curriculum; the net effect is a colonization of the intellectual life of the
university by competing special interest groups, often at the expense of
1 Harry R. Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education

(Washington, DC: Public Affairs, 2006); John C. Sommerville, The Decline of the
Secular University (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); also Declining by
Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, ed. Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Alvin Kernan, The Death of Literature (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1992) and his edited volume, What’s Happened to the
Humanities? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); John M. Ellis, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1990).

MacIntyre and the Postmodern University

969

quality and balanced judgment regarding the health and future development of intellectual culture as a whole.
The relatively inchoate situation in which we find ourselves, I want to
suggest, is a result of the devolution of both Marxist and Christian thought
in Western culture during the second half of the twentieth century. I use
the word “devolution” here to suggest that the particular perspectives for
cultural formation which once we might have associated with either Marxism or Christianity have, in the more affluent Western countries, eroded or
become co-opted (broadly speaking) by vectors of narrower individualistic
interest. Notoriously prominent among these overshadowing influences is
sexual politics, in which personal sexual freedom comes to be regarded by
many as the highest cultural good. Next most often cited is pursuit of a
maximization of personal wealth and leisure, often at the expense of the
common good for both present and future generations. These insistent
claims of the “name it and claim it” economy, absolutely individualistic in
character and expression, have in practice trumped more universal social
objectives, such as achieving freedom from want (Marx), or freedom from
self-centeredness (Christ). It will be evident that such preoccupations as
libertarian sexual license, promoted in various modes of entertainment,
and the construction of social values based on consumerism rather than
common purpose, are inimical both to Marxism and to Christianity as
expressed in their original forms. What both Marxism and Christianity
have had to offer is opportunity for service in what we might call a “public
vision.” (Liberal capitalism, by contrast, has increasingly made its appeal by
offering unrestricted opportunities for the fulfillment of private fantasies.)
A higher public or communal vision in both cases (though with different
degrees of success) has been sustained by the respective convictions of
Marxism and Christianity that there is a meaning in history that transcends individual horizons but at the same time gives individuals who share
it a higher sense of meaning and purpose.
We do not often enough think of Marxism and Christianity in terms of
their common interest in the common good. This is understandable.
Marxism, perhaps needless to say, historically has been opposed to religions
of all kinds. “Criticism of religion,” Marx asserted in 1844, “is the premise of all criticism.”2 Subsequently, as a materialist and naturalist philosophy, Marxism has typically found all forms of religion to be incompatible
with the mechanisms it has proposed for social progress. Marx’s original
point was itself drawn from debate within and among European religious
2 Karl Marx, Early Writings, trans. T. B. Bottomore (New York: McGraw-Hill,

1963), 43.

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David Lyle Jeffrey

groups; he saw that religious authority, especially the authority of the Bible,
had largely been undermined from within both Christian and Jewish
reformed traditions after the Enlightenment, and that the ossified state
churches functioned to inhibit rather than advance social liberty. Further,
he was prophetic, able to see far more clearly than liberal religionists themselves that the European state churches were doomed to increasing ineffectuality as a consequence of this loss of credible authority and transcendence.
In this light, his proposal for a kind of radical secularization of society
accurately anticipated the inevitable demise of an already rapidly secularizing European Christianity.
The trajectory of development foreseen by Marx has now come to pass
with a vengeance, and we should give credit where credit is due. Secularized or “liberal” Christianity, as we may see by the severe decline of mainstream Protestant churches in Europe and the English-speaking countries,
has diminished as a constructive social force. In many countries both in
Europe and in North America it is now a negligible presence in public
consciousness. The history of twentieth-century European and Englishspeaking culture shows that, once secularized, Christianity no longer effectively critiques culture; it becomes just another aspect of secular culture, or
parasitic upon it. As nominally Christian churches and their related institutions lose their distinctive reason for being, they continue to shrink. But
Marxism in Europe has also diminished as a vital social force; its own political idealism has dimmed. To some considerable degree this also happened
in China after the Cultural Revolution. In these cases, the moral authority
of Marxism has likewise been called into question. Is it possible that both
liberal Christianity and Marxism are now, at least in the West, “spent
forces”? If so, in what respect might this exhaustion provide for instructive
reflection among Christian intellectuals in the third millenium?
2. Liberal Protestantism and Humanistic Studies
It is useful to recall in particular that, even as Marx was writing, Christian
theology had already been marginalized as an authority for intellectual
purposes in the university. Subsequently, MacIntyre observes, in many
schools not only theology, but philosophy too “became just one more
academic discipline.”3 In Germany, this tendency had already been formalized when, in 1809, Wilhelm Von Humboldt separated theology from the
other humanities disciplines in his reorganizing of the Berlin curriculum,
greatly impeding thereby the possibility of natural cross-fertilization, and
3 God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition

(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 135.

MacIntyre and the Postmodern University

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especially the probability of a more holistic view of the person as a spiritual
as well as material and political being.4 Von Humboldt’s model was widely
influential both in Britain and in America. Ironically, once “liberated” in
this way from their dialectical relationship with theology, some of the
humanities disciplines became, in effect, religion substitutes and began to
offer mission justifications expressed in just such terms. This was particularly apparent in the study of vernacular literatures, an academic discipline
essentially introduced to the university in the nineteenth century. Similar
developments occurred in psychology, sociology, philosophy, and religious
studies, in each of which we see an anthropologizing of theological reflection. Part of the argument for each of these disciplines was that in the
modern context they replaced the work of an archaic theology, and that the
new perspectives were accordingly a contribution to the moral education
required by the eclipse of theological authority. As MacIntyre notes, John
Henry (Cardinal) Newman understood and opposed these developments
as, in effect, a fundamental confusion about the relationship of education
to moral development: “It was, on Newman’s view, a failure to recognize
the difference between genuine morality and this substitute for it that had
allowed so many of his contemporaries to believe that education is the
means to moral development” (148). In England, as later in America with
Ralph Waldo Emerson and his successors such as John Dewey, there
followed a deliberate acculturation of the disciplines as social programmatic in the service of liberal education theory.
For one highly influential British contemporary of Marx, the inspector
of schools and later Professor of Poetry, Matthew Arnold, literary study
should ideally replace theology and provide the basis for “modern” secular
religion. Arnold, whom Newman clearly had in mind in his remarks, was
a classic bourgeois liberal, the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford to lecture
exclusively in English (1857), and he is still generally regarded as the father
of literary study as a modern university discipline. An advocate for the
Established Church, he opposed the religious liberty of dissenting (nonstate-authorized) churches, which he asserted would lead to political anarchy (Culture and Anarchy, 1869). A “national right reason” required, he
thought, replacing every traditional theology and its religious practice with
an educated veneration for upper-class, high culture (Literature and Dogma,
1873). Though Arnold found biblical language about transcendence to be
admirably poetic, he rejected the value of the Bible as a privileged source
4 See Stephen Prickett, Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 180ff., and his Words and the
Word: Language, Poetics, and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), passim.

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David Lyle Jeffrey

of insight either into the nature of a transcendent God or into human
nature, and he denied that in any historical sense the Bible contains truth.
Yet, paradoxically, he wished the Bible to be preserved in the curriculum
for literary purposes (God and the Bible, 1875). It is admittedly fortunate
that in some universities, “Bible as Literature” courses are, as he advocated,
still taught, for without them much of the canon of English literature
would doubtless by now have become unintelligible. The old theological
transcendence, however, is largely now invisible, and the “secular scripture”
Arnold posited in its place has not retained sufficient cultural authority to
achieve anything like the unifying social force Arnold and his many successors had in mind.5 These successors were nonetheless persistent in continuing this model for literary (or other humanistic) studies until the last
quarter of the twentieth century.6
3. Neo-Marxism and Literary Studies
The tendency of Western thinkers since Descartes to make the thinking
subject (the self ) the actual subject of discourse in almost every field,7 has
further facilitated intellectual fragmentation to an extent those who
sought for a religion substitute had not, it seems, sufficiently anticipated.
Hypertrophy of the humanistic disciplines in such countries as France
and the United States has, as is well known, led to a proliferation of subspecialties (women’s studies, gender studies, multi-cultural studies) and
has also spawned a re-orientation of mainstream disciplines themselves
toward a preoccupation with such issues, each increasingly pursued with
the kind of obsessive fervor that one associates with religious enthusiasm.
All of this seemed to be quite exciting for a time, and many of the new
cultural and social agendas even saw (and advertised) themselves as extensions of Marxist thought. In fact, “neo-Marxist” was a self-descriptive term
adopted by many such specialists in what has come to be known as
“Cultural Studies.”Their praxis was nominally a criticism of hegemonies—
5 Northrop Frye, Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); Nicholas Boyle, Sacred and Secular Scriptures:
A Catholic Approach to Literature (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2005).
6 David Lyle Jeffrey, People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996); also, Rethinking the Future of the University, ed.
David Lyle Jeffrey and Dominic Manganiello (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
1998).
7 John A. Macmurray, The Self as Agent (London: Faber and Faber, 1959); also, his
Persons in Relation (London: Faber and Faber, 1961) offers a detailed account. See
also Ann Hartle, The Modern Self in Rousseau’s Confessions: A Reply to St. Augustine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).

MacIntyre and the Postmodern University

973

political, institutional, cultural, and religious. But were they Marxist? If so,
theirs was a strange kind of Marxism, one in which “alienation” often
became a cultic virtue more than a problem to be overcome, and for
which the language of discourse became calculatedly obscure and elitist.
The kind of theorizing that such intellectuals have pursued has been far
less universal than the project we associate with Marx, and increasingly it
has diverted from any synthetic view of a wider global culture. It has
tended also to be more focused on the present, less future-oriented.
Another way of putting this is to say that while, at their best, post-structuralist movements such as deconstruction, Lacanian analytics, and gender
studies have developed some useful critical tools and debating strategies,
they have largely failed to develop a sufficiently broad sense of positive
intellectual purpose.
In the contemporary Western university, radical individualism and
factional social construction tend to be two sides of the same coin: each
obviously depends for its ideological appeal on opposition to prevalent or
traditional notions of the common good. The resulting contradiction is
not always a clash of ideas, but very frequently it has led to intellectual
balkanization. An understandable penchant for side-stepping incommensurable conversations (Rorty) in the university context has further tended
to erode serious philosophical reflection on everything from intellectual
formation and conversation among the disciplines to matters of a rudimentary common curriculum. Unsurprisingly, such factional advocacies
have, by the exclusiveness, extremism, and frequent extravagance of their
claims, contributed to a palpable loss of authority for the humanities in the
university generally.
In English literary studies, for example, there has been a deluge of books
and articles over the past decade announcing what Andrew Delbanco has
called “The Decline and Fall of English Literature.”8 For Delbanco, a classic liberal, this means decline from the fuzzy principles of Matthew Arnold,
and, in America, from the similarly post-Christian secular individualism of
Emerson. The result, Delbanco laments, is that literary study is now “left
without a moral center.” This is hardly to be wondered at: the so-called
‘neo-Marxists’—who in reality are more often decadent liberals—typically
find the very idea of a “moral center” meaningless and even offensive.
Moral rectitude is not a meaningful aspiration for them, because all
notions of rectitude, indeed all notions of truth, are for them a species of
convenient fiction, merely socially constructed to serve a pursuit of political power. In brief, the idea of a “common good,” along with the fiction
8 Andrew Delbanco, “The Decline and Fall of Literature,” The New York Review of

Books (November 4, 1999).

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David Lyle Jeffrey

that education provides for moral instruction, is now incoherent precisely
to the degree that mind-independent common truths have been judged to
be meaningless or “uninteresting.”
4. Truth, Freedom, and Transcendence in the Humanities
The original idea of the university as an intellectual culture in the service of wider culture was based on the Christian premise that many minds
should come together to seek truth (Latin unus plus versus), many minds
turning together toward the One.9 It is no accident that MacIntyre has
so much to say on the place of Truth in Aquinas and in the thought of
Newman (87–92; 145–47) concerning the work of the university. With
the loss of the commonality of purpose the Catholic tradition has in
recent decades experienced, it is not surprising in the least that the idea
of the university as a place of a communal search for truth has fallen into
trouble more generally. This trouble is now highly visible to observers
outside the universities, and often, though without much in the way of a
deeper conceptual understanding, spectacular instances of what Marilynne Robinson has referred to as “absence of mind” is condemned in
the general press.10 But for our purposes, which require historical
perspective on intellectual modernity, it is appropriate to consider the
general public criticism in terms of particular and more informed criticism of the discipline which historically has most staked its claim to
public approval on providing a non-religiously based social and moral
purpose—even a kind of secular transcendence. In the case of English
literary studies, we see that perhaps the most trenchant recent critique of
“neo-Marxist” postmodernism comes from a principled Marxist, Terry
Eagleton. Eagleton’s denunciation is not unique—in fact it has precedents in the alarm of some classic liberal spokesmen such as George
Steiner, Andrew Delbanco, and the philosopher Bernard Williams, as well
as from a variety of Christians.11 But Eagleton in particular, a post9 Jaroslav Pelikan, in The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1992), provides a good general discussion of the development of this core idea from the medieval universities through John Henry
Newman’s Idea of the University and into the late-twentieth-century context.
10 A recent article, noteworthy in this regard, is Patrick J. Dineen’s “Science and the
Decline of the Liberal Arts,” New Atlantis 26 (Fall 2009/Winter 2010): 60–68. See
Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2010); also David Lyle Jeffrey, 后理论语境中的文学研究 (“Literary Studies in a
Post-theoretical Context”), Foreign Literatures Quarterly (Beijing: in Chinese) 108,
no. 4 (2007): 30–37.
11 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998); idem, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

MacIntyre and the Postmodern University

975

Catholic Marxist, is worth paying attention to, I suggest. The failure of
literary study following the 1960s to keep in the moral path of socialist
reform occasions Eagleton’s most stinging rebuke. The turn from literature to cultural theory, he argues, has progressively degenerated into a
fashionable, socially endorsed, yet entirely narcissistic self-preoccupation
in which, as he puts it, “quietly-spoken middle-class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and
eye-gouging, cyborgs and porno[graphic] movies,” oblivious to any
wider ethical imperative.12 The idiosyncratic ephemerality of such diversions, once it becomes normalized, not only produces an intellectual
crisis because of the loss of logical coherence (for example, blithe abandonment of the principle of non-contradiction)13 but entails a flight
from communal political conscience and public service into radically
anarchic self-absorption. That is, the anarchy that Arnold claimed to fear
in Culture and Anarchy has become a cultural reality, not because some
people (for example, Catholics and dissenter evangelicals) have continued
to exercise religious liberty, but because so many others followed Arnold
in believing that there could be an enduring civic morality without bona
fide spiritual transcendence. The ineffectuality of Arnold’s platitude—its
eventual status as meaningless cliché—eventually produced reaction, including anarchic withdrawal from civic morality and social purpose altogether.
Without an independent moral truth, why should people not pursue exclusively their subjective desires? Eagleton, in his book After Theory, is furious
over the palid introspection which has so readily subverted Arnold’s highbrow confidence that an enlightened rule of reason would anchor moral
purpose in the modern world. “Alienation,” in Marxist terms, had become
marginalized as an issue, and thus intractable. “The emancipation which had
1991); Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness:An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2002); see also Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of
Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991); idem, God,
Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition.
12 Terry Eagleton, After Theory (London: Basic Books, 1983), 2–3; Eagleton can be
seen to reflect the criticism of Jürgen Habermas, in the 1981 essay by Habermas,
“Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique 22 (1981): 3–14; likewise, Eagleton’s defense of Christianity against atheism in Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009),
parallels that of Habermas in A Time of Transition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006),
150–51, as well in the latter’s affirmative 2006 dialogue with Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), published as The Dialectics of Secularization
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007).
13 This is a basic contention of John M. Ellis in his Against Deconstruction (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

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failed in the streets and factories,” Eagleton writes in scorn, “could be acted
out instead in erotic intensities or the floating signifier.”14
There are consequences to ideas, we like to say, and though some wish not
to believe it, eventually there are consequences even in the academic marketplace. It is not surprising, given the decline in student enrollment and in
public prestige, that it is common now to speak of “crisis” in literary studies
as if it were above all an economic crisis. Clearly it is that, but that only
because of a long-standing crisis of intellectual coherence in literary studies
as a discipline. Yet, more in response to the reality of shrinking enrollments
than to any philosophical deficiency, there has recently been quite a bit of
effort to find a more coherent source of general appeal. With various intentions, the virtues of moral purpose, concern for public vision, and convictions about transcendence articulated in the canon of great authors
themselves have begun to be leveraged into a revival of interest in the “great
books.” In criticism, what Stanley Fish and others have termed a “turn to religion”15 is a similar response, by Christian and Jewish intellectuals primarily,
to an evident flight from the classrooms in literary studies. But this concern
is more broadly based, and has involved among philosophers the voice of
Eagleton’s sometime intellectual progenitor Jürgen Habermas, a selfprofessed atheist of Marxist sympathies, who has likewise recently risen to
the defense of the Christian intellectual tradition. In his book A Time of Transition, he argues that “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy.” “We continue to
nourish ourselves from this source,” he says; “everything else is postmodern
chatter.”16 There is more than a whiff here of reaction to the devolutions
effected by pseudo-Marxist postmodern liberalism.
5. Christian Critique
Christian criticism of the crisis in the humanities ought to be as pointed as
that of a Marxist like Eagleton, even if expressed in less dramatic terms,
because a principled Christian cultural critique shares to some considerable
14 Eagleton, After Theory, 29. See also his The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford:

Wiley-Blackwell, 1996).
15 Stanley Fish, “One University Under God?” The Chronicle of Higher Education

( January 7, 2005), 1; also “Does Reason Know What It Is Missing?” The New York
Times (April 13, 2010); also Susan Felch, “A Seminar on Christian Scholarship and
the Turn to Religion in Literary Studies,” Christianity and Literature 58.2 (2009):
213–303 (see especially the “afterword” by Kevin Hart, 295–301). More recently a
book by Andrew Thornton-Norris, The Spiritual History of English (London: The
Social Affairs Unit, 2010), has claimed that, with the disappearance of theological
transcendence, there has been a decline in the quality of literary English.
16 Jürgen Habermas, A Time of Transition, 150–51.

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977

degree in Marxism’s commitment to the common good, as well as its
conviction that there is meaning in history. There are, of course, differences. It seems to me that in his essay “Christianity’s Dual Meaning in
Chinese Modernization,” the Chinese philosopher You Xilin has captured
something of both the affinity and the difference when he observes:
Christianity thoroughly criticizes secular society when such society does
not allow a good person to live in a righteous way. On the other hand,
Christianity denies the human being any autonomous moral position
and thus it refuses any moral nihilism that results from the disappointment with secular humanity. Thus, faith in God and the perfect example
of Jesus’ self-devotion inspire individual Christians to uphold moral standards that lead to righteous deeds although he/she may be surrounded by
an environment in which crime is prevalent. Consequently, Christianity
shows the intrinsic force of its moral values, which challenge the abuses
of modernization.17

If avatars of the modern Catholic university do not always reach this high
standard, essentially the standard as expressed by Aquinas, Newman, and
MacIntyre, it is not the clarity of these signal Catholic philosophers on the
matter that is to be blamed.
6. Idealistic Marxism and Traditional Christianity: A Postscript
It may well be, as You Xilin,Yang Huilin, and other Chinese philosophers
have recently suggested, that Marxism has served to bring about modernity in China in a particularly forceful way, but also that, because Marxism is grounded in materialist rather than transcendent presuppositions,
it has proved much less effective in forming a critique of modernity at
the same time. Canadian philosopher George Grant has observed that
Marxism seems in the end to have failed in the West “primarily because
it does not allow sufficient freedom to the human spirit,”18 and insofar as
we understand him in that remark as he intended—namely, to be referring to something very much deeper than matters merely political—
there seems to be ample warrant for his judgment. This shortcoming has
17 You Xilin, “Christianity’s Dual Meaning in Chinese Modernization,” in Sino-

Christian Studies in China, ed. Yang Huilin and Daniel H. N. Yeung (Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), 47. For a compatible Western Christian critique,
one might consider the movement known as “radical orthodoxy,” notably as expressed
in works such as Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. John Milbank, Catherine
Pickstock, and Graham Ward (London: Routledge, 1999); also Stephen D. Long,
Divine Economy: Theology and the Market (London: Routledge, 2000).
18 George Grant, Philosophy in the Mass Age, edited and with introduction by William
Christian (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 63.

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produced disappointment in many quarters. At the same time that traditional Marxism can still offer telling criticisms of the degraded notion of
freedom which now characterizes much of Western postmodern culture,
in officially Marxist countries it has run the risk of a less consistent, at
worst even permissive, view of the corruptions of civic idealism by
personal greed and private ambition.
Nevertheless, we are here on the cusp of the common ground shared by
Marxism and Christianity, at least when each is more radically faithful to its
origins. It is a ground in some important respects quite alien to the terrain
occupied by most nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal theologians
and humanists. In part, the commonality of the prototypes arises from a
more closely shared intellectual history and genealogy; as Grant put it, “The
ultimate source of Marxist thought was the Judeo-Christian idea of history
as the divinely ordained process of man’s salvation.”19 The eminent Chinese
classical philosopher Liu Xiaofeng, a Marxist and a Christian, in looking at
this genealogy a half-century after the revolution of 1949 has shrewdly
observed that in China “the translations of Marx’s works and Western classical works (on philosophy and literature) introduced the humanistic
culture that contained Christian thoughts.”20 Between the medium and this
message there has been an unforeseen and creative synergy, now blossoming
in many Chinese universities, in which aspects of both Christianity and
Marxism are unconsciously but dynamically juxtaposed, creating there for
the first time, perhaps, conditions for the emergence of some features elsewhere found only in the earlier Catholic and Christian history of the Western university. In ways that one hopes Alasdair MacIntyre would at least
appreciate, if not entirely approve, the movement from idealistic Marxism,
through its disappointments, to a renewed search for truth and the common
good in the Chinese academic world in some measure mirrors his own
personal intellectual development, from a principled earlier Marxist idealism to his mature role as one of the best of contemporary spokesmen for a
genuinely Catholic conception of the university. But what his argument and
concise resumé of the relationship between theology and the intellectual life
of the university make clear, is that no university can remain credibly open
to a right relationship between the life of the mind and pursuit of the
common good that does not maintain and advance the prominence of
theology and theological reflection among the disciplines. Without a credi19 Ibid., 67.
20 Liu Xiaofeng, “Sino-Christian Theology in the Modern Context,” in Sino-Christian

Studies in China, ed. Yang Huilin and Daniel H. N. Yeung, 65. See also C. Stephen
Evans, “Redeemed Man: The Vision Which Gave Rise to Marxism,” Christian
Scholar’s Review 13, no. 2 (1984): 141–50.

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ble consideration of transcendence, the search for truth ultimately dissipates
into a bad dose of the sentimental vapors. The state of literary study in most
Western universities is not the only example of the failure of nineteenthcentury disciplines to achieve their promise, but it is a notable one. Efforts
to re-invigorate the literary disciplines through the development of
programs in “Religion and Literature” mark our awareness of what we have
lost, but they cannot hope to redeem the loss, I suggest, without intimate
pedagogical access to that perspective on Truth and transcendence which
has been the distinctive contribution of Catholic sacramental theology to
Western academic culture.
N&V

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981

Engaging MacIntyre’s God, Philosophy, Universities
F RANCESCA A RAN M URPHY
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN

T HIS BOOK states in the introduction that it derives from “three
convictions.” The first is that Catholic lay people need a better philosophical formation than they currently possess.The second is that the best
way into Catholic philosophy is through its history, “as a continuing
conversation” between contemporary enquirers and its greatest wisecrackers of the past (“good craic!” as an Irish priest once described his
talks with Herbert McCabe, O.P., at Notre Dame). Thirdly, philosophy is
not only a matter of abstract argument, but is a social phenomenon, with
its own institutional ecology, especially that of universities. In so far as
these convictions are the criteria by which the book is to be judged, it
achieves its aim. It is accessible to people without advanced knowledge
of philosophy, it presents a clear and thorough survey of Catholic philosophy through its history, and it explains how the university context has
affected this philosophy, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the
worse. The book is evidently the work of a master, so all I hope to
contribute to the conversation it engenders is to throw in some Gilsonian and theological crackers.
MacIntyre’s book is reminiscent of Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical
Experience. For Gilson, what really holds philosophical experience
together is metaphysics, and in particular the metaphysical reality of
being. The thesis of The Unity of Philosophical Experience is that one can’t
alter one aspect of the “philosophical experience” without that affecting
things all the way down the line. In particular, if one seeks to reduce or
remove metaphysical explanation from one’s interpretation of reality,
something else, which was not born for the role, like the divine will, with
al-Ashari or Malebranche, moral law for Kant, or society with Comte,

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will have the weight of metaphysics thrust upon it. In the end, Gilson
argued, “metaphysics always buries its undertakers,” because human
beings are bound to seek a first cause and principle of unity for their
experience. MacIntyre’s book is similar, though its focus is somewhat
more the unity of the disciplines studied in Universities than the unity of
philosophy. It is a sort of The Unity of University Experience. A guiding theme
of its history of Catholic philosophy is how the university disciplines
should hang together, but often don’t, in modern research universities. So
for instance, the “Averroistic” idea of the “two truths” independently and
disparately earned by philosophy and theology, and its rejection and refutation by St. Thomas Aquinas, which was always stressed in mid-twentieth century Catholic histories of medieval philosophy, because it stood
for the coherent relation of faith and reason, is significant in MacIntyre’s
book as representing the fragmentation or unity of all the disciplines, not
just philosophy and theology. In MacIntyre’s presentation, the significance of Aquinas’s refutation of the notion of philosophy and theology
representing two disparate truths is that the different intellectual “domains
are not self-enclosed, so that the truths in any one domain have no implication for what is true or false in any of the others. Some truths in physics
exclude certain historical possibilities. Some truths in mathematics exclude
certain physical possibilities. Some truths in theology exclude certain physical and certain philosophical possibilities” (68). The different domains,
MacIntyre tells us, ought to “share a single concept of truth,” which gives
meaning to the specific standards by which truth is discerned in the individual academic disciplines (69).
If rather than talking about the unity of metaphysics, and the unity of
the human metaphysical impulse, one is guided by the notion of the
(ideal) unity of the university curriculum, or the ideal university society,
as a cooperative ecology of disciplines and their teachers, the ultimate
picture is a bit less clear than it is on the “metaphysical” model. On the
one hand, the book argues that modern universities pursue an unconnected set of disciplines, because once we “[s]ubtract the knowledge of
God from our knowledge . . . what you have is an assortment of different kinds of knowledge, but no way of relating them to each other”
(147). The point there is that, since the emergence of the modern
research university in the eighteenth century, with its “marginal[ization]”
and “abandon[ment]” of theology (136), “universities have become . . .
fragmented and partitioned institutions” (174). Someone looking for a
more “metaphysical” picture of things might feel that MacIntyre is wanting the “university society” as such to carry the weight of metaphysics. If
it is supposed to do that job, and if, as MacIntyre argues, it is currently

Engaging MacIntyre’s God, Philosophy, Universities

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failing, then the outcome should be simply a wholly fragmented and
disjointed curriculum, in which interdisciplinarity or the foundation of
other disciplines upon a single key discipline or set of insights is impossible. As MacIntyre puts it, the result should be that “the conception of
the university presupposed by and embodied in the institutional forms of
contemporary research universities is . . . one that suggests . . . that there
is no such thing as the universe, no whole of which the subject matters
studied by the various disciplines are all parts or aspects, but instead just
a multifarious set of assorted subject matters” (174).
But on the other hand, MacIntyre seems to share Newman’s (and
Gilson’s) opinion that such intellectual fragmentation cannot last long, since
if we subtract any one of the sciences from the curriculum, there is an
inevitable tendency for other sciences to trespass on the intellectual
territory thus left vacant, to make claims that are not in fact . . . justifiable by the findings of their own discipline. So economists may pretend
to a competence on questions of ethics—one of Newman’s . . . examples—or natural scientists to a competence on questions of metaphysics
or theology, something that was not uncommon during the twentieth
century. (146)

And the disciplines don’t just, on this view, encroach on one another’s
territory, competing rather than cooperating for space, but rather one
single discipline tends to take over from an exiled philosophy or theology (the queen of the sciences). In one of the most illuminating suggestions of the book, MacIntyre proposes that the popularity of naturalism
in the past half century is due to a felt need to resolve the disintegration
of the diverse sciences, by founding all of them on physics (147), a
maneuver he says does not work.
Perhaps I was looking for more unity in the book than it intended to
offer. But it seemed to me somewhat confusing to complain on the one
hand that modern research universities offer the students a diversity of
unrelated disciplines, but on the other to claim that these universities are
not so intellectually fragmented after all, since the disciplines reorganize
themselves around new, though unworkable, centers. One could say that
it was as if, in this book, the ‘old Thomist’ anti-liberal MacIntyre is at odds
with the MacIntyre who also takes on board the ‘phenomenological’
approach of Newman. Thomism and phenomenology are not inherently
opposed; at least Gilson, in his introduction to Newman’s Grammar of
Assent, did not take issue with what he calls the author’s “phenomenology of religious belief.” What is difficult to combine is a Thomistic or
phenomenological concept of the human mind as naturally following

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certain laws (such as the need for some guiding centre for one’s intellectual activity) and a neo-Thomistic or neo-Aristotelian ideal of society as
a kind of intrinsic standard or absolute. For the first, what is of the essence
is the human mind itself and its objects, and these are innately interdisciplinary and co-ordinated. Some kind of coordination of efforts is bound
to happen, even if it is one based on false or limited premises. For the
second, it is the historical society which is of the essence, dictating the
outcomes, and unless one starts from a rightly ordered society, one will
not be able to achieve the interdisciplinarity or the coordination: unless
one starts from the good society, one can’t regain it, even in wrong or
partially false ways.
But at the same time, perhaps that bit of unclarity is simply the fact of
the matter: on the one hand, teachers and students in modern research
universities experience a setting in which the proponents of diverse,
highly specialized disciplines have little to say to one another, but, on the
other, there are deep intellectual undercurrents in these universities
which either unite the disciplines around centers ill-suited to perform
the task (like physics or biology) or promote an “interdisciplinarity” that
effectively destroys the notion of disciplines as independent domains of
enquiry. My father, who had attended English schools, which taught
history and geography as separate subjects, didn’t like the “Social Studies” textbook my brother had in the sixth grade, in America, in the late
1960s. He was always finding minor faults of geography or history in it,
and laughed at its pictures of ancient Greek boys doing gymnastics in
little wrap-around skirts. The textbook juxtaposed pictures of American
families tucking into steaks with drawings of Russian families staring at
empty plates. He dubbed it “the Propaganda Book,” and when my
brother had to do his ‘Social Studies’ homework, Father would declare,
“bring the Propaganda Book.” Not being either geography or history, but
a muddled merger of the two, “Social Studies” is not a real subject. And
where there is no real domain of intellectual enquiry, propaganda, of the
left or right, is substituted for knowledge. The kind of interdisciplinarity
exemplified by “Social Studies” is a real pedagogical danger in contemporary universities, where the curriculum is revised to compel it willynilly to produce integrated “sets of skills.” So, of course is the internal
disintegration of the disciplines at the higher, “research” level, or what
MacIntyre describes as the fragmentation of philosophy into a series of
unrelated subdisciplines (17–18).When, eventually, some “higher research
level” synthesis is made of these unconnected parts, it will doubtless
consist in Higher Propaganda. Perhaps, following MacIntyre’s suggestion
about naturalism, one could say this has already happened, at a vulgar

Engaging MacIntyre’s God, Philosophy, Universities

985

level, with sociobiology and the “New Atheism.” Perhaps the immense
popularity of these trends amongst plain persons is a result of their
making the grand, synthetic claims that students go to philosophy wanting to hear. Moreover, as MacIntyre says, few of the prestigious Catholic
research universities are doing much to contest such developments: “The
most prestigious Catholic universities often mimic the structures and
goals of the most prestigious secular universities and do so with little
sense of something having gone seriously amiss” (179). Though I admire
MacIntyre’s effort to put the “social context” of the university at the
center of the discussion, and though it makes this book and its history
very interesting, I don’t see how the problem can be resolved without
recourse to substances, whether one treats them in a metaphysical or a
phenomenological way. If one wants to distinguish between real and false
academic subjects, and to be able to say, “This is a real subject,” correlating
to a real domain of enquiry, one had better draw on a notion of
substances to which that subject corresponds.
And likewise, one will have to perform the delicate exercise of indicating that some “disciplines” are inherently propagandistic, by showing
that their “domains” and the laws they ascribe to them do not actually
exist . If, for instance, history is not governed by the dialectical materialist laws which Karl Marx purported to have discovered therein, and the
“domains” invented to show forth and exhibit these laws do not exist, in
the sense of corresponding to actual, substantial realities, then the university subjects thereby generated are inherently propagandistic. The only
way one will learn anything true in such disciplines is by accident, as
when a Lithuanian friend picked up quite a bit of theology and medieval
Catholic philosophy by studying “Atheism” at the University of Moscow
in the mid 1980s: he said that in order to show the falsity of the religious
claims, the Marxist professors sometimes had to describe them. So it is
somewhat unfortunate, not to say dispiriting, to find that MacIntyre,
speaking in his “anti-liberal” voice, takes the “unified curriculum” of the
Marxist universities of the former Soviet Union and its unwilling satellites as a model, claiming that its unification around the Marxist truth
claims gives it a greater affinity with what Christians should look for in
a university than most of what they will find in the “contemporary
American university.” Complaining that “the very notion of . . . a single
universe, different aspects of which are objects of enquiry for the various
disciplines, but in such a way that each aspect needs to be related to every
other” is lacking in anglophone universities, whether “professedly secular
or professedly Catholic,” MacIntyre asks us to

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[c]onsider by contrast the Marxist universities of the Soviet Union or
Communist Eastern Europe between 1917 and 1991 and put aside . . .
the issues raised by their corruption by the pseudo-Marxism of Stalinist and post-Stalinist state power. . . . [T]heir atheism was not something
merely negative, a denial of God’s existence. It was a consequence of
the dialectical and historical materialist understanding of the nature of
things that provided them with a framework within which each of the
academic disciplines could find its due place. So physics, history, and
economics were all taught in a way that made their mutual relevance
clear, and Marxist philosophy was assigned the tasks both of spelling out
this relevance in contemporary terms and of explaining how the
philosophies of the past had failed, just because they were the ideologically distorted expressions of class societies.

Although, as MacIntyre says, Catholics will not accept Marxist atheism,
“they have had to recognize that Marxism is a theory or a set of theories
with the same scope as their own and that in responding to it they are
responding to a theoretical atheism that is in some ways more intellectually congenial than the practical atheism of contemporary American
universities” (16–17). Here, it seems to me, we hear the “social” MacIntyre speaking, and admiring the Marxist universities not for their truth
claims, but simply for being societies in which the different orders were
thoroughly, if forcibly and unwillingly, integrated. I can’t see much point
in the disciplines being coordinated unless they are integrated around
shared truths. What does it matter if the domains were neatly interrelated
in Marxist universities, all being suffused with the principles of dialectical materialism, if those principles are not true, and the texts the professors produced and the students had to memorize were just “Propaganda
books”? If the human mind is, as Gilson claimed, inherently metaphysical and bent on finding unity, then the great thing is to encourage it in
its free discovery of real unities, real connections between the disciplines.
Aside from the exertions of John Paul II, it was the incipient emergence
of the internet that helped to dissolve Communist orthodoxy in the
former U.S.S.R. and bring down the walls dividing the Soviet East from
the West; likewise, today it looks as if free, integrative “craic” will reemerge outside the walls of the universities, on the Web. To paraphrase
Dostoevsky, such conversation will redeem the universities.
The theological side of these comments begins with a confession. This
book infiltrated my unconscious so profoundly and yet so furtively that I
plagiarized the title without any conscious intention to do so. In the course
of editing a book of conference papers we planned to subtitle Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini, I proposed changing the title from “Theology, the

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Universities and the Humanities” to “Theology, University, Humanities.” It
was only when chatting with David Braine on the phone (“What are you
doing?” “Reviewing a book by Alasdair MacIntyre.” “What’s it called?”),
that I closed God, Philosophy, Universities, looked at the cover, and realized
whence my inspiration for dropping the definite articles flowed. As a
theologian, I am interested in analogous questions to MacIntyre’s but I read
his book from the angle of theology and the universities. For instance, if
one is accustomed to speaking the languages of contemporary academic
theology, one experiences a certain frisson when one hears the belief of
Christians, together with that of Judaism and that of Islam, described as
“theism.” It is practically taboo today, and certainly profoundly “theologically incorrect” to describe the religion of Trinitarian believers as “theism”
along with equating it with the theism of Judaism and Islam. About the
only time theologians use the word “theism” is when they are disavowing
any affinity between their Christian beliefs about God and those of “classical theism.” Evidently the philosophers have different speech codes as well
as different emphases and interests.
Another example of the inadvertent cognitive dissonance produced in a
theologian by a philosopher’s book comes in the sentence that defines the
Catholic philosophical tradition as one “within which a Catholic allegiance
is inseparable from a recognition of philosophical enquiry as a secular and
autonomous activity” (41).Though they are not perhaps as consistent about
this as in their rejection of the term “theism,” many theologians think of
philosophy as a discipline that is not wholly and entirely secular. Instead,
they think of Plato’s myths and his arguments, or Aristotle’s wonder and his
analyses, or Hegel’s implicit and explicit mythologies and his rationalizations, as inseparably intertwined, and thus they conceive of philosophy as
often containing an unsecular, religious thread, one it never quite leaves
behind when argument takes the upper hand over belief.They think of the
religious imagination within philosophy as the element that makes it possible for theology to do business with philosophy.
A philosopher evidently doesn’t want the theologians needling in on
his territory, and for some good reasons. MacIntyre gives an historical
explanation of his belief in the importance of the autonomy of philosophy when he makes a familiar contrast of Byzantine, Islamic, and Western Catholic education in the Middle Ages. For all three, as “medieval
theistic civilizations,” “belief in God” was “a presupposition of all secular
enquiry and activity.” But, for the Byzantines, the imperial government
and the church were sufficiently indistinguishable, and education necessarily subordinated to their merged practical purposes, as to make it a
practical impossibility for secular knowledge to be pursued and taught

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“for its own sake.”The Muslims did create a great philosophical tradition,
but, again, its flourishing was thwarted, MacIntyre says, by the excessive
“integration” of the political and religious institutions. Only in the “Latin
West,” he says, did there arise “a conception of a need for and the legitimacy of secular institutions through which God is to be served, of the
existence of areas of human activity and enquiry in which the authoritative standards are independent either of the church or of secular rulers,
and this in a way that is in accordance with God’s will.” The result was
that “rival” “authorities” and traditions were possible: “[A]lternative and
rival answers to questions about the relationship of secular to ecclesiastical authority were posed in political terms that paralleled the competing
rival answers to questions debated in the schools about the relationship
of secular enquiries to those authoritative teachings to which theologians
appealed” (61–62). All true, all quite familiar, and it is all too clear that the
Marxist universities of the U.S.S.R. were modelled more on the Byzantine and Islamic paradigms than on the Latin West.
How far does the paradigm of separate political powers take us in understanding the relation of philosophy and theology in the mind of Thomas
or of Thomists? If we use it, we may think of Thomas talking to Aristotle
as one talking to a separate, autonomous dialogue partner. Even that analogy doesn’t really work, because someone who enters a conversation is
changed by it, and says things he or she would not have done if they hadn’t
been speaking with these and such people. That is part of what it means to
think of people as historical, and of philosophy as a long-term, traditionbased, historical conversation. So far as Aristotle is alive today, and in
conversation with us, and was likewise alive for the medievals, it could be
problematic to describe Gilson as “present[ing] a curiously un-Aristotelian
Aquinas,” as MacIntyre does (157). Gilson once remarked that, when
Thomas baptized Aristotle, he made him a new man. For those Thomists
who take note of this newness in the Aristotle on which they draw, what
Aristotle “said” in his original, historical persona can be modified by a sense
of what he is saying today. An example of this, to me, is the different uses
made of Aristotle by Francisco de Vitoria and Las Casas, on the one hand,
and Juan Ginés de Sepulveda on the other. As described by MacIntyre, the
1550–51 debates between the “paleo”-Aristotelian Sepulveda and Las
Casas about the Spanish treatment of the American Indians was about how
Aristotle speaks in the sixteenth century: “Sepulveda followed Aristotle in
arguing that there is a class of human beings who are ‘natural slaves.’ Their
lack of natural capacities is such that they can only be directed towards
good ends by rational agents who impose their authority upon them.
Sepulveda identified the American Indians as just such natural slaves and

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the Spaniards . . . as . . . rational agents. Las Casas did not deny outright that
there might be such natural slaves. But his firsthand experience of Indian
life gave him the strongest grounds for rejecting the claim that the Indians
fell into this category” (108). It could be that more than “firsthand experience of Indian life” entered the equation for Vitoria and Las Casas. Theirs
was not an “un-Aristotelian” Thomism, but a Thomism within which, like
the American Indians, Aristotle could be “baptized” and the anthropological and political implications of baptism taken seriously. For Las Casas and
Vitoria, Aristotelianism was not an unqualified absolute, but was read
through the modifying lens of Christianity.
MacIntyre says at the outset that he has for six years been teaching a
course with the same title as this book. One can only conclude by saying
how lucky his students have been. Several of the theologians who have
contributed to my lesser volume draw on it. The irony of my Gilsonian
and theological quibbles with God, Philosophy, Universities is perhaps that
it may ultimately be more quoted by theologians, in their defense of their
presence within the universities, than by philosophers, with their determination to retain their trade-union rights within the guild of secular
philosophers. It is a book that theologians, amongst other plain persons,
need to read.
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The Dignity of Being a Substance:
Person, Subsistence, and Nature
G ILLES E MERY, O.P.
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

I N HIS Disputed Questions De potentia, written about 1265/66, just
before the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas asked “whether there
can be a person in God” (utrum in Deo possit esse persona). His answer reads
as follows:
Person signifies a certain nature (quaedam natura) with a certain mode of
existing (quidam modus existendi). Now, the nature which person includes
in its signification is the most worthy (dignissima) of all natures, namely,
the intellectual nature according to its genus; and likewise the mode of
existing signified by person is the most worthy (dignissimus), namely,
such that something be existing by itself ( per se existens).Therefore, since
all that is most worthy (dignissimum) in creatures should be attributed to
God, this name person can fittingly be attributed to God, like other
names which are said of God in a proper way.1

This short answer stresses the dignity of the person three times in the
superlative form: “most worthy, most exalted (dignissimum).” In this text,
the dignity that characterizes the person is first considered according to
the common signification of the name “person,” a common signification
that applies—by analogy—to human beings, to angels, and to the three
divine persons. This dignity consists of, not one, but two features.
The first feature is the intellectual nature. By “intellectual nature,”
Aquinas does not mean the act of understanding, but the essence of beings
endowed with the faculty of intellectual knowledge and, consequently, the
faculty of will (which implies free choice and the capacity of performing
1 St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 3, corp.

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free acts). The accent is put first of all on the nature itself,2 and then on
the faculties or powers that belong to this nature: rationality also designates a faculty (the faculty of understanding and consequently the faculty
of will as “intellectual appetite”), but first, it characterizes a nature. The
second feature is what Aquinas here calls “a certain mode of existing”
(quidam modus existendi), that is, existing by oneself ( per se existens), which
means subsistence as the mode of existence that properly belongs to first
substances: existing not in another, but in oneself and by oneself. As the
Summa theologiae explains: “Insofar as [the substance] exists by itself and
not in another ( per se existit et non in alio), it is called subsistence (subsistentia).”3 These are the two features that ground the dignity of the person,
namely, (1) subsistence as denoting the substance under the aspect of its
special mode of existing, and (2) intellectual nature.
Finally, by dignity (“the greatest dignity”), in this context, Aquinas does
not mean something that comes to the person from the outside, as would
a special honor bestowed on a person by virtue of his or her high social
standing, but he means the excellent goodness that intrinsically characterizes the person as such: “Dignity (dignitas) signifies someone’s goodness
(bonitas) on account of himself or herself ( propter seipsum).”4 Such dignity
of the person is not first of all a moral worth but a metaphysical worth
(which grounds the moral worth of the person).
The Person: Modern Views and the Patristic Tradition
This metaphysical understanding of the person in terms of substance
(subsistence) and nature is—to say the least—no longer common in our
culture. It is quite often dismissed, for several complex reasons into which
I cannot enter here. We can think, for instance, of Immanuel Kant, who
reduced the substance either to the thing inaccessible in itself, or to an
epistemological category—a schema of understanding (Schema des
Verstandesbegriffs ).5 The understanding of the person as a substance ceded
2 ST III, q. 2, a. 2, corp.: “Person has a different meaning from nature. For nature signi-

fies the specific essence (essentia speciei) which is signified by the definition.”
3 ST I, q. 29, a. 2, corp.
4 In III Sent., d. 35, q. 1, a. 4, qla 1, corp.
5 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Idem, Werke in sechs Bänden, vol. 2

(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), 191–92. The “schema” is,
in itself, “always a mere product of the imagination” (nur ein Produkt der Einbildungskraft ), 189. Kant applied the same reduction to the notion of causality.
Whereas for Aquinas the wisdom and love of God are especially manifest by the
fact that God communicates to creatures a participation in his goodness by
giving them the dignity of being a cause (Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. III, ch. 69; cf.
ST I, q. 23, a. 8, ad 2: “dignitas causalitatis”), Kant reduced causality to the

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its place to various conceptions that put the principal accent on the
subjective aspects of the person, either in terms of thought (a person is a
subject who thinks and who has self-consciousness),6 or in terms of
moral autonomy and freedom (to be a person is to be able to dispose
freely of oneself and to be autonomous in one’s action), or in terms of
relations (the person is then defined by his or her insertion into the
network of social relationships, or the person is understood as being
constituted by the otherness of other persons: “I exist only through an
other”), or in terms of forming projects, or again in terms of the capacity to enjoy something, and so on.7
The concept of person in not an invention of Christian thought: it is
already found in classical Latin culture (with a social, moral, literary,
theatrical, and juridical background). But the Christian tradition certainly
offered a decisive contribution to the development of the understanding
of the person. Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, was the
first Christian author who made systematic use of the word “persona.” He
did so in a Trinitarian context, in order to reject modalism, that is, the
heterodox view that considered the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just as
three modes of manifestation of a God who, in himself, would be without
distinction. The affirmation of “three divine persons” aimed precisely to
maintain, against modalism, that the tri-personal “disposition” that appears
in the history of salvation exists in the very reality of God. To speak of
“person,” from the beginning of the Trinitarian use of this word, is to
signify the being that exists truly in itself, the reality that underlies the
manifestation to others, the foundation of what appears in the action. To
say, for instance, that the Son of God is a “person” is to affirm that he has
a proper existence or subsistence in himself, that he is not confused with
the Father. A similar purpose inspired the development of the Trinitarian
concept of hypostasis in the East, notably in Origen. Much later, in the
eighth century, St. John Damascene summarized the Eastern patristic
tradition by explaining that the hypostasis signifies “that which is and
which subsists by itself.”8 In sum, in Trinitarian and Christological
contexts, the person or hypostasis is a distinct subsisting reality endowed
“schematism of the pure conceptions of the understanding” (der Schematismus der
reinen Verstandesbegriffe): Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 192.
6 See Philip Dixon, “Nice and Hot Disputes”: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (London: T. & T. Clark, 2003).
7 For an overview and a critical discussion of these conceptions, see L’humain et la
personne, ed. François-Xavier Putallaz and Bernard N. Schumacher (Paris: Cerf,
2009).
8 John Damascene, Dialectica, ch. 43, in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol.
1, ed. Bonifatius Kotter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969), 108.

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with a proper mode of existing.The person as a substance is defined foremost by its distinct existence in itself and through itself.9
The Metaphysical Understanding of the Person
On this basis, Christian reflection has progressively elaborated an understanding of the person that applies to the Triune God (and therefore to
Christ Jesus) as well as to human beings and to angels. This analogical
understanding of what a person is found an important expression in the
well-known definition given by Boethius at the end of Antiquity: “A
person is an individual substance of rational nature (naturae rationabilis
individua substantia).”10 According to St. Thomas’s interpretation of
Boethius, the person is defined by the integration of the following three
features: (1) individuality; (2) substance; (3) a nature defined by and
endowed with intelligence and will.
1. The individual, by definition, signifies that which is “undivided” in
itself (one in itself) and which is also distinct from others (one with
comparison to others). To speak of the individual is to signify the
singular in its distinction and undividedness. St. Thomas specifies:
“ ‘Individual’ (individuum) is included in the definition of the person
in order to designate the individual mode of being (individualem
modum essendi ).”11 This means that, in Aquinas’s understanding of the
definition given by Boethius, the word “individual” means the incommunicable manner of existing of the real singular, the irreducibility of
the singular’s uniqueness.
2. The “individual” can apply to accidents, but it finds its supreme realization in the substance. The “substance” designates what stands
beneath the accidents; and, by extension, it designates that which is
apt to exist through itself, in itself and not in another, that is to say,
subsistence.When discussing whether, in the definition of the person,
substance refers to the first substance or to the second substance
(“second substance” signifies the “nature of the genus absolutely in
itself,” while “first substance” signifies “that nature as subsisting indi9 See La personne et le christianisme ancien, ed. Bernard Meunier (Paris: Cerf, 2006).
10 Boethius, Treatise against Eutyches and Nestorius, ch. 3 (PL 64, col. 1343).
11 St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 2, ad 5. Cf. ST I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 4: when

applied to the divine persons, who are not individualized by matter, “individual”
only implies incommunicability (incommunicabilitas). See Lawrence Dewan, “The
Individual as a Mode of Being according to Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63
(1997): 403–24.

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vidually”), Aquinas insists that the division of substance into “first” and
“second” substance should not be taken as a division into genus and
species, but rather as a division according to “different modes of
being” (secundum diversos modos essendi ), since this division is analogous. And, here again, Aquinas makes this important clarification: “In
this way, person is contained in the genus of substance, although not
as a species, but as determining a special mode of existing (ut specialem
modum existendi determinans).”12 This applies by analogy to God, not
that God would be contained in the genus of substance (God is
beyond any genus), but insofar as God is the principle of the genus
of substance.13
According to this explanation, the “individual substance” signifies
the individual whose “special mode of existence” is to subsist through
itself and in itself. Since the person is an individual substance, it is a reality that possesses its proper being in a complete manner, in itself and
through itself, and which exercises on its own the act of existing.What
is at stake in this explanation can be expressed in the following way:
what accounts for my uniqueness is not only my concrete individual
essence (my own humanity), but my proper act of existing in the
human nature common to all human beings. Thus, the “individual
substance” signifies the subsisting singular that exists through itself and
in itself, according to an irreducible mode, as a complete whole, a
“hypostasis” that exercises the act of existing on its own account.
3. The third element of the definition of the person is rational nature, that
is to say, the essence of beings endowed with intelligence. Here we must
add that rationality implies, as a constitutive feature, will and freedom:
the will itself as a free inclination, and free choice.14 Free will is the
characteristic of beings endowed with intelligence: they are not merely
12 De potentia, q. 9, a. 2, ad 6.
13 De potentia, q. 9, a. 3, ad 3. When applied to the divine persons, “substance” does

not mean what underlies the accidents (since there are no accidents in God), but
it means subsistence, that is, substance insofar as it exists in itself and by itself (ST
I, q. 29, a. 2, corp.; a. 3, ad 4). Faced with the objection that Boethius’s definition
of the person is unfitting since the divine essence itself is an “individual
substance,” Aquinas replies: “In the definition of the person, individual signifies
that which is not predicated of several; and in this sense the divine essence is not
an ‘individual substance’ by predication, inasmuch as it is predicated of several
persons (non est individua substantia secundum praedicationem, cum praedicetur de
pluribus personis)” (De potentia, q. 9, a. 2, ad 12).
14 De veritate, q. 23, a. 1, corp.: “In an intellectual nature, in which something is
received altogether immaterially, the essence of a free inclination is found

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“propelled” toward an end to attain, but instead they have the capacity
to direct themselves freely, by their will, toward the end that they have
apprehended by their mind.15 This is the ultimate determination that
makes of an individual substance a person: a nature endowed with the
power of understanding the truth and of loving the good (not only
particular goods, but the universal good).16 The rational nature is a principle of being and of acting. Free action is the clearest manifestation of
such rational nature, insofar as action follows upon being. Put otherwise, rational nature blossoms and makes itself known by the voluntary
command of acts, which has its root in the mind, insofar as these faculties belong to the nature itself. By virtue of this nature, the human
person possesses the ability to relate to the world, to others, to himself
or herself, and to God through knowledge and love. The interpersonal
dimension that characterizes the person is precisely inscribed within this
rational nature. I will return to this below.
In this view, the person is neither a thinking being nor a being that is
immediately apt to think or to will, but a being who exists in a nature that
is essentially defined by rationality (which applies to all human beings,
including severely handicapped people who will perhaps never be able to
think or to form projects).
Of course, this metaphysical understanding of the person is not the
first thing we notice in our experience of being “persons.” It is not spontaneous, but we discern it by reflecting on the immediate given of our
experience, that is, on the objects of our acts, and on our acts themselves,
so as to discern what lies at the root of these acts. At the root of free
action, of knowledge, and of self-consciousness, at the root of our relations with other people and creatures, we discover a being that holds itself
in existence, that is to say, the deep reality that is the radical principle of
knowledge, of free action, of openness to others, and of relations. The
metaphysical understanding of the person shows that we are open to the
real, open to being—open not just sometimes at some moments of our
lives, but open by our nature, by what we are.
perfectly verified; and this free inclination constitutes the essential character of
will (quae quidem libera inclinatio rationem voluntatis constituit ).”
ST I, q. 83, a. 4, corp.: “Within the intellective appetite, the will (voluntas) and
free choice (liberum arbitrium), which is nothing other than the power of choosing (vis electiva), bear the same relation to one another as, within the intellective
apprehension, the intellect (intellectus) and reason (ratio).”
15 ST I, q. 29, a. 1, corp.
16 ST I, q. 59, a. 1, corp. and ad 1; q. 64, a. 2, corp.

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This metaphysical approach, it should be clear, excludes neither the
psychological, moral, and relational features of the person nor the importance of action. Rather, it enables one to integrate these aspects, and it
guarantees their foundation. One can observe this, for example, in the
teaching of the Third Council of Constantinople (in 680–681). In the
wake of Chalcedon, this Council stressed the unity of Christ’s person
(Christ is one and the same hypostasis or person), and it paid special attention to the full integrity of his human nature, consisting of a rational soul
and a body ( psuche ˜ logike ˜ kai som̃a, according to the dogmatic definition
of Chalcedon). The document by which this Third Council of Constantinople addressed its results to the emperor explains that, since Christ
assumed a true human nature ( phusis) he exercises a true human activity
(energeia). The document then specifies: “Nothing other constitutes the
perfection of the human substance (anthrop̃ine ˜ ousia) than the essential
will (ousiod̃es thelem̃a) by which the power of free choice (autexousiotès) is
inscribed in us.”17
Established on a solid metaphysics of the person/hypostasis, the
Church’s doctrine regarding Christ Jesus was led to place the will and freedom of action at the heart of the understanding of human nature—a determination that had the greatest importance for the development of the
notion of person in Christian culture. And this is precisely what the
theme of the imago Dei expresses, as St. Thomas explains in the prologue
of the second part of his Summa theologiae (this prologue specifies the
aspect under which moral theology studies the human being): “The
human being has been created to the image of God,” which means that
the human being “is endowed with intelligence and free will, and has the
power to act by itself.” In this way, Christian theology elaborated a
conception of the person marked by proper subsistence, individuality,
unity, and totality, as well as by an intelligent and free nature.
Divine Persons and Human Persons
According to Aquinas, the divine persons are distinguished and constituted by relations, and they are indeed relations: the divine person is a
“subsisting relation.”18 But, according to St. Thomas, this is not the case
17 Greek text with Latin translation in Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio,

ed. J. D. Mansi, vol. 11 (Paris: H. Welter, 1901), col. 663–64. The Latin translation
reads: “Nihil enim aliud constituit humanae substantiae integritatem, nisi essentialis
voluntas, per quam liberi arbitrii vigor in nobis designatur” (col. 663).
18 The divine person is a subsistent relation (ST I, q. 40, a. 2, ad 1: “personae sunt ipsae
relationes subsistentes”); and the name “person” signifies the relation as subsisting (ST
I, q. 29, a. 4, corp.: “persona igitur divina significat relationem ut subsistentem”).

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with human persons: I am neither a relation nor a set of relations. The
constitution of a person by a relation remains the exclusive prerogative of
the Trinity, because only in God does a relation “subsist.”19 In a human
being, a relation does not constitute the person as such. However, many
Christian philosophers and theologians today ask: why shouldn’t we
apply the understanding of the person in terms of relations to human
persons? An answer to this question can be found in Aquinas’s distinction
between the common notion of the person, and the special notion that
applies distinctly to God and to humans.
There is, first, a common notion of person that is applied by analogy to the
divine Three, to angels, and to human beings. This common notion, which
is analogical, is expressed by the definition of Boethius. And there is, second,
a special notion of person that is applied distinctly either to human beings, or
to God the Trinity. This special notion can be expressed either “formally”
( formaliter), so as to signify what belongs the ratio of the person, or “materially” (materialiter): such “material signification” includes that which accounts
for the distinct individuality and uniqueness of one person.20
The “principle of individuation,” so to say, among the divine persons,21
is a relation, to the point that St. Thomas explains, concerning the divine
person of the Son of God: “The Son is a subsisting person by virtue of his
relation [namely, filiation]: for his relation is his characteristic personhood
(sua enim relatio est sua personalitas).”22 To the objection: “No substance is a
relation,” Aquinas gives the following answer: “The divine essence is not
in the genus of substance, but is, rather, above every genus, embracing in
itself the perfections of all genera. This is why nothing prevents one from
finding that which pertains to relation within it.”23
For its part, the human person is composed of a rational soul and a
body. The substantial unity of this body and this soul constitutes one
human person. According to the special notion that characterizes it, the
human person is a substantial existent of an intelligent and free nature,
19 ST I, q. 39, a. 1, ad 1.
20 De potentia, q. 9, a. 4, corp.: “We must observe that a thing is signified in two ways,

formally and materially. Formally a name signifies that which it was chiefly
intended to signify, and this is the ratio of the name: thus ‘man’ signifies something composed of a body and a rational soul. Materially a name signifies that
which is required for such ratio (illud in quo talis ratio salvatur): thus ‘man’ signifies
something that has a heart, brain, and such parts as required in order that the
body be animated with a rational soul.”
21 Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. IV, ch. 14 (no. 3503): “Id quod est quasi individuationis principium.”
22 In I Sent., d. 19, q. 3, a. 2, ad 1.
23 De potentia, q. 8, a. 2, ad 1.

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individualized by and subsisting in matter.24 According to this view, the
matter is the “principle of standing under” ( principium substandi ), whereas
the form (in our case, the human rational soul) is the “principle of
subsisting” ( principium subsistendi )25—so that the soul accounts for the
subsistence without which there could be no substantial individual.
This is not to imply that relations have no importance in such an
understanding of the human person. First of all, a relation to God is
implied by the very existence of the human person as created by God,26 a
relation that necessarily follows on the being of the creature (this relation
to God is a “proper accident” belonging to the genus of “relation”), with
real ontological weight.27 Second, relations are constitutive of the human
person if we consider the human nature insofar as it implies family relations, social life, mutual help, and the development of the image of God
in the human person. Aquinas accounts for these interpersonal relations
(as he accounts for human language) by considering the rational nature
that grounds them:

24 The principle of individuation is “signed matter” (matter as referred to definite

quantity and dimension). “Signed matter” individuates form, and consequently
(together with the form) the individual substance composed of matter and form.
Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. IV, ch. 40 (#3781): “The singular is individuated by
designated matter (materia designata) which is not included in the quiddity and
nature of the species. For, in designating Socrates, one includes this matter (haec
materia), which is not included in the ratio of human nature. Therefore, every
hypostasis subsisting in human nature is constituted by signed matter (materia
signata).” Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, ch. 65 (no. 531): “Singularis autem essentia
constituitur ex materia designata et forma individuata.”
25 ST I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 5. In De potentia, q. 9, a. 5, ad 13, Aquinas writes that the individuating principles ( principia individuantia) are both the principle of subsisting —
since a nature does not subsist except in singular beings—and the principle of
distinction from other individuals of the same species. And, in ST I, q. 29, a. 4,
corp., he explains: “Person in any nature signifies what is distinct in that nature:
thus in human nature it signifies this flesh, these bones, and this soul, which are
the individuating principles of a man, and which, though not belonging to the
signification of ‘person’ [in general], nevertheless do belong to the signification
of [a particular] human person.”
26 De potentia, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1: “Although the first cause that is God does not enter
into the essence of creatures, yet esse which is in creatures cannot be understood
except as derived from the divine esse: even as a proper effect ( proprius effectus)
cannot be understood save as derived from its proper cause.”
27 ST I, q. 44, a. 1, ad 1; q. 45, a. 3, ad 1. Cf. In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, ad 4: “If
‘creation’ is taken in the passive sense, it is a certain accident in the creature, and
so it signifies a certain reality which is not in the predicament of passion, properly speaking, but in the genus of relation (in genere relationis).”

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The divine providence disposes rational creatures in a different way from
other beings, because they differ from other beings in the way that their
own nature was established. . . . Since they have an intellectual nature,
they are able by their operation to attain to intelligible truth. . . . And
because they can reach intelligible truth by their natural operation, it is
clear that divine provision is made for them in a different way than for
other things. Inasmuch as the human being is given understanding and
reason, by which he can both discern and investigate the truth; as he is
also given sensory powers, both internal and external, whereby he is
helped to seek the truth; as he is also given the use of speech, by which
he is enabled to convey to another person the truth that he conceives in
his mind—thus constituted, human beings may help one another in the
process of knowing the truth, just as they may in regard to the other
needs of life, for man is by nature a social animal.28
Speech is proper to human beings, since it is proper to them, in
contrast with other animals, to have knowledge of good and evil, just
and unjust, and the like [the useful and the harmful], which speech can
signify. . . . Therefore, human beings by nature communicate about these
things. And communication about these things makes the household
and the political community, so that the human being is by nature (naturaliter) a social (domesticum) and political (civile) animal.29

These quotations from Aquinas could be developed, but they are enough
to show that, for him, our interpersonal relations are grounded in our
nature. They are, so to speak, the blossoming of our nature—to be more
precise: these relations are grounded in the “rational nature” that is part of
the very definition of the person, a rational nature which in turn finds its
foundation in the subsistence of the person as an “individual substance.”
Finally, let us briefly consider a problem posed by the Church’s
doctrine on the Trinity and on Christ. Christian monotheism holds that,
in God the Trinity, the three persons are one understanding and one will,
one freedom, exercising one operation as they are one identical essence or
nature: one single God. Consequently, if one defines the person solely by
reason, or freedom, or the capacity for autonomous action, how can we
recognize “three persons” in God? This would imply three intelligences,
three freedoms, three centers of spiritual life, in brief, three Gods (tritheism). This is far from a false or superficial difficulty. It has been vividly
perceived by Christian theologians ever since the seventeenth century
when, with John Locke and René Descartes, the person began to be
understood in terms of acts of thought. The problem is found also in
28 Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. III, ch. 147 (no. 3201–3202); emphasis mine.
29 Sententia Libri Politicorum, Bk. I, ch. 1/b (Leonine edition, vol. 48 A, p. 79);

emphasis mine.

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Christology: how can we profess that Christ Jesus is “one single person”
while recognizing in him a true and complete human mind (with intelligence and will) that remains really distinct from his intelligent and free
divinity? To define the person by the life of the mind would lead one to
posit two persons in Christ. Attempts during the twentieth century to
speak of three “modes of being” (Seinsweisen) in God the Trinity (Karl
Barth), or to specify the “personality” of the Three by the notion of
“distinct modes of subsistence” (distinkte Subsistenzweisen) (Karl Rahner),
did not solve the problem. In fact, the theologians who made such proposals adopted a conception of the human person based on the life of the
mind, so that the analogy with the divine persons became quite obscure.
St. Thomas’s understanding of the person still offers today a helpful
resource for pursuing Christian reflection on the human being and on the
Triune God. It places the metaphysical foundation of the person in the
foreground. 30 This foundation is at the root of the dignity of the person.
The person is “what is most worthy” (dignissimum) and “what is most
perfect ( perfectissimum)”31 by reason of its mode of existing through itself
as a substance of an intellectual nature. Being a substance is the most
fundamental dignity of the person. The human person is not a “rational
individual,” but a subsisting being of a rational nature. The criterion for the
dignity of a person is not only of the moral order, but it is—more fundamentally—of the metaphysical order. The criterion is the possession, not
of a property or of a set of properties, but of a nature; and not just any
possession, but the person’s existence as a substance of this nature. This
approach to the person, in terms of subsistence and of nature, grounds and
promotes the psychological, ethical, relational, and social traits of the
person. Further, this approach constitutes the indispensable foundation for
understanding analogically the divine person and the human person, that is,
for a consistent account of the human person and of the divine person by
way of analogy: “It is because subsisting in a rational nature is a great dignity
that every individual of a rational nature is called a person.”32
N&V

30 “Metaphysical” should in no way be confused with “conceptual.” Metaphysics

deals with being as being, with the real as real, that is, with what is at the heart
of all reality.
31 ST I, q. 29, a. 3, corp.
32 ST I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 2 (emphasis mine): “Et quia magnae dignitatis est in rationali
natura subsistere, ideo omne individuum rationalis naturae dicitur persona.”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011): 1003–28

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Alphonsus Liguori’s Moral Theology of Marriage:
Refreshing Realism, Continued Relevance
K ENT L ASNOSKI
Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI

Introduction
O NE OF THE most widely translated and republished theological
masters of the last 500 years, the patron saint of moral theologians and
confessors, the founder of the Redemptorist order, and a doctor of the
Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) has unfortunately become
relatively distant from modern moral theology, especially in the Englishlanguage scholarship.1 As an object of academic study, his moral theology
remains alive in the English language through one monograph (actually
a translation of a 1987 French monograph) and a small body of secondary literature, which mostly considers the role of his Theologia Moralis in
the moral manual tradition that lasted until the Second Vatican Council

1 The

only recent monograph on Liguori’s moral theology in the English
language is the 1998 translation of Théodule Rey-Mermet’s 1987 French work
Morale selon saint Alphonse de Liguori (Paris: Cerf, 1987). The English title is Moral
Choices: The Moral Theology of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, trans. Paul Laverdure
(Liguori, MO: Liguori, 1998). Rey-Mermet’s French was also translated into
Spanish in 1991 (A Moral de Santo Alfonso de Liguori, trans. Joao Batista Bonaventura Leite [Aparecida: Editora Santuário, 1991]). In the English language, monographs are limited to spirituality, e.g. Hamish Swanston, Celebrating Eternity Now:
A Study of the Theology of Alphonsus Liguori, 1696–1787 (Liguori, MO: Liguori,
1995); Barry Ulanov, The Way of St. Alphonsus Liguori (London: Burns, 1961); and
biographies, e.g., D. F. Miller, C.Ss.R. and L. X. Aubin, C.Ss.R., Saint Alphonsus
Liguori: Bishop, Confessor, Founder of the Redemptorists and Doctor of the Church,
1696–1787 (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1987).

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and the renewal of moral theology with Bernard Häring.2 Fortunately,
Spanish and Italian, along with some French and fewer German scholars,
have kept busy studying Liguori’s moral theology, though mostly from
historical perspectives, and mostly on or near the occasion of the bicentenary of his death and the tercentenary of his birth.3
This article addresses the lacuna of Alphonsian moral theology and spirituality in the modern theological discussion of marriage. The demise of
the manual tradition, which brought a renaissance of Scripture as the heart
of moral theology, has also meant a forgetting and sometimes a stigmatization of Alphonsus and his methods and approach. Where Alphonsus is
remembered, it is wherever his “equiprobabilism” can come in handy or
where he seems to anticipate the transition to modern “personalist,”
2 See, for example, Raphael Gallagher, “The Systematization of Alphonsus’ Moral

Theology through the Manuals,” Studia Moralia 25 (1987): 247; Gallagher, “The
Manual System of Moral Theology since the Death of Alphonsus,” Irish Theological Quarterly 51 (1985): 1–16; John Sharp, “The Influence of St. Alphonsus
Liguori in Nineteenth-century Britain,” The Downside Review 101 (1983): 60–76.
See also Dennis J. Billy, “An Alphonsian Model of Spiritual Direction,” Studia
Moralia 41 (2003): 47–72.There is also a 1951 doctoral dissertation from Catholic
University of America by Clayton Kramer, “Fear and Hope According to Saint
Alphonsus Liguori.”
3 Marciano Vidal has published as widely as anyone (in Spanish or otherwise) on
Alphonsus Liguori. See, for example, La familia en la vida y en el pensamiento de
Alfonso de Liguori, 1696–1787: proceso a la familia ‘tradicional’ (Madrid: Instituto
Superior de Ciencias Morales, 1995), which includes much of the work he has
done in separate articles published chiefly in the journal Studia Moralia. The journal Studia Moralia, published by the pontifical university bearing his name, has
done much to keep the study of Liguori alive.
In Italian, see, for example, Giovanni Velocci, “S. Alfonso de Liguori, pastore e
dottore,” Divinitas 32 (1988): 606; and “Antonio Rosmini e s. Alphonse de Liguori,”
Alphonse de Liguori (Paris: Beauchesne, 1987), 161–81; and Orlandi Giuseppe, “S
Alfonso Maria de Liguori e I laici: la fondazione delle ‘Cappelle serotine’ di Napoli,”
Lateranum 53 (1987): 504–26.
Among French scholars, Louis Vereecke is one of the most widely published,
e.g. “Evolution de la théologie moral du Concile de Trente à s. Alphonse de
Liguori,” Studia Moralia 25 (1987); Vereecke, “La conscience selon Saint Alphonse
de Liguori,” Studia Moralia 21 (1983): 259–73; and Vereecke, De Guillame d’Ockham
à saint Alphonse de Liguori: études d’histoire de la théologie morale moderne, 1300–1787
(Rome: Collegium S. Alfonsi de Urbe, 1986).
Among German scholars, see Otto Weiss, “Alfonso de Liguori und die deutsche
Moraltheologie im 19.Jahrhundert,” Studia Moralia 25 (1987); and Bernard Häring,
“Ein Gott des Erbarmens und der Gnade: das Vermächtnis des hl. Alfons Maria
von Liguori für Moral und Pastoral,” Theologish-praktische Quartalschrift 130 (1982):
217–27.

Alphonsus Liguori on Marriage

1005

“gospel values” approaches.4 This article, though, is less interested in how
he blazed a trail for where theology has gone. Instead, I begin with these
questions: Is Alphonsus Liguori a relevant source for modern moral theology on marriage? If so, is it only as a sort of prophet of modern developments, one who essentially agrees with the direction taken and pats
modern moral theologians on the back? Or, would Alphonsus have a valid
critique of modern approaches to marriage and the family? In what ways
can he not only support the modern move toward the fulfillment of and
self-gift of the human person in marriage, but also supplement and possibly redirect modern approaches to the way marriage and the family lead
persons to their supernatural end? This article is a step toward engaging
Alphonsian moral theology in modern discussions of moral theology in
marriage.This article makes a first step: presenting Alphonsus’s theology of
marriage in a way accessible to and relevant for modern discussions. To
this end, I argue that Alphonsus’s focus on the ultimate end of the human
person causes him to look with refreshing realism and yet confident assurance at the place of marriage in attaining that end.
To Marry or Not to Marry: The Alphonsian Approach
All of Liguori’s personal counsels in the confessional, his sermons, his letters,
his popular writings, the rule of the Redemptorist order, and his more
academic works, such as the Theologia Moralis, sought one chief goal: to make
saints. Liguori wrote and spoke about what was sure to make people holy,
not what was simply good enough to get by. His approach was principally
practical, but never merely pragmatic. For Liguori, life on earth was a training ground in sanctification through growth in prayer and virtue.5 The
Christian life was the love and imitation of Christ on earth, principally
4 Vidal, La familia en la vida y en el pensamiento de Alfonso de Liguori, 149–53; Rey-

Mermet, Moral Choices, 112–21.
5 Any claim that Alphonsus’s approach to the moral life was primarily casuistic and

theoretical would be improbable. For Alphonsus, the holy life consists not in a
scrupulous adherence to laws but the practice of Christian virtues, chief among
them the love of Christ, the resignation to the will of God, patience in suffering,
and obedience to a spiritual director. Practicing these virtues is sure to result in
obedience to moral laws, but such obedience is not the center of the moral life for
Alphonsus. Alphonsus’s popular, spiritual writings focused explicitly on the practice
of the virtues. Take, for example, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, trans. Peter
Heinegg (Liguori, MO: Liguori, 1997), which leads the reader through the virtues
entailed in the practice of love in imitation of Christ. The text includes a further
treatise on the acquisition of particular virtues. See also “The Practice of the Christian Virtues” in The Christian Virtues and the Means of Obtaining Them, trans. and ed.
Robert A. Coffin (New York: Edward Dunigan and Brother, 1855), 372–92.

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through a patient share in his sufferings and a constant resignation to the
will of God.6 When discerning between moral choices, Liguori would
reflect: I know this way will make me a saint, but I do not know whether
this other way will even certainly save me. Put this way, a right path becomes
at once clearer, though not for that reason any easier to choose.7 When faced
with the decision to marry or remain celibate, among the operative discernment questions for Liguori is this: which way is more likely to avoid sin and
facilitate growth in holiness, and which way more likely leads to sin or
potentially hinders growth in holiness?
Alphonsus Liguori’s own biographies, as well as his own writings across
the span of his life, demonstrate his approach to the question of whether
or not to marry; in every case we see a saint guiding people toward what
he thinks is the surest path to holiness. As to his life’s witness, biographers
tell us his experience, defying his father and choosing celibacy.8 In his own
writing, he explicitly treats the question in a letter to his brother Hercules,
in letters and discourses to consecrated women, and women and men
seeking advice on a choice for the state of life, in Theologia Moralis, Homo
Apostolicus, and On the True Spouse of Christ.9 His letter to a young man
discerning a state of life summarizes his position on the question:
6 The theme saturates all of Alphonsus’s popular, spiritual and moral works, but

see, for example, the section titled “signs by which we may know whether we
have the divine love in us,” in “A Christian’s Rule of Life,” inThe Christian Virtues,
413–18. See also Liguori, The Practice of the Love of Christ, 46, where Alphonsus
states, with the Blessed Battista Varani, that God does three “great favors” for
Christians: “The first enables them not to sin; the second, still greater is to do
good works; the third, and the greatest of all, is to suffer for his love.”
7 In a March, 1733 letter written to advise a nun, Sr. Celeste, about how best to
proceed in deciding between two spiritual directors, Alphonsus advocates certainty
where it can be had: “I believe that your attachment to Tosquez is not sinful, but is
it not true that human feelings are a great deal mixed up in it? It is not God that
you look for in Tosquez . . . in following Mgr. Falcoia you will certainly become a
saint; in following Tosquez you will certainly not become one, and God knows if
you will save your soul,” transcribed in Miller, Saint Alphonsus, 86–87.
8 Don Giuseppe, Alphonsus’s father, tried twice to arrange a marriage for his son.
Don Giuseppe dropped the first potential match before engagement when the
economic prospects turned out to be unfavorable. The second betrothal did not
occur either, this time because Alphonsus publicly snubbed the intended, and defiantly maintained his unwillingness to marry. See Miller, Saint Alphonsus, 21–22.
9 For the advice given to his brother Hercules on the possibility of a second
marriage, see Liguori, Lettere di S. Alfonso Maria de’Liguori, ed. F. Kuntz and F.
Pitocchi, 3 vols. (Rome: n.p., 1887–90), I, 477. For popular writings and published
letters to religious and lay people on the question, see “The Choice of a State of
Life, and the Vocation to the Religious State,” in The Great Means of Salvation and
of Perfection, The Complete Works of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Vol. 3, ed. Eugene

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1007

At the end of your letter you express a wish to learn from me whether,
in case you should not have the courage to enter religion, it would be
better to marry, as your parents wish, or to become a secular priest. I
answer:The married state I cannot recommend to you, because St. Paul does not
counsel it to any one, except there be a necessity for it, arising out of habitual
incontinence, which necessity, I hold for certain, does not exist in your case.10

If the boy has a call to religious life, he will never be satisfied unless he
follows that call, for happiness of those called to the imitation of Christ in
the religious life consists in detachment from all things, especially his
comforts, his parents, his self-esteem, and his own will.11 If the boy has no
vocation to the religious life, Liguori still cannot counsel marriage without
reason. Alphonsus will counsel marriage only on account of moral necessity. The criterion here is what will avoid sin and most certainly lead to
salvation. Marriage will most certainly lead to salvation if a person suffers
from the illness it cures. In the case of this boy, though, Alphonsus is confident no such illness exists, and therefore cannot say that marriage is the best
choice, that is, the one that will certainly lead to sainthood.
Behind this approach to the question of marriage is Alphonsus’s firm
belief that marriage is a more difficult path to holiness than celibate life.
Alphonsus has a stark realism about the worldliness of married life. The
demands of marriage make it nearly impossible to spend adequate time
in prayer:
Now it is difficult, not to say impossible to practise all this in the midst
of the noise and the disturbances of the world; for family affairs, the
necessities of the house, the complaints of parents, the quarrels and
persecutions with which the world is so full, will keep your mind so
occupied by cares and fears that you will barely be able in the evening
to recommend yourself to God, and even this will be done with many
distractions.You would wish to make your meditation, to read spiritual

Grimm (Brooklyn: Redemptorist Fathers, 1927), 381–511. See Liguori, Theologia
Moralis, Editio Nova cum antiquis editionibus diligenter collata in singulis auctorum allegationibus recognita notisque criticis et commentariis illustrata, 4 vols. Cura et studio P.
Leonardi Gaudé (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1912), I, 204–5. Unless otherwise noted, translations of this text are my own. No English translation of this text
has been published.
10 Liguori, “Answer to a Young Man who Asks Counsel on the Choice of a State
of Life,” in The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, 461–66, at 466.
11 See “The Choice of a State of Life, and the Vocation to the Religious State,” in
The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, 402–12.

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books, to receive Holy Communion often, to visit every day the Sacrament of the altar; but from all this you will be prevented by the affairs
of the world.12

Meeting the requirements of the family is enormously time consuming,
and almost requires a certain connection to the goods of the earth, since
the man (for Alphonsus) is required to provide for his family’s nourishment. A further caveat comes in a sermon Alphonsus wrote for the
seventh Sunday after Pentecost. “If you wish to marry, learn this day the
obligations which you contract with regard to the education of your children; and learn also, that if you do not fulfil them, you shall bring yourselves and all your children to damnation.”13 This young man is asked to
consider which path will more surely and more easily lead to peace and
holiness. For Alphonsus, the answer is clear: unless he is habitually incontinent, a young man would do better to live a celibate life. This advice is
not merely, or even primarily, an a priori pessimism about marriage
received from Augustine, but a practical conclusion reached after many
years of giving missions and hearing ten hours of confessions a day,
witnessing the suffering of the married in their best attempts at the
Christian life.
Alphonsus’s experience of the situation of married women in eighteenth-century Italy reinforces the notion that his caution regarding
marriage is based on realism rather than on theoretical, Augustinian
pessimism. Seeking to ameliorate people’s lives and lead them more
certainly to sainthood in peace, Alphonsus advises avoiding marriage to a
strictly earthly husband:
The maltreatment which [women] receive from their husbands, the
displeasure caused by their children, the wants of the house, the jealousies and fears to which they are subject, make them live in the midst
of continual anguish and bitterness. Married women may be called
martyrs of patience, if they bear all with resignation; but unless they are
patient and resigned, they will suffer a martyrdom in this world, and a
more painful martyrdom in the next.14
But would to God that married women had no other evil to
contend with besides that of not always being able to attend to their
12 Liguori, “Answer to a Young Man who asks Counsel on the Choice of a State of

Life,” in The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, 462.
13 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” in Sermons of St. Alphonsus Liguori: For All Sundays of the

Year, 4th edition (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1982), 269–78, at 270.
14 Liguori, “Advice to a Young Person in Doubt about the State of Life which She

ought to Embrace,” in The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, 468–73, at
471–72.

Alphonsus Liguori on Marriage

1009

sanctification as much as they should! . . . Unmarried women do not
understand this, but married women and those who have to hear their
confessions know it well . . . the ill treatment that they receive from
their husbands, the disobedience of children, the wants of a family, the
annoyance of mothers-in-law and relatives, the throes of childbirth,
always accompanied by danger of death, not to mention the afflictions
of jealousy, and scruples of conscience with regard to the rearing-up of
their children.15

These excerpts demonstrate, on Liguori’s part, a respect for and understanding of the reality of married life as it was experienced by people he
met. If Alphonsus had heard from married women that their practice of
the Christian life were well, he would have counseled the state of
marriage more strongly, I am sure. This was not the case, however, since
women told him in the confessional:
I would wish for retirement in order to spend a little time in mental
prayer, but the affairs of the family and of the house, which is always in
confusion, do not permit this. I would hear sermons, go to confession,
communicate often . . . but my husband does not wish it. My unceasing occupations, the care of children . . . keep me confined to the house;
and thus it is not without some difficulty that I can hear Mass at a late
hour on festivals.16

Given that he heard these types of concerns from real women in the
confessional day after day, his rhetorical question and answer below are
not unreasonable:
And how many married women are to be found in such a state of
perfection? They are very rare; and if you find any, they are always in
sorrow, that when they could have done so they did not consecrate
themselves to Jesus Christ. Amongst all the devout married women I
have known, I never knew one to be satisfied with her condition.17

The fact that married women are often unreasonably prevented from
practicing their piety unreasonably is further attested in Alphonsus’s work
geared for the training of compassionate, knowledgeable confessors, who
were to advise women and men in their roles as wives and husbands.
15 Liguori, “Discourse to Pious Maidens,” The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfec-

tion, 474–87, at 478.
16 Liguori, “Advice to a Young Person in Doubt about the State of Life which She

ought to Embrace,” in The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, 468–73, at
471–72.
17 Liguori, “Discourse to Pious Maidens,” 474–87, at 478–79.

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“The husband sins gravely,” Alphonsus writes, “if he impedes her with
respect to the precepts of God or the Church without just cause. . . . In
truth, if he impedes her without cause regarding the same good counsels
of the Church, such as confession, communion, and others; commonly
this is a venial sin, except if it is understood that she perceives great
usefulness in these activities.”18 If the wife is particularly interested in a
devout life, the husband’s culpability rises if he frustrates the possibility
for such a life. If he had not encountered such cases, Alphonsus would
likely not have included them in his manual, which is certainly long
enough as it is. Thus, it can be said that Alphonsus’s warnings about
marriage come from his understanding of the reality of marriage at the
time, as well as his concern for leading people in what he understood to
be the easiest way to salvation.
The modern reality presents a picture of marriage far different from
the one Liguori knew, yet ironically, in a time when “high” theologies of
sexuality and marriage are popular (e.g., theology of the body and domestic church), Alphonsus’s seemingly “lower” theology of marriage should
remind all Christians to attend to the actual practices and experiences of
married Christians. Alphonsus counseled marriage as a cure for the
disease of incontinence. Contemporary culture, it might seem, stands in
need of this medicine even more than did his own. Modern marketing
thrives on studying and implementing ways to inflame desire for a product; among the most powerful ways to sell a product is to associate it with
positive sexual experience or sexual success. In recent, memorable television advertisements, Cadillac asks: “When you turn on your car, does it
return the favor?” In a recent television ad campaign, one razor company
shows a man so cleanly shaven by this new razor that a woman working
out on the treadmill next to him is so overcome with desire for him that
she immediately falls to the floor. Even pharmaceuticals are getting into
the game: Viagra and Cialis advertising on many sporting events. Finally,
the modern proliferation of pornography in print, television, film, and
especially the internet contributes to and helps feed an ever-growing
hunger for sexual satisfaction. Alphonsus’s contribution to the modern
question of discernment about marriage might sound like this: is the
graced setting of marriage the place where I can best conquer my specific
vices and grow in virtue and holiness while helping another person do
the same?

18 Liguori, Theologia Moralis, vol. 1, 615–16, no. 356.

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The Alphonsian Approach to Marriage:
Relief for a Growing Number of Nonvowed Lay Catholics?
Alphonsus’s position on counseling marriage provides an interesting
counterpoint to the modern status quo of Christian life.19 Above, I argued
that Alphonsus would suggest a serious consideration of whether the
“need” for marriage was even greater today as a cure for artificially
inflamed desires, but at the same time, Alphonsus would not accept a
popular critique of celibacy, namely, that such a lifestyle by nature makes
an unreasonable demand on the human person. It is too difficult to have
a fully integrated sexuality and live a celibate life, some say. Further, it is
supposed, such a standard attracts to the priesthood and religious life
people with psycho-sexual instabilities. Celibate life is, on this account,
not a full realization of the human person as “sexual person” but is an
unnatural erasure of the person’s sexual self. Celibacy, others argue, is the
cause of the drastic priest-shortage.20 Alphonsus offers a needed critique
of the idea that the religious life is somehow too demanding or unnatural. In fact, Alphonsus made the judgment, based on his years of missions
and hearing confessions, that marriage was far more difficult than religious
life. He seems to have reached exactly the opposite conclusion from many
modern moral theologians and the popular opinion of Catholics young
and old. For Alphonsus, it is the married state that could more easily
threaten the full realization of the human person, the full detachment from
the world and the full resignation of the person to the will of God. While
I do not suggest we take up Alphonsus’s position and counsel marriage
only for those who cannot possibly resist fornication, I do think he challenges modern theologians, pastors, and those considering their own state
in life to perform a “reality check.” An encounter with Alphonsus’s teachings should occasion the question: Is the current paradigm helpful for
19 The expression “nonvowed form of life” is introduced in Patricia A. Sullivan,

“The Nonvowed Form of the Lay State in the Life of the Church,” Theological
Studies 68 (2007): 320–47, at 322–25; Bryan T. Froehle and Mary L. Gautier, ed.,
Catholicism USA: A Portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States, CARA
(Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000),
14 (cited in Sullivan, “Nonvowed Form,” 322).
20 Richard A. Schoenherr and David Yamane, Goodbye Father: The Celibate Male
Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002); Penelope J. Ryan, Practicing Catholic: The Search for a Livable Catholicism (New York: H. Holt, 1998), chaps. 4, 10; Paul E. Dinter, The Other Side of the
Altar: One Man’s Life in the Catholic Priesthood (New York: Farrar, 2003); First
National Conference on a Married Priesthood, Shaping the Future Priesthood
(Minneapolis: Corpus, 1988); and Brian Godden, Celibacy and the Catholic Priesthood: The Case for Change (Northampton: Becket, 1993).

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judging which state of life presents more impasses on the road to salvation?21 Was Alphonsus right that, practically speaking, marriage may actually present certain obstacles to growth in holiness for some people?
Sexuality in Marriage: A Good in Itself
It should be noted that we have seen little in Liguori’s counsels about
marriage that defames the sexual aspects of the conjugal relation. Likewise, Liguori’s counsel does not suggest that people sin by marrying;
Liguori simply thinks that, unless a person is habitually incontinent, the
choice for marriage is typically the choice for a more difficult path to
salvation. In that sense, then, for Liguori the sexual aspect of matrimony
is what chiefly recommends the sacrament to unmarried people. Alphonsus’s counsel is not based on a fear of sex, an overemphasis on concupiscence, or disgust with the human body, but, as we have seen, it is a
practical suggestion to facilitate growth in piety and holiness.22 One of
the rare mentions he makes of sexuality in marriage in his counsels
appears in a discourse to pious maidens. “I say that married persons can
be holy in the spirit, but not in the flesh; on the contrary, virgins who
have consecrated their virginity to Jesus Christ are holy both in soul and
in body. Holy both in body and in spirit ; and mark those other words, to
attend upon the Lord without impediment.”23 Some modern moral theologians might at first glance be tempted to see in Alphonsus’s statement the
specter of Cartesian dualism or an antiquated disgust of sexuality and the
body, but a second look allays these fears and points to what Alphonsus
actually emphasizes in his statement.
21 Confronted with a society saturated with sexually explicit images, dialogues, and

music that glorify the orgasm and a voracious sexual appetite as among the greatest
of human goods, perhaps Alphonsus would consider a greater portion of the population to be hopelessly incontinent and in need of marriage than in his own day.
22 Alphonsus treats the “dirtiness” of sexuality in Theologia Moralis, vol. 4,102–3,
nos. 922–23, when considering whether or not a couple can make use of
marriage on the same day they receive communion. He sets forth a probable
position that receiving communion after having recourse to sex for enjoyment’s
sake is a venial sin unless some reasonable cause excuse it. If the couple engages
in intercourse for the sake of procreation or on account of incontinence, then
they ought to abstain because they could have resisted through prayer, but they
do not sin in taking the sacrament. After receiving communion, though, Alphonsus states that there is no sin in the use of marriage. On festival, fasting days, or
days of special prayer, he says, it is commonly held that to give the marriage debt
is licit, though it seems probable that asking for the debt is a venial sin on such
days. Here, Alphonsus is more lenient than some, but more strict than some. As
always, he steers a middle path.
23 Liguori, “Discourse to Pious Maidens,” 477.

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The passage makes clear that Alphonsus’s major motivations are his
willingness to take St. Paul seriously in 1 Cor 7, and his robust understanding of the commitment made in the marital vows. These lead him
to the conclusion that the spouse can be perfectly holy only in spirit. We
must pay attention to what Liguori means by “holy.” “Holy” carries a
sense of exclusive dedication to God, to and for his purposes alone.When
Alphonsus says that the married person cannot be “holy” in the flesh as
the virgin is, he means that the person has lost the right to dedicate the
body exclusively, explicitly, and at all times to the service of God. Marriage,
for Alphonsus, is “the sacrament among baptized people, in which a man
and woman mutually and lawfully hand over their bodies to joint fellowship
of life, to the use of the bringing up of children, and to the remedy of
concupiscence.” The matter is mutual consent that has the essence of
handing over (traditio) to the other. The form is a mutual consent that
has the essence of accepting the other.24 Therefore, after marrying, the
body can no longer be handed over to God exclusively, for control of the
body has been handed over to the human spouse. Such an understanding
flows explicitly from a robust support for the plain-sense meaning of St.
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “Mulier sui corporis potestatem non
habet, sed vir. Similiter autem et vir sui corporis potestatem non habet,
sed mulier.”25 The spouses maintain control of their spirits, their souls,
which can and should be dedicated entirely to God and his purposes. But
24 Liguori, Theologia Moralis, vol. 4, 59, no. 879, emphasis mine. Rey-Mermet (Moral

Choices, 116) claims that, for Alphonsus, “[m]arriage is considered chiefly and in
itself as an expression of the mutual gift of persons in an ‘irrevocable pact of love
which includes the right of physical union.’ ” Perhaps Rey-Mermet a bit
anachronistically applies the phrase “expression of the mutual gift of persons” to
Alphonsus. The personalist approach to marriage is more recent than Alphonsus.
Alphonsus uses the term “traditio,” which I would interpret as handing over
rather than as gift. Additionally, in Alphonsus’s thought, the spouses are said to
give their “corpora,” not their “personas.” What is more, in Homo Apostolicus
(tract. 18, cap. 2, punctum 1) Alphonsus refers to the handing over not as an act
of love, but as a “traditio iuris.”This is not to say that love is uninvolved. It is only
to say that it is not, as Rey-Mermet says, “chiefly” what the marriage vows
express for Alphonsus. Finally, Rey-Mermet translates “Vinculum perpetuum
animarum cum obligatione reddendi debitum” as “irrevocable pact of love which
includes the right of physical union.” It seems his translation is nudged toward
his intended reading a bit too strongly. I would translate the phrase perhaps more
literally: “perpetual bond of souls with the obligation of the debt to be rendered.”
25 1 Cor 7:4.The woman does not have power over her own body, but the man. But
similarly, the man does not have power over his body, but the woman. Alphonsus
does not cite canon law or any summas de matrimonio in his defense, although, as
a lawyer, he would have been well aware of the canon law on marriage.

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the husband has a legitimate claim to the wife’s body, and the likewise the
wife to the husband’s. For example, if there is danger of adultery or pollution, the spouse must render the marital debt, even at the expense of time
spent in prayer or meditation. Obviously Alphonsus would not suggest
that sexual relations between spouses be so unaffectively or coldly undertaken as I have just described, but the point is instructive. Marriage for
Alphonsus involves ceding control of certain aspects of one’s own life for
the salvation of the spouse’s soul. It is in a certain way parallel to a vow
of obedience taken by religious. The mutual handing over of spouses
enjoins obedience in matters of the whole nuptial “societatem,” which
involves not only the other’s sexual needs but also all other demands of
domestic life—the diapers, the dishes, the education of children, the
plowing of the field, the care in times of sickness, the taking on of other
family members in need, the dowry, etc. Procuring and maintaining food,
clothing, and home, entertaining sometimes difficult guests, and seriously
taking on the task of educating children present possibly insurmountable
challenges to finding time for Eucharistic adoration, meditation, spiritual
reading, mental prayer, etc.
Alphonsus’s Moral Theology of Sexuality in Marriage:
Innovations and Critique
In what came before, I have not intended to say that Liguori thinks
marriage evil, or even that a person sins by entering the sacrament for
reasons other than necessity. In fact, Liguori, with Aquinas and others, finds
it probable to say that a person can enter marriage for ends extrinsic to
marriage per se. In Alphonsus’s thought, marriage has three types of ends:26
intrinsecos essentiales, intrinsecos accidentales, and extrinsecos accidentales.27 A
26 Rey-Mermet (Moral Choices, 115–16) claims that Alphonsus “does not hesitate to

contradict Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas, and (almost) the whole Roman law
tradition reaffirmed in the Codex Juris Canonici of 1917 (cc. 1013 and 1082) and by
Pius XI in Casti Connubii.” There may be some confusion here, though. Alphonsus’s systematization is not a contradiction of the previous tradition. Perhaps ReyMermet overstates his case with the use the term “contradict.” In the documents
Rey-Mermet cites, the question at hand is the three “goods” of marriage: proles,
fides, sacramentum. Alphonsus does not contradict these goods, but distinguishes
between their species. Proles is an intrinsic accidental end (or good). Fides (rendering the marriage debt exclusively to the spouse) is an intrinsic essential end (or
good). Sacramentum (indissolubility) is also an instrinsic essential end (or good).
27 Liguori, Theologia Moralis, vol. 4, 61–62, no. 882: “Tres fines in matrimonio
considerari possunt: fines intrinseci essentiales, intrinseci accidentales, et fines
accidentales extrinseci. Fines intrinseci essentiales sunt duo: traditio mutua cum
obligatione reddendi debitum, et vinculum indissolubile. Fines intrinseci accidentales pariter sunt duo: procreatio prolis, et remedium concupiscentiae. Fines

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person validly marries as long as none of the essential intrinsic ends of
marriage are excluded. A person validly but illicitly marries on two conditions: (1) excluding intrinsic accidental ends of marriage willfully; or (2)
including malicious extrinsic accidental ends.28 So a person validly but
sinfully (illicitly) marries with the explicit intention of avoiding procreation (vitandi prolem) while making use of the marriage act.29 At the
same time, though, couples can licitly contract marriage, even if they never
intend to consummate the marriage.30 In so doing, they are “sine intentione prolis et remedii concupiscentiae.” But to be without the intent to
procreate on account of a vow of continence is different from explicitly
intending to avoid procreation while still making use of the marriage
act.31 Alphonsus stands firmly in the tradition of Augustine and Aquinas
on this point. Also with Aquinas, Alphonsus finds that the spouses may
become affianced and marry without the consent of their parents, and,
barring just cause, the parents must provide the dowry for their daughter
in such cases. Parents must be consulted but not obeyed on this account.32
Provided none of the intrinsic essential or accidental ends of marriage are
autem accidentales extrinseci plurimi esse possunt, ut pax concilianda, voluptas
captanda, etc.”
28 Ibid., vol. 4, 61–62, nos. 881–82.
29 Ibid., vol. 4, 61, no. 881. “Licite contrahitur in remedium concupiscentiae (nihil
aliud intendendo): modo proles positive non impediatur; hoc enim sub mortali
non licet. . . . Hinc etiam conjuges possunt abstinere ab usu conjugii, et optare
ne plures accipiant liberos quam possint alere: dummodo, ut dixi, positive non
impediant nec abortum procurent. . . . Valide, sed illicite contrahitur cum intentione negandi debitum, vitandi prolem, vel etiam non educandi, moechandi, etc.”
30 Ibid., vol. 4, 62, no. 882: “Certum est secundo, quod si quis excluderet duos fines
intrinsecos accidentales, non solum valide, sed etiam licite posset quandoque
contrahere (prout, se esset senex, et nuberet sine spe procreandi prolem, nec
intenderet remedium concupiscentiae).” It is important to note that not intending or hoping for children in marriage can be sometimes licit. This is an exception rather than a rule.
31 Ibid. “Valide et licite contrahi potest cum pacto continentiae, sine intentione
prolis et remedii concupiscentiae. Ratio, quia non pugnat cum essentia matrimonii. Et patet exemplo Beatae Virginis et S. Josephi.”
32 Regarding the dowry: “[A]n pater teneatur dotare filiam, contra ejus voluntatem
nuptam?” (ibid., vol. 1, 604–6, nos. 336, 337). Regarding consultation and
consent: “Censent teneri filium parentes consulere; quia in tale negotio ipsi
majorem experientiam quam juvenes habent” (ibid., vol. 2, 495, no. 68). This is
unlike entrance into religious life, for which parents need not be consulted at all.
“Ex his omnibus concluditur, non solum non peccare filios religionem assumentes, parentibus inconsultis; sed ordinarie loquendo, valde errare si participes
eos faciant de sua vocatione, ob periculum cui se exponent se ab illa averti”
(ibid., vol. 2, 496, no. 68).

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excluded, Alphonsus finds no sin in marrying explicitly and primarily for
extrinsic reasons such as economic prudence, for bringing peace among
families, etc.33 He diverges here from the Augustinian approach, though,
which finds fault with those who enjoin marriage for any reason other
than as a means to procreation.34
Liguori takes another step beyond Augustine and Aquinas in his moral
thinking about the act of marriage itself. He finds it probable that one
does not sin by explicitly intending and seeking only the remedy of
concupiscence in the marital act.35 Furthermore, Alphonsus defends
moderate pleasure in sex as a licit end of the act, though never as the sole
end.36 The act of marriage, after all, “per se est licitus et honestus.”37
Liguori suggests that the man, having “seminated,” ought to continue the
act of sexual congress or use some other means to bring his spouse to
“semination” (orgasm).38 Neglect in this manner is at least venial sin.
In light of these credentials, then, scholars have applauded Alphonsus
as a prophet of modern magisterial approaches to sexuality in marriage
that are more relational and less legalistic than magisterial teaching on
sexuality before the Second Vatican Council. He is a transitional figure,
33 Ibid., vol. 4, 64, no. 883.
34 Augustine argues with the Manicheans on this point in De Moribus Ecclesiae

Catholicae et de Moribus Manicheorum, 2.18. “You think that taking a wife is not
for the sake of procreating children but for the sake of satisfying lust. But
marriage, as the very laws of marriage cry out, unites a man and a woman for
the sake of procreating children.” See also, Augustine, Sermon 51.22, where he
claims that marriage is entered for the mutual, honorable purpose of liberorum
procreandorum causa, not for the sake of satisfying lust.
35 See Liguori, Theologia Moralis, vol. 4, 95, 109, nos. 912, 927. Pleasure can be
sought as a means to the remedy of concupiscence. The ends that make licit the
contracting of marriage also make licit seeking the use thereof: “prolis, ad vitandum periculum incontinentiae, et valetudinis causa vel propter alios fines extrinsecos” (ibid., vol. 4, 109, no. 927).
36 Ibid., vol. 4, 95, no. 911–13. This is a divergence from Aquinas and Augustine, for
whom the act of marriage must be justified by some good other than itself. This
is on account of the fact that in its use, the act of marriage hinders the use of
reason, especially in the moment of orgasm. Human reason’s inability to control
the procreative act is a symptom of the Fall wherein the body’s rebellion against
the will parallels the human person’s rebellion against the divine will. Alphonsus
provides the citation of Aquinas in his text.
37 Ibid., vol. 4, 82, no. 900.
38 Ibid., vol. 4, 98–101, nos. 917–20. Liguori makes the decision based on his
understanding of biology. He thinks that the wife’s orgasm aids in the healthy
conception of the child or its early formation. See also Peter Gardella, Innocent
Ecstacy: How Christianity Gave America an Ethic of Sexual Pleasure (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985), 9–20.

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they say, who liberates spouses from the impossible burdens of rigorist
moral theology and paves the way to the post–Vatican II approaches.39
This is true as far as it goes, but it by no means indicates that Alphonsus
should be enlisted on the side of approaches that dissent from magisterial
Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. Alphonsus may be forward
thinking, but he manages to hold fast to a Thomistic understanding of the
sexual act’s natural teleology. Keep in mind that, for Alphonsus, explicitly
excluding any desire for conception avoids sin only in cases where additional children would cause serious danger to the family.40 Remember as
well, the first end of the sexual act remains, for Alphonsus, procreation;
any attempt to frustrate that end constitutes mortal sin.41 Indeed, the
only examples he gives of couples marrying licitly while not intending
procreation of children are the elderly, and Mary and Joseph. His use of
these examples helps to make sense of the true marriage between Mary
39 Vidal (La familia en la vida y en el pensamiento de Alfonso de Liguori, 152–53) sees

Alphonsus moving away from Augustine and Aquinas on sexuality in marriage
and embracing the “more optimistic and relational” opinion of John Chrysostom. For him, Alphonsus enters the tradition as a means to reorient Catholic
thinking in a more personalist direction. Rey-Mermet (Moral Choices, 116)
claims that, for Alphonsus, “Marriage is considered chiefly and in itself as an
expression of the mutual gift of persons in an ‘irrevocable pact of love which
includes the right of physical union.’ ”
40 In Theologia Moralis, vol. 4, 121, 123, nos. 939–40, 941–42. Liguori holds that spouses
may abstain from intercourse for any amount of time in their marriage, but if there
is an imminent risk of incontinence in one of the spouses, poverty is not a licit
reason for denying the marriage debt. In fact, if the spouse is aware of the imminent risk, he or she is obliged to seek intercourse out of love for the other spouse,
even if there is serious reason to avoid increasing family size. His reasoning is that it
is a great good and an obligation to avoid the sin of pollution or adultery that might
come from prolonged abstinence. The intention of procreation may be excluded
licitly only if there is serious harm that would result in increasing the family size,
e.g. in the case of poverty. This is not to say that a person may expressly desire the
act to be sterile, nor is it to say that spouses may in any way frustrate the procreative
telos of the sexual act. See ibid., vol. 4, 109, no. 927. His discussion of the nature of
marriage (vol. 4, 61–62, nos. 881–82) and the use of marriage (vol. 4, 82–117, nos.
900–937) presupposes that the natural telos of the sexual act is the possibility of
conception and that purposely to frustrate this end is a sin against nature.
41 Ibid., vol. 4, 61, no. 881: “Licite contrahitur in remedium concupiscentiae (nihil
aliud intendendo): modo proles positive non impediatur; hoc enim sub mortali
non licet.” See also ibid., vol. 4, 95, no. 912, where Alphonsus asserts that use of
the marriage act explicitly for the sake of pleasure alone (granted the act is still
open to conception) does not avoid venial sin, because it frustrates the right
ordering of the natural ends of the act of marriage: “Non excusatur autem a
veniali, quia est perversion quaedam ordinis; cum delectatione, quae intenta est a
natura ut medium ad generationem, fit finis habendae copulae.”

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and Joseph, as well as the marriages between the elderly that have always
been recognized in the Church.42 Neither of these examples provides
precedent to argue that a fertile couple could licitly marry with the
intention of having sterile intercourse. The elderly couple does not willfully make a formerly fertile act now sterile.The sterility of the act, if they
make use of it at all, is accidental to their desires. As to Mary and Joseph,
they are in a sense more open to the procreative good of marriage than
any couple, and they too never intend to engage in sterile sexual intercourse. So, while Alphonsus offers a way forward from the post-Tridentine reclamation of sexual morality by rigorists,43 he does not necessarily
point toward a probable dissent from the magisterial position on the
intrinsic evil of contraception.
Alphonsus’s Robust Spirituality of Marriage:
Raising up a Family of Saints
Saints Suffer
Though he does not counsel marriage except for the case of need, and
though he does allow licit contraction of marriage for reasons extrinsic
to the sacrament itself, Alphonsus nonetheless is optimistic about the ultimate end of married Christians. He finds reason to think that saints may
be made of all spouses: “God wants all of us to be saints, and each one
according to his or her state of life: the religious as a religious, laypeople
as laypeople, the priest as a priest, the married person as married, the
merchant as merchant, the soldier as a soldier, and so on, in every other
state of life.”44 For Alphonsus, this holiness is a life of virtue and prayer,
but also a life that nonetheless grows amidst the worldly demands of
marriage. Obedience to life’s duties does not itself determine salvation;
whether the events and duties of life are born in virtue or vice marks the
difference between a saint’s life and a sinner’s. Chief among the virtues
and the source of holiness for all people is love, the love of Jesus Christ
given by grace and manifested by the imitation of his life. This excerpt
from a letter to Father Tannoia on January 28, 1762, summarizes his
notion of the love of Jesus that brings people to salvation:
Bind yourselves, then, ever more and more with love to Jesus Christ.
Love is that golden chain which attaches souls to God and binds them so
42 Ibid., vol. 4, 62, no. 882.
43 See, for example, the moral textbook used by Alphonsus during his education:

François Genet, Théologie morale (Paris: Chez André Pralard, 1703).
44 Liguori,The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, trans. Peter Heinegg, intro. J. Robert

Fenili, C.Ss.R. (Liguori, MO: Liguori, 1997), 76.

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closely that it appears they are no longer able to separate themselves from
Him. Always, therefore, I pray you, make acts of love in your meditations,
Communions, in the visits to the Blessed Sacrament, during reading, in
your cells, in the refectory, in the wood, in all places at all times. He who
loves Jesus Christ from his heart has no fear of losing Him, and is content
to suffer every pain, all contempt and all poverty for His love.45

Although this letter explicitly treats the holiness of Alphonsus’s confreres,
the sufferings of “pain, all contempt and all poverty for His love” link the
passage directly to the kind of sufferings we have seen Alphonsus describe
in the married life. Recall that the wife’s lot is more difficult than that of
the religious on account of the “throes of childbirth,” the abuses, insults,
and ill-treatment of husbands and relatives, and the wants of the household (poverty) that continual toil never seems to assuage.46 It seems, then,
that—given recourse to the love of Christ—spouses stand to become as
great saints as any.
In Liguori’s thought, it is married people who suffer most in this world,
but they are not, for that reason, most cursed. In fact, for Liguori, the most
graced saint of all was not only married but also more given to suffering
than any person except Jesus. Her name was Mary, the mother of God. In
his widely read Glories of Mary, Alphonsus calls Mary the “queen of
martyrs.” Her suffering sorrows, he says, “surpassed the sufferings of all
other martyrs together.”47 Recall that Liguori also called holy spouses
“martyrs of patience.” He dedicated a number of sermons and discourses
to explicating the sorrows of Mary endured in patience.48 For example,
following the prophecy of Simeon at the Temple, Mary’s sufferings were
amplified by the anticipation of Jesus’ crucifixion that lay ever before her.49
Nonetheless, Mary’s life is most graced, for any grace ever received by any
person was also received by Mary, as she was “gratia plena.”50 In effect, far
from presenting merely a pessimistic view of marriage,51 Liguori understands marriage to be graced in the suffering it brings, and he calls a married
45 A portion of the letter is transcribed in D. F. Miller, Saint Alphonsus, 225–26.
46 Liguori, “Discourse to Pious Maidens,” 478.
47 Liguori, The Glories of Mary (Liguori, MO: Liguori, 2000), 282–93: “The sorrows

that tortured her soul were the crown that proclaimed her the queen of martyrs.”
48 Ibid., 354–55.
49 Ibid., 294–98.
50 See Alphonsus’s sermon on the Immaculate Conception: ibid., 178–97.
51 See Vidal, La familia en la vida y en el pensamiento de Alfonso de Liguori, 182–88, at

188. For Vidal, Alphonsus’s characterization of married life is entirely pessimistic
and excessively so, even after granting that strong rhetoric would have been used
to exhort those choosing a state in life as well as those already living the religious
life. Since his work is a socio-historico-biographical account of Alphonsus on

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woman the exemplar of discipleship, love, patience-in-suffering, and resignation to the will of God. Marriage can be the setting for holiness, albeit a
more difficult one than consecrated life.
In Mary, Alphonsus has a strong pastoral tool for ameliorating the
suffering of women both in his own time and in our current day. After
all, during the eighteenth century women lost, on average, more than half
of their children during the first year of life.They suffer all the more from
the anticipation of this loss or the loss of their own life in childbirth,
knowing full well these sufferings are not only possible but probable.52
Similarly, whereas infertility was a deep, enigmatic, practically incurable
wound for a family in the eighteenth century, medicine of the twentyfirst century tempts spouses to seek technological solutions to this problem that destroy human dignity and life. In a world where technology can
solve almost any problem, including infertility, Alphonsus’s development
of the virtues of resignation to the will of God and patience in suffering
ought to resist the modern desire to have life “our own way.” As Alphonsus says, “a soul that desires to belong completely to God must be
resolved to suffer in all things, eagerly embracing all voluntary mortifications, and with still more eagerness the involuntary ones, since those are more
welcome to almighty God.”53 What’s more, Alphonsus notes that there are
many who would like to serve God, but only on their own terms: at such
and such a position, with such and such a person, in such and such place.
Alphonsus finds that such people—possessing a velleity for sainthood, but
only as they see fit—lack freedom of Spirit and suffer from a slavery to
self-love.54 Perhaps Mary’s freedom of Spirit and unequivocal “yes” to the
sorrows of her life and her son’s life can help couples pause and reconsider how their own sufferings and disappointments in marriage, among
them infertility, or, on the other hand, the need to maintain family size
for serious economic or health reasons contribute to their salvation.
Perhaps Liguori might lead infertile couples, or those suffering loss of
children to death, to find solidarity with Mary, who saw the fruit of her
womb crushed at the pillar and hung on the cross. Perhaps infertile
couples might find further strength to pursue adoption, perhaps even
adoption of unwanted or handicapped children, through solidarity with
marriage and the family, he does not explore the theological connections
between suffering, the Christian life, and Mary.
52 See ibid., 148, and G. Da Molin, “Struttura della famiglia e personale di servizio
nell’Italia meridionale,” in M. Barbagli and D.I. Kertzer ed., Storia della famiglia
italiana, 1750–1950 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), 227.
53 Liguori, Practice of the Love of Christ, 51.
54 Ibid., 68.

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Mary, who, at the foot of that same cross, accepted the beloved disciple
as an adopted son. It seems the questions about fertility and suffering in
childbirth that modern spouses face are in many ways opposite from
those Alphonsus faced in the confessional. In the West, while infant and
maternal mortality have decreased, they nonetheless remain cause for
great suffering. Miscarriage affects approximately one-in-five pregnant
women, and other less serious complications also continue to bring
suffering to many expecting parents, but as couples continue to wait
longer for children and as modern industrial technologies bring people
into contact with ever more dangerous chemicals and materials, it is
infertility that increasingly plagues spouses and garners the most attention. Alphonsus’s Marian theology serves as a poignant resource for
answering the question, how to deal with suffering in a marriage yesterday and today.
Parents as Missionaries of the Home
Holiness in marriage, though, is not restricted to bearing suffering in
virtue; holiness in marriage also includes the virtuous embrace of its
responsibilities—among them the rearing and education of children.
While married couples are not necessarily missionaries zealously pursuing the salvation of the souls of the most abandoned of society, Liguori
nonetheless enjoins on them the same missionary zeal for the salvation of
souls—their children’s souls. Just as it is the mission of the Redemptorists
to bring the gospel and sacraments to the abandoned rustics, it is the
parents’ mission to bring the gospel and sacraments to their children. We
learn of parents’ responsibilities to their children in Alphonsus’s exposition of the fourth commandment in his Theologia Moralis, his Istruzione al
popolo, and also in a sermon composed for the seventh Sunday after
Pentecost.55 This sermon, “On the Education of Children,” is preached
for the Gospel of Matthew, 7:18, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil
fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit.” The mission of
parenthood is to produce good fruit, that is, saints. Nowhere does Liguori
make this more explicit than when he says that parents, with Queen
55 Alphonsus also explicates this commandment in Homo Apostolicus tract. 7, “De

quarto praecepto decalogi”; in Institutio catechistica ad populum in Praecepta Decalogi
et Sacramenta, “De quarto praecepto,” pars prima, cap. 4, “De sexto praecepto,” pars
prima, cap. 6; in Istruzione al popolo sovra I Precetti del Decalogo per bene osservarli e
sovra I sagramenti per ben riceverli per uso de’parrochi e missionary e di tutti gli ecclesiastici che s’impiegano ad insegnare la dottrina cristiana, “Del quarto precetto,” cap. 4,
“Del sesto precetto,” cap. 6. All of these texts are available and searchable at
www.intratext.com/Catalogo/Autori/AUT231.HTM (accessed 16 April 2008).

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Blanche, the mother of St. Louis, ought to teach their children this
maxim: “My son, I would rather see you dead in my arms, than in a state
of sin.”56 Fathers who neglect their children’s souls “are not, says St.
Bernard, fathers, but murderers; they kill, not the bodies, but the souls of
their children.”57 Alphonsus notes, though, that the task of raising Christian children depends first and foremost on the parents’ holiness.58 In
order to have zeal for the souls of their children, spouses must energetically pursue the salvation of their own souls. “But if parents be wicked,
how can the children be virtuous?”59
As I said above, parents can lead their children to Christ only inasmuch
as they have solicitude for their own souls; at the same time, though,
responsible parenthood itself constitutes a path to sanctification for
Liguori. Liguori relies on Sirach 30:5 and 1 Timothy 2:15 for this conclusion. “Hence, he who teaches his son to live well, shall die a happy and
tranquil death. . . . And he shall save his soul by means of his children; that
is, by the virtuous education which he has given them. ‘She shall be saved
through child-bearing.’ ”60 Alphonsus has an extended understanding of
this passage from 1 Timothy, one that transcends the physical act of bearing a child in the flesh and reaches toward the bearing of a child up to
sainthood through Christian education, virtues, and the sacraments.61 In
addition, Alphonsus applies this passage to fathers as well as mothers.
Commitment to a child’s education in virtue and faith also comes
from a proper understanding the child’s place in the family and the nature
of the parents’ relationship to the child. Spouses must know that “God
gives children to parents, not that they may assist the family, but that they
may be brought up in the fear of God, and be directed in the way of eternal salvation.”62 “ ‘We have’, says St. Chrysostom, ‘a great deposit in children; let us attend to them with great care’—hom. ix., in I. ad Tit. Children
have not been given to parents as a present or possession, which they may
dispose of as they please, but as a trust, for which, if lost through their
negligence, they must render an account to God.”63 What a stirring
56 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 275. While I cite most from this sermon, I do not intend

to offer an exhaustive reading of this sermon or of his sermons in general. There
is, however, substantial overlap of content among the popular writings.
57 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 276.
58 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 269.
59 Ibid., 269, 275–76: “Children are like apes; they do what they see their parents do
. . . scandalous parents compel, in a certain manner, their children to lead a bad life.”
60 Ibid., 271.
61 Ibid., 271–72.
62 Ibid., 270.
63 Ibid.

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critique of modern commodification of children in marriage, and, as we
see below, the attendant personification of pets and property.64 “Would
to God,” Alphonsus writes, “that certain parents paid as much attention
to their children as they do to their horses! How careful are they to see
that their horses are fed and well trained! And they take no pains to make
their children attend at catechism, hear mass, or go to confession. ‘We
take more care’, says St. Chrysostom, ‘of our asses and horses, than of our
children’—hom. x., in Matt.”65 It seems that love of things and animals
more than children is as old a phenomenon as parenting itself.
This is all fine, some might say, but do parents today not already care
about the spiritual wellbeing of their children? What does Alphonsus
really add to a Christian understanding of the mission of parenthood?
What Alphonsus offers is a complete reprioritization of the tasks of
parenthood. Solicitude for the child’s salvation by growth in virtue and
knowledge of the faith holds the primary position, far above their education in letters, sciences, and/or trade. Mothers are to teach their children
the maxim, “What will it profit us to gain the whole world, if we lose our
own souls? Everything on this Earth has an end; but eternity never ends.
Let all be lost, provided God is not lost.”66 Liguori is not just emphasizing a focus on salvation, but he is drastically prioritizing it over other
ends. “On the day of judgment,” he writes, “parents shall have to render
an account for all the sins of their children.”67 Liguori’s approach serves
to remind modern parents that saving their child’s soul is more important
than saving for their child’s college education. In a culture where middleclass parents spend more hours at work than at home so that they can
afford luxuries for their children, Alphonsus’s vision of parenting as a spiritual, moral mission, rather than as primarily an economic one, offers
refreshing and liberating alternatives for spouses bogged down by a society telling parents that what their children have is more important then
what they are and what they become.68 Liguori exhorts parents to be
64 See John F. Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society: The Spirituality of

Cultural Resistance, 3rd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006). Certainly Liguori would
tremble to see the modern proliferation of dog parks over against parks for children. Without question he would be shocked to find a civilization that allows 3.7
million abortions per annum but vigorously prosecutes cruelty to animals.
65 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 271.
66 Ibid., 275–76.
67 Ibid., 271. He finds this idea in Origen’s commentary on Job: “—Origen, Librum
II, in Job, ‘Omnia quaecumque deliquerint filii, a parentibus requiruntur,’ ”
(Quoted in Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 271).
68 See, for example, Susan Linn, Consuming Kids:The Hostile Takeover of Childhood (New
York: New Press, 2004); and Juliet Schor, Born to Buy:The Commercialized Child and

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Kent Lasnoski

concerned most with what God intends their children to become—
saints—and his advice for doing so is not merely to be an eco-friendly
consumer or resist materialism by a moderate, generous life, but rather he
counsels a life of radical piety (sacrificing the supermarket and the soccer
league for the sake of eucharistic adoration and spiritual reading).
Toward a Livable Christian Family Life
for Yesterday and Today
A true missionary and a gentle moral theologian, Liguori does not simply
lay these demands on the shoulders of parents and then walk away; he is
most interested in giving parents real, bearable solutions to the challenges
of the moral life in conjugal life and raising children. His suggestions for
how to live the moral life proclaimed in the gospel can be divided into
three sections: (1) pious practice; (2) propositional knowledge of the
faith; and (3) growth in virtue.
First, he treats the teaching of pious practice. For the gospel to be
successfully preached, it must be practicable. It must truly be good news, a
truly better way of life. This notion would not be lost on Alphonsus. He
does not burden spouses with impossible yokes of odious pious practice in
the realm of child-rearing, but offers simple, clear practices that are as relevant today as in the eighteenth century. Alphonsus gives families a “rule of
life” drastically abridged from the rule of the Redemptorists. He includes
abridged or revised versions of this rule in many of his spiritual books and
in some sermons.69 The rule given in the sermon on parenting is even
more abbreviated than those found in spiritual treatises for a more general
audience, which suggests a special care that his counsel to families be
approachable. The rule typically has two parts: (1) things to be done daily,
and (2) general counsels for Christian living. The daily acts frame the day
in terms of worship. On rising, members of the family are “first, to thank
God for having preserved their life during the night; secondly, to offer to
God all the good actions which they will perform, and all the pains which
they shall suffer during the day; thirdly, to implore of Jesus Christ and the
most holy Mary to preserve them from all sin during the day.”70 At the end
the New Consumer Culture (New York: Scribner, 2004). On the other hand Ellen
Seiter, Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1993) tries to support consumer culture among children
as a form of communication.
69 A version of the rule appears also in Liguori, The Way of Salvation and of Perfection, 502–10; and The Christian Virtues, 335–71, 392–402.
70 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 274. In “Rule of Life,” in The Way of Salvation and of Perfection, vol. 2, rev. ed., Eugene Grimm, ed. (Brooklyn: Redemptorist Fathers, 1926),

Alphonsus Liguori on Marriage

1025

of the day, each person should perform an examination of conscience and
an act of contrition.71 At some point each day, “good fathers of families are
careful to get a book of meditations read, and to have mental prayer in
common for half an hour every day. This is what the Holy Ghost exhorts
you to practice.”72 Additionally, “teach them [children] to make, every day,
the acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, to recite the Rosary, and to visit the
blessed sacrament.”73 Again, Alphonsus abridges the abridged “rule of life”
here, leaving out the visits to our Lady.74 It also seems that here, unlike in
the “rule of life,” the acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity are to be made daily,
while the practices of reciting the rosary and visiting the Sacrament are to
be taught but need not be made every day. Parents ought weekly to avail
their children of the sacraments of confession (beginning at 7 years old) and
communion (beginning at 10 years old) as well; they should have their
children confirmed at the age of reason.75
Parents are not only morally obligated to teach their children authentic practices of piety, but they must also teach and pass on to them the
content of the faith. Again, as a missionary to the abandoned rustics, typically uneducated in the faith, Alphonsus is sensitive to the parents’ own
lacking knowledge of the faith. So, once again, he makes the moral obligation to pass on the faith an easier yoke to bear. Alphonsus simplifies the
faith to four “mysteries” that parents should teach their children:
First, that there is but one God, the Creator and Lord of all things;
secondly, that this God is a remunerator, who, in the next life, shall
reward the good with the eternal glory of Paradise, and shall punish the
502–10, at 502, Liguori adds the option that a person could also recite the Our
Father, a hail Mary, the Creed, and 3 more hail Marys in honor of her purity.
71 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 274. In “Rule of Life,” 505, he adds that a person might
perform the “Christian acts” at this time.
72 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 274. In “Rule of Life,” 505, another half-hour of spiritual
reading is suggested in addition to the half-hour of meditation. Alphonsus also
provides detailed description of how to perform these meditations (503–4).
73 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 274. In “Rule of Life,” Alphonsus describes in greater
detail the practice of visiting the Blessed Sacrament (505). Liguori also wrote an
immediately popular book to aid people in visits to the Blessed Sacrament (Visits
to the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady [Rockford, IL: TAN, 2000]).
74 Liguori, “Rule of Life,” 505. Liguori also leaves out of this double-abridged
version the advice to hear as many sermons as possible, to make a one-day retreat
once a month, and to make an eight-day retreat annually (508).
75 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 274. In “Rule of Life,” 504–6, Alphonsus suggests, in
consultation with a spiritual director, hearing mass daily and receiving communion multiple times a week. One ought to, if possible, spend a half-hour in preparation to receive communion and a half-hour in thanksgiving after receiving the
Sacrament as well. He also suggests spending a half an hour visiting our Lady.

Kent Lasnoski

1026

wicked with the everlasting torments of Hell; thirdly, the mystery of the
most holy Trinity,—that is, that in God there are Three Persons, who
are only one God, because they have but one essence; fourthly, the
mystery of the incarnation of the Divine Word—the Son of God, and
true God, who became man in the womb of Mary, and suffered and
died for our salvation. . . . If you are ignorant of these mysteries, you are
obliged to learn them, and afterwards to teach them to your children.76

Parents are responsible for the propositional knowledge that there is one
God who is of one essence but three persons, who is creator, judge, and
redeemer through his incarnate Son, who was born of a virgin and
suffered and died for our salvation. Given that they themselves have the
opportunity to learn these truths, parents are morally culpable for their
children’s ignorance of them.
Parents are not only invested with teaching piety and the articles of
faith to their children, but they “are obliged to instruct their children in
the practice of virtue, not only by words, but still more by example.”77 The
practices of piety and the propositional knowledge of Christian mysteries
are of little good without virtue. There are two pieces to the pedagogy of
virtue for Liguori: shunning the occasion for sin, and correcting faults in
the progress of virtue.78 As to the first, parents must take every caution to
spare their children from occasions of sin.79 For, as Alphonsus commonly
puts it, if one does not avoid voluntary occasions of sin, how can one
possibly hope to resist involuntary occasions?80 The second is to train children in developing the habits of virtue through discipline, actively correcting faults.81 This discipline will fail if hypocritical or done in anger. It must
be gentle, reasonable, and only rarely corporal.82 Finally, as they develop
in virtue and move toward choosing a state in life, the parents must not
interfere with the choice, for more often than not, when they do, they
cannot help but seek their own or the family’s interest.83
76 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 273–74.
77 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 275.
78 Elsewhere, Liguori states the role of the father in governing the good of the

family in general as twofold: to rid the home of all evil and vice, and to promote
the growth of virtue in the home. See Instrucción al pueblo sobre los diez
mandamientos y los sacramentos, trans. N. Moriones (Madrid: n.p., 1955), 215–22.
79 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 276.
80 Liguori, “Rule of Life,” 507.
81 Liguori, “Sermon 36,” 277–78.
82 Ibid., 275–78.
83 See Liguori, Selva di materie predicabilie ed estruttive, parte prima, cap. 10, in Opere di
S. Alfonso Maria de Liguori, vol. 3 (Turín: 1847), 80. “The will of the parents is not a
sign of vocation to the priesthood, as parents [who]induce their children to embrace

Alphonsus Liguori on Marriage

1027

Conclusion
In this article I have sought to frame Alphonsus’s moral theology of
marriage in the terms used in modern discussions of marriage and
family: the discernment of marriage, sexuality in marriage, spirituality
and growth in holiness in marriage, and the mission of educating children in Christ. What we have seen is that, more than anything, Liguori
seeks to make saints. His discussion of state in life centered on this point,
for he could suggest a marriage only if it was clearly for the spiritual
benefit of the person in question. His vivid expression of the challenges
confronting married people was based on his experience of the reality in
his time, rather than solely on an Augustinian or Thomistic notion of the
Fall and sexuality. Despite the sufferings the nuptial life presents, Alphonsus called spouses to rise up as saints in their married state. In fact, the
very sufferings presented by married life provided part of the occasion for
Alphonsus to praise the virtue of Mary above that of all other saints.
Specifically, Alphonsus calls spouses to holiness in three ways: through
patient suffering of life’s trials; through active pursuit of pious practice
and growth in virtue; and through the passing on of piety, the content of
the faith, and virtue to children by education in word and deed.
Alphonsus’s approach to the moral theology of marriage has the
potential to supplement current discussions of family life. By basing his
counsels on an honest understanding of the reality of marriages in his
time, Alphonsus encourages the same type of theological and pastoral
attention on how spouses can virtuously deal with what they will actually encounter in their marriages. The article has demonstrated four
points of contact: (1) Alphonsus’s position on marriage as an exception
rather than a rule challenges popular practice of discerning marriage or
celibate life; (2) Alphonsus’s understanding of the graced life as a life of
patience in suffering, detachment from worldly goods, and resignation to
the will of God radically challenges the modern consumer, emotivist
ethic in marriage and opposes the modern obsession with technological
manipulation of the world and our own bodies for our own ends; (3)
Alphonsus’s characterization of parenthood as a mission to nurture and
form children into humble saints gives pause to the current trend of
making children into professional consumers and slaves to self-love and
self-aggrandizement; and (4) in the face of myriad, often nebulous,
the priesthood are not looking to the good of their children’s souls but only [to] the
interest and good of the family.” At the same time, though, Alphonsus warns against
the danger of being drawn away from a true vocation to religious or priestly life by
parents who desire otherwise (Theologia Moralis I, 603, and II, 496).

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Kent Lasnoski

confusing, and overly affective spiritualities, Liguori’s rule of life provides
concrete, practicable options for modern Christian families, which often
find themselves floundering in their search for real ways to grow in their
Christian life.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 1029–54

1029

Benedict XVI’s “Hermeneutic of Reform”
and Religious Freedom
M ARTIN R HONHEIMER
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

I. Continuity or Rupture: How Did Vatican II Understand
the Church’s Relation with the Modern World?1
I N A notable Christmas message given before the Roman Curia on
December 22, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI cautioned against a widespread
interpretation of the Second Vatican Council which would posit that the
Church after the Council is different than the “preconciliar” Church.
Benedict called this erroneous interpretation of the Council a
“hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.”
1 The present article first appeared in German in Die Tagespost 115 (26 September

2009): 14, and online at KATH.NET, 28 September 2009 (www.kath.net/
detail.php?id=24068). A Spanish translation of the article appeared in the Appendix I of M. Rhonheimer, Cristianismo y laicidad: Historia y actualidad de una relación
compleja, Ediciones (Madrid: Rialp, 2009), 167–79. The version presented here
includes the text of that article in its entirety, expanded and provided with an
appendix, which deals with specific questions concerning the continuity and
infallibility of the ordinary universal magisterium, questions inherent to the problem discussed here. This expanded version was first published in French as
“L’«herméneutique de la réforme» et la liberté de religion,” in the French edition
of Nova et Vetera 85 (2010): 341–63 (online: www.novaetvetera.ch/Art%20Rhonheimer.htm) and in a slightly abridged version in Die Neue Ordnung 65, no. 4
(August 2011): 244–61. Parts of these texts were previously published online also in
English: chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1347670. Compared with the
version of the French edition of Nova et Vetera, this complete English version is
slightly updated, including at the end a further response to a critic from the ranks
of the Society of St. Pius X.
I thank Joseph T. Papa, Matthew Sherry, and William F. Murphy, all of whom
have contributed to this English translation.

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Martin Rhonheimer

The warning was enthusiastically taken up by Catholics plainly faithful to the Magisterium of the Church with the opinion spreading that,
in his speech, Benedict had opposed the “hermeneutic of discontinuity”
with a “hermeneutic of continuity.” Robert Spaemann also seems to have
understood it this way, as the idea seems to him consistent with current
efforts at harmonization in the area of religious freedom, efforts which
defend the existence of an uninterrupted continuity between pre- and
post-conciliar doctrine.2
This understanding, however, is unfounded. In the Pope’s address,
there is no such opposition between a “hermeneutic of discontinuity”
and a “hermeneutic of continuity.” Rather, as he explained: “In contrast
with the hermeneutic of discontinuity is a hermeneutic of reform . . .”
And in what lies the “nature of true reform”? According to the Holy
Father, true reform is found “in the interplay, on different levels, between
continuity and discontinuity.”
1. The Relationship with the State
“Continuity,” therefore, is not the only hermeneutical category for
understanding the Second Vatican Council. The category of “reform” is
also necessary, a category which includes elements of both continuity and
discontinuity. But as Benedict emphasized, the continuity and discontinuity are “on different levels.” It is important, therefore, to identify and
distinguish these levels correctly.
On this point the Pope first asserted: “The council had to define anew
the relation between the Church and modernity”—and in two regards.
First, regarding the modern natural sciences. “Secondly, the relation
between the Church and the modern state had to be newly defined: a
state which gave space to citizens of different religions and ideologies,
acting with neutrality toward those religions, and which assumed responsibility only for guaranteeing the orderly and tolerant cohabitation of
citizens, and the freedom to practice their own religion.” It is clear, Benedict continued, that regarding the Council’s teaching, “in all of these
areas, which as a whole represent a single problem, there could seem to
be a certain discontinuity; and in a certain sense, there was discontinuity.”
2 Cf. Die Tagespost, 49 (April 25, 2009), 5. Some months later Robert Spaemann

further specified his position in an article appearing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung. Cf. R. Spaemann, “Legitimer Wandel der Lehre,” in F.A.Z. 228 (October 1, 2009), 7. Spaemann also speaks of a “change of magisterium,” specifically
in analogy with the change of the Church’s doctrine on usury and the interdiction of the corresponding practice of lending for interest. The actual relevance of
that analogy, however, seems doubtful to me.

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

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At the same time, it can be said that, “in principle, nothing of continuity
was given up.” Thus: “Precisely in this interplay on different levels
between continuity and discontinuity lies the nature of true reform.”
Benedict XVI then gave as an example of the “hermeneutic of
reform” the understanding of the conciliar teaching on religious freedom, as though in anticipation of the current debate. In doing so, he
made precisely that separation of the “different levels” that the preconciliar magisterium, for very specific theological and historical reasons, had
been unable to accomplish. Gregory XVI and Pius IX—to mention just
these two popes—considered that the modern fundamental right to freedom of religion, conscience, and worship was necessarily joined to the
denial of the existence of a true religion. They thought this because they
could not conceive that, since there was religious truth and there was a
true Church, these should not also receive the support of the state-political order and the civil legal order. It is also true that many of their liberal
opponents used precisely the opposite argument to defend religious freedom: such a freedom must exist, because there is no true religion.
The liberal view held that the state had neither the competence nor
the obligation to assure the prevalence in society of the true religion,
which contrasted with the traditional idea of not conceding to other religions the right to exist, but at most only tolerating them within certain
limits. Similarly, the liberal view held that the state must not, in service of
the true religion, place limits on freedom of press and expression through
state censorship, which to the nineteenth-century Church was tantamount to a denial of the unique truth of the Christian religion, and to
both “indifferentism” and “agnosticism.” In the preconcilar magisterium,
therefore, the doctrine on the unique truth of the Christian religion was
linked to a doctrine on the function of the state and its duty to assure the
prevalence of the true religion and to protect society from the spread of
religious error. This implied the ideal of a “Catholic state,” in which,
ideally, the Catholic religion is the only state religion and the legal order
must always serve to protect the true religion.
Precisely here lies Vatican II’s discontinuity with the doctrine of the
nineteenth-century popes—a discontinuity, however, that brings into
view a deeper and more essential continuity. As Pope Benedict explained
in his address: “With the Decree on religious freedom, the Second Vatican Council both recognized and assumed a fundamental principle of the
modern state, while at the same time re-connecting itself with a deeply
rooted inheritance of the Church.” This fundamental principle of the
modern state that is simultaneously a deeply-rooted inheritance reassumed by the Church is, for Benedict, the rejection of a state religion.

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Martin Rhonheimer

“The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in the God revealed
to them in Jesus Christ, and as such they also died for freedom of
conscience and for the freedom to confess their faith.”
In the modern conception, after all, “freedom of conscience” meant
above all freedom of worship, that is, the right, in the contexts of public
order and morality, of individuals and the various religious communities
to live their faith and to profess it—publicly and communitarily—without impediment by the state. This is exactly what the first Christians
asked during the age of persecutions. They did not demand that the state
support religious truth, but asked only for the freedom to profess their
faith without state interference.Vatican II now teaches that this is a fundamental civil right of the person—that is, a right of all people, regardless
of their religious faith. This right implies the abrogation of the earlier
claim of the so-called “rights of truth” to political and legal guarantees,
and the renunciation of state repression of religious error. However one
views the question, the conclusion is unavoidable: precisely this teaching
of the Second Vatican Council is what Pius IX condemned in his encyclical Quanta Cura.
Pope Benedict concluded his exemplification of the “hermeneutic of
reform” with the doctrine of religious freedom with a concise statement:
“The Second Vatican Council, with its new definition of the relations
between the Church’s faith and certain basic elements of modern
thought, reelaborated or corrected some decisions made in the past.” This
correction does not imply a discontinuity at the level of Catholic doctrine
on faith and morals—the competency of the authentic magisterium and
possessed of infallibility, even as ordinary magisterium. The Pope thus
spoke here only of an “apparent discontinuity,” since, in rejecting an
outdated teaching on the state, the Church “has recovered and deepened
its true nature and identity. The Church was and is, both before and after
the council, the same Church: one, holy, Catholic and apostolic, making
its pilgrim way through time.”
In short: the teaching of Vatican II on religious freedom does not
imply a new dogmatic orientation, but it does take on a new orientation
for the Church’s social doctrine—specifically, a correction of its teaching
on the mission and function of the state. The Council gave the same
immutable principles a new application in a new historical setting. There
is no timeless dogmatic Catholic doctrine on the state—nor can there
be—with the exception of those principles that are rooted in the apostolic Tradition and in Sacred Scripture. The idea of a “Catholic state” as
the secular arm of the Church falls outside these principles, which in fact
suggest a separation between the political and religious spheres.

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

1033

The partial dissolution of the genuinely Christian dualism between
civil and spiritual power, and their historical intermingling, was a later
development, the result of specific contingent historical circumstances:
first, as a consequence of the elevation of Christianity to the state religion
of the Roman Empire and the conflict with Arianism (which once again
claimed a divinization of the state); then, during the early Middle Ages,
due to the integration of the Church with imperial governmental structures; and finally, as a reaction against this integration in the medieval
political-canonical doctrine of the “plenitudo potestatis” of the popes, out
of which grew the modern idea of the confessional catholic monarchial
state—the view that was still held by Pius IX, with of course its corresponding Protestant version.
We find a clear break here in the teaching of Vatican II, which once
and for all abandoned a historical burden.The Council’s doctrine on religious freedom is essentially a doctrine on the functions and limits of the
state, as well as on a fundamental civil right—a right of persons, not of
truth—involving a limitation in the sovereignty and competence of the
state in religious matters. It is also a doctrine on the Church’s freedom,
based on the corporate right to religious freedom, to exercise its salvific
mission without hindrance, even in a secular state—a right that also
belongs to every other religion. Finally, it is a doctrine on the state’s
responsibility to encourage, in a neutral and impartial way, the creation of
the necessary conditions in the public and moral order within which religious freedom can flourish and citizens can fulfill their religious duties.
2. Unsuccessful Attempts at Harmonization
It is precisely this new political-legal doctrine, which asserts that the state
is no longer the secular arm of the Church or the representative of religious truth, that traditionalists reject. In fact, Fr. Matthias Gaudron of the
German branch of the Society of St. Pius X, responsible for dialogue with
Catholic institutions, identified the essential point in a letter published in
Die Tagespost ( June 6, 2009). Whereas some harmonizing positions, such
as that of H. Klueting (Tagespost 64 [May 30, 2009]: 18), reduce Vatican
II’s doctrine on religious freedom to “freedom from forced conversion”—thus falsely suggesting an unbroken continuity—Fr. Gaudron put
his finger on the key point: the dissent is not over the question of the
rejection of forced conversions, about which there is unanimity, but
regards “whether and to what degree the public exercise and propagation
of a false faith may be limited.” He thus correctly identifies a break in
continuity or, in the words of Benedict XVI, discontinuity.

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Martin Rhonheimer

This is stated even more clearly in the memorandum sent by Fr. Franz
Schmidberger, superior in Germany of the Society of St. Pius X, to the
German bishops, entitled “The Time Bombs of Vatican II.” According to
Fr. Schmidberger, the Council’s teaching implies “the secularization of
states and of society” and “state agnosticism”; it denies the right and duty
of states “to prevent adherents of false religions from promoting their religious convictions in the public sphere through public gatherings,
missionary activities and the erection of buildings for their false cult.” In
short: with its teaching on religious neutrality—read: secularity—the
Council abandoned the traditional teaching on the Catholic state and the
social kingdom of Jesus Christ. In fact, says Schmidberger, here simply
following Archbishop Lefebvre, “Jesus Christ [is] the only God, and his
Cross the only source of salvation”; consequently “this claim of universal
representation must be made efficacious in society to the greatest extent
possible, through the prudent policies of state leaders.”
Here we have neither communion nor continuity with the doctrine of
Vatican II. I think that attempts at harmonization such as those of Basil
Valuet3 (to whom Spaemann refers) and Bertrand de Margerie4—despite
their laudable efforts to reconcile traditionally minded thinkers with the
teaching of Vatican II—are fraught with objective difficulties and doomed
from the start. Ultimately they sow confusion, since such attempts obscure
not only the real problem, but also the originality of the teaching of Vatican II. The arguments used are false, inasmuch as these efforts at harmonization fail to consider the political-legal context or the distinction of
levels called for by Benedict XVI.
Thus it cannot be claimed—with B. de Margerie—that neither for
Gregory XVI nor for Vatican II is freedom of press “unlimited” and that
there is therefore continuity between Gregory’s condemnation of freedom
of press and Vatican II’s doctrine. Gregory asked for ecclesiastically
controlled state censorship of the press in the service of the true religion,
whereas Vatican II—as did nineteenth-century liberals—situated the limits
of freedom of opinion and the press in the rights of citizens, legally defined
and juridically enforceable, and in the requirements of public order and
morality.These limits correspond fully with the logic of the secular, liberal,
constitutional, and democratic state, which is neutral with respect to religious truth claims, and have nothing—repeat nothing—to do with the
“defense of religious truth” or the protection of citizens from the “scourge
of religious error,” and thus also nothing to do with state censorship in the
3 B. Valuet, La liberté religieuse et la tradition catholique, 3 vols. (Le Barroux, France:

Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux, 1998).
4 B. de Margerie, Liberté religieuse et règne du Christ (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1988).

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

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service of and according to the dictates of the Church (a censorship which,
in the nineteenth-century Papal states, where canon law functioned as civil
law, was enforced by the Holy Office—predecessor of today’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).
Similarly, neither can the tolerance taught by Pius XII in his address “Ci
riesce” of December 6, 1953—a tolerance which could be exercised in
religious matters “under certain circumstances” and according to the
discretionary judgment “of Catholic statesmen”—be considered a form of
religious freedom, precisely because this fundamental civil right of the
person limits the competence of the state power in religious questions.
According to this right, a place for the discretionary judgment of “Catholic
statesmen” would no longer be possible, and would even be illegal. A
supposed “right of tolerance,” therefore, which Basil Valuet attributes to
Pius XII and says corresponds to the doctrine of Vatican II, would be a
contradiction and cannot exist.
For all these reasons, we are not faced here with, in Robert Spaemann’s words, a “battle over principles devoid of consequences,” but with
a basic question of the relation of the Church with the modern world,
and especially with the free democratic constitutional state. Even more,
it is a question of the Church’s self-understanding and its response to the
question of coercion in religious matters. Although the Church has
always rejected the idea of forced conversions, it has not generally
rejected coercion in religious matters. On the contrary. Pius XI’s encyclical Quanta Cura was not directed against liberals who denied God, but
against the influential group of catholic liberals gathered around the
French politician Charles de Montalembert. These were orthodox
Catholics, who even defended the existence of the Papal states (it was
Montalembert who coined the slogan “A free Church in a free state,”
later taken up by Cavour in a different sense), and who at the Congress
of Malines in August 1863 demanded that the Church recognize freedom
of assembly, press, and worship.
This demand, however, collided with the “traditional” position—a
legacy of the High Middle Ages—that the Church had the right to use
coercion to protect Catholics from apostasy, with the help of legal-punitive state measures. “The acceptance of the faith is a matter of freedom,”
according to St. Thomas Aquinas; “but one is obligated to preserve the
faith once it has been embraced” (Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 10, a. 8, ad
3). The theologians who prepared Quanta Cura appealed to this principle, understanding it to be the task of the state, as the Church’s secular
arm, to protect the faithful from influences threatening to the faith and
apostasy, by means of state censorship and civil penal law.

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On this basis Pius VI, in his Brief “Quod aliquantum” (1791), had
earlier condemned the French Revolution’s “General Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of Citizens” as the public apostasy of an entire nation.
Religious freedom could be demanded by Catholics in an unbelieving or
Jewish state, but France was a Christian nation, and the French were
baptized Christians, and thus a generalized civil freedom could not be
granted regarding adherence to any religion other than the true one—
the Catholic faith. Pius VI said it well: the unbaptized “cannot be compelled to obey the Catholic faith; the rest, however, must be compelled
(‘sunt cogendi’).”
In his 2005 discourse Benedict XVI defended precisely the first,
“liberal” phase of the French Revolution, distinguishing it from the
second, Jacobin, plebiscitary and radical-democratic phase, that brought
with it the Reign of Terror. He thus rehabilitated the 1789 declaration of
the rights of man and of citizens, which had been born of a spirit of
representative parliamentarianism and American constitutional thought.
3. The Perspective of Vatican II
It is thanks to Vatican II that the identification of religious freedom with
“indifferentism” and “agnosticism,” typical of preconciliar doctrine, has
been overcome. This is an epochal transition for the Church’s magisterium, one which can only be understood according to the “hermeneutic of reform” proposed by Benedict XVI. This transition should be
embraced, not watered down by the search for a false continuity that
would ultimately distort a genuine continuity and, with it, the nature of
the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.
And what of the “traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of
individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of
Christ,” which according to the conciliar Declaration, remains “intact”?
This statement, in fact, has often been called up to suggest an uninterrupted “continuity” in the Church’s teaching on religious freedom as
well. The Council’s teaching here seems to be ambivalent. The statement,
however, is not as ambivalent as it might appear.These duties—as is stated
immediately prior to the cited phrase—presuppose a “freedom from
coercion in civil society.” It seems that, when the Declaration speaks of
the duty “of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the
one Church of Christ,” the old doctrine on the functions of states as the
secular arm of the Church has already been set aside.
What these duties consist in is specified in what can be considered an
authentic interpretation of the debated passage. The passage is quoted in
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2105, which explains that it refers

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to the duty of individuals and of society of “offering God genuine
worship.” This is realized when, “constantly evangelizing men, the
Church works toward enabling them ‘to infuse the Christian spirit into
the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in
which [they] live’.” In their personal involvements and activities in family
and professional life, Christians are required “to make known the worship
of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic
Church.”This, concludes the present section of the Catechism, is how the
Church “shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in
particular over human societies.”
That is, the perspective of Vatican II calls for the proclamation of the
Gospel by the Church and for the apostolate of the Christian faithful so
that these penetrate the structures of society with the spirit of Christ –
not a word on the state as the secular arm of the Church, which by state
coercion must protect the “rights of truth,” and in this way impose the
kingdom of Christ in human society. The discontinuity is obvious. And
even more obvious is the continuity, where it is truly essential, and therefore necessary.
II. Appendix: Does the Existence of Discontinuity
Call into Question the Infallibility of the Magisterium?
The reactions of some theologians to the reflections above have emphasized that my interpretation would bring into doubt the infallibility of
the Church’s magisterium, and that it is thus not acceptable because my
observations would suggest a real rupture in the continuity of the universal ordinary magisterium. According to their opposing view, in declaring
religious freedom a natural right, Vatican II’s doctrine on religious freedom did introduce a genuine novelty, though without for this reason
coming into conflict with earlier magisterial declarations that had not yet
contemplated such a natural right.We should therefore, according to their
view, not speak of discontinuity, but of a broadening of perspective. In
fact, the condemnations of religious freedom by the popes of the nineteenth century would have a disciplinary and not a doctrinal value.
Although it is not the task of moral or political philosophy to address
questions such as these—which properly belong to fundamental theology—it is nonetheless necessary in this case to fill out my argument, so
as to avoid any misunderstanding. For my part, I consider the question to
have been settled by what I have already said. In fact, from my interpretation of the relations between the historical dimension and the purely
theological dimension, it has already been clearly shown that neither the
infallibility of the Church’s solemn magisterium, nor that of its universal

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ordinary magisterium, is in any way called into question. This was shown
by the distinction between two levels: on the one hand, the level of the
principles of the doctrine of the Catholic faith; on the other hand, that
of their concrete historical application, as was also advocated in Benedict
XVI’s discourse. Of course, one who cannot agree to this distinction will
certainly have difficulty in accepting my argumentation.
In order to show, then, why I consider the criticism expounded above
to be erroneous and the related fears unfounded, I will attempt here to
explain this distinction at more length, refuting the above-mentioned
objections. In doing so, I will proceed in five steps.
1. The Question of Infallibility
The infallibility of the magisterium—the Compendium of the Catechism of
the Catholic Church affirms in number 185—“is exercised when the Roman
pontiff, in virtue of his office as the supreme pastor of the Church, or the
college of bishops, in union with the pope especially when joined
together in an ecumenical council, proclaim by a definitive act a doctrine
pertaining to faith or morals.” In the same way, the infallibility of the
universal magisterium of the college of bishops is exercised “when the
pope and bishops in their ordinary magisterium are in agreement in
proposing a doctrine as definitive.” This infallibility regards not only
dogma in the strict sense, but the totality of the teaching on faith and
morals, including the interpretation of the natural moral law and any
other proclamation that might have an intrinsic historical or logical relationship with the faith, without which dogma could not be correctly
understood or preserved.
The first case—definition “ex cathedra” or ecumenical council—
clearly does not obtain with the question of freedom of religion. In
effect, the first and so far the only council to have expressed itself on this
subject has been Vatican II. It was precisely this Council which recognized religious freedom. In the same way, not even the universal ordinary
magisterium seems to be affected here, because never before had the
pope and the bishops condemned religious freedom and proclaimed this
condemnation as a definitive doctrine of the Church. This was rather the
case of a few isolated popes, over a span of about a hundred years, and
never of an explicit assertion of wanting to present a definitive doctrine
in a matter of faith or morals (even if this was the implicit understanding
of the nineteenth-century popes).
Prima facie, therefore, it seems at the least very improbable that the
discontinuity highlighted above in the Church’s doctrine on the freedom
of religion could in some way bring into question the infallibility of the

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magisterium, including the universal ordinary magisterium. This initial
claim should be confirmed by what follows.
2. The Doctrinal Substance of the Condemnation
of Religious Freedom by Pius IX
If this is considered under the aspect of his condemnation of both indifferentism and relativism in religion—according to which there is no
exclusive religious truth, all the religions are in principle equal, and the
Church of Christ is not the only way of salvation—it is undeniable that
the condemnation of religious freedom issued by Pius IX in effect
touched on a central aspect of Catholic dogma. Upholding the truth of
the Catholic Church against this challenge of indifferentism and religious
relativism seemed, in any case, what was at stake at the time. If I say “this
seemed,” it is because—as Vatican II demonstrated—the doctrine of the
exclusive truth of the Christian religion and of the unicity of the Church
of Jesus Christ as the way of eternal salvation is in reality not in the least
harmed by the acceptance of freedom of religion and worship.
As Vatican II teaches, the right to freedom of religion and worship
does not in any way imply that all religions are equivalent. This right is
in effect a right of persons; it does not concern the question of knowing
to what extent that which persons believe might contradict the truth. In
other words, recognizing that the faithful of all religions enjoy the same
civil right to freedom of worship does not mean that, because it is a right
of all, all religions must be “equally true.”
As shown above, the conviction of the popes and the dominant theology of the nineteenth century was that a civil right to freedom of religion (or freedom of worship) implied precisely such indifferentism. For
them, this also meant abandoning the principle according to which the
government of a Catholic country has the task and duty of protecting
and favoring the Catholic truth, and of denying the right of any deviant
religious confession to exist. At the most, such religious error could be
tolerated within certain limits and to the extent reasonable (in order to
avoid greater evil).To concede, however, a (civil) right to profess and cultivate a religion which was not the true one was considered to imply ipso
facto the admission that there is not only one true religion and Church,
but that all religions are equivalent. Now, it goes without saying that at
the time the Church could not accept such a view of things, nor moreover can it do so today. Nonetheless, today the Church has modified its
conception of the function of the state and of its duties toward the true
religion, a conception that in reality is not at all of a purely theological
nature; nor has it to do with the nature of the Church and its faith, but

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it concerns the nature of the state and its relationship with the Church.
So at the most, this is a question concerning an aspect of the social
doctrine of the Church.
So when Benedict XVI says that Vatican Council II “recognized and
made its own an essential principle of the modern state with the decree
on religious freedom,” he is clearly manifesting a conception of the
nature and duties of the state very different from and opposed to Pius
IX’s conception of the state; he also departs from the traditional view of
the subjection of temporal power to spiritual power. Such a discontinuity does not signify rupture with the dogmatic doctrinal Tradition of the
Church, nor a deviation from the depositum fidei and thus from the canon
of Vincent of Lérins: “quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est” (from what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all).
As a result, there can be no contradiction here, not even with the infallibility of the universal ordinary magisterium of the Church, since such a
contradiction is in itself not possible.
Admittedly, the doctrine on temporal power that was developed on
the basis of apostolic Tradition, and especially of Sacred Scripture (including the letters of Saint Paul), also contains elements of natural law that are
also the object of the infallible magisterium of the Church. This applies
in particular to the doctrine that teaches that all power comes from God,
that civil governors and authorities are part of the order of creation, and
that in conscience, and thus for moral reasons, everyone owes obedience
to the civil authority and must also acknowledge its right to adopt punitive measures. Yet it would be excessive to affirm that these principles of
Scripture and Tradition also contain guidelines on the relationship
between the Church and the state, on the duties of the state toward the
true religion, or on the right of the Church to assert its claims by the
secular arm of the state, as an instrument of both temporal penalties and
civil consequences. It was only in the course of time and under the influence of different situations and historical needs that such positions or
doctrines were constituted, principally in relation to the Church’s battle
for the libertas ecclesiae, the freedom of the Church from civil and political control and oversight. This was an extremely complex process, the
stages of which I have discussed in other publications.5
5 See chapter 12 of my forthcoming The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy

(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), entitled
“Christianity and Secularity: Past and Present of a Complex Relationship.” It was
previously published in Italian as “Cristianesimo e laicità: storia ed attualità di un
rapporto complesso,” in Laicità: la ricerca dell’universale nella differenza, ed. Pierpaolo
Donati (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008), 27–138; in Spanish, see Cristianismo y laicidad.

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

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In this regard, it must also be emphasized that the discontinuity pointed
out by Benedict XVI at the level of the application of principles does not
imply any rupture in the continuity of the understanding of the mystery
of the Church. On the contrary, Benedict XVI notes that “the Church,
both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy,
catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time.” One grasps here, it
seems to me, Benedict XVI’s real concern for a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” that sees in the Church of Vatican II another Church,
a new Church. According to the pope, the supporters of a “hermeneutic
of discontinuity and rupture” have considered the Council “as a sort of
constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one.” In
reality, Benedict XVI explains, the Council fathers had not received such
a mandate. Speaking of continuity and of discontinuity at different
levels—on the one hand that of dogma, of the understanding of the
mystery of the Church, and, on the other, the level of the always concrete
and contingent ways of applying it—“the hermeneutic of reform”
defended by Benedict XVI does not establish any rupture in the understanding of the Church. The Church is instead understood there as “a
subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the
same, the one subject of the journeying people of God.”
3. Natural Right or Civil Right? The Heart of the Doctrine
of Vatican II on Religious Freedom
As argued in another objection in the criticism cited at the beginning of
this appendix, Vatican II proclaims in its declaration Dignitatis Humanae,
at number 2, that “the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the
very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the
revealed word of God and by reason itself.” Now, this means that for Vatican II, religious freedom is a natural right. In declaring this, the infallible
magisterium of the Church extends the interpretation of the natural
moral law and of natural rights. As a result, the objection concludes, there
can be no discontinuity or contradiction here, and so it would be false to
affirm that Vatican II explicitly taught that which Pius IX condemned,
that is, the right to freedom of religion and of worship.
In effect, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, at number 2106, states
the grounds of this right clearly: “This right is based on the very nature
of the human person.” It is certainly correct to say that the Second Vatican Council considers religious freedom as part of natural law. But it is
Historia y actualidad de una relación compleja (Madrid: Rialp, 2009). A muchexpanded German version is forthcoming with the title Christentum und säkularer
Staat: Geschichte—Gegenwart—Zukunft (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2012).

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equally true to say that Dignitatis Humanae at number 2 asserts: “This
right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the
constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become
a civil right.” The perspective of Vatican II is therefore not simply and
solely that of natural law, but is always also that of religious freedom “as
a civil right,” meaning, in the final analysis, as the right to freedom of
worship. In fact, this was also the perspective of Pius IX, because the freedom of religion that he was condemning was nothing other than the civil
right to freedom of worship asserted by, among others, the Catholic
liberals. It is therefore correct to say that the assertion by Vatican II of religious freedom as a demand proper to natural law, meaning the civil right
to freedom of worship, is nothing other than what had been condemned
in the encyclical Quanta Cura of Pius IX and in its supplement, the
“Syllabus” of errors.
Natural law as such is therefore not at all affected by the discontinuity
that is in question here. The contradiction arises only at the level of the
assertion of the civil right, and is therefore only of the political order.The
doctrine of Vatican II and the teaching of Quanta Cura with its “Syllabus
errorum” are therefore not in contradiction at the level of the natural law,
but at the level of natural law’s legal-political application in situations and
in the face of concrete problems. Besides, the innovation introduced by
Vatican II rests not only on its teaching of religious freedom as a natural
right but also on the need for this to be recognized as a civil right, as freedom of worship. In other words, from the well-attested conception of
religious freedom as a natural right, Vatican II was able to draw a new
consequence concerning the positive legal order of the state. And yet,
Pius IX had not drawn this same consequence; he considered it, on the
contrary, harmful and false because—in his view—it necessarily implied
religious indifferentism and relativism, both from the doctrinal point of
view and in its practical consequences. Vice versa, if the Second Vatican
Council was able to do so, that is because it started from a different
conception of the state and of its relationship to the Church, which
allowed the Council to move the emphasis from the “right of the truth”
to the “right of the person,” of the citizen considered as an individual and
of his religious conscience.
So once again, what is at stake here is not the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium in its interpretation of the natural law, because saying
“application” is not the same thing as saying “interpretation.” In effect,
interpretation essentially rests on that which concerns the natural moral
law and the corresponding moral norm, but it says nothing about the
manner in which the natural law or natural rights must be applied, nor is

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it concerned with the consequences that must be drawn from a given
historical situation. That the magisterium should sometimes express itself
on such an application is inevitable, and can also be helpful. That having
been said, it still cannot be affirmed that these are cases of magisterial
interpretations of natural rights or of the natural moral law, capable of
being the object of infallibility. They are concrete realizations and applications, which, at the time in which they are made, can be binding for
the Catholic faithful and demand their obedience. But this is not in any
way a matter of teachings that could not be recused by subsequent magisterial decisions.6
4. Discontinuity in Doctrine or Only in Relationship
with the Political-practical (Disciplinary) Orientation?
In order to escape from the supposed threat of a doctrinal contradiction,
one could nonetheless take refuge in the argument that the condemnations of Pius IX were not doctrinal condemnations, but only disciplinary.
In that case, there would not be any doctrinal discontinuity.
Now, in the first place, the pope’s speech of 2005 does not oppose
doctrinal affirmations on the one hand to simple “decisions” (of a practical and disciplinary nature) on the other. In reality, Benedict XVI goes
further, in distinguishing between “principles” and “the ways of their
application.” In the second place, I consider this objection to be mistaken
from the historical point of view as well, because in the nineteenth
century this question was clearly of a doctrinal nature. In effect, Pius IX
understood his condemnation of religious freedom as a necessity of the
dogmatic order, and not solely as a disciplinary measure. As we have
already said, the assertion of religious freedom or the affirmation that the
Church does not have the right to impose upon the faithful, with the help
of the “secular arm,” punishments or coercive temporal measures was
perceived at the time as a heresy, or at least as a way leading to heresy.7 So
6 Montalembert, too, submitted to the pontifical verdict, certainly in the more

moderate interpretation, approved by Pius IX, of Bishop Félix Dupanloup of
Orléans.
7 It is true that the main editor for the preparatory work of the encyclical Quanta
Cura, consultor to the Holy Office Fr. Luigi Bilio, qualified as heretical the statement defended by Montalembert that “L’Église n’a pas le droit de réprimer les
violateurs de ses lois par des peines temporelles” (“The Church does not have
the right to suppress violators of its laws by means of temporal punishments”).
See on the theme the remarkably well-documented study of Bernard Lucien,
Grégoire XVI, Pie IX et Vatican II: Études sur la Liberté religieuse dans la doctrine
catholique (Tours: Éditions Forts dans la foi, 1990), 184–85. (Incidentally, Lucien
is himself opposed to Vatican II’s doctrine of religious liberty.) See also Giacomo

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it seems to me historically as well as objectively mistaken to interpret the
condemnation of religious freedom on the part of the authorities of the
time as a simple measure of practical-disciplinary order.
For Pius IX, what was in danger was the very safeguarding of the
essence of the Church, of its claim to be the sole bearer of the fullness of
truth and source of salvation. So for him, recognizing the freedom of religion meant denying these truths; it equally meant religious indifferentism
and relativism. The greatness of this pope resides precisely in this: that on
the basis of the theological positions of his time (the historical character of
which he was unable to discern), he unquestionably acted in a spirit of
heroic fidelity to the faith and stood firm as a rock in the midst of a tempest

Martina, S.J., Pio IX (1851–1866) (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1986), 336–48. It is important to emphasize that the above position,
censured as heretical, does not simply refer to the right of the Church to impose,
in the case of the baptized, ecclesiastical penalties which might also include
“temporal” aspects—as, for example, the withdrawal of an ecclesiastical office or
of a church benefice. The context of the present case makes it clear that with
“temporal” the consulters of the Holy Office referred to state authority as being
in the service of enforcing church laws on the baptized. (The consulters explicitly stated that Montalembert’s condemnable proposition referred to the “freedom of worship and press and to material coercion for religious reasons,” and so
in this context “temporal” precisely did not refer to ecclesiastical power and
penalties, but to the coercitive power of the state in the service of the true religion.) It is important to emphasize this, because the problem raised by the
Catholic liberals around Montalembert was not whether the Church had the
right to use coercion by imposing ecclesiastical penalties (spiritual, as for example, excommunication; and temporal, as the examples mentioned above); the
question rather was whether the Church had the right to recur to the support
of the temporal power of the state to impose its jurisdiction over the baptized,
and whether the state, or Catholic state officials, had the duty to serve the
Church in that respect. This is why Thomas Pink (a professor of philosophy at
King’s College, London) is mistaken in blaming me for having falsely asserted
that with Vatican II the Church has renounced to its right to impose temporal
penalties to enforce its jurisdiction over the baptized; he is also wrong in writing that, according to me, this was the idea that in 1864 was considered heretical by Bilio and the other consultors of the Holy Office (see Thomas Pink,
“Rhonheimer on Religious Liberty: On the ‘hermeneutic of reform’ and religious liberty in Nova et Vetera,” RorateCaeli blogspot [August 5, 2011] roratecaeli.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-religious-liberty-and-hermeneutic-of.html).
My point was precisely that Bilio and the other theologians consulting the Holy
Office referred “temporal” to the state as the secular arm of the Church for the
enforcement of ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the baptized and to corresponding
“material coercion for religious reasons,” as they expressed it.

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of unbridled relativism.The time was evidently not yet ripe for the Church
to join this defensive battle in a new and more differentiated way.8
It is in the rejection of religious indifferentism and relativism that the
still-valid heart of this nineteenth-century condemnation is found.
Nonetheless, this battle against religious indifferentism and relativism has
become a battle against the civil right to freedom of religion and worship
because of the conception that the state is the guarantor of religious truth
and the Church possesses the right to make use of the state as its secular
arm to ensure its pastoral responsibilities. Now, such a conception of the
state did not rest in the slightest on the principles of Catholic doctrine
on faith and morality, but rather on the traditions and practices of ecclesiastical law of medieval origin, as also on their theological justifications.
To this it must be added that magisterial discontinuity as such is not at
stake here. For Benedict XVI, this is not primarily a matter of the continuity of the magisterium, but of continuity of the Church, and of the
understanding of the Church. He is opposed to the idea of a rupture
between the “preconciliar” and “postconciliar” Church, as it is presented
by the supporters of a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” In the
magisterial declarations—in particular in those touching on political,
economic, and social issues—many elements are found that depend upon
historical circumstances. The magisterium of the Church in the field of
social teaching also contains, together with immutable principles founded
on the doctrine of the faith, a mass of implementations that are often, in
hindsight, rather dubious. What is involved here is not a type of “teaching” similar to Catholic teaching in matters of faith and morals, where
the Church interprets the natural law in an obligatory manner—as in the
cases of questions concerning contraception, abortion, euthanasia, and
other moral norms in the field of bioethics. In these last cases, it is not a
matter of simple applications of the natural law and concrete situations,
but of determinations of that which belongs precisely to the natural law
8 For this reason, Pius IX also later approved the distinction between “thesis” and

“hypothesis,” which was elaborated by the journal Civiltà Cattolica (founded by
the Jesuits on Pius IX’s request). According to this distinction, one must, from a
practical-political perspective, accept and even demand modern freedoms as a
“hypothesis” for the sake of Catholic causes, but one must never affirm them as
a “thesis,” that is, as being genuinely true and just. Cf. the statement made, in this
decisive context, by Fr. Carlo Maria Curci, S.J., “Il congresso cattolico di Malines
e le libertà moderne,” in La Civiltà Cattolica, ser. 5, vol. 8, fasc. 326 (2 October
1863): 129–49. With some important exceptions (for example, Jacques Maritain,
Yves Congar, and John Courtney Murray), Catholic theology would maintain
this distinction between “thesis” and “hypothesis” until Vatican II.

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and to the corresponding moral norm. In this field, the universal ordinary
magisterium is also infallible.
The conceptions dominant in the nineteenth century with regard to
the role and duties of the temporal power toward the true religion—
conceptions founded on models of the Middle Ages and of late Christian
antiquity, but which acquired their definitive form only within the
modern confessional state—can claim for themselves only with great
difficulty the privilege of resting on the apostolic Tradition or of being a
constitutive element of the depositum fidei. In the same way, it seems very
improbable that these conceptions belong to the truths that possess an
historical or necessary logical relationship with the truths of the faith or
of dogma, truths that would be necessary to maintain for the purpose of
preserving and interpreting correctly the depositum fidei, as it is explained
in several documents of the magisterium.9
On the contrary, it would seem that at its origin Christianity even
adopted a rather different position. It was born and developed in a pagan
environment; it was conceived, on the basis of the Gospel and the example of Jesus Christ, as founded essentially on the separation between religion and politics, and it only demanded from the Roman Empire the
freedom to develop without obstacles. In recognizing and making its own
through its decree on religious freedom an “essential principle of the
modern state,” Benedict XVI affirms in his speech, Vatican Council II
“has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can
be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself
(cf. Mt 22:21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time.”10
9 Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on the “Professio

fidei,” and especially John Paul II, Apostolic Letter issued Motu proprio Ad tuendam fidem of May 18, 1998. In the latter document one reads regarding the
second paragraph of the Professio fidei: “This second paragraph of the Profession of
faith is of utmost importance since it refers to truths that are necessarily
connected to divine revelation. These truths, in the investigation of Catholic
doctrine, illustrate the Divine Spirit’s particular inspiration for the Church’s
deeper understanding of a truth concerning faith and morals, with which they
are connected either for historical reasons or by a logical relationship.” It seems
difficult to prove that such as relation exists in the case in question.
10 In his article Rhonheimer on Religious Liberty (see note 7 above), Professor Pink
wrongly asserts that Dignitatis Humanae did not pronounce a teaching on the relations between Church and state; Pink arrives at this conclusion because he interprets DH no. 3, the last paragraph (that is, the teaching that the state has no
competence in directing or prohibiting religious acts because this contradicts the
very nature of the state, which is ordered only to the temporal common good) as
referring only to the fact that, by its very nature (“under natural law,” as Pink says),
the state has no such competence, but that it has “a duty of reason under natural

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Nonetheless, the reference to the Gospel and to the first Christians is
a theme mentioned not solely by Benedict XVI. Even earlier it constituted the heart of the argumentation of Dignitatis Humanae, which dedicates two paragraphs, 11 and 12, to a reflection on the origins of the
Church. The Council explains laconically: “In faithfulness therefore to
the truth of the Gospel, the Church is following the way of Christ and
the apostles when she recognizes and gives support to the principle of
religious freedom as befitting the dignity of man and as being in accord
with divine revelation.” It is precisely the reference to the Gospel, to the
apostolic Tradition and to the testimony of the first Christians, who, as
Benedict XVI emphasizes, “clearly rejected the religion of the state,” that
truly characterizes the doctrine on religious freedom of Vatican II. Thus
the conception of the tasks and duties of the state toward the true religion, which had been taken as authoritative by Pius IX, was tacitly
shelved by the act of solemn magisterium of an ecumenical council.11
law” to profess and promote the true religious faith; and that baptized state officials have the corresponding moral obligations toward the Church; it is precisely
the Church which has the right to demand this on the basis of her jurisdiction
over the baptized. Vatican II, Pink argues, has not abandoned this doctrine but
simply sidestepped it for prudential (or pastoral) reasons—for example, the impossibility of enforcing this teaching under modern conditions—thus leaving the
traditional teaching intact. Now, this quite sophisticated interpretation actually is
nothing other than a new version of the above mentioned distinction between
“thesis” and “hypothesis,” elaborated by the nineteenth-century Jesuits. Many
passages of Dignitatis Humanae make it clear, however, that the Council intended
precisely much more: to abandon the centuries-old, but certainly not apostolic,
tradition of conceiving the temporal power as being in the service of the spiritual
power and to return to the message of the Gospel, the teaching of the Apostles,
and the practice of the early Christians (see DH nos. 10–12). Unfortunately,
Thomas Pink disregards those texts of the magisterium which contradict his
interpretation—most importantly, Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas message to the
Roman Curia, which is never mentioned and in which, as I have repeatedly
quoted, the Pope speaks about the Church’s having “made its own an essential
principle of the modern state.” This signifies that Vatican II not only omits
mentioning—for prudential reasons—the traditional doctrine, but that it actually
proffers a new teaching. The novelty of that teaching does not rest in an innovation in Catholic dogma or morals; it rather consists in a different, soundly secularist conception of the state, which logically and necessarily also implies a
different understanding of the relation between Church and state. (Another key
text of the postconciliar magisterium, disregarded by Professor Pink, is the Doctrinal Note “On Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life”
by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of November 24, 2002, referenced at note 21 below.)
11 It seems clear to me that a confessional state, in the traditional sense of the term,
would be essentially incompatible with the doctrine of Vatican II and in general

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5. Fidelity to the Faith, Tradition and “traditions,”
and Political Modernity
Vatican Council II freed the Church from a centuries-old historical
burden, the origins of which date back not to the apostolic Tradition and
to the depositum fidei but rather to concrete decisions of the post-Constantinian era of Christianity. These decisions ultimately crystallized in canonical traditions and in their respective theological interpretations, with
which the Church tried to defend its freedom, the libertas ecclesiae, from
the incessant attacks of the temporal powers: one might think in particular of the medieval doctrine of the two swords, which, at the time, sought
to justify theologically and biblically the understanding of the pope’s plenitudo potestatis. Nonetheless, over the course of the centuries, these canonical traditions and their theological formulations have changed their function
and tone. Afterward, and in the tradition of the confessional modern sovereign states, these became a justification of the ideal Catholic state, in which
“the throne and the altar” existed in close symbiosis, and Catholic statesmen zealously upheld the cause of the “rights of the Church” instead of the
civil right to religious freedom. This symbiosis and this unilateral vision
that led to clericalism (in the sense of the unsound meddling of clerics in
political and generally worldly affairs) and to a clerical society did not fail
to obscure the authentic face of the Church.
The Second Vatican Council dared to take a step here that defined an
era. Nonetheless, this did not change the Church’s understanding of
itself, or the Catholic doctrine on faith and morals. There was only a
redefinition of the manner in which the Church conceives of its relationship with the world, and in particular with the temporal power of the
state, a redefinition that in fact hearkens back to the origins, to the founding Christian charism, so to speak, and in particular to the very words of
Jesus, who invites us to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what
is God’s. Neither the infallibility of the pope nor that of the universal
with the civil right to freedom of religion, since, necessarily, civil discrimination
would be inevitable in a confessional state, especially in the public sphere. The
statement of Vatican II in number 6 of Dignitatis Humanae (“If, in view of peculiar circumstances obtaining among peoples, special civil recognition is given to
one religious community in the constitutional order of society, it is at the same
time imperative that the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom should be recognized and made effective in practice”) should not
be understood in the sense that the Council maintained here a compatibility
between the confessional state and religious freedom, but in the sense that the
Council proffered here an admonition to do away with all religious discrimination, addressed to those states in which historical vestiges of privileges accorded
to a particular religion still survived.

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

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ordinary magisterium of the college of bishops was harmed or diminished by such a step. On the contrary, through the doctrine of Vatican II
on religious freedom there is a much clearer manifestation of the identity of the Church of Jesus Christ and of the extent to which the magisterium of the Church in matters of faith and morals possesses continuity,
in spite of all the historical discontinuities; this continuity in matters of
faith and morals moreover constitutes the foundation and the most
convincing argument for the possibility of its infallibility. For this reason,
it seems to me that any interpretation that would seek to smooth over,
by means of complicated expedient arguments, any sort of discontinuity
in this picture of completeness, is of no support in the defense of the
magisterium of the Church. Although motivated by pastoral reasons that
are in themselves comprehensible and valid (but are shown to be
mistaken in the light of the facts), such an interpretation complicates
things unnecessarily. Through the evidence of the concrete intentions
regarding ecclesiastical politics of those who promote such an interpretation, smoothing over any discontinuity can even have a counterproductive effect and so damage the credibility of the magisterium.
Against those who, instead, like the traditionalists gathered around the
Society of St. Pius X of Archbishop Lefebvre, are no longer able to see in
the Church of Vatican II “the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”
of Tradition, and who speak of a disastrous rupture with the past, one can
reply that in effect there is an irreconcilable dispute here over the
conception of the Church, and also of the state and its duties. It is for this
reason that these traditionalists, for whom “tradition as such” and “the
ecclesial traditions” are clearly more important than the apostolic Tradition12 —the only one that is ultimately normative—will find it difficult
to accept the attempts at mediation mentioned above, because these skirt
the heart of the problem, which is none other than the discontinuity that
really does exist.
In a response, published online, to Robert Spaemann and to my statements on the theme of religious freedom, Fr. Matthias Gaudron cites a
statement of mine: “There is no timeless dogmatic Catholic doctrine on
the state—nor can there be,” commenting on it as follows: “If this is true
then the new magisterium of Vatican II is no longer dogmatic, but is itself
subject to change. By this same fact, then, no one can reproach the Society of St. Pius X for criticizing this magisterium.”13 Indeed, the teaching
12 See, in the opposite sense, the Catechism of the Catholic Church 83, and Vatican

Council II, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation.
13 Sie haben ihn entthront! Eine Antwort von Pater Matthias Gaudron zur Diskussion um

die Religionsfreiheit (November 26, 2009), to be found at www.piusbruderschaft.de.

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Martin Rhonheimer

of Vatican II on religious freedom as a civil right is certainly not dogmatic
in nature. It is, however, the magisterium of an ecumenical council and,
as such, must be accepted by the faithful with religious obedience (not
less, but indeed much more so, than the condemnations of Pius IX in
their time). In any case, this does not justify a division in the Church.
The position of the traditionalists, moreover, does not confine itself to
saying that one may criticize this teaching; it instead goes so far as to say
that this teaching means apostasy from the Church of Christ and is—at
least implicitly—heretical, and it claims that the Church of Vatican II is no
longer the true Church of Jesus Christ. This is why Fr. Gaudron’s argumentation also skirts the real issue when he writes: “It should therefore
be permitted, in the very bosom of the Church, to criticize a teaching
that contradicts the body of the Church’s earlier declarations, as well as
to raise important objections from a juridical and political perspective. It
is a matter here of a right to a different opinion.” I consider this statement rather to conceal the facts, because the issue is not that members of
the Society of St. Pius X “criticize” the conciliar teaching, but that they
claim that the traditional conception of the state and of the relations
between the state and the Church—in particular the vision in which the
state has the duty to promote the Catholic religion and to the extent
possible to hinder the spread of other religions, through coercive means
such as the condemnation of a civil right to freedom of religion and
worship—would be a constitutive element of the doctrine of the Catholic faith,
so that in the rejection of such a conception, Christ is “dethroned” and
the Church betrayed. Before such a conception, the liberal principle of
religious freedom seems an apostasy, the Church of Vatican II is no longer
the true Catholic Church, and the schismatic episcopal ordinations of
1988 would ultimately be justified.14
In a later response to my affirmation above that the members of the
Society of St. Pius X consider the doctrine of Vatican II about religious
freedom heretical, Fr. Gaudron has replied that this is not true, that what I
described above is not the position of the Society of St. Pius X, but that
of the so-called “sedisvacantists.”15 According to Fr. Gaudron, the doctrine
of the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom, in its opposition to
Pius IX’s understanding of the duties of the state toward the true religion,
does not oppose a dogma of Catholic faith (and thus it is not heretical),
14 Cf. also Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Ils l’ont découronné. Du libéralisme à l’apos-

tasie. La tragédie conciliaire (Escurolles: Editions Fideliter, 1987); Bernard Lucien,
Grégoire XVI, Pie IX et Vatican II.
15 See Gaudron’s article “Religionsfreiheit und Unfehlbarkeit der Kirche” from 18
May 2011, on www.piusbruderschaft.de.

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

1051

but only a theological sententia certa.16 Admittedly, this would be a significant precision, and I would like to accept it if there were not considerable doubts about whether Fr. Gaudron is really putting all of his cards on
the table. For, like Archbishop Lefebvre, he also quotes Pius VII’s Apostolic
letter Post Tam Diurnitas (1814),17 which says that the right to freedom of
worship signifies the equivalence of all religions (that is, religious indifferentism), and that this is “implicitly the disastrous and ever deplorable
heresy which St. Augustine mentions with the following words: ‘They
assert that all the heretics are on the good way and tell the truth (. . .)’.”
Now Pius IX later condemned, in the encyclical Quanta Cura, the
following opinion of the catholic liberals (Montalembert): “that is the
best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached
to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against
the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require” (this is
the wording of Quanta Cura). Pius IX adds that this opinion is “against
the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers”; he
therefore suggests what Pius VII, in Post Tam Diurnitas, mentioned above,
had already indicated to be the core point, namely to “put on the same
level the Church, outside of which there is no salvation, with the heretic
sects and even with the Jewish faithlessness.” This is the decisive point
which Fr. Gaudron seems to fail to address and even obscures: the traditional coupling of religious freedom and indifferentism, which necessarily meant that the defense of religious freedom would imply the
equivalence of all religions, something which clearly is “against the
doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers” and, thus,
16 According to the article “Qualifikationen, theol.,” in Lexikon für Theologie und

Kirche (2d ed. 1963, vol. 8), 918, a sentence which is “theologically certain” (theologice certum) is a theological affirmation about whose relationship to revelation
the magisterium has not yet decided definitively, the denial of which however
would be tantamount to a denial of a doctrine of faith or at least indirectly
threaten it. According to the article “Theological Censures,” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), online edition:
www.newadvent.org/cathen/03532a.htm, “[a]proposition is branded heretical
when it goes directly and immediately against a revealed or defined dogma, or
dogma de fide; erroneous when it contradicts only a certain (certa) theological
conclusion or truth clearly deduced from two premises, one an article of faith,
the other naturally certain. Even though a statement be not obviously a heresy
or an error it may yet come near to either. It is styled next, proximate to heresy
when its opposition to a revealed and defined dogma is not certain, or chiefly
when the truth it contradicts, though commonly accepted as revealed, has yet
never been the object of a definition (proxima fidei).”
17 See Matthias Gaudron, “Die Religionsfreiheit, Das wahre Verhältnis von Kirche
und Staat,“ Civitas. Zeitschrift für das christliche Gemeinwesen 10 (2010): 1–19, at 7.

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Martin Rhonheimer

a heretical position. Exactly this equating of religious freedom with indifferentism, however, was undone with the Second Vatican Council. With
it, what the popes of the nineteenth century rejected as heretical still is
heresy: religious indifferentism. But religious freedom as a civil right is no
longer affected by this verdict.
On the grounds of their understanding of Church and state, however,
the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre reject exactly this uncoupling of the
equation of religious freedom and indifferentism. To the extent that they
hold to this position, the doctrine of Vatican II must seem to them heretical, at least regarding its implications. Consider also the following
sentence by Montalembert (which was qualified as heretical by Fr. Luigi
Bilio, Consultor of the Holy Office and main drafter of Quanta Cura):
“The Church does not have the right to suppress violators of its laws by
means of temporal punishments.”18 Yet, this position of Montalembert
was exactly the one targeted by Pius IX in Quanta Cura. The core of the
“traditional” and “preconciliar” doctrine included the affirmation that—
in religious matters and for the salvation of souls—the Church, by her
very essence, had the right to use the temporal power. In modern language,
she had the right to rely on the means of state coercion, a right whose
defense, as Archbishop Lefebvre has stressed emphatically, was the core of
the papal condemnation of religious freedom.19
This is why we have to ask how Fr. Gaudron, and with him the Society of St. Pius X, can possibly avoid the consequence of asserting that the
Second Vatican Council’s doctrine on religious freedom at least implicitly is opposed to the Catholic doctrine of faith and thus is implicated in
heresy. He must, moreover, recognize the legitimacy of being asked how
he can possibly justify the schismatic act of the 1988 Episcopal ordinations on the grounds of the incongruence of the teaching of Vatican II
on religious freedom with a mere theological sententia certa (which incongruence he claims the doctrine on religious freedom reflects). Together
18 See note 7 above.
19 See Lefebvre, Ils l’ont découronné, 76 : “Ce qui est commun à tous les libéralismes,

c’est la revendication du droit à ne pas être inquiété par le pouvoir civil dans l’exercice public de la religion de son choix ; leur dénominateur commun (comme
le dit le cardinal Billot) c’est la libération de toute contrainte en matière
religieuse. Et cela, les papes l’ont condamné.” This shows again why Thomas
Pink, in Rhonheimer on Religious Liberty, is wrong: the question is not about ecclesiastical power as such and its right to impose, besides strictly spiritual penalties
such as excommunication, also so-called temporal penalties such as for example
withdrawing a Church office or benefice, but the question of the relation
between the ecclesiastical power and the power of worldly authorities, that is, the
temporal power of the state (see also note 7 above).

Benedict XVI and Religious Freedom

1053

with Archbishop Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, he
should rather hold that this teaching implies the “heresy of liberalism”
and a general apostasy of the Church and the entire human society from
Jesus Christ, and that it therefore puts the whole of catholic faith at
stake.20 Provided, however, Fr. Gaudron only intended to defend—
against the idea of the religiously neutral, secular state—the integristic
idea of a state, which has the task and the right to use coercion for the
salvation of souls, this would only be a political position (though a theologically grounded one), which I would not consider to be heretical, but
anachronistic and regrettable.
Vatican Council II effectively places us before a choice: the choice
between, on the one hand, a Church that seeks to affirm and impose its
truths and its pastoral duties by means of civil power, and on the other
hand, a Church that recognizes—as Dignitatis Humanae maintains in
number 1—that “the truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its
own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with
power.” It is not a matter here of two Churches that are distinct in the
dogmatic or constitutive sense, but of two Churches that have different
ways of understanding their relationships with the world and with the
temporal order.Vatican II does not speak out either for a strictly “laicist”
state in the sense of traditional French “laïcité” or for the relegation of
religion to the private sphere, but for a Church that no longer presumes
to impose the kingship of Christ by means of temporal power, and that
for this very reason acknowledges the political secularity of the modern
secular—not militantly laicist—state.
This is precisely the perspective of Vatican II. It has been confirmed
by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Doctrinal Note “On
Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life” of
November 24, 2002. In number 6 of this note we read that “laïcité, understood as autonomy of the political or civil sphere from that of religion
and the Church” represents for Catholic moral doctrine “a value that has
been attained and recognized by the Catholic Church and belongs to
[the] inheritance of contemporary civilization.”21 Though not
20 Ibid.
21 I have slightly changed the wording of the official English translation, because it

does not correctly reproduce the Italian original which speaks of “laicità” (the
Italian equivalent to the French “laicitë”) and of “autonomy” without any further
qualification (and not, as the English translation does, of “rightful autonomy” which
is out of place, because the autonomy of the state regarding the religious and the
ecclesiastical spheres is autonomy tout court, without any further qualification).The
Italian original thus says: “Per la dottrina morale cattolica la laicità intesa come
autonomia della sfera civile e politica da quella religiosa ed ecclesiastica—ma non

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Martin Rhonheimer

autonomous morally—it must satisfy basic, objective moral criteria—the
state is at the same time not obliged to recognize one religious truth or
one true Church over other confessions or religious communities. As
state and as coercive civil power, it declares itself incompetent to judge
on religious questions of truth or on any associated privileges. The duties
and aims of the state are of a different nature, even when it shows
concern for the religious life of its citizens or when it recognizes a particular religion, deeply anchored in a nation’s tradition, as a reality belonging to its culture and its public life. The state’s activity is ultimately
oriented toward the political principles of justice and of the equality of all
confessions, and toward the recognition of the same rights of all persons.
“Government therefore ought indeed to take account of the religious life
of the citizenry and show it favor, since the function of government is to
make provision for the common welfare. However, it would clearly transgress the limits set to its power, were it to presume to command or inhibit
religious acts.”22
The mission of preaching the Gospel, on the part of the Church and
by the apostolate of the lay faithful who found themselves upon that
Gospel, consists in penetrating the structures of society with the spirit of
Christ, and by this means favoring the manifestation of the kingship of
Christ.23 The kingdom of Christ does not begin with the public confession of the true religion; it begins with the proclamation of the Gospel
by the Church, which is received in the hearts of men and women, and
it continues to grow through the apostolic action of the ordinary faithful who establish it in all of human society, in all the structures and realities of life.
N&V

da quella morale—è un valore acquisito e riconosciuto dalla Chiesa e appartiene al
patrimonio di civiltà che è stato raggiunto.” Of course, this does not mean that
the state must be indifferent regarding the religious life of its citizens or that religion must be absent from public life, as it is in the case of French “laïcité” (see the
passage of Dignitatis Humanae quoted in continuation). The point is the institutional independence and sovereignty of the political sphere with respect to religious authorities like the Church, that is, the absence of any form of establishment
of a determinate religion.
22 Dignitatis Humanae, no. 3.
23 See my reflections on this subject in my book Changing the World: The Timeliness
of Opus Dei (New York: Scepter Press, 2009).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 1055–87

1055

The Alleged Feudalism of Anselm’s
Cur Deus Homo and the Benedictine Concepts
of Obedience, Honor, and Order
DAVID L.W HIDDEN III
Our Lady of the Lake College
Baton Rouge, LA

S T. A NSELM ’ S Cur Deus Homo1 ranks as one of the most influential
pieces of Christian theology in the two millennia of reflection upon the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The influence of Cur Deus Homo,
however, has not been all positive, as much of the modern discussion about
the Cur Deus Homo has consisted of offering objections to Anselm’s understanding of the atoning work of Jesus Christ, with various authors criticizing the work for its feudal background, its violence, or its neglect of the life
of Christ. Anselm’s argument in the Cur Deus Homo often serves as a theological Rorschach test upon which theologians have projected their own
theological worries, and much (mis)interpretation of Cur Deus Homo results
from either importing concepts that are not intrinsic to Anselm’s argument
or misunderstanding its details. The thesis of this essay is that, rather than
focusing on an outdated feudal model, we can better understand the Cur
Deus Homo by exploring Anselm’s monastic background and the connections between the Cur Deus Homo and the Rule of Benedict (RB or the
Rule),2 particularly in regard to the concepts of obedience, honor, and order.
1 Anselm, Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and

Sons, 1946–61). English translation: Anselm, Anselm of Canterbury: The Major
Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998). English quotations will be from the Davies volume, but the citations to
the Cur Deus Homo and Anselm’s Epistles will be listed as Schmitt with volume,
page, and line number following.
2 St. Benedict and Timothy Fry, RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and
English with Notes (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981).

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David L.Whidden III

The Question of Feudalism
Generally speaking, it has been presumed for the better part of a century
that the proper context for understanding the concepts of satisfaction,
punishment, honor, obedience, and order in the Cur Deus Homo was that
of the feudal society in which Anselm operated. Without providing a
complete historiography, one can point to early arguments by Cremer,
Harnack, and Foley3 which claimed that the Cur Deus Homo was rife
with feudal imagery in such a way as to limit its theological effectiveness
for a modern era. Foley ascribed to feudalism Anselm’s “conception of
God’s relation to man, of the loss of God’s honour, of Christ’s obedience
as service, of the mutual relations of the subjects of God the Lord, and of
the substitution of Christ’s service for ours,”4 while Harnack argues that
“the worst thing in Anselm’s theory [is] the mythological conception of
God as the mighty private man, who is incensed at the injury done to
His honour and does not forgo His wrath until He has received an at
least adequately great equivalent.”5 The influence of their work, especially that of Harnack, whose History of Dogma was a standard history of
doctrine text for most of the twentieth century, meant that many theologians were trained to believe that the feudal background was crucial to
understanding Anselm’s work. More contemporary accounts of Anselm
continue to make the feudal claim, with the most prominent being J.
Denny Weaver’s claim that Anselm’s satisfaction theory derived both from
the medieval penitential system and “the image of the feudal lord who
gave protection to his vassals but also exacted penalties for offenses against
his honor,”6 while four different authors in a recent anthology of essays
on the atonement manage to make the feudal claim.7 This is not to say,
of course, that these theologians do not have other criticisms of Anselm’s
argument, but their claims about feudalism have often been vulgarized to
3 Hermann Cremer, “Die Wurzeln des Anselm’schen Satisfactionsbegriffes,” Theolo-

gische Studien und Kritiken 53 (1880): 7–24 and “Der germanische Satisfactionsbegriff in der Versöhnungslehre,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 66 (1893): 316–45.
Cremer’s main emphasis was on Anselm’s system as influenced by Teutonic legal
codes. Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol.VI (New York: Dover Publications,
1961), 54–83. George C. Foley, Anselm’s Theory of the Atonement:The Bohlen Lectures,
1908 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 113–15.
4 Ibid., 114–15.
5 Harnack, History of Dogma, 76. Harnack, of course, had many other concerns
about Anselm’s ideas, but this charge is one that continues to resonate.
6 J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans,
2001), 16.
7 Simon Barrow and Jonathan Bartley, eds., Consuming Passion: Why the Killing of
Jesus Really Matters (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005), 31, 38, 48, 92.

The Alleged Feudalism of Cur Deus Homo

1057

the point that theologians are often comfortable dismissing Anselm out
of hand purely because of the supposed feudal concepts in his argument.8
One minority report is specific only to the question of Anselm’s idea
of satisfaction. In Christus Victor, Gustav Aulen claimed that the Anselmian
concept of satisfaction was derived from the penitential system of the
Middle Ages, but he made this claim while ignoring the importance of the
feudal context, not by denying it.9 With the exception of a few who have
followed Aulen, the feudal charge has remained in place to this day, though
sometimes the two are combined, so that Anselm is sometimes said to be
best understood through both feudalism and the penitential system.
Only within the last twenty years has a robust alternative explanation of
Anselm’s conceptual framework been developed, as the Benedictine
community has sought to claim the Rule as the primary source of Anselm’s
ideas in Cur Deus Homo.10 In an important, but much neglected, article, Guy
Mansini argues that the penitential system from which Anselm derived his
concept of satisfaction in the Cur Deus Homo “is substantially the same
notion of satisfaction to be found in the Rule.”11 Mansini points to four
elements of satisfaction that are found in the Cur Deus Homo, which he
compares to the concept of satisfaction that is found in seventeen places in
the Rule:12 (1) “satisfaction takes place in the context of disrupted personal
relations”; (2) “satisfaction is the appropriate means, on the part of the
offender, of seeking the forgiveness of the one offended”; (3) “satisfaction is
distinct from punishment as the willing from the unwilling bearing of the
consequences of offense”; and (4) “satisfaction is supererogatory.”13 Mansini
8 The best defense in English of Cur Deus Homo can be found in John McIntyre,

St. Anselm and His Critics: A Re-Interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo (Edinburgh:
Oliver and Boyd, 1954).
9 Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea
of Atonement (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 84–92.
10 An early exception is Hans Urs von Balthasar, who describes Anselm’s reasoning
as “monastic, like that of the Areopagite, but it is Benedictine, and that means
both communal and dialogic at the same time. Its monastic form is contemplative, beholding, transparent; its Benedictine content is manifest in the consciousness of freedom and in a form of life stamped by freedom.” Studies in Theological
Style: Clerical Styles. Vol. II of The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 211.
11 Guy Mansini, “St. Anselm, ‘Satisfactio’, and the ‘Rule’ of St. Benedict,” Revue
Benedictine 97 (1987): 102.
12 Specifically RB 5.19, 11.13, 24.4, 24.7, 27.3, 43.6, 43.11, 43.12, 43.16, 44.t, 44.3,
44.8 (x2), 44.9, 45.1, 46.3, and 71.8. Mansini also argues that versions of emendatioemendare, which also pervade RB, are conceptual equivalents of satisfaction.
13 Mansini, “St. Anselm, ‘Satisfactio’, and the ‘Rule’ of St. Benedict,” 109. This is
Mansini’s summary of an argument offered on pp. 104–9.

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David L.Whidden III

goes on to demonstrate a textual link between Epistle 105, written before
Cur Deus Homo, and chapter 29 of the Rule to indicate Anselm’s comfortable familiarity with the Benedictine concept of satisfaction. Finally, Mansini
convincingly argues that for Anselm, “the whole of monastic life can be
understood as satisfactory.”14 According to Mansini, the disjunction
between satisfaction and punishment is central to the Rule, and Anselm uses
those ideas in the Cur Deus Homo as well as in his work as the abbot at Bec.
John Fortin has made the same case for the satisfaction/punishment
disjunction and has extended the trend of finding Benedictine roots for
Anselm’s theology in his description of justice.15 While not a member of
the Benedictine order, Scott Matthews has also sought to locate Anselm’s
Proslogion within its monastic context.16 The suggestion common to these
scholars is that Anselm’s thirty-three-year career as a Benedictine monk—
fifteen of those years as abbot—had the biggest influence upon his theology; the argument is not that we should ignore Anselm’s broader context,
but rather that Anselm’s primary worldview, and the intellectual model
upon which the Cur Deus Homo is based, is derived from that life which
he knew most intimately and which he considered to be the superior
form of life in his time. The Rule requires that it “be read often in the
community, so that none of the brothers can offer the excuse of ignorance,”17 and Anselm’s reference to the Rule in his letters reflects his intimate knowledge and understanding of both its details and its intent.18 The
Rule was normative for both Anselm and the community within which
he spent the majority of his adult life, though as Sir Richard Southern has
pointed out, the authority of the Rule for Anselm is a result of its divine
source in God and its functional summary of Scripture.19
Unfortunately, this Benedictine background of Anselm’s thought has
not made significant inroads into the community of theological scholars,
14 Ibid., 114.
15 John Fortin, “Satisfactio in St. Benedict’s Regula and St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo,”

Modern Schoolman 79 (2002): 305–11, and “The Influence of Benedict’s Regula
on Anselm’s Concept of Justice,” American Benedictine Review 58 (2007): 154–71.
16 Scott Matthews, Reason, Community and Religious Tradition: Anselm’s Argument and
the Friars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 15–29.
17 RB 66.8.
18 See, for instance, Epistles 113 (Schmitt III: 247–48), 123 (Schmitt III: 263–64),
137 (Schmitt III: 281–83), 156 (Schmitt IV: 17–23), 251 (Schmitt IV: 162–63),
267 (Schmitt IV: 182), 375 (Schmitt V: 319), and 450 (Schmitt V: 397–98).
English translation: Anselm, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, trans. Walter
Fröhlich, 3 vols. Cistercian Studies Series, nos. 96, 97, and 142 (Kalamazoo, MI:
Cistercian Publications, 1990–94).
19 Richard W. Southern, “Anselm at Canterbury,” Anselm Studies: An Occasional Journal; Proceedings of the Third International Saint Anselm Conference I (1983): 17.

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as the feudal environment continues to be asserted as the primary influence upon Anselm’s thought. Therefore, before we look more closely at
the Benedictine concepts in the Cur Deus Homo, we should investigate
the substance of the charge of feudalism and see if the charge is sustainable, given the growth of scholarship on feudalism since the claim was
first made at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Feudalism Complaint
Just what is the problem with feudalism, and what is its apparently insidious effect on the Cur Deus Homo? Harnack’s suggestion that the God of
the Cur Deus Homo is some kind of petty tyrant overly concerned with
his honor is one complaint. Recent commentators are concerned about
the influence that the hierarchical structure of feudal life had on Anselm’s
conception of God and his overall argument.20 There are charges that the
argument is too legalistic, because of the influence of feudal law courts,
and consequently Anselm’s vision of the Atonement requires some change
on God’s part, or that it is too economic and mechanistic and thus overly
concerned with debts.21 When theologians complain about the violence
of the cross, the underlying concern seems to be that the violence “of the
sword”22 propagated by the feudal order with its unruly knights may have
had a negative impact on Anselm’s conception of the Atonement.
Often, however, theologians do not enumerate the specific problems
with feudalism and its influence on Anselm; they treat the charge of feudalism itself as sufficient to dismiss Anselm’s argument. One wonders, in fact,
whether feudalism is a term used by theologians as a rhetorical device rather
than a substantive argument against Anselm. As Elizabeth Brown has pointed
out, historians often apply the concept of feudalism “abusively, to those
selected elements of the past that were to be overthrown, abolished, or inexorably superseded.”23 Given how often it is Protestant theologians who
object to Anselm’s feudalism, and yet with little discussion of exactly what
the problems are—we are all supposed to be against feudalism, even if
perhaps we no longer know why—perhaps the real function of the feudal
charge may somehow be to delegitimize Anselm’s argument; the term

20 Joerg Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (Minneapolis,

MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 125.
21 On the debt aspects of atonement theory see Gary Anderson, Sin: A History (New

Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009), especially pp. 189–202 on Anselm.
22 Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement, 5.
23 Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians

of Medieval Europe,” American Historical Review 79 (October 1974): 1065.

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David L.Whidden III

“feudal” has become a stand-in for “medieval” and part of an overall rejection of the medieval church.
This lack of clarity about the exact problems with feudalism, however,
is minor compared to the deeper problems with the feudalism charge.
First, the very concept of feudalism as a useful model for understanding
medieval society, especially in the eleventh century, has come under
sustained attack by medieval historians, who argue that feudalism is an
eighteenth-century construct, which, when imposed on our study of
medieval life, obscures its variety and complexity and causes us to ignore
evidence contrary to the feudal thesis. Second, even if one were somehow to rescue the feudal model as explanatory for medieval life, the
evidence for its presence in Anselm’s argument is less telling than one
might expect; there are better explanations for the concepts Anselm uses,
and the technical language of feudalism is practically nonexistent in the
Cur Deus Homo. Each of these two concerns bears deeper investigation.
Problems with the Feudal Model
Without going into an extensive historiography of feudalism, suffice it to
say that the middle parts of the last century witnessed an explosion of
scholarship on the subject. Beyond what Harnack and his contemporaries
knew about feudalism, the decades around World War II saw prominent
historians such as Marc Bloch and F. L. Ganshof write important books
about the essential nature of feudalism and the origins of feudal society,24
while English historians spent considerable effort trying to understand the
influence of the Norman Conquest on the existing structure of English
society. Typical of the efforts to understand feudalism are Bloch’s description of the “fundamental features of European feudalism” as
a subject peasantry; widespread use of the service tenement (i.e. the fief)
instead of a salary, which was out of the question; the supremacy of a
class of specialized warriors; ties of obedience and protection which
bind man to man and, within the warrior class, assume the distinctive
form called vassalage; fragmentation of authority—leading inevitably to
disorder; and, in the midst of all this, the survival of other forms of association, family and State, of which the latter, during the second feudal
age, was to acquire renewed strength.25
24 Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon with introduction by M. Postan

(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961). First published as La Société féodale
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1939). F. L. Ganshof, Feudalism, trans. Philip Grierson,
second English ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961); first published as
Qu’est-ce la féodalité (Bruxelles: J. Lebègue and Cie, 1944).
25 Bloch, Feudal Society, 446.

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While Bloch’s definition is expansive and is often the image we have
in our minds when we think of feudalism, Ganshof provides a second
definition that is restricted to feudo-vassalic relations, where feudalism is
a body of institutions creating and regulating the obligations of obedience and service—mainly military service—on the part of a free man
(the vassal) towards another free man (the lord), and the obligations of
protection and maintenance on the part of the lord with regard to his
vassal. The obligation of maintenance had usually as one of its effects the
grant by the lord to his vassal of a unit of real property known as a fief.26

Yet even as these historians delved more deeply into the primary
sources, others began to realize that the feudal model they described was
insufficient to explain the differences they found when confronted with
the evidence, so that they were often forced to extract a notion of feudalism which did not fit the medieval reality. In 1974 Elizabeth Brown
published her landmark article, “The Tyranny of a Construct,” which challenged the usefulness of the feudal model for understanding medieval
society.27 Brown claimed that while other historians had had doubts about
the use of the term and realized that it was “an arbitrary pattern imposed
by modern writers upon men long dead and events long past,”28 historians often claimed that it was useful for pedagogical purposes, for the
purpose of comparing different societies, or served as an indispensable
abstraction that allowed historians to deal with the complexities of the
medieval world. In response to these claims, Brown pointed out that it is
deceptive and condescending to avoid complexity when teaching and
those scholars who impose the feudal model in their research
run the risk of having their vision narrowed, their perspective anachronistically skewed, and their receptivity to divergent data consequently
blunted unless they firmly divorce themselves from the preconceptions
and sets associated with the oversimplified models and abstractions with
which they have been indoctrinated and which they themselves pass on
to their students.29

The proper use of the term “feudalism” was, according to Brown, best
limited to dealing only with fiefs, and historians would be more effective
26 Ganshof, Feudalism, xx.
27 Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct.”
28 Ibid., 1067. Here Brown is quoting H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The

Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh:
University Press, 1963), 92.
29 Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct,” 1078–79.

David L.Whidden III

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in their descriptions of medieval society if they let the complex data
speak for itself rather than attempting to impose definitions and extract
essential elements of something that never really existed in specific locations. Feudalism, as some kind of ideal kind of political organization to
which medieval leaders aspired, never existed except in the minds of later
historians. In fact, feudalism is nothing other than
a construct devised in the seventeenth century and then and subsequently used by lawyers, scholars, teachers, and polemicists to refer to
phenomena, generally associated more or less closely with the Middle
Ages, but always and inevitably phenomena selected by the person
employing the term and reflecting that particular viewer’s biases, values,
and orientations.30

Brown created the theoretical case against imposing the model of
feudalism on the historical data; twenty years later, Susan Reynolds
provided the hard evidence against the use of the feudal model in both
its expansive and its restricted senses in her book Fiefs and Vassals: The
Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted.31 This is an immensely detailed, densely
argued, and difficult to summarize book32 that is broken into two parts:
the first part of the book argues against seeing feudo-vassalic relations as
being the most important institutions of the medieval period, calls into
question the supposed prevalence of vassalage, and argues that the majority of property was held freely rather than through some form of service.
In the second part, Reynolds gives a location by location review of the
evidence from across most of Europe during the period 900–1300.
Focusing on the different uses of words, on concepts, and on the
phenomena of property relations, Reynolds argues against the reality or
usefulness of the kinds of models offered by Bloch and Ganshof. She
offers the following conclusions that are relevant to our discussion of the
alleged feudalism of Anselm.
First, the conceptual model of feudalism that has been in place since the
eighteenth century is the result of the development of academic and
professional law in the twelfth and subsequent centuries. Academic lawyers
in Italy who were investigating the questions presented by the Libri Feudorum found in it old language from the Carolingian empire about vassals;
30 Ibid., 1086.
31 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1994).
32 Reynolds provides a helpful four-page summary of her conclusions at the begin-

ning of a more recent article, “Fiefs and Vassals in Scotland: A View from Outside,”
Scottish Historical Review 82 (2003): 176–93.

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they conjectured about the origin of feudalism from war bands and then
incorporated language about vassals into their work. As medieval governments became more centralized and bureaucratic, the language of fiefs and
vassals, which had disappeared from the vocabulary after the end of the
Carolingian empire, was reincorporated into professional law. Historians
and lawyers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accepted this
explanation about the origin of feudalism from war bands and created the
model to explain medieval life, often for their own rhetorical purposes.33
Second, the idea that feudalism began as the result of personal bonds
between leaders of war bands and their followers, and was then formalized and territorialized, is false. The image of feudal anarchy, in which
knights and barons constantly war on each other at the expense of peasants, is so outdated that no medieval historian now thinks of the medieval
period that way.34 Instead, Reynolds offers a counter-hypothesis: that
inasmuch as concerns about property law developed in any sort of
systematic way, the origin of property law is better understood to have
been the result of churches carefully tracking their property over generations. Because churches were not allowed to alienate their property
permanently, the church had to ensure that those who held property
from the church did not do so for more than several generations without
affirming the church’s ownership of the property. Reynolds proposes that
“we should think less of the church and its property being ‘feudalized’
than of property rights being ‘ecclesiasticized’.”35
Third, the primary means of holding property in Anselm’s era was not
fief-holding; rather, most property was held freely. Fiefs were not a
specific category of property until after 1100,36 and the old idea that
property held freely (known as alods or allods) was slowly converted to
fiefs and developed into a form of feudal hierarchy after the demise of the
Carolingian Empire is belied by the abundance of evidence that most
property was held freely. That does not mean that property owners did
not owe service or fidelity to the king, for land could be confiscated by
kings for acts of betrayal, but service was required not on the basis of
property but on the basis of the jurisdiction of kings and other leaders.
Typically all landowners owed military service, not just nobles, and all
persons were expected to be faithful to the king. Service and faithfulness
were not a function of property or specific to feudo-vassalic relations.37
33 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, 64–72, 478–79.
34 Ibid., 476.
35 Ibid., 143.
36 Ibid., 59.
37 Ibid., 31, 352.

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David L.Whidden III

As Reynolds points out, ownership of property always has obligations
attached to it, yet those obligations in no way preclude the reality of the
property being held freely.38
Fourth, and related to the previous point, in contrast to the model that
sees the king as just another feudal lord, the power of feudal lords over
kings is greatly inflated, and kingship in Anselm’s time remained the
primary model of political organization. Reynolds points out that
the fact that the words dominus and senior were used both of kings and
lesser lords need not mean that the king’s authority or dominium was
seen as similar to theirs. God was a dominus, but that did not make his
dominium over the world comparable either to the political authority or
to the mere property rights enjoyed by a human lord.39

The feudal hierarchy does not, according to Reynolds, appear until after
Anselm’s death.40 There may have been a hierarchy of jurisdiction in this
time period, but at the top of the hierarchy, both in theory and reality,
were kings, with dukes and counts clearly having subordinated jurisdiction. And contrary to modern assumptions, those property owners at the
higher layers of society had fewer rights to the “use management, and
receipt of the income” from their property in comparison to free men
who were further removed from the top layers of society.41
By concentrating this summary on Reynolds’s work one may gain the
impression that she is a solitary scholar making idiosyncratic claims, but
she is not alone in her conclusions. With respect to Normandy, Emily
Tabuteau argued that “the widespread existence of definitions of feudal
obligations cannot be demonstrated at any time before 1100.”42 She
points to the methodological problem of using twelfth-century sources to
understand eleventh-century realities. Norman habits, according to
Tabuteau, were “markedly anomalous” with respect to the feudal model.43
There has not been, to date, a substantial piece of work that overturns
Reynolds’s research or broad conclusions.
38 Ibid., 56. In modern times, for instance, one may own one’s property but also be

obligated to pay taxes on it or follow the restrictions of a homeowners’ association. Those obligations do not mean that the property is not freely held.
39 Ibid., 36.
40 Ibid., 70.
41 Ibid., 394.
42 Emily Zack Tabuteau, “Definitions of Feudal Military Obligations in EleventhCentury Normandy,” in On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of
Samuel E. Thorne, ed. M. S. Arnold and others (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1981), 19.
43 Ibid., 20.

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The emergence of this scholarship calls into question the application
of an outdated and distorting historical model as the key to understanding Anselm’s argument in the Cur Deus Homo. When we impose on
Anselm’s thought a model that historians and lawyers constructed after
he died, we run the methodological risk of either ignoring important
aspects of his thought or forcing data that does not fit the model into the
model in some inappropriate way. When we combine this methodological risk with the rhetorical purposes for which the feudal model has been
developed and utilized, we may miss alternative understandings of
Anselm’s thought that have greater explanatory force.
The Alleged Feudalism of Cur Deus Homo
The work of Reynolds and others should be sufficient to cause any
theologian to shy away from making feudal claims about Anselm or
anyone else. Let us, though, for the moment put aside their work, pretend
that the feudal model is somehow still licit, and look more specifically at
just where the alleged feudalism is to be found in the Cur Deus Homo.
We can begin with the work of the eminent historian Sir Richard Southern, who makes the strongest case for Anselm’s feudalism by applying the
feudal model to understanding Anselm’s work in his important biography
of Anselm, Saint Anselm: Portrait in a Landscape,44 which continues to
shape our thought on the Cur Deus Homo. In describing the Cur Deus
Homo, Southern attempts to rescue it from the feudal charge by better
explaining the supposed feudal context in which Anselm was operating,
especially with respect to Anselm’s idea of honor.45 Southern claims that
Anselm’s “favourite image of the relations between God and Man was
that of a lord and his vassals,” where the “emphasis is always on their
subordination to the lord’s will.” Because humans, through Adam, had not
given their due service to God, they lost their inheritance, just as a vassal
would lose his inheritance by refusing his due service to his lord in the
feudal model.46 Southern fully applies the feudal model to Anselm by
referring to a “repressive regime,” a “disciplined tenantry,” the “repressions
44 Richard W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1990).
45 Ibid., 221–27. This section does not seem to have been updated from Southern’s

earlier biography on Anselm, St. Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic
Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 107–14, so it
does not reflect any of the significant changes in understandings of medieval life
and feudalism that occurred in the almost thirty years since Southern first wrote
about Anselm.
46 Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, 222.

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David L.Whidden III

of feudal society,” “a lord castigating innocent serfs,” and “the loosening
of the social bond, which made the outlaw.”47
What is interesting about Southern’s account, besides the fact that it
imposes the feudal model, is that in making the claim about the alleged
feudalism in the Cur Deus Homo he presents evidence for Anselm’s
feudalistic imagery not from the Cur Deus Homo or from Anselm’s writings, but from conversations and talks reported by others. Southern’s
primary evidence for Anselm’s feudalism in the Cur Deus Homo are two
reports from De Humanis Moribus per Similitudines48 and one from Eadmer’s
Vita Anselmi.49 The only writing to which Southern points that is actually by Anselm is Epistle 17, but that letter only shows that everyone
serves under someone else. Southern imposes the feudal model on it by
seeing the letter pointing to relations between a lord (praestandi ) and a
serf (famulandi ), though these translations work only if one presupposes
the feudal model.50 The only place where Southern actually employs the
Cur Deus Homo to make the case for feudalism in the Cur Deus Homo is
in reference to the concept of honor, which Southern takes to be indicative of feudal thought, even though none of the previous three examples
he presents as representative of Anselm’s feudalism mention honor in any
way whatsoever.
If we look at the Cur Deus Homo without “feudal sunglasses”51 we can
begin to see how little there is in it that fits the feudal model. For
instance, in no place in the Cur Deus Homo do any of the following
terms, which are often associated with the feudal model, appear: vassi or
vassalli, precaria, feodum (or feodalis ), casamentum, milites, or homagium.52
Fideles appears twice, but both times in contrast to infideles and clearly
with respect to the faithful holding of Christian belief.53 Among the
remaining technical terms typically used to identify the feudal model, the
47 Ibid., 222–26.
48 Anselm, Memorials of St. Anselm, ed. R. W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt (London:

Oxford University Press, 1969). Similitudo de regno et villa et castello et dungione,
66–67, and Similitudo inter monachum et arborem, 73–74.
49 Eadmer, The Life of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, trans. Richard W. Southern (London: T. Nelson, 1962), 93–98.
50 Epistle 17, translated by Southern on page 168 of Portrait in a Landscape; Schmitt
III: 122–23, 18–22. Fröhlich provides a translation not infected by the feudal
model as ‘superior’ ( praestandi) and ‘servant’ ( famulandi). The biblical quotes from
1 Corinthians 7:21–22 should tip us off that the model is not feudal but biblical.
51 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, 12.
52 G. R. Evans and Anselm, A Concordance to the Works of St. Anselm, 4 vols. (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1984).
53 Cur Deus Homo, preface and 1.1; Schmitt II: 42, 9–11 and 48, 1–2.

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term beneficium is used in one passage (II.5),54 and the terms servitio and
honor appear throughout, but these are feudal only if one presupposes the
feudal model.
In addition to the technical terms of feudalism, which do not seem to
exist in the Cur Deus Homo, scholars also point to supposedly feudal
images and parables that Anselm uses to explain parts of his argument.
Four places are typically identified as being indicative of feudal
thought—Cur Deus Homo 1.5, 1.13–15, 2.5 and 2.16. We will look at
each in turn.
The first of these, Cur Deus Homo 1.5, is a brief discussion of why it
would have been inappropriate for someone other than God to restore
humans to their proper place, and the basic argument is that if someone
other than God were to do so, then humans would be denied their basic
dignity by which they were to be equal to angels and to serve God alone.
This represents a liberation of humans for Anselm, but it is feudal only if
one equates all forms of servitude with feudalism; there is no discussion
of property rights, of service for property, of vassalage, etc.
The second, Cur Deus Homo 1.13–15, is the famous discussion about
God’s honor, but otherwise there are no other elements that fit the classic model of feudalism. There is a discussion of justice and its relation to
God’s honor, but again there is no discussion of God as a petty lord, of
humans as vassals, of service for inheritance, or of any of the other things
that would lead us to be believe that feudo-vassalic relations are the
primary model for understanding the divine-human relations. Even if we
equate the honor assigned to God as meaning something to do with
God’s estate or property, as Southern wants to do, this may only reflect an
understanding of the rights that a free person had to property during the
Anselmian era—it is too great a leap to see simply one concept, that of
honor, deployed as the basis for the entire feudal claim. Looking at the
Cur Deus Homo with a feudal presupposition can cause us to see honor
as indicative of the whole feudal model, but this claim would need
substantial justification to be anything other than a stretch.
The third passage, Cur Deus Homo 2.5, is the one place where derivations of the term beneficium appear, a term that sometimes was used to
indicate a gift of property perhaps for some form of service. But here the
question revolves around the kind of gratitude that one should experience upon the receipt of a gift and how we are to understand the relation between necessity and a gift freely given; the question is not about
54 Though as Reynolds points out, it is a mistake to equate a benefice with a fief.

Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, 95, 120.

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the kind of service that one should provide upon receiving a gift.
Further, in explaining this question, Anselm turns not to a secular example to clarify the question, but to a monastic one whereby the necessity
of monastic service is the result of an oath freely taken.
The fourth, Cur Deus Homo 2.16, is a parable that aims to show how
the power of Christ’s death could extend across time and be made available to persons who were not living at the time of his crucifixion. Here
there is a service offered to a king (not a lord), but it is not in return for
inheritable property as in the feudal model, but as a means of saving
others from “mortis damnationem.” Further, the service offered is not
necessarily military service; in fact, the exact nature of the service is not
mentioned at all—only that it is pleasing to the king. Rather than feudal,
the model here is more apparently monastic, as one of the functions of
monks in Anselm’s era was to do service to God on behalf of others who
were unable to do so. Anselm seems to have monastic service in mind
here, not feudal service.
In short, the Cur Deus Homo lacks the technical terms typically associated with the feudal model, and the reason that people have described
the images that Anselm uses as feudal is because they have presupposed
the feudal model in interpreting his ideas. It is time for theologians to
catch up with medieval historians and stop making this deeply problematic charge with respect to Anselm. In the future, for theologians to make
claims about the feudalism of the Cur Deus Homo it would seem that they
would have three hurdles to overcome. First, they would have to provide
an account for the feudal model itself and how it is an accurate understanding of the medieval context in which Anselm operates. It would also
be helpful if scholars would also be more explicit about the exact
complaint against feudalism and why that period is somehow unique.
Second, if they have cleared that hurdle they would need to point more
directly to the actual text of the Cur Deus Homo, explain its lack of the
technical terminology of the feudal model, and argue for how the Cur
Deus Homo is feudal in spite of this absence. Third, they would then have
to argue for how the four examples described above are in fact feudal,
rather than monastic or merely medieval.
It is not enough, however, to argue against one framework of understanding without seeking to replace it with another. Two alternative
frameworks merit investigation: (1) recent attempts to understand how
imperial desires might have shaped the Cur Deus Homo, and (2) the
framework of monastic life and the Rule of Benedict. We can now turn our
attention to these two alternative models, which we will discuss in
dialogue with each other.

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Empire or Benedict?
A recent trend in theology is to assess critically the ways that empire
shapes our theology. Chief among these is Joerg Rieger’s recent work,
Christ and Empire,55 in which he devotes a chapter to the influence of
Anselm’s context on the Cur Deus Homo. For Rieger, Anselm’s controlling social context as well as the primary influence on his thought-world
is the imperial dynamic of the Norman Conquest and the political gains
of the papacy in Rome, so that “the empire provides the context for
Anselm’s Christology like water provides the context for fish.”56
Briefly put, Rieger’s overall project is to investigate how empire—
“large and ever-changing conglomerates of power that are aimed at
controlling all aspects of our lives”57—shapes our Christologies in ways
that domesticate Christ or use Christ for imperial purposes. There is a
twofold movement to Rieger’s work: he first seeks to uncover ways that
imperial desires have wrongly influenced our understanding of Christ, and
then he looks at how Christ manages to escape even imperial depredations by providing a Christological “surplus” that subverts and points
beyond the control of the status quo. The Christological surplus allows
one to see who and what is being repressed so that one can gain an “alternative perspective” by which one can “see things from the underside that
you cannot see from the top, especially the distortions of the system.”58
Rieger is not so much criticizing particular Christologies as he is attempting to expose the reach of empires even into our conceptions of Christ.
In applying this approach to Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, Rieger first
spends a considerable amount of time criticizing Anselm for ignoring
investiture rules, being beholden to the political elite, paying homage to
the king, supporting a hierarchical social order and the status quo, promoting a Western epistemic hegemony, and ignoring the lives of Christ and
the people,59 but he then goes on to identify a “Christological surplus”
in which Anselm’s atonement theory can be used to resist empire by
restoring justice, subverting social structures, addressing systemic sin, and
encouraging relational concepts.60
While one way of looking at this approach to Anselm is to claim that
it is more complex than the feudal model, it ends up being rather confusing, so that one is unsure why Anselm’s Christology is even salvageable,
55 Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times, 119–58.
56 Ibid., 135.
57 Ibid., vii.
58 Ibid., 9.
59 Ibid., 124–28, 132, 139.
60 Ibid., 144–47.

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regardless of Christ’s ability to slip from an imperial grasp. So on one
hand Rieger claims that Anselm finds God “at the top of the society, with
the highest powers that be,” while on the other hand he seemingly
contradicts himself by pointing out that Anselm twice went into exile as
a result of conflicts with the kings; he contends that the conflicts did not
“call into question his basic allegiance to the Norman Empire.”61 Again,
after insinuating that Anselm’s investiture at Canterbury was irregular and
that the land holdings at Bec expanded because of Anselm’s influence,
Rieger approvingly quotes Sally Vaughn on Anselm’s disinterest in power
and wealth.62 He declares that the underlying problem that caused the
writing of Cur Deus Homo, though apparently repressed from Anselm’s
consciousness, is the conflict with the Muslim empire—and yet he
mentions that Anselm opposed the Crusades.63
Perhaps the stark conflicts resulting from Rieger’s understanding of
Anselm’s social context can be explained away as the product of the
conflicts inherent in any person who attempts to live a Christian life of
responsibility in a difficult world. Rieger, however, is more likely to argue
that it is not his reading of Anselm that is conflicted, but rather that
Anselm’s life and work exhibits conflict as a result of Freudian repression.64 For Rieger, one task of the theologian is to reveal that which is
repressed, so that he can free the positive features of Anselm’s theology
from its negative aspects. Rieger would contend that by ignoring, and
thus repressing, the alleged feudal and imperial background of Anselm’s
thought-world, we miss the important elements of Anselm’s argument.
He summarizes his argument:
In sum, the key concepts of Anselm’s approach, including justice, love,
order, honor, and satisfaction, emphasize relationship. But the question
is what kind of relationship we envision and whether the hierarchical
kinds of relation of empire can give way to the kinds of relationship in
God’s kingdom where, according to Jesus’ repeated reminder, “many
who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mark 10:31).65
61 Ibid., 125. The question of whether the Norman kingdoms were actually an

empire, a subject of some dispute among historians, is not taken up by Rieger.
62 Ibid., 129.
63 Ibid., 131, 133.
64 Ibid., 134. See also Joerg Rieger, God and the Excluded: Visions and Blind Spots in

Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), especially chapter five,
for Rieger’s full description of how theologians can make themselves aware of
what is being repressed in their theological formulations.
65 Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times, 146. Rieger’s conception
of hierarchy is not clear here, as the verse from Mark does not imply an end to

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In the remainder of this essay I will argue that what is being repressed
is the Benedictine background of those very concepts in Anselm’s thought
which Rieger finds salutary. Many theologians, including Rieger, mention
the fact that Anselm was a Benedictine monk, but few have given sufficient attention to the influence monasticism had on Anselm’s thought.
Obedience, honor, and order are all elements of the Rule and of the Cur
Deus Homo, and so, following Mansini and Fortin, I will seek to show how
these three monastic concepts provide pivotal insight into the Cur Deus
Homo. Additionally, I will seek to show that, properly understood, monastic concepts of obedience, honor, and order are much more benign and
provide a more flexible hierarchy than if conceived as strictly feudal
concepts; understood in their proper context, the concepts do not lead to
conflicted readings of Anselm, but rather they allow the full integration of
both his material and his spiritual realities.The goal is to show that, instead
of feudalism or empire, the intellectual and contextual sources of Anselm’s
argument, and of his entire soteriological understanding, are monastic.
To argue that Anselm looks to secular life, whether consciously or
unconsciously, as the primary model for understanding how one is saved
is to miss what we might think of as Anselm’s monastic soteriology. In
Anselm’s estimation, abandoning a monastery for life outside of the cloister is akin to the Fall,66 and salvation is found in the cloister, since salvation is most certain for those who love God until the end, which happens
by perfect monastic obedience. Monks represent for Anselm “the elect”
who have renounced the world to follow Christ.67 Anselm most explicitly details his monastic soteriology in Epistle 121, where he acknowledges
that monks are not the only ones who are saved, but he compares monks,
who love God alone, with laypersons, who must “couple love of God and
love of the world at the same time,” and he asserts that “if someone who
endeavors to love God alone keeps his intention to the end, his salvation
is certain.” And, in an echo of the Proslogion, Anselm says that a monk who
maintains his commitment, even if he has sinned, has made a commitment
that “is such that he cannot have a greater (quo maius habere non potest).”68
hierarchy, but rather the replacement of one hierarchy with another where the
“last will be first.” An inverted hierarchy, after all, is still a hierarchy.
66 Epistle 140; Schmitt III: 285–86, 5–8. He describes a monk who has abandoned
the monastery as “just like any son of our mother Eve who forfeited the delights
of paradise after being deceived in paradise.”
67 Epistles 2 (Schmitt III: 100, 40–47), 51 (Schmitt III: 165, 26–35), 81 (Schmitt III:
205–6, 22–32), 121 (Schmitt III: 261–62, 20–45), and 231 (Schmitt IV: 136–37,
28–39). Note here the parallels with Cur Deus Homo 1.18, which details how an
elect must replace the fallen angels in heaven.
68 Epistle 121, Schmitt III: 261, 24–39.

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The point here is that if Anselm understands the optimal means of attaining salvation here on earth to be through monastic life, then it would
make the most sense to look to this model for understanding salvation on
a cosmic scale. Obedience, honor, and order, along with satisfaction, are
best understood from within this monastic model, where God is modeled
after an abbot and Christ is modeled after a perfectly obedient monk—
though Anselm would say in reality that the modeling goes in the opposite direction.
Obedience
While we often associate the spiritual practices of monastic life with
prayer, worship, the daily office, and ascetic denial, one can easily make
the case that the primary spiritual practice of Benedictine monasticism is
obedience. The psychological, theological, and spiritual genius of Benedict, and his predecessors from whom he freely borrowed, was to recognize that the central problem of human life was disobedience caused by
self-will and that the cure for self-will was obedience to the will of
another. He establishes the contrast in the first few lines of the Rule, as he
states in the prologue, “The labor of obedience will bring you back to
him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This
message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own
will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of
obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord.”69 In his
descriptions of the four kinds of monks, he praises the cenobites and
anchorites who serve under a rule, while he rejects the sarabaites whose
“law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy,” as well as the
gyrovagues who “are slaves to their own wills.”70 It is our self-will, by
which we “take pleasure in the satisfaction of [our] desires,”71 which
provides the greatest obstacle to our salvation.
If self-will is the perennial human problem, monastic obedience, properly understood, is the best solution. While we often think of obedience as
a restriction that diminishes our autonomy and often results in abuses of
power, Benedictine obedience has a completely different rationale and
69 RB prologue, 2–3. As Fry points out in his footnote, there are strong intimations

of an Adam/Christ typology in the disobedience/obedience dialectic of this
passage, which seems to be reflected in the Cur Deus Homo as well. Benedict and
Fry, 157. As we will see below, rather than feudal obedience, it would seem that
much of the Cur Deus Homo is an extended reflection on Romans 5:19: “For just
as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one
man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
70 RB 1.8 and 1.11.
71 RB 7.31

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tenor to it, as we can see in two passages where Benedict focuses his attention on obedience. In chapter five of the Rule, Benedict links obedience to
love of Christ and God, so that obedience is done out of love, since “it is
love that impels them to pursue everlasting life.”72 Thus obedience is not
done for the purpose of serving a hierarchy, but it rather serves the purpose
of love for God. The love of God, however, is possible only for one who
gives up his self-will and subjects himself to the abbot, so that monks “no
longer live by their own judgment, giving in to their whims and appetites;
rather they walk according to another’s decisions and directions.”73 At the
heart of this passage on obedience is the text from John 6:38, “I have come
not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me,” a passage we will
see again in Anselm’s reflection on obedience in Cur Deus Homo 1.9.
The abbot, who serves in the place of the Christ, plays the crucial role
in monastic obedience. Unlike a secular lord, the abbot works for the benefit of those who are to obey him, rather than for his own benefit (though
even secular lords, in contrast to the old feudal model, had responsibilities
and obligations to their subjects), and the controlling images of the abbot’s
role in chapter 2 of the Rule are pastoral rather than lordly. The abbot,
unlike a secular lord, must not only teach what the Lord would teach, but
must also serve as a living example for those members of the monastery
who are either too dense or too willful to understand; obedience starts
with the abbot obeying, rather than the abbot ordering others to obey.The
basic principle is one that we understand even today as we develop
programs in spiritual direction, which is that weak souls should place themselves under the rule of others.74
The second main passage on obedience is in two of the last three
chapters of the Rule, where Benedict discusses mutual obedience among
monks. Here obedience is not framed in a hierarchical way but in a way
that fosters the mutual respect of the brothers. A monk is not supposed
“to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead, what he judges
better for someone else,”75 which again is a reversal of the alleged feudal
relationship. Thus we see that obedience has a highly social element not
for the preservation of hierarchy, but rather for preservation of the peace
of the community as it seeks to “prefer nothing whatever to Christ.”76
72 RB 5.10.
73 RB 5.12.
74 Stephen M. Hildebrand, “Oboedientia and Oboedire in the Rule of St. Benedict: A

Study of Their Theological and Monastic Meanings,” American Benedictine Review
52 (2001): 423.
75 RB 72.7.
76 RB 72.11.

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The idea of obedience shows up quite frequently in Anselm’s letters,
and it will be useful to see how he uses the idea in his role as abbot and
archbishop before we see how it is deployed in Cur Deus Homo. As we
would expect after our discussion of obedience in the Rule, the will, love,
and obedience are all connected in Anselm’s mind, so that in one of his
early letters he tells a friend that
we must direct our minds to what the Lord to whom we belong wills to
do with us, rather than to what we, who do not belong to ourselves, want. Let
us therefore so preserve our longing for brotherly charity that we observe
the command of the heavenly will. And let us so display the obedience
of submission which divine ordinance demands that we may keep the
warmth of the love which divine dispensation bestows on us.77

Anselm applies Benedictine principles of obedience even to the taking
up of leadership positions in the abbey. He writes to a friend who has
become abbot-elect at another abbey that the monk should refuse to take
up the position in any way that he can, unless it would cause him to sin,
in which case he should “submit obediently and bear it conscientiously.”78
Recognizing the risks attendant in being an abbot, where the abbot is
liable to be judged for the faults of the monks,79 Anselm thinks that only
the sin of disobedience can force one to take up a position of responsibility, and it is worth noting that Anselm sees the abbacy more as a position
of heavy responsibility than as one of power. In fact, shortly after Anselm
sent this letter to his friend, Anselm was nominated for the abbacy at Bec,
and he resisted it so vociferously that his friend wrote him back and
directly quoted Anselm’s letter to him and suggested that Anselm too must
take up the position. His friend seems to take great joy in giving Anselm
a dose of his own medicine as he boasts that “it is indeed a wonderful
victory to prevail over someone with his own weapons.”80 One might
construe all of this resistance to responsibility as a tropological pattern
which Anselm inherited, as Sally Vaughn does,81 but this assumes that
Anselm was incapable of expressing his own mind in the first place.
77 Epistle 5, Schmitt III: 106, 8–14. My emphasis.
78 Epistle 61, Schmitt III: 176, 22–23. Written fifteen years before Anselm takes a role

at Canterbury, one can see here that Anselm’s resistance to taking up the archbishopric is not some feigned affect, but rather the result of a lifelong principle that he
applied not only to himself but also to others. However, as it is clear, ultimately for
Anselm obedience wins out when there is a chance of the sin of disobedience.
79 RB 2.7.
80 Epistle 88, Schmitt III: 213, 15–16.
81 Sally N.Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and
the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 116–21.

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We will return to Anselm’s letters as they provide insight into his argument in Cur Deus Homo, but it seems clear that the concept of obedience
in the Rule made it into Anselm’s daily life as a monk and abbot without
much change from Benedict’s original formulation.82 Indeed, mirroring
the Prologue to the Rule, the first mention of obedience in the Cur Deus
Homo occurs when Anselm, paraphrasing Romans 5:19, maintains that “it
was appropriate that, just as death entered the human race through a
man’s disobedience, so life should be restored through a man’s obedience.”83 The center of Anselm’s reflection on obedience, however, occurs
in chapters eight and nine of the first book.
In this part of the argument, Boso and Anselm are discussing whether
or not God is at fault for Jesus’ death by handing him over to die. Anselm
claims that “the Father did not coerce Christ to face death against his
will, or give permission for him to be killed, but Christ himself of his
own volition underwent death in order to save mankind.”84 In reply,
Boso quickly offers up a series of five different proofs from Scripture to
the contrary. Anselm argues that there is a key distinction between what
Jesus does out of obedience and what is done to Jesus by others as a result
of his obedience. There is no way that Jesus could be compelled to die,
as any rational being who never sins is not in any way obliged to die,
where not sinning is giving to God “what is owed him,”85 which would,
of course, be obedience. Thus Jesus’ death could be something that he
voluntarily undergoes, but not something he was required to do out of
the “compulsion of obedience.”86
This idea is also thoroughly Benedictine. As Anselm explains in one of
his letters, “this very Rule teaches that a monk must subject himself in total
obedience to his superior and that, imitating the Lord’s example, we must
observe obedience until death.”87 The section of the Rule to which Anselm
is referring is the famous passage on humility, where Benedict states:
The third step of humility is that a man submits to his superior in all
obedience for the love of God, imitating the Lord of whom the Apostle says: He became obedient even to death (Phil 2:8).
Vaughn clarifies her understanding of this in a confrontation with Richard
Southern: see Sally N.Vaughn, “Anselm: Saint and Statesman,” Albion: A Quarterly
Journal Concerned with British Studies 20 (1988): 205–20.
82 See also Epistles 6, 137 and 156 in Schmitt III and IV.
83 Cur Deus Homo 1.3, Schmitt II: 51, 5–7; cf. 1 Cor 15:22.
84 Cur Deus Homo 1.8, Schmitt II: 60, 11–14.
85 Cur Deus Homo 1.11, Schmitt II: 68, 10.
86 Cur Deus Homo 1.8, Schmitt II: 61, 1–2.
87 Epistle 123, Schmitt III: 264, 14–16.

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The fourth step of humility is that in this obedience under difficult,
unfavorable, or even unjust conditions, his heart quietly embraces
suffering and endures it without weakening or seeking escape.88

Thus the Benedictine understanding of Jesus’ suffering is one in which
Jesus obeyed even in the face of unjust suffering; one does not directly
will one’s own death, and God certainly does not will our deaths,89 but
rather one wills obedience, which might result in death through no fault
of anyone other than the unjust persons who cause one’s death. The
content of Jesus’ obedience, or the proper obedience of all humans, is not
death but rather a life of constant “truth and justice,”90 which may have
the accidental effect of death. By willing God’s justice, Christ in effect
willed the supererogatory satisfaction that would come through his
death, but Christ was in no way directly obedient to anyone’s will that he
die; God did not will it and Christ is not under any obligation to obey
human beings. Christ is exalted not because he died, but because he was
perfectly obedient. Here too we see Anselm reflect on the Benedictine
discussion of John 6:38, which we mentioned above, and we can see the
links between Benedictine obedience and the shaping of the will and
Anselm’s ideas in the Cur Deus Homo.
Another key passage in Cur Deus Homo regarding obedience is also
best understood through Anselm’s conception of the role of obedience in
monastic life—the famed “one glance” argument in Cur Deus Homo 1.21.
Here Anselm is making a case for the weight of sin and how even the
smallest sin, something as insignificant as a backwards glance, can create a
seemingly insoluble problem for divine/human relations. The example
seems so extreme as to make God seem petty and trifling, so that
Harnack’s charge of an angry lord who needs to be satisfied might seem
appropriate. Taken out of its monastic context this charge would likely
stick, but since we know that Anselm would always conceive of God as
greater than a petty tyrant, we might need to look elsewhere to understand the implications of this argument. Here again, Anselm’s letters show
a link between monastic obedience and his theological arguments.
88 RB 7.34–36. Note that this passage is brought up by Boso in Cur Deus Homo 1.8

and explained by Anselm in 1.9.
89 Note that the issue in 1.8 is about God’s justice. Anselm agrees that it would be

unjust for God to condemn or send an innocent man to death, but he argues that
if Christ voluntarily goes to his death, then God’s justice remains intact. The
implied comparison here may be with Pilate, who did send an innocent man to
death, so that if God were to send Christ to die, then God would be no different than Pilate.
90 Cur Deus Homo 1.9, Schmitt II: 61, 13.

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In three letters, Anselm ties the existence of the smallest amount of sin
to the problems of the preservation of the monastic community; the
controlling biblical text is Sirach 19:1, which Anselm quotes in all three
letters. The first letter was sent to a group of nuns to thank them for their
support while he had been exiled. Anselm tells them that they will
live in a holy manner if you diligently keep your rule and your intention.You do this diligently if you do not scorn the smallest things.Your
intention should always be to strive for progress and to dread regress
with all your heart. For it is written “that one who despises little things
fails little by little” (Sirach 19.1). One who fails makes no progress.
Therefore if you wish to progress and dread regress do not despise the
little things. As it is true “that one who despises little things fails little
by little” so it is true that one who does not despise little things
progresses little by little.91

Anselm extends this idea in a letter sent after completion of Cur Deus
Homo, a letter in which he tells a group of monks that “in a monastery
where the smallest matters are strictly observed, the severity of the monastic rule remains inviolable, there is peace among the brothers and denunciations in chapter come to an end. But where the smallest faults are
neglected the whole rule breaks down little by little and is destroyed.”92
Seen in this monastic and biblical context, Anselm’s example of the
wayward glance places God in a different light. Instead of a petty feudal
tyrant who is easily offended, the smallest sin must be dealt with for the
sake of the justice and preservation of the community—in this case the
community of the universe—so that the problems will not multiply. The
injustice introduced into the universe by sin threatens the preservation of
“the whole of creation,”93 and so in consonance with a controlling image
of the whole treatise of God as craftsman, God must go on a rescue
mission to save us from ourselves and to keep us from falling further away
from His goal for our lives.
Honor
Rieger situates the question of honor firmly in a supposed feudal and
imperial context, where “honor is based on the interpersonal relation
between the lord and vassal, and everything else in the empire finds its
91 Epistle 403, Schmitt V: 347–48, 17–23.
92 Epistle 231, Schmitt IV: 137, 22–26. See also Epistle 450, Schmitt V: 397–98, for

a similar discussion.
93 Cur Deus Homo 1.21, Schmitt II: 89, 12–13.

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place in relation to this order.”94 According to Rieger, this relationship is
central to understanding both Cur Deus Homo and its supposed feudal
context, for to dishonor God as ruler is to introduce a break into all of
existence in a system “based on the recognition of the honor and status
of each member.”95 Rieger reflects the understanding of honor—primarily construed as a vertical relationship in which the vassal is required to
give honor to the lord—that we find in Southern, who concludes a brief
discussion of Anselm’s understanding of God’s honor with the statement
that honor was “essentially a social bond which held all ranks of society
in their due place.”96 In making these claims, both Rieger and Southern
neglect the biblical and Benedictine background of Anselm’s concept of
honor which informs his argument in Cur Deus Homo. To address their
concerns we once again look at the Rule and then Anselm’s letters as
means of better understanding God’s honor in Cur Deus Homo.
Although honor does not play as important a role in the Rule as does
obedience or satisfaction, it is nevertheless worth investigating the few
places where it is mentioned, to see how the Rule provides insight into how
honor is supposed to work both within and without the monastic community.97 Honor in the Rule is a multi-directional concept rather than a
strictly hierarchical one. That is not to say that God is not at the top of the
hierarchy98 and the Rule mentions specifically that monks, during the night
office, are to “rise from their seats in honor and reverence for the Holy
94 Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times, 136. Given the case we

have made against feudalism above, we can put aside the question about whether
something can be both feudal, with its centrifugal forces, and imperial, with its
centripetal forces. Whatever the usefulness of those two models for understanding medieval social organization, it is not clear that the two can exist in the same
place at the same time. How, for instance, does one reconcile the supposed fragmentation of authority mentioned in Bloch’s definition of feudalism (see above,
p. 1060) with the idea of large imperial conglomerates of power mentioned in
Rieger’s definition of empire (above, p. 1069)? It is not self-evident that it can be
both. By the logic of these two models, Anselm’s argument must be either feudal
or imperial, but not both. In actuality, Anselm’s argument is neither.
95 Ibid.
96 Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, 226.
97 Honor is mentioned in the following places in RB : 4.8, 9.7, 11.9, 36.4, 53.2,
53.15, 63.10–17, and 72.4. Note that in several of these cases Fry renders the
Latin honor as “respect.”
98 I have never been quite sure what the alternative is to having God at the top of
a hierarchy. Is God supposed to be at the same level as us, like the CEO of some
organization that is trying to flatten its bureaucracy? Or is he in some way
supposed to be less than us? Even a kenotic reading of Jesus’ life presumes that
he started from a position at the top of a hierarchy to begin with. Theologians
often insinuate that there is something wrong with this conception of God, but

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Trinity.”99 We might think of this as a kind of liturgical or religious honor
that belongs only to God. A similar form of honor is given to the abbot of
the monastery, who is naturally at the top of the hierarchy of the monastery
and thus is to be accorded the honor due to his station. This honor,
however, is not because of any intrinsic merit in the abbot but because “he
holds the place of Christ” and so must be honored and loved for the sake
of Christ, who is to be loved above all. Even here the honor accorded the
abbot comes with significant responsibilities, as the abbot is called upon to
make sure that his actions “show himself worthy of such honor.”100
The greater emphasis in the Rule, however, is on mutual honor and on
caring for the weakest in the community as an act of obedience and love
that displays our honor for God. Honor plays a role both among the relationships within the monastic community and among the relationships
the community has with those outside of the cloister.
Benedict first introduces the idea of monastic honor in RB 4.8, which
is in his discussion of the tools for good works that a monk uses in the
spiritual life. Here he quotes 1 Peter 2:17, “you must honor everyone” and
quotes from the Golden Rule, immediately establishing the idea that
honor applies to all persons, not just those who might be higher up the
hierarchy, or even just those who are in the monastic community.101 In
addressing the idea of honor within the monastic community, Benedict
twice quotes Romans 12:10, which Fry translates as “they should each try
to be the first to show respect (honore) to the other.”102 Honor, then, is
applied not just up the hierarchy, but through all levels of the community.
What makes this mutual honor possible is a call for monks to reject their
own self-importance and instead assume a position of humility with
respect to others, which is made most clear in Benedict’s famed section on
humility in RB 7. In the sixth and seventh steps on the ladder of humility, monks are required to be content with both menial treatment and
menial work and to be convinced deep in their hearts that they are inferior to all.103 Though Benedict does not specifically mention honor here,
the basic precepts of humility spelled out in the Rule provide a basis for
the mutual honoring of those within and without the community.
since they often engage in criticism rather than positive affirmations, one cannot
quite ferret out what the correct idea of God is.
99 RB 9.7.
100 RB 63.13–14
101 RB 4.8, “honorare omnes homines.”
102 RB 63.17 and 72.4: “honore se invicem praeveniant.”
103 RB 7.49–52. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer of this article for pointing out the relevance of this passage for this section.

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Perhaps even more profoundly influential in Benedict’s understanding
of honor is his reflection on Matthew 25:31–46. Both of the Rule’s
commands to honor the sick and travelers (in RB 36 and 53 respectively)
are shaped by Jesus’ description of the judgment that will fall upon those
who do not care for the sick or for travelers. At the top, then, of the
honorific hierarchy in the Rule are the sick brothers, for “care of the sick
must rank above and before all else, so that they may be truly served as
Christ,” and yet the sick must “bear in mind that they are served out of
honor for God.”104
Likewise, the honor with which guests are to be received is multidirectional rather than bottom-up. Benedict assumes that the natural awe
that humans tend to give the wealthy and powerful insures that these will
be treated with proper honor when they visit the monastery, so he
emphasizes that “great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor
people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is
received.”105 Fry points out that the repetition of the phrase “to all”
(omnibis) in 53.1, 53.2, 53.6, and 53.13 is likely another allusion to the text
of 1 Peter 2:17 that was previously mentioned in RB 4.8.106 Benedictine
honor is not a hierarchical phenomenon, but rather Benedictine honor
seeks to find Christ in all persons, regardless of background or social status.
In these few mentions of honor in the Rule we find honor being
construed primarily Christologically. Monks are called to honor others
not because of their intrinsic worth or position in society or the
monastery, but rather because Christ is to be found in each person, but
most especially the less fortunate. Monks are to serve and honor each
other because of what Benedict describes, in perhaps the key passage of
the entire Rule, as the preferential option for Christ: “let them prefer
nothing whatever to Christ.”107
We find many of the same concepts of honor in Anselm’s correspondence, where honor is mentioned in more than fifty of his letters.108 The
basic honor afforded to travelers is mentioned by Anselm in addressing
both recipients and hosts.109 What is interesting in these particular
mentions of honor is how often Anselm links honor and love.110 A typi104 RB 36.1–4.
105 RB 53.15
106 Benedict and Fry, 256, note at 53.2.
107 RB 72.11, “Christo omino nihil praeponant.”
108 Evans and Anselm, A Concordance to the Works of St. Anselm, s.v. ‘honor’ and its

derivatives.
109 For instance, Epistles 116, 118, 151, 274, 280, 286–87, 407.
110 Epistles 58, 65, 66, 87, 147, 274.

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cal letter of this type is a letter that Anselm writes to the Archbishop of
Rouen asking him to receive William Giffard, the bishop-elect of
Winchester, “with love and honor,” since Giffard had been forced into
exile by the king of England.111 The consistent connection between love
and honor indicates that for Anselm honor is a social bond created not
by one’s position in society but by the mutual affection between two
persons. Additionally, this love and honor has a transitive property to it,
whereby one’s love and honor for one person is transferred to another
person based on that primary relationship.
Anselm also consistently differentiates between secular and heavenly
honors or true and false honors.112 In a letter inveighing against a young
man’s decision to join the First Crusade instead of the monastery, Anselm
tells the young man that “the bloody confusion of wars is wickedness; the
insatiable greed for hollow honors and hollow riches is wickedness.”113
The real honor comes not from pursuing the vanity of false honors, but
“from cross[ing] over into the freedom of the truth.”114 Likewise, Anselm
tells a bishop who has resigned his bishopric for the purpose of joining a
monastery that the bishop has done a good thing, since “all those follow
vanity who desire the dignities and honors and riches of the world.”115
For Anselm, true honor is found in the monastery, and he is not at all
impressed with the honors outside of it.
The false honor of the secular world is compared with the perfection
of the monastic life in Anselm’s description of the ideal of monastic life,
which he offers to a hermit named Hugh. Here we see echoes of the
sixth and seventh steps of the ladder of humility from the Rule. By loving
others more than themselves, monks “despise riches, power and pleasure
and being honored and praised,” and so instead must “love contempt,
poverty, hard work and submission, as do holy men.”116 Anselm follows
this with the quotation from Luke 18:14, “he who humbles himself will
111 Epistle 274, Schmitt IV: 189, 18–21.
112 Epistles 117, 134, 160, 251, 418.
113 Epistle 117, Schmitt III: 253, 20.
114 Ibid., Schmitt III: 254, 56.
115 Epistle 418, Schmitt V: 363, 6 through 364, 12. Modern writers often presume

that medieval people lacked a distinction between religious and secular life, but
Anselm clearly sees a patent distinction between these two worlds. The difference is that Anselm draws the boundaries more tightly, so that a bishop is a part
of the secular world and only those in the cloister are properly part of the religious world. The difference in these boundaries may partially explain Anselm’s
resistance to becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury, since holding that secular
position would put his salvation at greater risk.
116 Epistle 112, Schmitt III: 246, 66–72.

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be exalted,” which is the verse that opens the section on humility in the
Rule. Real honor, that by which one attains the highest exaltation, comes
from humility that flows from loving others.
Indeed, in a passage that shows just how deeply subversive of secular
honor Anselm’s monastic idea of honor is, he tells the abbess of Winchester that the aforementioned William Giffard’s exile should be understood
with gratitude since
God is bestowing such an honor on your bishop. For indeed greater
glory and praise are his in the sight of God and of good men for having
been despoiled and exiled for the sake of justice than if he had become
wealthy with all the riches and all the possessions of the world by
violating justice. Therefore, let all his friends rejoice and exult because
he could be overcome by no violence or fear, nor could he be separated from truth by any cupidity.117

Anselm was aware of secular ideas of honor, but he surely did not think
too highly of them. His description of the honor that Giffard will receive
from God from his suffering in exile could easily double as a description
of the honor that Christ receives from his suffering from obedience.
With this better understanding of how Anselm’s monasticism shaped his
ideas of honor, we can turn to his use of the concept in the Cur Deus Homo.
The main sections on honor in Cur Deus Homo are in chapters thirteen
through fifteen in the first book, and Anselm begins by boldly stating his
thesis that “there is nothing more intolerable in the universal order than that
a creature should take away honor from the creator and not repay what he
takes away.”118 God should not tolerate this grave injustice and it would be
wrong for God to ignore the slight; it is matter of justice, not pride. God
must always be just to Himself, and to rectify this grave injustice, God must
either demand a repayment of the honor or inflict punishment. As in the
Rule, one of the key issues here is that of human self-will, for God’s justice
requires either that humans submit to God as an act of free will by not
sinning, or make satisfaction by paying recompense for their sin through
their free will, or be punished against their free will. Here we see the Benedictine disjunction of satisfaction or punishment come into play, as demonstrated in Mansini’s article.We also see the Benedictine emphasis on the will,
because “the sole honour, the complete honour, which we owe to God and
which God demands from us” is a righteous will.119 That is, we display our
honor for God simply by maintaining a correct will with regard to God.
117 Epistle 276, Schmitt IV, 191, 6–11.
118 Cur Deus Homo 1.13, Schmitt II: 71, 7–8.
119 Cur Deus Homo 1.11, Schmitt II: 68, 15–18.

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All this talk of honor, however, seems to make God subject to the
whims of human will, as though God were somehow dependent upon us
to uphold his honor, and so Anselm quickly moves to assure us that God’s
intrinsic honor is in fact not harmed at all, but rather the real harm is to
the rational creature, “who dishonors God, with regard to himself, since
he is not willingly subordinating himself to God’s governance, and is
disturbing, as far as he is able, the order and beauty of the universe.”120
The point here is that the honor that humans are due to receive as
rational creatures made for the beatific vision is denied to them when
they attempt to put their wills above God. Whereas humans might think
they can elevate themselves beyond their station through self-will, in fact
they lower themselves in the order of things, so that they cannot attain
the heights for which God made them. This is not to say that God’s
honor is not important; rather it is to say that humans can have no direct
impact upon God’s intrinsic honor. God will maintain his honor through
satisfaction or punishment, but God, like a Benedictine abbot, will
choose satisfaction over punishment, because that will also restore the
honor humans have lost through their disobedience.
The role of the beatific vision in Anselm’s argument is often neglected,
but without his teleological concept of human beings, the question of
honor is too easily construed as just an outworking of feudal concepts
rather than the consequence of deep theological commitments. Anselm’s
point is that we have taken away something from ourselves, not from God:
[S]ince man was created in such a way as to be capable of possessing
blessed happiness, if he were not to sin, when he is deprived of blessedness and of all that is good, on account of sin, he is paying back what
he has violently seized from his own property (de suo ), however much this
is against his will.121

That is, God’s justice would consist in our paying back what we stole
from ourselves, not from God. The damage is not to God but rather to
ourselves, and yet it is a damage that only God can repair; what is at stake
120 Cur Deus Homo 1.15, Schmitt II: 73, 6–9. Mansini here makes a distinction

between God’s intrinsic and extrinsic honor.With regard to God’s intrinsic honor,
we can have no impact. With regard to God’s extrinsic honor, as it is found in the
beauty of creation, we appear to disturb God’s honor when we do not freely
subordinate our will to God. Mansini, “St. Anselm, ‘Satisfactio’, and the ‘Rule’ of
St. Benedict,” 103.
121 Cur Deus Homo 1.14, Schmitt II: 72, 16–18. My emphasis. Boso makes a similar
argument in Cur Deus Homo 1.7 that the devil, as a thief, has persuaded man to
steal his own self from his master, God. Schmitt II: 56, 3 through 57, 13.

David L.Whidden III

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is the restoration of our own justice and righteousness as well as our
proper place in the universe. We honor ourselves and uphold God’s
extrinsic honor when we do not sin and when we obey God, because by
doing so we allow ourselves to reach the high end for which God made
us, which is alongside the angels of heaven; we become exalted through
our humility in relation to God. Just as God’s honor is a matter intrinsic
to Himself, so our honor is a matter of giving to ourselves what is due to
us by giving to God what is due to God—obedience. God restores our
honor by the work of the God-man, by which “human nature was
exalted.”122 This hardly seems like the kind of honor found in the
lord/vassal relationships of the feudal model.
What I hope that I have demonstrated so far is that a Benedictine reading of Anselm’s use of the language of honor is best understood in light of
monastic—rather than supposedly feudal—commitments. Rieger acknowledges that Anselm’s concept of honor is relational,123 but, having presupposed Anselm’s feudal and imperial commitments, he cannot quite make
sense of why it is so. Because of his feudal reading of Anselm, Rieger has to
discard the parts of the argument that he dislikes in favor of a Christological surplus. If, however, we locate Anselm’s discussion of honor within its
proper context, we can see that God’s honor is not at stake, human honor
is, and the God-man comes to restore it; God upholds his honor by restoring our lost honor. The God-man comes to heal the sick and welcome the
poor who have squandered their heavenly possessions, not to demand satisfaction for God’s sake.This is not a Christological surplus but rather a Christological fullness that embraces all of Anselm’s argument.
Order
Closely related to the question of honor is that of order, and here again
Rieger’s concerns can help us identify what is at stake. As Rieger points out,
the term order occurs frequently in CDH, and sometimes it is translated
by different terms in English, including “station in life,” an expression
that shows the relational but also hierarchical qualities of the term. This
order, based on the relation of ruler and ruled, guarantees stability and
welfare. Peace, justice, and the unity of the empire rest on the maintaining of this order. . . . At stake is not personal honor or outward
appearances but one’s place in society—what we might call the “ontology of the empire.”124
122 Cur Deus Homo 1.8, Schmitt II: 59, 27–28. Again, note the connection between

exaltation and humility.
123 Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times, 146.
124 Ibid., 136.

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Rieger is absolutely right that the order of the universe is a central concern
of Anselm’s dialogue. From the very beginning of the discussion Anselm
seems to locate the central problem in the disruption of the cosmic order;
in that disruption, “the human race, clearly his most precious piece of
workmanship, had been completely ruined,” and so God’s plans were
apparently frustrated.125 (Note as well that the controlling image of God
here, and the one that underlies the whole treatise, is not that of a feudal
lord but that of a careful craftsman whose most precious work has been
badly damaged.) In the passages regarding honor which we have already
investigated (CDH 1.13–15), Anselm does emphasize the importance of
creatures accepting their proper role in the universal order, especially as
rational agents. Placing oneself in the place of God instead of subordinating oneself to God disturbs “the order and beauty of the universe.”126 For
the sake of brevity we need not contest Rieger’s point about the importance of order in Anselm’s argument or reiterate Anselm’s argument on this
point.There is, however, the question of whether this worry about order is
driven by Anselm’s alleged feudal and imperial context or, as I have maintained so far, by Anselm’s monastic context.
Once again, a close inspection of the Rule points to a conceptual background of monastic reason behind Anselm’s concern with order. The
Latin term ordo is, in both Fry’s translation of the Rule and Fairweather’s
translation of the Cur Deus Homo in the Davies volume, translated sometimes as order, sometimes as rank, and sometimes as station in life. In chapter 63 of the Rule, Benedict describes how the monastery is ordered by
describing the rank of the monks; there is a threefold criterion for apportioning rank: “according to the date of their entry, the virtue of their
lives, and the decision of the abbot.”127 The abbot is responsible for maintaining the order of the monks, but he is not allowed to “make any unjust
arrangements, as though he had the power to do whatever he wished.”128
This does not, however, result in a static system, as is the case with the
supposed feudal arrangements (and even here there was more mobility
than the model would perhaps be able to account for), but rather one in
which there is both stability and mobility. While the abbot must keep the
order according to justice, he has the flexibility to move people along
depending upon their particular circumstances. The selection of deans is
made according to their virtues, not their length of service; reading and
singing are assigned by ability and not rank; and bad priors can lose their
125 Cur Deus Homo 1.4, Schmitt II: 52, 8–9.
126 Cur Deus Homo 1.15, Schmitt II: 73, 8.
127 RB 63.1.
128 RB 63.2

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rank.129 Indeed, Anselm’s quick rise through Bec is a clear indication that
rank was not so static that one could not move up rapidly, given the
proper abilities, both spiritual and intellectual.
More importantly, the assignment of rank is deeply subversive of the
secular or so-called “imperial” order; it does not mirror the secular order
but overturns it, as “a man born free is not to be given higher rank than
a slave who becomes a monk, except for some other good reason,” and
priests are not accorded any special rank in their admission to the
monastery.130 Even the abbot is not selected according to seniority, but
rather “goodness of life and wisdom in teaching must be the criteria for
choosing the one to be made abbot, even if he is the last in community
rank.”131 The point here is that while the term order may seem to imply
a static system in which there is little room for movement, the lived reality allowed for plenty of movement, which was done in a way to maximize peace among the brothers.
Another aspect of Benedictine order was that disobedience resulted in
a loss of rank for the offending brother. A brother who came late to Vigils
was required to stand at the end of the line of monks, rather than in his
assigned rank, and monks who had been excommunicated and then
readmitted were given a rank assigned by the abbot.132 This aspect of
Benedictine order is certainly obvious in Anselm’s discussion; the fundamental problem between God and humans arises when humans attempt
to be recognized for a rank that is inappropriate to their temporal or
moral status. In fact, if we take Benedict’s logic seriously, we can see that
God would naturally hold the highest rank, since he is both temporally
superior to angels and humans, since he is the first being, and also morally
superior to them. When humans attempt to disrupt the order by not
obeying God, they disturb the peace and order of the universal
monastery of which God is, in some sense, the permanent abbot.
At the beginning of his essay, Rieger argues that one must seek a
“christological surplus” in Anselm’s thought, since Anselm’s goal seems to
be “the restoration of the status quo,”133 but this is to completely misunderstand both Anselm’s goal and the role of order in Anselm’s life. For
Anselm, the status quo represents a fall from the goodness and beauty of
the order of the universe, and so he instead seeks a restoration of the status
quo ante, in which humans were at peace because they were in proper
129 RB 21.4, 38.12, and 65.20 respectively.
130 RB 2.18 and 60.7
131 RB 64.2
132 RB 43.5 and 44.5
133 Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times, 120.

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relation to God and to each other. The status quo is, according to a
monastic reading of Anselm, a place in which the concerns of empire and
the depredations of the secular lords hold sway. And while Anselm
certainly managed to thrive in that environment, his focus was on
restoration to a state in which all humans were at peace only because they
were first at peace with God.134 Only, by Anselm’s logic, could a Godman restore mankind to its exalted status and there is no way in which
his Christology needs to be rescued from feudalism; the whole point of
Anselm’s Christology is to rescue us from the dreadful consequences of
our self-will. If Anselm were to look at the situation from a feudal
perspective, he would, I think, simply ask us whether we want to be the
vassal of the devil or of God.
Conclusion
Feudal interpretations of Anselm, in addition to being now outdated, are
too one-sided and emphasize just one side of his social context, rather
than his monastic context. As Mansini and Fortin have previously shown,
and I hope I have shown as well, Anselm’s logic is Benedictine to the
core. Rieger’s conflicted reading of Anselm comes from repressing the
monastic and spiritual side of Anselm’s argument; Rieger emphasizes
Anselm’s four-year stint at Canterbury (at the time of the completion of
Cur Deus Homo) at the cost of ignoring his previous thirty-three years as
a Benedictine monk, prior, and abbot.
There is a striking passage in the middle of the Rule where Benedict’s
and Anselm’s interests directly coincide, where obedience, sacrifice, satisfaction, order, and the Paschal mystery all converge in one place. In his
description of Lent, Benedict tells us that “the life of a monk ought to be
a continuous Lent,” and he urges the entire community to keep its life
pure through self-denial. Monks are encouraged to “have something
above the assigned measure to offer God of his own will with the joy of the
Holy Spirit (1 Thess 1:6),”135 just as the God-man offers something above
the assigned measure in the gift of his life at the end of the Lenten
period. This offering is to be made with the approval of the abbot, so
obedience and order remain as part of the equation as well. What this
passage tells us is that the best way to read the Cur Deus Homo is with a
N&V
copy of the Rule of Benedict in one’s lap.

134 See Cur Deus Homo 2.11, Schmitt II: 100, 8–19, for Anselm’s description of how

he perceives true human nature.
135 RB 49.1–7.

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Fides Caritate Formata: Faith Formed By Love1
ROBERT L OUIS W ILKEN
Providence College
Providence, RI

A MONG the texts studied at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, when I
was a student there in the 1950s, was Schroeder’s edition of the English
and Latin versions of The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.2 I still
own that book, and when I began to prepare this talk I took it off the
shelf to read the article on justification in the Sixth Session of the Council. To my surprise I discovered that in the margin of Chapter VII, Quid
Sit Justificatio impii, “In what does the justification of the sinner consist,”
I had written: “Justification is not complete with the gift of grace, but
must be completed by charity.”
Over the years I have occasionally remarked to close friends that when
first I studied the article on justification at Trent I thought it made more
sense than what I read in Martin Luther or in the Lutheran Confessions.
I suppose that would suggest I was a crypto-Catholic even when I was a
Lutheran seminarian.
I doubt that was the case.
At Concordia we took theology seriously and my marginal comment
was no doubt an interpretation of the Catholic critique of Luther’s
doctrine of justification by grace through faith.Yet it was revealing to me
that the one marginal comment I made had to do with love in relation
to justification.
What is more important, of course, is not what I thought fifty years
ago but what the Council said. In reading the article on justification in
1 Lecture

delivered at the inaugural Wilken Colloquium, Baylor University
Honors College, March 17, 2011.
2 Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation,
trans. Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O.P. (St. Louis: Herder Books, 1941).

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the decrees of the Council afresh, I was struck that my marginal
comment is found precisely at the place where the council fathers had
cited St. Paul’s words from Romans 5, the passage that begins: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ” and ends with these words: “God’s love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to
us.” In the language of Trent: “The love of God is poured forth by the Holy
Spirit in the hearts of those who are justified and inheres in them. . . .”
It is unlikely that when I read the decrees of the Council of Trent as a
young theological student I was attentive to its interpretation of Romans
5:5. In our exegetical courses I am sure we learned the conventional
modern interpretation of that verse, that the “love of God” refers to God’s
love for us. In grammatical terms, the phrase is a subjective genitive.3 It
was not until much later in life that I learned, reading Augustine, that the
passage could be taken differently. For Augustine the phrase “love of
God” in Romans 5:5 was always taken as an objective genitive, that is our
love for God.
The council fathers also cite Galatians 5:6, “In Christ Jesus neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working
through love.” The juxtaposition of the two texts goes back at least to
Augustine,4 but to grasp the significance of the medieval phrase fides caritate formata it is to Romans 5:5 that we must turn.
For Augustine, Romans 5 was a pivotal text in his understanding of
the Scriptures as a whole and of justification in particular. It is cited again
and again throughout his writings: thirteen times in his Tractates on the
Gospel of John, four times in the brief Homilies on 1 John, to mention only
two of his works. I begin with its use in Augustine’s mature response to
Pelagius, his well-known treatise On the Spirit and the Letter.
As you will recall, this treatise was written in response to questions that
Count Marcellinus raised about certain statements Augustine had made
in his work On the Desserts and Remission of Sins, written in response to
the teaching of Pelagius. Marcellinus thought that it was illogical to say
that “sinlessness” was possible, but deny that anyone had reached that
state. And it is that dilemma that Augustine examines in the treatise.
For an understanding of the phrase fides caritate formata, the key passage
comes at the very beginning of the treatise. Augustine first disposes of the
presumed logical problem by reminding Marcellinus that the Scriptures
teach that with God it is possible for a camel to pass through the eye of
3 See Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J., Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commen-

tary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 398.
4 Augustine, On the Trinity 15.16.31–17.32.

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a needle, but that has never happened. And twelve thousand legions of
angels could have come to Christ’s aid to prevent his suffering, but that
too did not happen. When Augustine makes these kinds of argument, I
have the sense his tongue is in his check.
But he has a serious point to make. It is only by the work of God that
such things could have been done. And so it is with human righteousness
or justice—the other English term to translate the Greek dikaiosune.
Righteousness or justice cannot be brought about by relying on one’s will;
a work of such magnitude can only be a gift from God. For in Philippians we read:“It is God, after all, who produces in you, says the apostle, both
the willing and the action in accord with good will” (Phil 2:13).5
After this introduction Augustine turns to a summary of Pelagius’s
views as he understood them.6 We must, writes Augustine, strongly
oppose those who think the human will can attain righteousness or make
progress toward it without the help of God. Pelagius believed that God’s
grace is made present in our lives through the commandments and the
gift of free will, the ability to choose good or evil. Through these gifts we
are able to live a righteous life. Augustine, however, does not see things
that way.
Here is how he responds.
We, on the other hand, say that the human will is helped to achieve
righteousness in this way. Besides being created with the free choice of
the will and besides the teaching by which human beings are instructed
how they ought to live, one must receive the Holy Spirit whereby there
arises in the soul the delight in and the love (delectatio dilectioque) of
God, the supreme and changeless good, even now when one walks by
faith not yet by sight. By this love then given as an earnest (1 Cor 1:22;
5:5; Eph 1:14) of God’s gratuitous gift, one is set afire with the desire
to cleave (Ps 73:28) to one’s creator (inardescat inhaerere Creatori ), kindled
in mind to come within the shining of the true light (atque inflammetur
accedere ad participationem illius veri luminis ) and so receive from the
source of one’s being the only true well-being. Free choice alone, if the
way of truth is hidden, avails for nothing but sin; and when the right
action and the true aim has begun to appear clearly, there is still no
doing, no devotion, no good life, unless it be also delighted in and
loved. And that it may be loved the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
not by the free choice whose spring is in ourselves, but through the Holy
Spirit which is given to us (Rom 5:5).7
5 Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter 2.2.
6 For a balanced presentation of Pelagius’s understanding of grace, see Robert F.

Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (New York: Seabury Press, 1968).
7 Augustine, Spirit and Letter 3.5.

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Several distinctly Augustinian accents are present in this passage. The
most noteworthy is that Augustine makes the transformation brought by
grace to turn on the love for God, citing Romans 5:5. To make us righteous, the Holy Spirit inspires us to love God. In depicting the end toward
which the love of God leads, Augustine uses the verb “cleave,” in Latin
inhaerere. For those who know the Latin Bible, inhaerere will remind you
of another of Augustine’s favorite passages in the Psalms: Mihi autem
adhaerere Deo bonum est. “For me to cleave to God is good” (72 [73:28]).
Justification is an affair of being drawn into intimate fellowship with
God, a sharing ( participatio) in God’s life that is only possible through
love. Love, more than faith or hope, brings us close to God. “When we
ask whether someone is good, we do not ask what he believes or what
he hopes for, but what he loves,” Augustine writes in the Enchiridion.8
Of course, that love is greater than faith and hope is not original with
Augustine. It comes from St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:13, and other early
writers drew out the implications of the passage. Gregory of Nyssa, for
example, focused his exposition on another verse in the chapter:
“Prophecies will pass away, and knowledge will pass away, but love never
ends.” Hope, writes Gregory, works so long as that for which one hopes
is not present, and faith is the “assurance of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1).
But love is an “interior disposition” by which the soul is attached to God,
and this will never be taken away.When the soul comes into the presence
of God “the operation of love remains,” for “if love is taken away, what
will hold us to God?”9
Note too in the passage from Spirit and Letter that Augustine uses
ardent, charged language to speak of love, words such as on fire, inflamed,
kindled, and ablaze. This is not the vocabulary one uses in depicting
agape, love of neighbor. No doubt, hearing the passage from the Spirit and
Letter you recalled the words in book 13 of the Confessions: “My weight
is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me. By your
gift”—note the allusion to Romans 5 and the Holy Spirit—“we are set
on fire and carried upwards; we grow red hot and ascend.”10 Two
centuries later Maximus the Confessor will speak of the “passion of holy
love” that binds the soul to God.11
For Augustine, then, love is the affection that draws us to God and
holds us to God. Which means that he is interpreting Scripture with
Scripture, St. Paul with the help of St. John. Here, for example, is a passage
8 Enchiridion 31.117 where he cites Romans 5:5.
9 Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione dialogus, 46:93b–97a; 65a.
10 Augustine, Confessions 13.9.10.
11 Maximus, Four Hundred Chapters on Love 3. 67.

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from his commentary on John 6 at the words “No one can come to me
unless the Father who sent me draws him. . . .” Augustine cites Romans
5:5 to explain what is meant by the term “draw.” To some, he says, the
term “draw” suggests coercion, for if we are “drawn” (the Latin traho
means to drag or pull violently) we come unwillingly. But there is
another kind of being drawn and that is being “drawn by love.” Just as a
person can be drawn by the will, one can also be drawn by “delight,”
voluptas, pleasure or enjoyment. The psalmist sings: “Take delight in the
Lord and he will give you the desire of your heart” (Ps 37:4). The heart
savors the “bread of heaven” about which John 6 speaks. And for good
measure, Augustine quotes Vergil. Trahit sua quemque voluptas (“His delight
draws him”).12 Finally, he takes a shot at Pelagius. It is “delight, not obligation” that leads us to God, as we see in the Song of Songs, which speaks
of being drawn “by the odor of your fragrances.”13
Four points then: love as love toward God, love as delight that draws
us to God, love as the bond that holds us fast to God, and love as the gift
that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Although the love that is poured into our hearts is a gift of God, Augustine makes clear that it is we who do the loving. This is a point of capital
importance. For Augustine, justification is not something external to
ourselves, grace acting upon us from without, imputed, to use the language
of the Reformation; rather, it is something we possess, that inheres in us
and changes us. In the City of God—commenting on Philippians 2, “it is
God who produces in you both the willing and the doing . . .”—he writes:
“[T]he righteousness ( justitia) of God means not only the quality whereby
God himself is righteous, but also the quality that God produces in a man
who is justified by him.” Augustine had in mind actual righteousness.When
we say that this is the “will which God is said to produce in men,” we mean
that God wills what he does not himself will, but makes his followers into
willers (volentes).14
By the gift of the Spirit, then, we are made into “lovers” of God. Again
from the Spirit and Letter. “There could be no spark of love in us, however
small, were it not shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit
which is given to us. For this love through the Holy Spirit which is shed
abroad in our hearts is not his own love for us but that by which he
12 Eclogues 2.65; C. Day Lewis, The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil (New York:

Anchor-Doubleday, 1964), 17.
13 Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 26.1–5. Song of Song passage is at Song 1:3.

The Vulgate reads: “Trahe me, post te curremus in odorem ungentuorum tuorum.”
14 Augustine, City of God 22.2; see also On the Trinity 14.5.

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makes us lovers; like the righteousnss of God by which we are made righteous through his gift.”15
Now the phrase itself, fides caritate formata, does not occur in Augustine, though the theological conception underlying it is present and rests
on the interpretation of Romans 5:5 as the love by which we love God.
It was not until the Middle Ages that the phrase itself came into general
usage, and its meaning was grounded in Romans 5:5. So, for example, in
article 24 of the Secunda secundae Thomas Aquinas asks “whether love is
caused in us by infusion?” After setting forth reasons why love is not
caused by infusion, Thomas introduces his argument in the sed contra by
citing Romans 5:5, “the love of God is poured into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit who is given to us.” Love, says Thomas, is “friendship of man
with God founded on the fellowship of everlasting happiness” This
fellowship is a gift of grace, for Paul writes that “the grace of God is life
eternal” (Rom 6:23).16 Hence the love of God cannot be acquired by
our natural powers, but only by the infusion of the Holy Spirit.17
It is clear that Thomas understands the “love of God” in Romans 5:5,
as our love toward God. This is not without significance, because in his
Commentary on Romans he observes that the phrase “love of God” can be
taken either as God’s love for us or as our love for God, citing appropriate biblical passages to support each understanding. For the first, God’s
love for us, he cites Jeremiah, “He loved you with an everlasting love”
(31:3), and for the second, our love for God, Romans 8: “I am sure that
nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God”
(8:39).18 It is telling that he cites this passage from Romans—a verse that
modern interpreters also take as referring to God’s love for us.19
Though Thomas presented both interpretations in his commentary, he
inclined to the Augustinian view. “For the Holy Spirit, who is the love of
the Father and of the Son, is given to us that we might participate in the
Love who is the Holy Spirit, and by this sharing we are made lovers of
God. That we love him is a sign that he loves us.”20 In support he cites
15 Augustine, Spirit and Letter 32.56. Here too Augustine cites Romans 5:5
16 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 24, a. 2. On Thomas, see Miriam Rose, Fides Caritate

Formata. Das Verhältnis von Glaube und Liebe in der Summa Theologiae des Thomas
von Aquin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2007). Peter Lombard also
takes Romans 5:5 to mean our love for God. See Sentences, Book I: XVII.4.2
(63); 6.2 (65). Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae (“Spicilegium Bonaventurianum”;
Rome: 1971), 145, 149.
17 ST II–II, q. 23, a. 2.
18 Lectura in epistolam ad Romanos (Rome: Marietti, 1953), nos. 392–93.
19 See Fitzmyer, Romans, 536
20 Lectura in epistolam ad Romanos, no. 392.

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Proverbs: “I love those who love me” (Pr 8:17). And that of course is the
position he takes in the Summa. “Love is the form of faith because it
quickens the act of faith.”21
Finally, before returning to Trent, let me bring forward one other
witness, a late medieval commentator on Romans. In this commentary
the author gave what by then was the traditional reading of the text. He
writes that here St. Paul is speaking about the “unreserved devotion to
God that creates men of a right heart; it alone extinguishes the satisfaction of one’s own righteousness.” The love spoken of here is the “love we
have for God alone.” It is not the kind of love directed at a creature; it
means “loving God dearly,” that is, to “esteem God above everything
else.”22 This commentary was a series of lectures given in Wittenberg in
1515 by the Augustinian friar Martin Luther.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, then, the interpretation of
Romans 5:5 as our love for God was the prevailing view, and, as Thomas
makes clear, it was this understanding of Romans 5:5 that lay behind the
phrase fides caritate formata. Now with Augustine filtered through Thomas
Aquinas and a late medieval Augustinian friar, let me turn to article 7 on
justification in the sixth session of the Council of Trent.
In the previous chapter the council fathers had discussed the “manner of
preparation” for justification. There the accent was on faith. Human beings,
they say, “are disposed to justice [righteousness], when, aroused and aided by
divine grace, receiving faith by hearing, they are moved freely toward
God. . . .” In article 7, “What does justification consist of ?” they say this:
“This disposition or preparation is followed by justification itself; which is
not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the
inward man through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts whereby
an unjust man become just and from being an enemy becomes a friend, that
he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting (Ti 3:7). . . .”
Then follows a scholastic dissection of the teaching before the article
returns to the central theme, the renewal of the inner man by the gift of
the Spirit. The “justification of the sinner” takes place when the “love of
God is poured forth by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who are
21 ST II–II, q. 4, a. 3. See also I–II, q. 113, a. 4. Thomas finds support for his under-

standing of grace in another term in Romans 5, “stand” in 5:2. “Through him we
have obtained access to his grace in which we stand and we rejoice in our hope
of sharing the glory of Christ.” Paul, says Thomas, is speaking about the “state of
grace,” i.e., grace as a condition in which one lives, a disposition that allows the
soul to rest its affections in God, Lectura in epistolam ad Romanos, no. 383.
22 Lectures on Romans at 5:5. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, (hereafter WA) (Weimar: 1938), 306–7.

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justified and inheres in them; and so it is that man through Jesus Christ,
in whom he is ingrafted, receives in that justification, together with the
remission of sins, all these infused at the same time, namely, faith, hope
and love. For faith, unless hope and love be added to it, neither unites
man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of his body.”
The first thing to note is that Trent follows the traditional interpretation of Romans 5:5, namely that it refers to our love for God. More
specifically, the council fathers understand love as the affection that binds
us to God and transforms us. That, of course, is what Augustine had in
mind when he used the word “cleave” to expound the text. Trent’s word
is “unites,” and to fill out what is meant it introduces several other terms,
“inheres,” ingrafted,” and “infused.” In Trent’s view, justification takes
place through an interior renewal by the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is
received in the soul of the believer.
Second, the passage from Romans 5 is interpreted with the help of
other New Testament texts, among them Ephesians 1:12: when you
believed in him “you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is
the guarantee (arrabon) of our inheritance.” This is significant because the
term “guarantee” (arrabon, here rendered as pignus) appeared in the passage
from Augustine’s Spirit and Letter and highlights the role of the Holy Spirit
in justification, Trent also quotes 1 Corinthians 13 with its the triad of
faith, hope, and love and Galatians 5:6, “faith working through love.”
As you are well aware the Protestant reformers, in particular Luther
and Melancthon, mounted a vigorous critique of the phrase fides caritate
formata because of its presumed theological deficiencies. Luther’s Lectures
on Galatians from 1531 are particularly biting. At Galatians 3:11, “the just
shall live by faith,” he writes that Paul did not say iustus ex fide formata
vivit, but simpliciter iustus ex fide vivit. Only faith grasps hold of Christ, says
Luther, but “they” (the papists) prefer “love to faith and attribute righteousness not to faith but to love. . . . But if they do not attribute righteousness to faith except when accompanied by love, they attribute to
faith nothing at all.”23 A few pages later he says that the papists keep
repeating the phrase fides formata, but, says Luther, this is to trample Christ
underfoot and to establish righteousness on the basis of works. They
charge us, he continues, with teaching that “true faith is faith alone without works,” but “if justification is based on loving the neighbor we have
23 WA

40.1: 421–23. On Luther’s critique of fides caritate formata see George
Bavaud, “ ‘Fides Caritate Formata’. La critique par Luther de cette formule dans
son Commentaire de l’Epître aux Galates (1531),” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 24 (1977): 235–50. See also Otto Herman Pesch, Hinführung zu
Luther (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1982), 155–70.

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no need of Christ.”24 Philipp Melancthon calls fides caritate formata a bit
of “sophistry” to evade the clear teaching of the Scriptures. Love has no
place in the act of being justified. As he puts it in the Apology to the
Augsburg Confession: “Only faith lays hold of Christ.”25
In response Trent appealed to the triad of “faith, hope, and love.” “Faith,
unless hope and charity are added to it, neither unites man perfectly with
Christ nor makes him a living member of his body.” Trent appealed also
to a string of biblical texts among which Romans 5:5 is prominent. And
in the thirty-three canons, that is, anathemas, that are included in the Sixth
Session, the only biblical text that is cited verbatim is Romans 5:5. Here
is canon 11: “If anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ or by the sole remission of sins, to the
exclusion of the grace and the ‘love which is poured forth into their hearts
by the Holy Spirit’ and remains in them, or also that the grace by which
we are justified is only the good will of God, let him be anathema.’ ”
Romans 5:5 has a central role in Trent’s exposition of the doctrine of
justification, and there the text is interpreted in light of the long tradition of exegesis that goes back at least to Augustine.
So here is my question: Can Trent’s or Thomas’s or Augustine’s exegesis of Romans 5:5 stand up under close exegetical scrutiny. As many of
you know modern biblical scholars reject their interpretation out of
hand. In his magisterial commentary on Romans, Joseph Fitzmyer
dismisses the Augustinian view in a sentence. The phrase, he says, refers
to “God’s love for us,” a subjective genitive, and in support gives a list of
contemporary commentators: Cornely, Dunn, Kaesemann, Kuss,
Lagrange, Nygren, Prat, Schlier, Sickenberger, Zeller.26
In his Systematic Theology Wolfhart Pannenberg weighs in against the
exegesis as well as the theology of the article on justification at Trent.
“There is no exegetical support,” he writes, “for the view of faith in what
the council says about the righteousness of faith and the justification of
24 WA 40.1: 606.
25 Melanchthon, Apology to the Augsburg Confession 4.107–9; 139.
26 Fitzmyer, Romans, 398. Even J. Burnaby, one of Augustine’s most astute and

sympathetic interpreters, faults Augustine for his interpretation of Romans 5. See
his Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1938), 99. For a critique of Burnaby, see Oliver O’Donovan, The
Problem of Self Love in St. Augustine (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1980),
130. John Calvin was also critical of Augustine’s reading of Romans 5:5. In his
Commentary on Romans Calvin said that Augustine’s “mind was wandering” when
he took this verse as referring to our love for God. His “pious opinion” is
contrary to what “Paul intended.” Johannis Calvini Commentarius in Epistolam
Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T. H. L. Parker (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 106.

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believers when it links faith only to the beginning of justification and
then ascribes its completion to the infusing of love into the hearts of
believers by the Holy Spirit, which Paul mentions in another context
(Rom 5:5), not in relation to justification. . . . The council’s defective
exegetical judgment may well be understandable because it was seeing
Paul’s statements through the spectacles of the Scholastic doctrine of
grace, but its judgment was defective nonetheless.”27
But is that really so? Is Trent’s use of Romans 5 a matter of prooftexting in support of the “scholastic doctrine of grace,” or is it an exercise in biblical theology, a recapitulation of the exegesis that underlies the
doctrine of grace? Though there is a direct line of interpretation of
Romans 5:5 from Augustine up through the Middle Ages and into the
sixteenth century, we have to dig deeper. For it was not only Augustine
and the Latin scholastics who took Romans 5:5 to be speaking of our
love for God. The Church’s first and greatest biblical scholar, Origen of
Alexandria, a native Greek speaker, also read the text in that way.28
Origen provides a clue to why the exegetical tradition took the course
it did. If you look again at Romans 5, you will note three words, faith,
hope, and love. Origen saw that the triad was present in the passage, and in
his Commentary on Romans 5 he cites 1 Corinthians 13 twice to explain to
his readers the structure of the passage. “The love of God which is greater
than everything (1 Cor 13:13) follows faith and hope, and not only fills our
minds but also abounds and is shed abroad into our hearts because it is not
acquired by human skill, but is poured out by the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
This explanation, that there is a parallel between 1 Corinthians 13 and
Romans 5, follows the “sequence” of the passage, says Origen.
Once Origen introduces the triad of faith, hope, and love, the entire
passage takes on a new light. For faith and hope are dispositions, things
we attribute to a human subject, not to God; hence the love mentioned
in 1 Corinthians 13 is not the love of God for us, but our love for God.
If Paul is interpreted by Paul, there is a sound textual basis to conclude
27 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998),

222–23. For a modern discussion of the issues raised by Trent in relation to the
Joint Declaration, see Christopher J. Malloy, Engrafted into Christ: A Critique of the
Joint Declaration (New York: Peter Lang, 2005).
28 Augustine was familiar with Origen’s writings and had access to his biblical
commentaries through the translations of Jerome and Rufinus. See Caroline P.
Hammond Bammel, “Origen, Augustine and the Exegesis of Paul,” in Tradition
and Exegesis in Early Christian Writers, no. 17 (Aldershot, England:Variorum Press,
1995). There is no way to know whether Augustine was familiar with Origen’s
exegesis of Romans 5:5. Bammel does not discuss that text. It is possible that
Augustine came to his interpretation independently of Origen.

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that when love is used with faith and hope in Romans 5:1–5, the love
being spoken of is our love for God.29 Already at the end of chapter 4,
Origen had cited 1 Corinthians 13 to fill out the discussion of Abraham’s
faith and hope. “I think that faith is the first beginning of salvation and
its true foundation, hope is the advance and growth of the building, and
love is the completion and culmination of the whole work. For that
reason love is said to be greater than everything else.”30
Still, Origen is an astute student of biblical language, and when he
comes to 5:5, he steps back before going ahead with his exposition. “It
seems to me,” he writes, “that we should consider whether in this passage
‘the love that is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit’ is the love
by which we love God or whether it is the love by which we are loved
by God.” Either interpretation was possible on philological grounds. But
then he says: “If indeed love is to be understood as that love by which we
love God, no argument is needed. If, however, it is to be understood as
that love by which we are loved by God, because he says, ‘love of God is
poured into our hearts,’ Paul holds that love is the supreme and greatest
gift of the Holy Spirit. For as this gift was first received from God, we are
able to love God himself because we are loved by God.”
For Origen the two possible interpretations of the passage merge into
one. Even if the second meaning is adopted, that the love is God’s love for
us, the purpose of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is that we might love
God. Then he supports his interpretation by reference to passages where
the Spirit is identified with love (2 Tim 1:7), God the Father is called “love”
(1 Jn 4:8), and Christ is called the “Son of love” (Col 1:13). This phrase is
usually translated “the kingdom of his beloved Son,” but in Greek it reads
“the kingdom of his son of love.” The Vulgate has regnum filii dilectionis.
Because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are identified with “love” in the
Scriptures, says Origen,
[I]t is certain that the Son and the Spirit are to be understood to be
from the one fount of paternal godhead. From the fullness of the Spirit
the fullness of love is infused into the hearts of the saints so that they
might share in the divine nature, as the apostle Peter taught (2 Pet 1:4).
And so it is that in the gift of the Holy Spirit that word is fulfilled, “As
you Father are in me and I in you, may they also be one in us.” ( Jn
17:21) This means that they become sharers in the divine nature
through the fullness of love that the Holy Spirit brings about.31
29 Origen, Commentary on Romans 4.10.11 in Origenes: Commentarii in Epistulam ad

Romanos II, ed. Theresia Heither, O.S.B. (Freiburg: Herder, 1992–1999), 280.
30 Ibid., 4.6.3 (Heither ed., 226–28).
31 Ibid., 4.10.

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In addition to the two customary passages to support theosis, Origen
adds Romans 5:1–5.
• • •
Early in the Church’s history Romans 5:5 acquired a distinctive interpretation. What Augustine developed in writing after writing, what
Origen adumbrated and later thinkers investigated and analyzed, is this:
love is a mutual relation, grounded in the Holy Trinity, in which the Holy
Spirit is poured into our hearts that we might share in God’s life and light
and love. At the very heart of redemption is our love for God. It is this
tradition, forged in the exegesis of Sacred Scripture, that underlies the
article on justification at the Council of Trent.32
Augustine’s homilies on 1 John are among his most profound spiritual
writings. In homily 8, commenting on 1 John 4:13, “by this we know that
we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit,”
he asks how we know that God dwells in us? Because “he has given us
of his Spirit.” And how do we know that his Spirit dwells in us? “Because
if your heart is filled with love it is filled with the Spirit.” And how do
we know this, asks Augustine. “Ask the apostle,” who says: “Because the
love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit
who has been given to us.”33
In the same homilies, commenting on the text “Anyone who loves the
one who has begotten [ Jesus Christ] loves him who has been begotten
by him” (5:1), Augustine comments: “He has joined love directly to faith;
because faith is empty without love.” In other words: fides caritate
formata.34
N&V
32 Von Balthasar defended the traditional interpretation of Roman 5:5. “We need

not hesitate to describe the result of God’s (eternal) act of generation as a
constant abiding (and hence a habitus) in grace. Even the term infusion can be
substantiated biblically. In fact it arose solely from Romans 5:5 and 1 Cor. 12:13.
Protestant polemics against these terms are only justified where the latter are
misused (suggesting that grace can become a possession of man’s nature). To
reject them would be like rejecting a genuine inner sanctification of the justified
person—something for which Karl Barth fought very early on. After all we have
said, therefore, there can be no question of an ontic ‘increase’ of grace in a man
without a corresponding increase of faith-knowledge-love. ‘Everyone who loves
is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for
God is love’ [1 Jn 4:7ff.]” (Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2. The
Dramatis Personae: Man in God [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990], 315–16).
33 Augustine, Homilies on 1 John 8.12.
34 Ibid., 10.2. See also On the Trinity 15.32. “And this gift [the Holy Spirit] surely is
distinctively to be understood as the love which brings us through to God, without which no other gift of God at call can bring us through to God.”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011): 1101–27

1101

Book Reviews
Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical Life by Oliva Blanchette (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010 ), xvi + 820 pp.
M AURICE Blondel (1861–1949) devoted himself from an early age first to
Christ and then to philosophy. But, as Oliva Blanchette describes it in his
monumental “philosophical life” of the French thinker, Blondel came to
intellectual maturity at a time in which fissures in the relationship between
the Church and the world, which had sprung up in secret, grew into an
outright rupture. While it would have been difficult enough to find oneself
suddenly on one side or another, the division passed directly through the
center of Blondel’s heart. Blondel, though, was gifted with both a radical
docility to the Church and an intellectual genius that allowed him to
expand modern philosophy’s self-understanding from the inside in such a
way that it too would recognize the inevitable drama of Augustine’s cor inquietum. It was Blondel’s aim, in the dissertation for which he is principally
known, first of all to bring to light a reality that, as central as it is to human
life, had up to that point curiously received little attention from the philosophical tradition, namely, the sphere of action, and, second, to demonstrate
through a rigorous phenomenological method that action cannot avoid
continuously transcending itself, ultimately to the point of opening up to
the possibility of grace. To the consternation of his philosophical examiners
at the late-nineteenth-century Sorbonne, Blondel famously ended the
dissertation with a word frankly confessing the reality of faith: “C’est.”
As Henri de Lubac later wrote in a letter to Blondel, the concern he had
come to share was that “Christianity has too often been uprooted from the
inner viscera of man.” What Blondel came to call his “method of immanence” challenged this split between the Church and the world from both
directions. On the one hand, it revealed that the autonomy of the natural
order does not mean self-sufficiency; in fact, to the contrary, nature even on
its own terms possesses a need for something that lies beyond itself, namely,

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Book Reviews

the gratuitous order of grace that cannot be demanded but also cannot be
rejected without necessary consequences. On the other hand, against what
Blondel called “monophorism,” which interpreted the order of grace as
something wholly extrinsic to the secular order and thus without any natural significance, Blondel insisted on a profound receptivity to the gift of
grace, an internal preparation for it, which is itself part of grace’s gratuity. In
other words, he retrieved from the tradition the Catholic idea of the immanent action of grace that is inseparable from its action “from above,” which
is indispensable if grace is to penetrate to the very core of nature. Without
this immanent action, we cannot avoid thinking of the supernatural order
as simply a superficial overlay. The bold position he navigated in the
uncharted waters of modern secularism caused him to suffer misunderstandings on all sides. During the “Modernist” crisis, Blondel found his
orthodoxy under attack (though his work was never officially condemned)
and at the same time he had to separate himself from those with whom he
had initially thought he had common cause.
Because of the importance of the nature-grace problem, we tend to
forget that Blondel’s interest in philosophy both preceded the Modernist
crisis and continued beyond it. There is a certain irony about Blondel’s
legacy. He sought to protect and defend the autonomy of philosophy,
demonstrating its abiding role even within faith, and yet today he is read
almost exclusively by theologians. He also sought to recover philosophy’s
original aim to understand the whole of reality, and yet today he is
thought of narrowly as “the philosopher of action”—and by that is
meant, not a thinker who explored all of the dimensions and implications
of this neglected sphere, but typically nothing more than one who
engaged the problem of the opening of the immanent sphere to the
supernatural. More than fifty years after his death, Blondel’s work is
arguably still awaiting its proper reception.
In this respect, it would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Oliva
Blanchette’s book, which acknowledges the significance of Blondel’s dissertation—in fact, the book begins directly with a dramatic account of Blondel’s
public defense before stepping back to tell the story of Blondel’s prior development—but it continues beyond this problem to offer an account of the
whole of Blondel’s work. Indeed, the story of L’Action, Blondel’s early works,
and the various aspects of the Modernist controversy forms only half of the
eight-hundred-plus paged book, the second part of which offers a detailed
presentation of the two trilogies in which Blondel worked out his mature
philosophy in systematic fashion. Blanchette is positioned like no other to
present the life and work of Blondel: a translator of L’Action into English,
Blanchette originally studied Blondel in the early fifties, taught Blondel’s

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1103

philosophy at Boston College for several decades, spent a great deal of time
inside the Blondel archives in Aix and then in Louvain, and enjoyed a friendship with Blondel’s secretary, Nathalie Panis, with whom Blondel worked
very closely toward the end of his life after effectively losing his sight. Mademoiselle Panis, to whose memory Blanchette dedicated his book, was the
original custodian of Blondel’s papers and according to Blanchette was the
source of much of the biographical information he draws on to illuminate
Blondel’s work. Given Blanchette’s resources, his expertise in Blondel’s
philosophy and long acquaintance with the material, and indeed his stylistic
clarity, it is difficult to imagine any study surpassing this book in comprehensiveness and depth any time soon.
The book’s subtitle, “A Philosophical Life,” is a fitting description of the
approach Blanchette adopts. Though it is filled with details about Blondel’s
person, his friendships and family relationships, the events through which he
lived, and the circumstances under which he did his teaching and writing,
the book is not primarily a biography. Instead, Blanchette offers the personal
details principally in order to set the context as an illuminating backdrop for
what constitutes the real essence of the book, namely, a substantial exposition, argument by argument, of each of Blondel’s main works.These include
not only the books he published, but also most of his significant essays and
journal articles. The personal details, fascinating in themselves, on occasion
also serve to bring out something of considerable importance for the
content of Blondel’s thought. For example, Blanchette describes the
exchange with his close friend Victor Delbos that ultimately led Blondel to
add a hastily composed final chapter on the ontological dimension of action
to his dissertation after his defense in 1893, and explains why he was sufficiently dissatisfied with the dissertation not to allow its republication after
this limited printing was exhausted. This account illuminates the relationship between his late trilogy on Thought, Being, and Action and the original thesis, showing that the explicitly metaphysical approach Blondel adopts
in his later work had been intended from the beginning. If Blanchette’s foregrounding the exposition of Blondel’s writings makes the book a slower
read, it is difficult to imagine a better presentation of his thought, from its
germ to its final flourishing.
The volume is worth owning already simply as a scholarly resource. In
addition to the clear articulation of chapters that allow one to consult with
ease a particular episode from his life or the exposition of a particular essay,
the book also includes a dated list of Blondel’s major works and even
posthumous publications. But there are three particular contributions of
Blanchette’s study that I would like to highlight here in relation to the
general reception of Blondel’s philosophy. The first is the clarification of

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Blondel’s position in the Modernist controversy, showing the consistency
of Blondel’s position from the beginning to the end, the difference of his
position from the notions criticized by Pascendi, and its harmony with the
Church’s tradition—against those who would characterize the story as
“Blondel vs. the Vatican” (see, for example, the work of John McNeil). The
second is the nuanced account of Blondel’s role as a philosopher against
those who tend to “theologize him” (see, for example, Adam English, The
Possibility of Christian Philosophy). Blanchette shows with great lucidity both
how reason, for Blondel, requires but never anticipates the supernatural and
also how philosophy retains a distinct task even within the order of revelation. The third contribution, and the most significant for this reader, is
Blanchette’s elucidation of the incredible wealth of philosophical insight in
his systematic late work—against those who would characterize the early
writings as the “definitive Blondel” and the later work primarily as a fairly
unsuccessful rearticulation of his initial thesis in more tentative and accommodating terms in light of criticism (see, for example, Bouillard’s classic
work, Blondel and Christianity). While Blanchette admires the boldness of
Blondel’s dissertation, and acknowledges the stylistic infelicities of the later
work, which are due to Blondel’s obligation to compose these volumes by
dictation, he nevertheless reveals the final trilogies to be the crowning
expression of Blondel’s philosophy; they provide the proper context in
which to make sense of Blondel’s profound insights into action and the
problem of the supernatural.
If there is any criticism to be made, it is that Blanchette limits his
account to its own sort of “method of immanence,” that is, an internal
exposition of Blondel’s thought without a great deal of analysis or evaluation of the arguments, and without much of an account of how the
later work was received. (After he finishes an in-depth exposition of each
of the last volumes Blondel composed, Blanchette concludes the book
with a couple of paragraphs relating the circumstances of the philosopher’s death.) But of course to have included such things would have
made the already ponderous volume impossibly long. One would hardly
want to give up any detail of the masterful presentation of Blondel’s
“philosophical life” that the book does offer. Blanchette has given us
what will no doubt be the definitive study in English of Blondel’s life and
work, and will remain a permanent resource for anyone interested, not
only in Blondel, or the history of the Modernist crisis, but simply in what
it might mean to philosophize in the light of faith.
N&V
D. C. Schindler
Villanova University
Villanova, PA

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Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought by David VanDrunen (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010 ), x + 446 pp.
A MERICAN Calvinists have been reappraising natural law of late. While
Reformation scholarship has never denied its existence in Calvin and
company, the problem since the Barth-Brunner debate of last century has
been what modern heirs of Calvin should do with the idea. Is it a vestigial organ of the Catholic tradition, needing to be excised due to infection with natural theology and the analogia entis? Recent monographs,
such as Stephen Grabill’s, have answered negatively, seeking to recover
Reformed natural law doctrine. Now David VanDrunen, professor at
Westminster Seminary California, has written Natural Law and the Two
Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (hereafter
NLTK ), wherein he argues that natural law has played an important role
for five hundred years in enabling Calvinists to distinguish between two
ways in which God governs men: through the “spiritual kingdom” (institutional and invisible church) and the “civil kingdom” (secular society).
NLTK is in the Emory University Studies in Law and Religion, edited
by John Witte, Jr.
In the first chapter, “The Untold Story of Reformed Social Thought,”
VanDrunen proposes that his ambitious project establishes the integral
relation of the natural law and two kingdoms doctrines in Calvinist theology. The primary target is neo-Calvinism, the progeny of Abraham
Kuyper’s idea that, since all of creation is being redeemed by Christ,
Christians ought to extend the one kingdom of God beyond the church
into all spheres of life, thereby transforming civil society to the glory of
God. For VanDrunen, this involves the institutional church in political and
cultural affairs, which threatens the church’s spiritual mission to proclaim
salvation.The antidote is the Reformed natural law tradition, namely, “that
God had inscribed his moral law on the heart of every person, such that
[. . . all] have a universally accessible standard for the development of civil
law” (1–2).VanDrunen argues that classic Reformed theologians, in positing natural law as the civil kingdom’s guide outside of revelation, thereby
“rooted political and cultural life in God’s work of creation and providence, not in his work of redemption and eschatological restoration
through Jesus Christ” (2). For this reason, ecclesial involvement in culture
or politics is not only superfluous but violates God’s providential ordering
of the world. Chapter 2, “Precursors of the Reformed Tradition,” establishes a historical foundation through a survey of how Christians have
understood church and secular society to inhabit the same world.

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Chapter 3 presents Calvin’s connection of natural law to his own
version of the two kingdoms as prototypical for the Reformed tradition.
Calvin’s exposition of natural law, though, is ambiguous. On the one hand,
reason is fallen and cannot rise to God, while on the other hand, every
man has clear access to the natural law.To solve this ambiguity,VanDrunen
appeals to the way natural law functions within the two kingdoms doctrine.
In the spiritual kingdom, natural law condemns through conscience’s
witness against man for transgressing the will of God. In the civil kingdom,
natural law is the foundation for civil order. Since natural law perdures after
the fall of man, the civil order still functions. VanDrunen’s Calvin finds in
this a reason for barring the church, concerned only with salvation of souls,
from overseeing the state. In the spiritual kingdom “the conscience is
trained to piety and divine worship” (72) and so is concerned with the
governance of interior acts by the Holy Spirit. In the civil kingdom, men
are “instructed in those duties [they] are bound to perform” by the natural
law. This is an interesting move in reading Calvin, though ambiguity
regarding natural law, religion, and civil life remains.
VanDrunen locates the theological ground of Calvin’s position in the
“dual mediatorship of Christ,” whereby the Son rules the nations as
Creator and rules the church as Redeemer (75–76). Since Christ rules the
world in these two distinct ways that correspond to the two kingdoms,
each with a distinct constitution of natural law or Scripture, respectively,
neither kingdom must impinge on the other. Despite this delineation of
political and ecclesial authority in Calvin,VanDrunen finds inconsistencies
in how this was applied in Geneva (85–93). For example, the Consistory
of pastors had authority over all citizens of Geneva, regardless of standing
with the churches (85). In the other direction, Calvin expected the magistracy to regulate religious “externals”—for instance, it should punish
public blasphemy (88). Calvin saw this as enforcing the whole natural law,
which includes the first table of the Decalogue.
Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate the continuity of Reformed “resistance
theorists” and “orthodox scholastics” with Calvin’s vision through the
seventeenth century.Various motifs recur: the accountability of all to the
natural law; natural law as the foundation for order in the civil kingdom;
and the dual mediatorship of Christ, whereby he rules civil matters as
Creator and spiritual ones as Redeemer. The ambiguous state of natural
law found in Calvin reappears in these theologians, as they held that
“[t]hough nature confronts all people with the divine law, reason as a
human faculty is not inherently trustworthy” (134).
Chapter 6 covers three applications in the New World of the Reformed
two kingdoms doctrine.The first is John Cotton in colonial New England.

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While “for Cotton . . . the Son rules the state as God and creator and rules
the church as God-man and redeemer” (218), the Puritan still wanted the
state to protect true religion and wanted magistrates to take religious oaths
(221–22). Second, the disestablishmentarian Presbyterians of post-Revolutionary, Episcopalian-leaning Virginia blended appeals to natural law, the
two kingdoms, and Enlightenment ideals in petitioning for religious toleration (240–44). A contemporary development of the two kingdoms idea
was the modification of the Westminster Confession by American Presbyterians to deny the magistrate ecclesial oversight.
In VanDrunen’s assessment, a third group of American Calvinists
applied the natural law–two kingdoms synthesis most consistently. They
are Southern advocates of de jure divino Presbyterianism, the strict separation of church and state, and chattel slavery. When James Thornwell
promoted the separationist “spirituality of the church” version of the two
kingdoms, Northern Presbyterian Charles Hodge challenged him on the
implication that the visible church could not actively inform civil society on moral matters. VanDrunen suggests that this was not Thornwell’s
position, but then charges Thornwell with inconsistency for seeing any
overlap in churchly and civil matters (264–65; cf. 262 n. 168)! VanDrunen
commends the “spirituality of the church” but disapproves of the
doctrine’s use in preserving American slavery. He urges his interlocutors
to evaluate Thornwell’s arguments, not the fact that Thornwell was “in
part motivated to espouse his doctrine because it prohibited the church
from taking a political stance against slavery” (261).
Chapter 7 reinterprets Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian and
statesman, as having more in common with the classic Reformed position than with Kuyperian neo-Calvinism. Kuyper held to the essential
components of the two kingdoms and natural law, though under terms
such as “sphere sovereignty” and “creation ordinances.” Most notable is
VanDrunen’s argument that Kuyper held to the two kingdoms as
confirmed by his doctrine of common grace, a foundational doctrine for
neo-Calvinism (302–14). Nevertheless, Kuyper mistakenly called for the
“Christianization” of culture, which does not cohere with Christ’s two
mediatorships (314–15).
Chapter 8 turns to Karl Barth, whom VanDrunen portrays as the iconoclast of the classic Reformed synthesis. He is, to read between the lines,
neo-Calvinism made consistent. VanDrunen critiques Barth for jettisoning natural law, the two kingdoms, the logos asarkos, and the dual mediatorship of Christ. For Barth, the orders of creation and redemption are
indistinguishably united in the one person of Jesus Christ, the Son made
flesh (323). To appeal to differing roles of the Son is to separate the

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Creator from the Redeemer (344). Chapters 9 and 10 relate Reformed
movements that claim Kuyper as forerunner to the classic synthesis.
VanDrunen charges neo-Calvinist thinkers with confusing creation and
redemption in calling for Christian societal transformation.
Catholic readers will find points of contact with VanDrunen’s classic
Reformed synthesis, such as that the church has a spiritual mission
distinct from the state and that natural law grounds civil society’s relative
autonomy in “mediating” God’s providence. Nevertheless, disagreements
may arise from VanDrunen’s approach to the traditional nature/grace
distinction. The Reformed tradition tends to relate grace to sin only, and
for VanDrunen, the notions of the beatific vision and participation in the
divine nature are “neo-Platonic” and erroneous (105). This suspicion of
traditional thought on nature/grace and man’s supernatural end explains
why the classic Reformed, neo-Calvinists, and Barthians disagree not
only with Catholics about the two kingdoms, but also with each other.
In the course of renegotiating these doctrines, they have posited incompatible visions of eschatological consummation and man’s final end, the
nature of grace, the identity of the kingdom of God, and its relation to
creation and the political-cultural impulse.
One issue involving the nature/grace distinction is VanDrunen’s attempt
to cleanly distinguish the spiritual and secular realms. His narrative
commends the minimization of overlapping jurisdiction to the point of
denying the church direct involvement in civil society.VanDrunen presents
the “two mediatorships of Christ” as the main theological ground in his
sources for this two kingdoms separation.Yet it is not obvious how circumscribing the church’s voice follows necessarily from Christ’s dual mediatorship, since providence and redemption are united in the one divine ratio.
While the two kingdoms are relatively autonomous, the intermediate end
of civil society is ultimately ordered to the supernatural destiny of man and
the church’s spiritual mission.VanDrunen’s acknowledgment that revelation
contains and clarifies the natural law further disturbs this compartmentalization. The church, having received revelation, would seem to have the
duty to teach natural law principles to her own members and to civil society, given the effects of the fall on the human intellect. The church must
speak to civil society when necessary to protect the salvation of the human
person, as man must keep the natural law for salvation. Grace heals and
elevates nothing other than nature.
Another curiosity is the fate of the religious side of natural law as
NLTK enters the era of liberal democracies. If Calvinist thinkers “could
claim to have a natural law basis for entrusting the magistrate with the
establishment and enforcement of laws concerning atheism, idolatry, blas-

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phemy, and worship, which relate to the demands of the first four
commandments” (201), what changed in the development of Reformed
natural law theory to make this an “inconsistency”? If VanDrunen were
to argue that, given the modern situation, enforcement of the first table
would harm the common good, he would find much sympathy. But
VanDrunen thinks the modern situation good because of the “spirituality of the church.”The reader is left to wonder if God rules the civil kingdom by only the second table of the natural law or what the earthly city
owes, if anything, to God.
In light of this change, the methodological question is whether
VanDrunen has read the Southern “spirituality of the church” doctrine
into earlier articulations of the two kingdoms because he sees it as the
natural terminus of Reformed development.Where he finds the Reformed
inconsistently applying their theory until three centuries after Calvin, one
may think of other explanations. One possibility is that Calvinists have
applied the same set of principles in different socio-political contexts with
different results without contradicting those principles. VanDrunen carefully entertains this possibility, but thinks it an incomplete explanation. If
VanDrunen is correct, then Calvinists supported the magistrate’s jurisdiction in religious matters when expedient for the initial survival of the
Reformed movement, but the pressure of pluralistic America helped
Calvinists to see the consistency of religious freedom. Alternatively, American Presbyterians may have reformulated the two kingdoms relationship
because of that pressure and, in reality, there are various “consistent”
Reformed two kingdoms doctrines differing still from one another.
Regarding St.Thomas,VanDrunen satisfactorily explains how the eternal, natural, human, and divine laws relate in the Prima secundae (42–47).
Still, VanDrunen offers a hostile and heavy-handed analysis of Aquinas’s
positions on conscience and nature/grace when contrasting him with
Calvin (101–7). At least twice, VanDrunen mistakes the presence of the
doctrine of the theological virtue of charity in medieval theologians for
the absence of any kind of natural love, then declares Luther’s and
Calvin’s views superior for making natural love part of the natural law
(65; 102n118). VanDrunen highlights the similarities between Aquinas,
Scotus, and Ockham on natural law as he establishes a broad medieval
tradition with which he places Calvin in continuity (42–55).
NLTK will stimulate Reformed Christians uncertain of natural law and
will interest students of Christian social theories. The book may not
convince all Reformed readers that the natural law–two kingdoms
synthesis entails that the church should not speak to public moral issues or
establish institutions to further the works of mercy. Others may balk at the

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attempt to ground a civil ethic in natural law, on account of Calvinist or
late modern suspicions of reason. Nevertheless, VanDrunen rightly
cautions against the political messianism that may seduce conservatives or
liberals, Protestants or Catholics. He does not, however, provide
compelling historical or theological reasons why Calvinists—or anybody
else—ought to think that the church qua church should not inform the
conscience of citizens, be merciful toward pagans, or even transform civil
society in the course of preaching salvation in Christ the Mediator. N&V
Barrett Hamilton Turner
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC

Christ and the Catholic Priesthood: Ecclesial Hierarchy and the
Pattern of the Trinity by Matthew Levering (Chicago: Hillenbrand
Books, 2010 ) x + 340 pp.
M ATTHEW Levering here expounds the traditional Catholic doctrine of
the priesthood and defends it against criticisms that may have arisen
among the Protestant Reformers but were then prolonged along theological, historical, political, social, cultural, psychological, and even moral
lines characteristic of modernity and have more recently been voiced
even by theologians writing from within the Roman Catholic tradition.
Typically, Levering begins each of his five principal chapters at a point
where contemporary scholars have found the notion and practice of
priesthood problematic or even objectionable. Sometimes he is able to
invoke other recent writers who nuance matters less negatively. Positively
and powerfully, our author argues that the priestly office and hierarchy
belong integrally to a pattern of sacramental mediation rooted in the
kenotic divine self-gift through the Son and the Spirit, which in turn
allows the ascent of receptive believers into communion with God. Not
surprisingly, the chief witnesses in the tradition are “Dionysius the
Areopagite,” with his celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, and Thomas
Aquinas in the Summa contra Gentiles, the Summa theologiae, and the
Supplement to the latter based by Reginald Piperno on the master’s
Commentary on the Sentences.
The first numbered chapter deals with what—if it were correct—would
perhaps be the weightiest and most severe objection to the doctrine as
Levering himself grounds it, since it reaches to the heart of divine dogma.
For Levering, the ultimate basis for hierarchical priesthood resides in a
sound Trinitarianism, and he finds a convenient opponent in Miroslav Volf,
whose own “free church”—or even “congregationalist”—ecclesiology

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appeals, in After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity, to the
“social” version of the Trinity propounded by Jürgen Moltmann in order
to challenge the “communion ecclesiologies” of Joseph Ratzinger and John
D. Zizioulas on account of their respective Trinitarian flaws (Ratzinger is
alleged by Volf to reduce divine personhood to “relationality,” while
Zizioulas overplays the “monarchy” of the Father). By contrast, Levering
argues that “Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology exhibits the compatibility of a
strong affirmation of divine unity with a thorough rejection of a monist
understanding of God—and thus, by extension, the compatibility of a
strong account of ecclesial unity with an equally strong affirmation of
ecclesial communion” (43). More concretely: “Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology—in which the Son receives all from the Father, and the Spirit is the
Gift of the Father and the Son—can be seen to constitute the pattern,
through the missions in history of the Son and Spirit, for the gifting and
receptivity that unite the Church in communion through faith and the
sacraments of faith” (39). Or, phrasing it from the human end: “Due to the
pattern of gifting/receptivity, the (hierarchical) ecclesial communion of
believers makes manifest the (ordered) communion of Trinitarian persons,
at the same time as it makes manifest the unity of the Trinity” (53).
In chapter 2, Levering turns to the priesthood of Christ, in which—
according to the Second Vatican Council—the Christian priesthood shares
by means of “the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist,” which itself is “the chief
means through which believers are expressing in their lives and demonstrating to others the mystery of Christ and the genuine nature of the true
Church” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 2 and 7). A priestly office of Christ can
certainly be seen in Incarnational and Trinitarian terms in the Letter to the
Hebrews, but given the relative paucity of such a notion in the Gospel
narratives, our author turns to several contemporary New Testament scholars (with N. T. Wright in the lead) for “historical-critical witness to an
understanding of Jesus’ death as a priestly action that is eschatological, sacrificial/eucharistic, sanctifying and unitive”; and these same dimensions can
be classically seen in Aquinas, particularly in his treatment of the priesthood
of Christ in the Summa theologiae III, q. 22. According to 1 Peter 2:4–10
and the book of Revelation (1:5–6; 5:9–10; 20:6), all Christians share in
that priesthood, being “enabled, in Christ and his Spirit, to worship God
the Father in holiness,” but the question remains: “Is there also a hierarchical priesthood whose ministry unites our spiritual sacrifices cultically to the
sacrifice of Christ?” (65–66). To that question Levering turns in chapter 3,
treating it first in historical terms: “The Priesthood of the First Christians.”
Thus chapter 3 begins by tackling two recent accounts of hierarchy in
the early Church by Catholic writers: “While affirming that the first

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Christian communities were marked by hierarchy, James Burtchaell and
Francis Sullivan present ecclesial hierarchy not as a sacramental reality
arising from Christ’s mediation of his priestly action, but as a functional
form of leadership that Christ did not directly will” (121). For his part,
Levering examines the scriptural evidence found particularly in 1
Corinthians and the Gospel of Matthew to show that “in the New Testament, ecclesial hierarchy is intrinsic to, rather than merely conducive to
Christian communion” (ibid.). Especially important is St. Paul’s presentation of the “apostolic mandate” in chapters 1, 4, 10, and 12 of the first
Corinthian letter, and the first Gospel’s understanding of the relationship
between the authority instituted by Christ in the disciples/apostles in the
matter of teaching, baptism and Eucharist and the pattern and goal of that
authority found in self-subordinating Christian love. Aquinas—from the
Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 74—is brought in for the sake of his
“grounding ontologically the Eucharistic role of bishops and priests in a
theology of sacramental ‘character’,” whereby they stand “in persona
Christi” (122, and especially 164–77).
In chapter 4 Levering looks at the question of “Priority or Primacy in
the Church.” He finds support in twentieth-century Eastern Christianity
from John Zizioulas (already invoked in this connection in chapter 3), and
now also Nicholas Afanasiev and Olivier Clément, particularly at the level
of the Eucharistic community as “the local church” gathered around the
bishop and under his presidency. The Orthodox, however, are typically
suspicious of the notion of a “universal Church,” especially insofar as it
provides the framework for the papal “primacy.” Nevertheless, Afanasiev in
particular supplies helpful support at least in terms of a “priority” in witnessing to the gospel that can contemplate the notion of a local church (even
Rome!) that “presides in love.” For his part, Clément is sensitive to the
global dimensions of a “modern world that is marked by increasing unity
and increasing fragmentation” (198), and he looks for “the rediscovery of a
mystical and liturgical vision of the cosmos” (201) that might be promoted
by “a Church restructured around dynamic Eucharistic communities, each
gathered around its bishop, . . . with universal primacy ultimately pertaining
to the bishop of Rome as the embodiment of both the presence of Peter
and the charismatic inspiration of Paul” (202). Levering calls above all on
Aquinas for the teaching and gubernatorial offices of the papacy: “Even if
they get caught up in the erudite errors of theologians, Aquinas notes,
simple believers will not go astray so long as they adhere to the Church
above such theologians, because ‘the faith of the universal Church . . . cannot
err, since our Lord said (Luke xxii.32): I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy
faith fail not.’ . . . Since the foundation of the papal ministry is Christ’s grace

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of headship and Christ’s prayer, Aquinas sees the papal ministry as the antidote to the inevitability of theological divisions” (217–18).
Levering himself offers a very subtle and sophisticated solution to the
question of local and universal: “Just as the unity of the many Eucharists
requires an understanding of the one living body and blood of Christ, so
also the unity of the many members and churches requires an understanding of the one Church encompassing all members and churches,
which are divisible in a sense that the body and blood of Christ are not.
. . . The conceptual self-sufficiency of the local church, as containing in
itself all the local churches, no more follows than does the conceptual
self-sufficiency of the local Eucharist. In both cases, the ‘Body of Christ’
includes both the one and the many in a nuanced fashion” (193–94). It
seems that our author never came across the snappy phrase that made its
way in ecumenical circles from the mid-twentieth-century Swiss
Reformed theologian Jean-Jacques von Allmen, to the effect that “the
local church is wholly church but not the whole Church.” The notion of
a Eucharistic presidency for the universal Church was at least floated
(albeit in a “problem box” following paragraph 111) in the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order study, The Nature and Purpose of the
Church (1998): “Most churches accept that a eucharist needs a president.
Amongst these, there are some who would go on to say that a gathering
of eucharistic communities at regional and world level similarly needs a
president. In this perspective conciliarity implies primacy and primacy
conciliarity”; regrettably, the idea was dropped altogether from the
revised text of 2005, The Nature and Mission of the Church.
In his fifth and final main chapter, Levering concentrates on the notion
of “sacramental mediation,” which has in fact underlain the entire book.
Volf appears again on account of his charge against “the sociological weaknesses of hierarchical structures”: “Were hierarchical ecclesial structure the
only ecclesial option, he notes, many people would choose instead to
remain unchurched. In this sense, ‘The differentiation of various traditions
is not simply to be lamented as a scandal, but rather welcomed as a sign of
the vitality of the Christian faith within multicultural, rapidly changing
societies demanding diversification and flexibility’ ” (229). The question
hinges, says Levering in reply, upon what constitutes the core of Christian
personalism: “Specifically, how does Jesus Christ encounter, heal, and
elevate into Trinitarian communion the personhood of each of his
members? At the heart of this question is whether one understands the
Church to be constituted by sacramental mediation (and thus preeminently
by the Eucharist)” (232). Our author proceeds, somewhat surprisingly, by
way of the German Protestant J. G. Hamann (1730–88) and the Jewish

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thinker Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) before coming to “Aquinas’s
theology of the priesthood, which draws heavily upon Dionysius’ understanding of mediation while also responding to concerns that resonate with
those of Volf ” (233). (Admittedly, it would have been possible to bring in
also John Henry Newman; see 245, n. 60.) Briefly: “Human beings, after
sin, do not come naturally to look upward. The hierarch, within the
community, belongs to the ‘perceptible symbols’ by which the triune God
leads human beings upward to communion in divine unity and Trinity. By
his presiding at the Eucharistic synaxis, the hierarch symbolizes the need
for each member to receive from above, from Christ, and the hierarch
symbolizes the reality that the gifts are not merely exchanged among the
members but rather come down from the Father through Christ by his
Spirit. The community becomes itself in worship—a richly symbolic
worship in which the pattern of upward-looking receptivity is symbolized
throughout. Hierarchy thus fits the particular kind of interpersonal relationship that is the relationship of fallen/redeemed human beings with
God. So as to share in the Trinitarian communion of equal Persons, human
beings need to be formed by an embodied hierarchical symbolism to learn
how once again to receive gifts from on high. Even an imperfect hierarch
can take his place within the symbolic framework, although it is much
better that the hierarch be what he should be” (256). And to that very last
point Levering reverts in his brief conclusion on “hierarchy and holiness”
(where he engages with Pheme Perkins and Nicholas M. Healy). The clue
resides in “self-dispossessive receptivity,” being enabled by the mediation of
grace to follow the pattern of Christ’s kenotic charity (291).
For clarity of exposition in the main text, and for comprehensiveness of
reference in the footnotes, it would be hard to better this book.
N&V
Geoffrey Wainwright
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, NC

Aesthetic Revelation: Reading Ancient and Medieval Texts after
Hans Urs von Balthasar by Oleg V. Bychkov (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2010 ), vii + 349 pp.
I N Aesthetic Revelation, Oleg V. Bychkov sets out to discern and evaluate
the hermeneutical method of Hans Urs von Balthasar, particularly his read
of aesthetic thinking in non-Christian and Christian tradition. Bychkov
proposes to critique von Balthasar’s aesthetic method by a close, historical, Gadamer-infused examination of ancient texts (5; see also xiv, 100).
Following Brian McNeil, Bychkov acknowledges: “Balthasar sees the

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theological exegete more as an iconographer than as a photographer” (94).
In other words, von Balthasar examines multiple texts by drawing together
various unifying themes or Gestalten instead of employing chronology or
narrow textual exegesis (97, 115). Key to the arrangement of these Gestalten is the singular Gestalt of Christ, the Incarnate God (73). Von Balthasar
is deeply indebted to Karl Barth for his profoundly Christocentric perspective (52–55). Despite von Balthasar’s frequent resistances to Immanuel
Kant, Bychkov sees von Balthasar’s understanding of the aesthetic as essentially modern (78) and argues that von Balthasar’s hermeneutic resembles
that of Heidegger or Gadamer more than it does ancient authors (85).
Central to von Balthasar’s exegetical method is the “aesthetic,” and here
Bychkov focuses on two qualities in particular: the aesthetic as revelatory,
and the aesthetic as sensible (113, 123). Together, the revelatory and the
sensible constitute what Bychkov calls a “direct seeing,” or an intuitive
grasp that tends to bypass the intellect (120).
These three aesthetic features, the revelatory, the sensible, and direct
seeing, become Bychkov’s fundamental criteria in his subsequent examination of historical texts. Bychkov dedicates the rest of the book to examining the concept of the aesthetic in specific Western traditions: Platonic,
Stoic, Augustinian, Bonaventure/Late Medieval (129–321). Bychkov
interacts with both the primary texts and historical scholars, and he relates
these findings to von Balthasar’s claims about them. Not all of Bychkov’s
chosen texts, particularly those from the Stoic tradition, fall under von
Balthasar’s purview, and Bychkov’s stated goal in this case is to see if he
can find further correlations with von Balthasar’s work in the broader
Western tradition (124).The author discovers repeated instances of von
Balthasar finding his own project in the works of historical figures, a practice von Balthasar often employs that serves to distort these figures according to his own image (particularly Plato, 141). Augustine and Bonaventure
appear as figures most resembling Balthasar’s own sensibilities, perhaps not
least because both are explicitly Christian, and the attempts of each to
arrange theology according to Christ’s form have the most sympathies
with Balthasar’s efforts. The overall historical sense that emerges is one of
von Balthasar’s continuity with history, and in this way Bychkov affirms
von Balthasar’s basic project by unveiling similar contours in ancient and
medieval thinkers. He finds in von Balthasar and these historical figures a
comparable sensibility toward the aesthetic: an intuitive or “direct” grasp
of something revealed or unveiled through the senses.
Bychkov concludes, “Our hermeneutic dialogue with ancient and
medieval thought proves that von Balthasar’s analysis was essentially
correct: both ancient and medieval authors do notice and explore for

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their theological and philosophical needs the revelatory aspect of what
we now call aesthetic experience” (323). He then offers further reflections on the current state of aesthetic studies, urging a more “engaged”
field—that is, one brought out of its academic isolation. He ends with
this phenomenological note from Husserl and Schelling: “Beyond the
realm of eidetically observable phenomena, there is no intelligible reality:
things resist our reflection about them . . . and pose limits” (333).
The effort presented in Aesthetic Revelation is both arduous and laudable. Bychkov approaches his primary texts with great care, attentive both
to their historical context and to the original languages employed. His
work is a fine attempt to resituate von Balthasar according to the tradition
of the aesthetic thought he himself explores, and with more historical
awareness than von Balthasar displays. Bychkov also helps to situate von
Balthasar within contemporary discussion, relating von Balthasar both to
recent history in aesthetic circles—particularly with respect to Kant and
to phenomenology—and to the possible future of the aesthetic in the
academy, where the aesthetic remains isolated from other disciplines.
It is not always clear, however, that von Balthasar’s interaction with
historical texts has been fully evaluated, and with that the possible further
uses of his aesthetic “hermeneutic.” Bychkov’s own treatment of von
Balthasar’s historical interlocutors reveals von Balthasar’s troubling
tendency to see his own project in the works of the Western philosophical, theological tradition, and it is fair to wonder if Bychkov’s optimistic
conclusion—“Balthasar’s analysis was essentially correct”—is stretched a
bit too far. Bychkov’s careful work helps to indicate deep flaws in von
Balthasar’s perspective—as, for example, in his neglect (in Bychkov’s eyes,
cf. 176) of the Stoic tradition, which Bychkov persuasively indicates has
a wealth of material for aesthetic reflection (176–212). Pressing the flaws
of von Balthasar’s studies would have been helpful, even as Bychkov helps
to vindicate von Balthasar’s interaction with history.
A prominent feature of Bychkov’s work is the insistence that his own
method will emphasize history alongside a narrowed definition of the
“aesthetic”: the aesthetic as a revelatory, “direct” seeing through the
senses. Though this helps to limit Bychkov’s study to a manageable
whole, it also distinguishes the focus of his study from von Balthasar’s
theological emphases. Von Balthasar’s affirmation or denial of aesthetic
concepts is not based on a self-sufficient sense of the aesthetic, but on the
form of Christ. Bychkov’s study concentrates on the aesthetic qualities of
this form, not on the Christological aspect of the form. The decision to
focus on the three qualities of the aesthetic—as revelatory, sensual, and
direct—rather than to examine the Christological form that orders those

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qualities is in a certain respect necessary to Bychkov’s study. His branches
into a wider range of early non-Christian sources than von Balthasar’s. At
the same time, it serves to obscure Bychkov’s evaluation of von Balthasar’s
“hermeneutic,” the proposed emphasis of Aesthetic Revelation, since
Bychkov himself does not take up von Balthasar’s interpretive method in
full. Von Balthasar’s “hermeneutic,” in other words, is Christologicalhistorical, and indeed primarily Christological rather than historical. The
form of Christ shapes history itself.The limits of Bychkov’s study put him
at partial odds with von Balthasar’s method. He evaluates von Balthasar
in a primarily aesthetic, historical manner instead of adopting von
Balthasar’s Christological point of view. This makes his evaluation of that
method itself partial, and, for this reviewer, calls into question Bychkov’s
basic assumption that von Balthasar is essentially a modern, Heideggerian-Gadamerian textual interpreter.
Bychkov also displays great sympathies with both modern hermeneutic theory, particularly Hans-George Gadamer, and phenomenology. His
evaluation of von Balthasar as an essentially modern, phenomenological
reader of history is both accurate and misleading. While von Balthasar is
beholden to modern ideas, such as what Fergus Kerr has called a
“Heideggerian Thomism,” von Balthasar also sets himself against much of
the modern project. He places himself at a distance from Kant, and he
rejects phenomenology despite his sympathies with it. A wider-ranging
interaction with the work of scholars Aidan Nichols and D. C. Schindler
would have assisted Bychkov with regard to von Balthasar’s complex relationship to phenomenology and modern philosophy. Thomas Aquinas
also looms as an important, and uninvestigated, aesthetic interlocutor of
von Balthasar.
As a whole, Bychkov’s work is admirable. His book contributes to the
valuable task of placing von Balthasar in the wider context of the history
of ideas and thus more firmly in the contemporary discussion of the
future of aesthetics. Bychkov’s careful analysis of historical texts is most
helpful here, and his lengthy discussion of the modern interest in aesthetics is indispensible. Aesthetic Revelation helps to highlight the possibilities
and problems in von Balthasar’s “iconography” of the past, even if it does
not resolve either.
N&V
Anne M. Carpenter
Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI

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Book Reviews

The Drug, the Soul, and God: A Theological Perspective on
Anti-Depressants by John-Mark Miravalle (Scranton, PA: University of
Scranton Press, 2010 ), 139 pp.
J OHN -M ARK Miravalle’s The Drug, the Soul, and God formulates a
Catholic response to the pharmaceutical treatment of depression. It
follows Gaudium et Spes in discerning the signs of the time, in this case the
growing dependence on anti-depressants in our society, and offers a
response drawing on the Catholic tradition, specifically “the psychology of
Thomas Aquinas” (25). One of Miravalle’s main goals is to make clear that
there is an overreliance on anti-depressants, caused in part by false assurances of the scientific grounding of the cause of depression itself. Rather
than simply assuming that all depression is physiologically based, as most
do, Miravalle draws from Aquinas’s treatment of sorrow to provide an
explanation rooted in the passions and therefore more under one’s own
control. If depression is simply a biological problem, then the response
could simply entail a pharmaceutical approach. If it is, however, rooted in
the passions, involving both soul and body, then the response must entail
something more holistic, respecting the spiritual nature of humanity.
Miravalle begins by exposing the shallow approach of modern
psychology, which lacks a defined anthropology, especially regarding
man’s moral and spiritual constitution (1). He states that the intent of the
book is to provide the principles needed from a Catholic perspective to
give guidance on the use of anti-depressants. Chapter one leads with a
discussion of anti-depressants in general, particularly their palliative rather
than curative role for the patient. The controversy over anti-depressants
centers on whether or not depression is physiological, rising from the
improper functioning of neurotransmitters. Miravalle focuses on the
recentness of this assertion (made mostly after the rise of anti-depressants
themselves) and the lack of compelling scientific proof (14). The current
consensus on the use of anti-depressants, he argues, comes from the overwhelming influence of the pharmaceutical companies and the ease of
their use for doctors. However, their rise has lead to the treatment of
depression on simply a bodily level without reaching to the real, personal
depth of the illness. He contends that doctors have removed mental
illness from the patient’s sphere of control and experience (18). With this
background, Miravalle states that the object of his inquiry in the rest of
the book concerns whether it is justifiable to give anti-depressants when
there is not a clear biochemical disorder (21).
In chapter two Miravalle turns to Aquinas for a more holistic account
of depression. He states that Aquinas “lays out the proper anthropological

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conception of the essence, causes, symptoms, and finality of depression, as
well as the foundation for its appropriate treatment” (26). The focus of his
reading is Aquinas’s account of the passions, particularly the passion of
sorrow. Since a passion is a reaction to some perceived good or evil, one
can control the passions by attaching positive or negative associations with
an object in the imagination. This view of the passions enables Miravalle
to assert more responsibility for the one suffering from depression over his
or her emotional state (32). He next turns to Aquinas’s account of sorrow:
sorrow in itself, which is a rational pain; its cause, seen as deprivation of a
perceived good; its effects, including impairment of normal mental function; and its remedies, such as positive physical, emotional, and spiritual
stimuli (34–44). Depression in particular is described as a burden on the
soul, because of which one withdraws into oneself; in depression the
mood is not focused on one particular object, but on all things (37, 46).
He summarizes the light Aquinas sheds on depression as follows:
Depression is not, therefore, an unintelligible, senseless ailment, and one
need not turn as by default to the physical makeup of the person in
order to understand its origin. Rather, it generally seems to stem from
an excessive introspection and concentration on internal pain.This state
is to be especially fought by attempting to reconnect the person with
what might be called extra-mental reality. (45)

The most important extra-mental realities are eternal realities, which
Aquinas holds up as the highest source of relief for depression, since they
are focused on the triumph of good and are most fulfilling of human teleology (43–46). By ignoring the ultimate good, modern psychology cuts
itself off from the most important referent and solution to depression.
After this articulation of a broader anthropology, Miravalle in chapter
three articulates the moral principles needed to guide discussion of
depression. Morality is crucial to this discussion, because, as Miravalle
describes, it is the art of fulfilling the human person, which shapes one to
be as perfect as possible and attains the goods appropriate to one’s nature
in order to maximize one’s potential for excellence (47). The crux of his
argument focuses on the principle of integrity, namely, that one must not
deliberately act in a manner contrary to human goodness or in a way that
prohibits one from fulfilling the task entrusted to him or her by God
(48–49). Any manipulation of the person through the use of mood-altering drugs must be evaluated in light of its effect on the person’s overall
well-being. Miravalle uses contraception as one example of the pharmacological manipulation of the person from a bodily level without respect
for the person’s moral and spiritual dimensions (51–54). He concludes

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Book Reviews

the chapter by discussing the good of inner peace, which mood-altering
drugs could potentially harm by creating an artificial mood without the
proper integration of the person.
The fourth chapter brings us to the heart of the discussion of the
moral permissibility of anti-depressants. Miravalle articulates his position
that depression has not been proven to be biochemically based, which
leads him to this position:
It seems to me that antidepressant drug use is not in itself intrinsically
evil, and may even be of real benefit in therapy when used in conjunction with treatments geared more directly at the patient’s mental state.
However, it is not morally permissible to use these drugs as the sole or
fundamental treatment for depression, since to do so would constitute an
unnatural perversion of the appetitive power away from the apprehensive
power, and would, therefore, involve an attack on personal integrity. (59)

He asserts that the evidence points to depression as being primarily rooted
in experience. The response to experience-based depression is to assert the
governing role of the intellect over the passions: “The appetitive power is
meant to respond to the apprehensive power.The person’s emotions should
respond to how the mind sees things” (63). Anti-depressants thwart this
proper interior harmony: “The mind presents the world in a negative, ultimately tragic light, and yet the individual’s emotional experience is one of
contentment, or even of a general cheerfulness. In scholastic language, the
person apprehends evil and experiences joy” (ibid.). It is this evaluation that
provides the heart of his moral criticism of the use of anti-depressants. Antidepressants do not address the experiential root of mental problems, but
rather simply alter one’s mood while letting the interior conflict persist.
Treatment should focus on removing the source of the problem, “the
offending object,” while medication should be reserved for aiding this
treatment in a subordinate fashion—when patients cannot function properly—so that the harmony of the powers can be preserved (70, 77).
With the main purpose of the book now accomplished, Miravalle
devotes the two remaining chapters respectively to promoting a Thomistic
psychology and examining the spiritual role of suffering. Chapter five
examines particularly the joint work of Anna Terruwe and Conrad Baars as
a model for combining Thomistic moral principles with modern psychology. The final chapter looks at the role of suffering in relation to spiritual
growth. Suffering can serve as a just punishment, or as an opportunity for
the soul to be roused from spiritual slumber; it can impel one toward
growth and even perfection, and is also an opportunity for the Christian to
share in the suffering of Christ as a member of His Body (100–105, 112).

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1121

Suffering is also a natural response to loss and sin, a manifestation of which
can be seen in depression. Miravalle worries that anti-depressants may
deprive souls of spiritual growth by covering over problems and dulling the
soul, thus deterring persons from reflection on life and longing for spiritual goods (109). This leads him to his final and most spiritually charged
critique of anti-depressants: The anti-depressant culture “is a phenomenon
that is, to a large degree, the product of a general misunderstanding, or
more precisely non-awareness of the meaning and significance of suffering” (112). In conclusion, Miravalle reaffirms that the treatment of depression should respect the harmony of the powers and reject the false position
that seeks to avoid suffering at all costs (117–18).
As a whole, I think Miravalle is very successful at pointing out problems with the current use of anti-depressants and providing general moral
and spiritual principles to form a response. The problem, however, is
complex, especially given the need to substantiate scientific claims. While
I greatly applaud Miravalle’s use of Aquinas in psychology, I wonder if
Aquinas is sufficient for a complete response to this modern dilemma.
Just as Aquinas turned to ancient philosophy as a metaphysical tool for
theology, I believe he would also glean all that he could from modern
science. Aquinas provides a solid foundation for understanding human
nature as a body-soul unity, but his insights could be fleshed out by using
modern research on the brain. Miravalle is right to point that there is still
much uncertainty; it seems, however, that an account of depression is
incomplete without recourse to modern science (even while we await
more detail from science). Aquinas is a solid guide in this discussion, but
his thought should not be made to provide more than it is able.
In particular, I question whether Aquinas’s description of depression as
a sorrow completely expresses the depression that many suffer today. It is
true that many people who take anti-depressants may simply be suffering
from the excessive influence of the passion of sorrow. Simply addressing
their situations chemically could do great harm to their souls, as Miravalle
points out. However, what of the case of someone whose depression, or
other serious mental illness, has descended to the level of pathology?
Here sorrow is not simply (or no longer) functioning as a response to
some outside stimulant, but rather the emotions have been prohibited
from functioning properly. Miravalle assumes that the intellect must be
focused on a negative trigger in the depressed mind and therefore
concludes that providing an artificial emotional stimulant would cause
interior imbalance and do harm to inner harmony. It may not be enough,
however, in addressing the negative thoughts of the mind, simply to
remove the source of the illness and thereby allow a return to proper

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Book Reviews

functioning. Anti-depressants are designed to address such a case of severe
emotional malfunction.Therefore, although Miravalle’s assessment is largely
on target, inasmuch as there is a severe overuse of anti-depressants, it does
not comprehensively illuminate anti-depressant use for serious mental
illnesses, including ones more serious than depression.
While the analogy of contraception is important and helpful inasmuch
as it highlights the crucial role of teleology, it also has its limits. Whereas
contraception impedes one’s natural teleology, anti-depressants are meant
to enable human flourishing. When the emotion of sorrow has been
taken to pathological levels, it is then crucial to remove this excess. It is
true that in some patients anti-depressants may produce an excessive
opposite emotion, but ideally they should enable the proper functioning
of the emotional life. Anti-depressants do not necessarily prevent those
who take them from experiencing the passion of sorrow, but rather are
meant to pull one out of excessive sorrow. It strikes me as paradoxical that
Miravalle mentions that anti-depressants may be used in certain cases and
nevertheless accuses them of intrinsically harming one’s internal order
(using the example of contraception to bolster his point). Regardless, it is
important to take Miravalle’s enjoinment to discover and address seriously the emotional roots of the illness.
It is encouraging to see a serious and thoughtful engagement of such
a significant, contemporary topic, despite any limitations in the book.
While Miravalle may have too quickly dismissed current scientific studies of depression, he has provided an important service in providing key
anthropological and moral points to assist in analyzing the use of antidepressants. It is necessary to point out that the scientific grounds for the
pharmacological treatment of depression are currently weak, yet a more
definitive Catholic response may require further scientific inquiry. It is
hoped that this book will receive a wide reading and will encourage
future Catholic engagements with this crucial issue as part of the Church’s
mission to heal both souls and our culture.
N&V
R. Jared Staudt
Augustine Institute
Denver, CO

Eternity, Time, and the Life of Wisdom by Matthew L. Lamb
(Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007 ), xx + 161 pp.
M ATTHEW Lamb once described Thomas Aquinas as a paradox who
conjoined deep reverence for tradition with “an astonishing zest for
novelty” (“Introduction” to his translation of Thomas Aquinas’s Commen-

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tary on Ephesians, 1966, p. 1). Lamb himself might seem to be such a paradox. One reviewer of his Solidarity with Victims noted that Lamb’s project
“just might put political theology on a new and promising footing” but
was bewildered by “his attempt to salvage orthodoxy” (Charles Strain in
Journal of Religion 65 [1985]: 299–301). Lamb’s aim has always been to
recover the transformative power of orthodoxy. This has taken different
forms at different moments of his long career, but one constant has been
his preoccupation with the challenge of mediating the truth claims of the
Gospel in a way that would resist both the truncations of modernity and
the distortions of sub-par theology. As he puts it in the present volume,
“The challenge facing philosophers and theologians today is twofold.
First is the task of reaching up or returning to the truly great philosophers and theologians of the past in order to be transformed by the truth
and wisdom they communicate. The second task is transposing that truth
and wisdom to the manifold problems and issues of today” (52f.).
Concretely for Lamb this has meant a profound retrieval of Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas, together with a serious engagement with modern
and post-modern thought and a commitment to what some might justly
regard as the “novel” project of Bernard Lonergan.
In any case the “novelty” of Lamb’s approach was already apparent in
the remarkably insightful introduction to his translation of Thomas
Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians (1966).There he showed how Thomas
Aquinas assimilated and transformed the patristic tradition of exegesis,
not through the introduction of new techniques, but by a differentiated
reflection on how the Word of God might be transmitted in the words
of human beings. The faithful transmission of the transcendent in the
particular has, in a sense, remained the focus of Lamb’s work down to the
essays in the present volume. Along the way he has tried to deal with the
complications stemming from the modern and post-modern problematic
of hermeneutics and history.
Having drawn attention to the importance of Thomas Aquinas’s
presuppositions for his approach to Scripture as the word of God, Lamb
was led to work out his own presuppositions with great care in order to
come to terms with the derailments of modern and post-modern
thought. This he did in his published dissertation, History, Method and
Theology (1978). In a broad sense his concern in that volume was with
the relationship between faith and culture. He argued that theology must
move beyond historical and exegetical questions to evaluative and foundational questions. Theology cannot abandon its truth-intention without
also surrendering its critical mediation between religious faith and the
cultural matrix. In his subsequent Solidarity with Victims (1982) this

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concern resulted in a typology of theologies based on the relationship
between theory and praxis. Here he argued for a theology based on
conversion and a self-critical recovery of the classic meaning of reason
from the teeth of its modern distortions and truncations as a precondition for coming to terms with the most authentic witness of the Christian tradition. All along the line he has opposed the Enlightenment
temptation to subordinate the cosmic order to ourselves rather than
ourselves to the cosmic order, insisting that such resistance depends on
fidelity to the truth claims of the Gospel.
As their collective title suggests, the essays in the present volume carry
forward Lamb’s relentless critique of an historicism that buries the past and
a relativism that refuses to come to judgment. These essays represent the
projects of more than a dozen years from 1992 to 2004. Where his previous books were decidedly addressed to the methodological situation of
academic theology in relation to other disciplines, here one senses an
address to the wider Church, though these essays make substantial intellectual demands. It seems clear that Lamb feels the disorder he has decried
in academic theology is increasingly spilling over into ecclesial life, as the
introduction by Dauphinais and Levering suggests. The essays are well
chosen and aptly titled, for it is easy to discern in them thematic continuities in relation to the title and, to the extent that a collection of essays can
be said to have a thesis, this collection advances an important one.
For Lamb, wisdom has to do with the apprehension of order, which
means, concretely, coming to understand that time and space are an
ordered whole present in the divine eternal now. Coming to terms with
divine eternity as the source of order and meaning in history is intrinsic
to wisdom. Lamb brings out how Augustine wedded the Platonic concern
for human intelligence as spiritual to the Christian commitment to the
word of God as true, which commitment entailed, among other things,
that history itself is a field of divine meaning. Augustine thus took intelligence in act as the analogue for approaching the mystery of God, whose
loving understanding creates and orders the meaningful totality of times
and places. This achievement became possible for Augustine only because
he had himself been profoundly converted morally, intellectually, and religiously. Lamb argues that unless we undergo the same profound conversion we will be unable to reach up to the mind of Augustine. Christian
wisdom depends upon a deep personal transformation, which involves,
among other things, intellectual probity as a form of purity of heart.
Lamb argues that Boethius and later Thomas Aquinas were worthy
heirs of Augustine in this respect. Their achievement was derailed,
however, into the gutters of voluntarism and nominalism, where divine

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1125

power and will eclipsed divine wisdom as the key categories for conceiving God’s relationship to the world. This derailment leads directly into
the modern project, preoccupied with power relations and convinced
that divine sovereignty and human autonomy compete in a zero-sum
game. Lamb discerns the effects of this derailment both in modern
philosophy and in the sterility of later scholasticism, as exemplified in the
controversy de auxiliis, which, he argues, stemmed from a mechanistic
approach to divine transcendence and human freedom. He points out
with great perspicacity how the instrumentalizing approach to knowledge characteristic of so much modern science is also embedded in biblical fundamentalism. “Where modern science would wrest knowledge as
power from observing and instrumentalizing nature, so modern fundamentalists would wrest from biblical apocalyptic . . . the secrets of the end
time as immanent” (57).
Thus the relationship between Catholicism and modern cultures calls
for dialectical discernment. Lamb understands dialectic in Lonergan’s
sense of coming to grips with the radical source of differences. This is
altogether more differentiated and serious than asking, for example,
whether Catholics should adopt the posture of separatism or assimilation
vis-à-vis American culture. A serious critique of culture demands coming
to terms with transcultural norms, which norms Lamb, following Lonergan, finds in the “communicative praxis” of asking and answering questions. The root of dogmatism and nihilism in modern culture, he argues,
is “misplaced normativity” by which we attribute to our products and
practices the normativity that really belongs to the praxis of intelligence,
reason, and charity. By disclosing the normative structure of consciousness, Lonergan showed how we can rescue the authentic achievements of
orthodoxy from the derailments of conceptualism, voluntarism, and
nominalism. “The work of Bernard Lonergan demonstrates the need to
recover the intellectual, moral, and religious orthopraxis that has been the
matrix out of which genuine orthodoxy lives through the ages” (145f.).
This praxis is “communicative” because we are subjects-in-relation
whose development is conversational. Lamb is sharply critical of modernity’s “monadic” construction of personal identity in isolation from God
and others. Rousseau exemplifies this tendency in his appeal to God not as
a meaningful partner in the making of a life, but solely as a judging spectator. The truncated modern subject understands both internal and external
relations in terms of domination. By contrast, the Confessions of Augustine
and Teresa of Avila are invoked as examples of a Christian self-understanding in conversation with God.The irony of modern historical consciousness
is that its awareness of historicity is generally attended by a failure to under-

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stand how human history is constituted by meaning in relation to God and
others. Memory and expectation mediate past and future into the conscious
present, in a created participation in that divine eternal presence which
creates and redeems all times. Thus our friendship is not limited to those
who happen fortuitously to share our particular time and place.
Lamb inveighs against the modern empiricist truncation of consciousness for closing the world of nature and history off from God. Having
thus exiled God from time and space, modernity is unable to understand
how history has any meaning beyond the succession of discrete
moments. In consequence, moderns are unable to read the Bible as referring to any realities beyond itself. Modern critical approaches to Scripture never complete the hermeneutical circle by coming to grips with
the religious realities mediated through biblical testimony; one may as
well venture a history of mathematics without understanding the math.
Lamb sees Einsteinian relativity as a way to recover the openness of time
and history and reconnect with the wisdom of Augustine, Boethius, and
Thomas Aquinas, who understood that divine eternity does not negate
time but creates and orders all times.
It is this divine eternal presence which ensures that “there are no nameless victims of history” (9) and opens up a space for human freedom. The
resurrection attests the personal character of God’s saving love. God knows
and loves individuals, not only in the divine understanding but also in the
human mind of Christ. Christ suffered as no other, indeed more than all
others combined, because in his human consciousness he knew and loved
each of us in all the uniqueness of our personal histories of sin and suffering. Thus Lamb urges “the highest Christology possible . . . if one is going
to take the concrete histories of suffering seriously” (65 n. 35).
Lamb is well known as one of the most important students of Bernard
Lonergan. Those who have studied Lonergan seriously will feel his influence everywhere in these pages. But Lamb is no slavish repeater, whether
of Lonergan or of Augustine, Boethius, or Thomas Aquinas. He has assimilated their ideas in a remarkable way and brought them to bear creatively
on his own distinctive project and in his own distinctive voice. One
might wonder how Lamb conceives the relationship of this project to
Lonergan’s call for a paradigm shift in theology. For example, how does
Lamb understand his use of Lonergan’s hermeneutics (cf. 23f.) to criticize historical critical approaches to the Bible in relation to Lonergan’s
differentiation of functional specialties in theology? The answer might be
surmised, but what is wanted is a monograph.
There are limits to what can be accomplished in an essay, and even a
collection of essays cannot transcend them. Ideas compactly expressed

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tend to get repeated rather than expanded. These essays are more toursde-force than patient pedagogy. Lamb’s immense learning makes strenuous demands on the reader. He presupposes a great deal. He paints with
a broad brush and seldom substantiates his claims with the specificity and
detail one might expect in a monograph. Some readers will no doubt
bristle at his sweeping censure of Scotus, Ockham, Descartes, or others,
yet he gives them few details to hold on to. On the other hand, Lamb’s
generalizations are at the service of rare insight. He never succumbs to
scissors-and-paste theology. Virtually every page shimmers with light.
Even those who disagree profoundly should find his purpose worthwhile
and his ideas immensely stimulating.
N&V
Jeremy D. Wilkins
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas