Nova et Vetera Winter 2012 • Volume 10, Number 1 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal S ENIOR E DITOR Georges Cardinal Cottier, O.P. C O -E DITORS Reinhard Hütter, Duke University Divinity School Matthew Levering, University of Dayton M ANAGING E DITOR R. Jared Staudt, Augustine Institute A SSOCIATE E DITORS Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Timothy Gray, Augustine Institute Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., Dominican Studium, Toulouse Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Eichstätt Michael Sherwin, O.P., University of Fribourg B OARD OF A DVISORS Anthony Akinwale, O.P., Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., University of Fribourg Steven Boguslawski, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross David B. Burrell, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame Peter Casarella, DePaul University Romanus Cessario, O.P., St. John’s Seminary Boyd Taylor Coolman, Boston College Michael Dauphinais, Ave Maria University Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Dominican University College Fulvio Di Blasi, Collegio Universitario ARCES Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments Anthony Fisher, O.P., Bishop of Parramatta, Australia Laura Garcia, Boston College Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard University Paul J. Griffiths, Duke University Divinity School Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa Fergus Kerr, O.P., University of Edinburgh Matthew L. Lamb, Ave Maria University Mother Assumpta Long, O.P., Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist Steven A. Long, Ave Maria University Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Saint Meinrad School of Theology Daniel McInerny, Baylor University Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame R. R. Reno, First Things Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg Pia Francesca de Solenni, Seattle, Washington David Solomon, University of Notre Dame Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Instructions for Contributors 1. Address all contributions, books for review, and related correspondence to Matthew Levering, mjlevering@yahoo.com or Reinhard Hütter, rhuetter@div.duke.edu. 2. Contributions should be prepared to accord as closely as possible with the typographical conventions of Nova et Vetera. The University of Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) is our authority on matters of style. 3. Nova et Vetera practices blind review. Submissions are evaluated anonymously by members of the editorial board and other scholars with appropriate expertise. Name, affiliation, and contact information should be included on a separate page apart from the submission. 4. Galley-proofs of articles are sent to contributors to be read and corrected and should be returned to the Editors within ten days of receipt. Corrections should be confined to typographical and factual errors. 5. Submission of a manuscript entails the author’s agreement (in the event his or her contribution is accepted for publication) to assign the copyright to Nova et Vetera. NOVA ET VETERA The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Winter 2012 Vol. 10, No. 1 C OMMENTARY Witness to Faith: George Weigel, Blessed John Paul II, and the Theological Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C AJETAN C UDDY, O.P. & ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. 1 Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? . . . T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. 15 A RTICLES Anaphoras without Institution Narrative: Historical and Dogmatic Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A NSGAR S ANTOGROSSI , O.S.B . AQUINAS AND THE E NVIRONMENT S YMPOSIUM Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C HRISTOPHER T HOMPSON Perennial Wisdom: Notes Toward a Green Thomism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C HRISTOPHER T HOMPSON Towards the Reciprocity of Man and Nature: Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . K ENNETH S CHMITZ On the Recovery of Experience and the Search for a Christian Environmentalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C HRISTOPHER B LUM At Home in the Cosmos: The Revealing of the Sons of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S TRATFORD C ALDECOTT Renewing Husbandry: Wendell Berry, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas on “Economics” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J OHN A. C UDDEBACK The Gift of Wonder: Chestertonian Resources for Creation Stewardship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DAVID PAUL D EAVEL Nature’s Finality and the Stewardship of Creation According to Saint Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S TEPHEN A. H IPP Thomistic Reflections on the Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S TEVEN A. L ONG A World of Natures and the Presence of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C HARLES M OREROD, O.P. Metaphysical Realism as the Foundation of Environmental Stewardship and Economic Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D EBORAH S AVAGE Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ: The Catholic Agrarianism of Vincent McNabb, O.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M ATTHEW P HILIPP W HELAN 27 61 67 81 95 105 121 135 143 193 215 233 253 B OOK R EVIEWS Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology by Michael J. Gorman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PABLO G ADENZ 279 The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary on the Three Holy Mantras of the Śriṽaisn· ava · Hindus by Francis X. Clooney, S.J. . . . . . DANIEL A. K EATING 283 Jewish-Christian Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom: Engagements with the Theology of David Novak by Matthew Levering. . . . . . J OEL N. L OHR The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B ERNARD M ULCAHY, O.P. “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body by Eduardo J. Echeverria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M ARY S HIVANANDAN Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology edited by Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L AWRENCE J. W ELCH 287 290 293 298 The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international forum for theological and philosophical studies from a Thomistic perspective. Founded in 1926 by future Cardinal Charles Journet in association with Jacques Maritain, Nova et Vetera is published in related, distinct French and English editions. The English edition of Nova et Vetera welcomes articles and book reviews in theology, philosophy, and biblical studies that address central contemporary debates and discussions. We seek to be “at the heart of the Church,” faithful to the Magisterium and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and devoted to the work of true dialogue, both ecumenically and across intellectual disciplines. Nova et Vetera (ISSN 1542-7315) is published by Augustine Institute, 3001 S. Federal Blvd., Box 1126, Denver, CO 80236. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by Augustine Institute. © Copyright 2010 by Augustine Institute. 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For subscription inquiries, email us at nvjournal@intrepidgroup.com or phone 970-416-6673. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 1–13 1 Witness to Faith: George Weigel, Blessed John Paul II, and the Theological Life C AJETAN C UDDY, O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. Saint John’s Seminary Brighton, MA * * * ON 19 June 1948, a young Polish priest presented himself before a board of professors at the Pontificia Studiorum Universitas a Sancto Thoma Aquinate in Urbe—a place still commonly known as “the Angelicum.” He was about to defend his doctoral dissertation titled Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce.1 Doctoral defenses always occasion moments of anxiety. This praevium inspired a special awe. The assembled board included some of the most distinguished theologians in Rome. Future cardinals Paul Philippe, O.P., and Luigi Ciappi, O.P., served as examiners.2 They joined the institution’s most famous faculty member, Father Reginald GarrigouLagrange, O.P.3 The premier French Thomist had directed the work of the 1 The thesis was published in Italian in 1979: La fede secondo San Giovanni della Croce (Rome: Herder, 1979). It later was translated into English by Jordan Aumann, O.P., as Faith According to Saint John of the Cross (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981). 2 In his Preface to Faith According to Saint John of the Cross (13), Aumann notes the board’s composition. 3 “I [Wojtyl/a] wish to address the last word [of this Introduction] to the Very Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, who consented to direct the writing of this thesis, giving suggestions and guidance out of his own vast experience and learning” (Faith According, 29). Although readers may note in the dissertation insights from a variety of theological influences, one Wojtyl/an commentator has 2 Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P. young Father Karol Józef Wojtyl/a and was, as one author puts it, “his chief mentor both in Thomism . . . and in Catholic spirituality.”4 The legacy of the “monstre sacré of Thomism” entails its own complexity and questions.5 This evaluation should not surprise us. All are agreed that the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a tumultuous period for Catholic theology.6 To maintain objectivity during the heat of a controversy may prove difficult. More time must elapse before one can evaluate the form and matter of the “Garrigouvian” corpus, though some scholars have already begun to assess Garrigou’s significance.7 One thing can be said for remarked that “the influence of Garrigou-Lagrange, however, remained paramount” (Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyl/a: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997], 35).This estimation is echoed by Michael Waldstein in his thorough introduction to the most recent English translation of John Paul II’s writings on the “Theology of the Body”: “Wojtyl/a resolutely takes the side of his thesis advisor Garrigou-Lagrange in the debate about the Mystical Doctor’s relevance for the life of ordinary Christians. . . . Wojtyl/a may have come to the same conclusions on his own by his reading of St. John of the Cross, but it is likely that GarrigouLagrange helped significantly to shape the core of John Paul II’s vision” ( John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body [Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006], 87). 4 George Hunston Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of His Thought and Action (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981), 93. Williams goes on to remark, “Among his professors [at the Angelicum] were Father Michael Browne (1887–1971), the Irish Dominican and promoter of the elevation of St. Catherine of Siena to the rank of Doctor Ecclesiae, and three other future cardinals, the Dutch Maximilien de Furstenberg, the French Carmelite [sic] Pierre-Paul Phillippe [sic], and the Italian Mario A. Ciappi. But surely the greatest figure of the Angelicum was the French-born Father Réginald (‘the Rigid’) GarrigouLagrange, O.P. (1877–1969), the most distinguished authority in Christendom on Thomism in the tradition of the Leonine revival of the Angelic Doctor as the philosophical authority within the Church.” Although Williams’s book is a rigorous and engaging study of the intellectual strands of John Paul II, it erroneously claims that Cardinal Philippe was a Carmelite. The former Secretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (1967–73) was a Dominican theologian of the Province of France. 5 Richard Peddicord, O.P., The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005), 2. 6 For an interesting summary of some of themes and figures see Fergus Kerr, TwentiethCentury Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Also of help is John Auricchio, S.S.P., The Future of Theology (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1970). 7 For example, Aidan Nichols, O.P., in Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2008), who coined the adjective “Garrigouvian” (93, 105). George Weigel on Blessed John Paul II 3 certain: the convergence of three figures—St. John of the Cross, Karol Wojtyl/a, and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange—during an evolving period in Church history merits even today our close attention.8 We know, for instance, that the choice of a topic, namely, faith in the writings of the “Doctor Mysticus,” served Garrigou-Lagrange’s research purposes.9 The subject of faith and the location of the Thomist academy in Rome evoke certain comparisons.The Mystical Doctor himself grew up in the Thomistic atmosphere of the Spanish Salamanca School.10 Garrigou-Lagrange emphasized the centrality of faith to Catholic life and doctrine as a needed corrective to positivist views of the Church that had emerged from as early as the sixteenth century.11 In fact, the French Dominican had himself written many pages on St. John of the Cross and he also had been in active support of John’s elevation to the dignity of “Doctor of the Church.”12 As 8 It is interesting to note that Garrigou-Lagrange’s celebrated article “La théolo- gie nouvelle, où va-t-elle?” (Angelicum 23 [1946]: 126–45) was published the same year that the young Father Wojtyl/a arrived at the Angelicum (Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, 96). See also Aidan Nichols, O.P., “Thomism and the nouvelle théologie,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 1–19. 9 In regard to the topic, “Garrigou-Lagrange evidently influenced his [Wojtyl/a’s] choice of theme” (Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyl/a, 45). Williams agrees: “It would appear likely that Garrigou-Lagrange made the suggestion to Father Wojtyl/a to take up the problem of faith and its metaphysical status in order to supplement the earlier doctoral thesis done under him [Garrigou-Lagrange] in 1935 by Michel Labourdette, O.P.” (The Mind of John Paul II, 106). 10 “Although we have no definite information as to what lectures John followed during his year at the University [of Salamanca] as a teólogo . . . it seems certain that the young Carmelites attended the morning lectures given by [the Dominican theologian] Mancio [of Corpus Christi (1497–1576)] . . . for everyone at Salamanca talked of Mancio” (Bruno de Jésus-Marie, O.C.D., St. John of the Cross [New York: Sheed & Ward], 37). “Mancio was faithful to the spirit of his Order, as expressed in a General Chapter held at Salamanca in 1551, and a decree issued in 1561, which substituted, for University lectures, the Summa Theologica in place of Peter Lombard’s Sentences . . . Mancio expounded this code of Thomism, article by article, in accordance with Cajetan’s commentaries” (Bruno, 38). For details on the life and thought of the remarkable Mancio of Corpus Christi, see Vincent Beltrán de Heredia, O.P., “El Maestro Mancio de Corpus Christi, O.P.,” La Ciencia tomista 51 (1935): 7–103. 11 Cf. De Virtutibus Theologicis: Commentarius in Summam theologicam S.Thomae Ia IIae q. 62, 65, 68, et IIa IIae q. 1–46 (Turin: Roberto Berruti & Co., 1949); loosely translated (in part) into English by Thomas a Kempis Reilly, O.P., as The Theological Virtues: Volume One—On Faith (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1965). See also The One God: A Commentary on the First Part of St.Thomas’Theological Summa (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1943), 39–92. 12 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Christian Perfection and Contemplation According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 4 Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P. we know, the fortuitous convergence of contingent realities cannot be attributed to causes like “luck” or “chance.” In the light of divine Providence, as Aquinas reminds us, no accidents occur.13 God indeed orders all things suaviter et fortiter (cf. Wis 8:1). The young Polish priest passed his doctoral examinations with high marks. His written work, the thesis, received from his illustrious examiners eighteen beans out of a possible twenty. His oral defense was particularly exemplary. Father Wojtyl/a “received the highest grade possible, fifty marks out of fifty.”14 He returned to Poland and he began his first parish assignment in Niegowić. Father Garrigou-Lagrange continued teaching at the Angelicum for another twelve years, until he was reassigned to the Dominican priory at Santa Sabina in Rome. He remained there—gradually losing his mental faculties—until he died on the feast of the Dominican Rhineland mystic, Blessed Henry Suso, 15 February 1964.15 Many years later, on 14 September 1998, the same Father Karol Wojtyl/a, now reigning as Supreme Pontiff, gave the world his encyclical titled Fides et Ratio. In the introduction to that encyclical, John Paul II identifies a “reason why I write these reflections” and discloses the continuity between this and his earlier encyclicals. “In my Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, I drew attention to ‘certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied’. In the present Letter [Fides et Ratio], I wish to pursue that reflection by concentrating on the theme of truth itself and on its foundation in relation to faith. For it is undeniable that this time of rapid and complex change can leave especially the younger generation, to whom the future belongs and on whom it depends, with a sense that they have no valid points of reference.”16 The contemporary reader wonders 1937). Jacques Maritain notes Garrigou-Lagrange’s support in his introduction to Fr. Bruno de Jésus-Marie’s St. John of the Cross: “Cf. The Letter of Postulation addressed, on June 14th, 1926, in the name of the Collegio Angelico, by Fathers Hugon and Garrigou-Lagrange, to the Sovereign Pontiff, with a view to obtaining the title Doctor of the Universal Church for St. John of the Cross, Analecta O.C.D. (October-December, 1926)” (Bruno, St. John of the Cross, 382, n. 21). 13 “Nothing hinders certain things [from] happening by luck or by chance, if compared to their proximate causes: but not if compared to Divine Providence, whereby ‘nothing happens at random in the world,’ as Augustine says” (ST I, q. 116, a. 1, ad 2). 14 George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 87. 15 Cf. M.-B. Lavaud, “Le Père Garrigou-Lagrange: In memoriam,” Revue thomiste 64 (1964): 181–99; P. M. Emonet, “Un maître prestigieux,” Angelicum 42 (1965): 195–99. 16 Fides et Ratio, §6. George Weigel on Blessed John Paul II 5 whether the motivation and roots of this unique encyclical can be traced back to the Pope’s doctoral studies on the theological virtue of faith.17 * * * Sixty-two years after Wojtyl/a’s oral defense and only five years after his death, the long-awaited second volume to George Weigel’s biography of Pope John Paul II was released.18 The timing, in God’s providence, could not have been better. On 1 May 2011, Pope Benedict XVI beatified his predecessor. One now refers to the charismatic priest from Kraków as “Blessed John Paul II.” The Church prays to him. It goes without saying that Weigel’s monumental study of the “Millennial Pope” achieved a new standing, a high dignity, and a hagiographic value. What the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., said about Witness to Hope comes to mind: “If a choice had to be made among the biographies, Weigel would clearly win.”19 From the perspectives of both quantity and quality, Weigel’s overall efforts as papal biographer leave one breathless.The first volume, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide in thirteen languages, and a fourteenth (Chinese) is on the way.20 The book’s success shows that Cardinal Dulles made the right evaluation. Indeed, another reviewer called Witness “the most important biography of the 20th century.”21 The second volume, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, hit the top-ten bestsellers list of the Association of Catholic Publishers.22 With the publication of these two volumes, Weigel has put himself in the rare position of being his only real competition. As one reader concludes: “Weigel’s biography, in sum, is certainly the most authoritative the world is likely to get of one of the great figures of recent history.”23 What makes George Weigel’s account of Blessed John Paul II so significant? The answer is simple. Weigel understands the centrality of faith. In 17 One commentator suggests that it is possible to read Fides et Ratio as “a vindication of Garrigou-Lagrange’s lifework” (Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of Thomism, 220). 18 George Weigel, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II —The Victory of Free- dom, the Last Years, the Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2010). 19 Avery Dulles, “Witness to the Witness,” First Things 97 (November 1999): 49. 20 www.eppc.org/programs/catholicstudies/about/programID.16,pageID.260/ default.asp. 21 Jonathan V. Last, “Old Man and the See: The Last Years of a Historic Papacy,” The Weekly Standard, June 27, 2011, www.weeklystandard.com/articles/old-manand-see_574831.html. 22 www.cbpa.org/images/BestsellersList-0111.pdf (accessed 30 September 2011). 23 Mary Eberstadt, “The Cold War Pope,” Policy Review, December 1, 2010, www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/58031. 6 Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P. other words, he tells the story of a man of faith as only a man of faith can tell it. Weigel took inspiration from his subject. As he himself reports: “Referring to other biographical efforts and their emphasis on his role as a statesman, Pope John Paul II once remarked, ‘They try to understand me from the outside. But I can only be understood from inside.’ ”24 Breaking through the facile consensus that John Paul II was primarily (and perhaps only) an engaging intellectual and a political leader, Weigel insists that he was first and foremost a Christian. George Weigel enjoys the singular privilege of being the first to study, to know, and, then, to write about Blessed John Paul II “from the inside.” Weigel’s great service remains that he has told the Pope’s story through the eyes of faith. When the Church declares one “Blessed,” she does more than confer a post-mortem ecclesiastical honor on those who have remained faithful to a party line. Beatification signals a supernatural reality. And, as with all things supernatural, this reality requires faith both to recognize and to appreciate it. Only those who have the eyes to see are able to see. Weigel has shown himself stalwart in his commitment to recounting the life and times of Karol Wojtyl/a from a beatitudinal aspect. That is, he shows the Pope marching toward God. In a word, George Weigel “got” the late Holy Father. One regrets that critics of both John Paul II and George Weigel easily disregard the significance of approaching John Paul II under the aspect of supernatural beatitude. However, a Dominican would aver that Weigel’s achievement represents a triumph for a biography that now has become hagiography. To see with the eyes of faith remains essential to understanding both the Chair of Peter and Blessed John Paul II. “His faith is not one facet of his personality or one dimension of his intellect. His faith is Karol Wojtyl/a, at the most profound level of his personhood.”25 Because he lived as a true Christian believer, John Paul II exhibited a man transformed by the grace of God. In this way, the late Holy Father provided a tremendous, living example of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes as the vocation of humanity, namely, “to show forth the image of God and to be transformed into the image of the Father’s only Son.”26 To recall the foundational centrality of the imago Dei in what Aquinas calls the sacra doctrina introduces nothing new.27 Indeed, we discover the doctrine of the image present at the very beginning of divine revelation: 24 Witness to Hope, 7. This moving quotation is also repeated near the conclusion of its sequel, The End of the Beginning, 402. 25 Witness to Hope, 10 (emphasis in original). 26 See CCC 1877. 27 See D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development of Aquinas’ Teaching (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1990). George Weigel on Blessed John Paul II 7 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ ” (Gn 1:26). Why does the imago Dei attain an important place within Catholic teaching? The answer depends on the soul’s intellectual nature and its ability to know and to love God. At its origins, the imago Dei analogously reflects within the human person the eternal pattern of knowledge and love that exists in God himself.28 However, this “representative” image— in which the divine self-knowledge is imaged in the soul’s knowing and loving itself through its own essence—does not exhaust the potentialities of the image of God in man.29 The immanent operations of the rational soul extend beyond the human subject. The human being created in the imago Dei is called not only to image God by a notional and volitional reflection, but also to image God by knowing and loving the same object as that of the divine knowing and loving itself. In short, man can know and love God himself. In this movement prompted by divine charity, the Thomist school, especially as elaborated by its commentators, locates the most perfect form of the imago Dei that one can attain. Thomists refer to this form as the image of conformity.30 Taking into account the various concrete states in which the imago Dei can be identified, Thomists entertain a tripartite distinction. First, there is the natural image. This consists in man’s natural aptitude for understanding and loving God without sanctifying grace. Since the natural image belongs to the order of creation, all people possess it. Both saints and sinners alike bear the natural image of God. Secondly, there is the image 28 ST I, q. 93, a. 5. For further commentary, see William J. Hill, O.P., Proper Relations to the Indwelling Divine Persons (Washington, DC: The Thomist Press, n.d.), 1–8. “Temporal things are so dissimilar from God that in knowing and loving them the human soul neither expressly resembles God, nor is it thereby conformed to Him. Yet, in knowing and loving itself the former of these two images is achieved. For here the soul is enabled to know and love itself through its own essence. . . . And in such is there found an analogical similitude of God’s eternal knowledge and love of Himself through Himself ” (ibid., 5). “The likeness here obtained is an image only by an analogy of proper proportionality . . . there is a proportion between power, object, and term principled (in both knowledge and love) in the [human] one and the [Divine] Other” (ibid., 6). 29 “More perfect than this image by analogy is that whereby the mind of man not only represents the Trinity of Persons, but has a real capacity to conform itself to Them” (ibid., 6). 30 “For as the soul knows itself through itself, so is there a sense in which it is enabled to know God through Himself, as He is most intimately present to it as the source of its being. And in such there is shown the soul’s capacity, at least, for becoming a true image of conformity” (ibid., 7). See also ST I, q. 93, a. 8. and Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 46–48. 8 Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P. of grace or the “supernatural image of God.” This is realized in wayfarers who—albeit imperfectly—know and love God actually or habitually while on earth. The image of grace flourishes only in the justified. In the just, the image no longer exists as an aptitude on the level of nature.There instead arises an actualization of the imago Dei by reason of the graced conformity to the divine pattern that develops under the impulsion of the divine premotion. Finally, the image of glory appears as the aptitudinal consummation in those persons who know and love God through the beatific vision. This completion belongs only to the saints in heaven.31 Pope John Paul II ranks among them, that is, among the blessed. The full depth and implications of the imago Dei do not make themselves readily apparent. To appreciate fully the interlocking integrity and the tendential unity of nature and grace and glory requires theological faith. One may easily infer that the virtues—the acquired and the infused moral virtues, as well as the theological virtues—figure importantly in the Christian life.32 For only in light of these virtues does one recognize the imago Dei and only through them does the imago achieve its perfection on earth.33 31 “Since man is said to be the image of God by reason of his intellectual nature, he is the most perfectly like God according to that in which he can best imitate God in his intellectual nature. Now the intellectual nature imitates God chiefly in this, that God understands and loves Himself. Wherefore we see that the image of God is in man in three ways. First, inasmuch as man possesses a natural aptitude for understanding and loving God; and this aptitude consists in the very nature of the mind, which is common to all men. Secondly, inasmuch as man actually and habitually knows and loves God, though imperfectly; and this image consists in the conformity of grace.Thirdly, inasmuch as man knows and loves God perfectly; and this image consists in the likeness of glory. Wherefore on the words, ‘The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us’ (Ps 4:7), the gloss distinguishes a threefold image of ‘creation,’ of ‘re-creation,’ and of ‘likeness.’The first is found in all men, the second only in the just, the third only in the blessed” (ST I, q. 93, a. 4). 32 See Steven A. Long’s “Obediential Potency, Human Knowledge, and the Natural Desire for God,” International Philosophical Quarterly 37.1 (1997): 45–63. Long observes that St. Thomas “adduces obediential potency in the context of his answer to an objection concerning the very possibility of infused virtue [in De virtutibus in commune, a. 10, ad 13]. Just as earth and water have diverse passive potencies in relation to different active agencies, so human nature possesses a passive potency for that which can be achieved in it only through the active agency of God. It is this conception of obediential potency that expounds acts of infused virtue as truly acts of the human agent, without thereby implying that human nature can perform supernaturalized acts apart from divine aid” (45–46). 33 For the implications of the imago Dei in the Christian sacramental life see Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Sonship, Sacrifice, and Satisfaction: The Divine Friendship in Aquinas and the Renewal of Christian Anthropology,” Letter & Spirit 3 (2007): 71–93. George Weigel on Blessed John Paul II 9 George Weigel gets this. He displays a profound grasp of what God accomplishes for us in Christ. The dynamics of grace do not admit of a facile treatment. The papal biographer does not content himself with providing a mere narration of facts and dates. Indeed, in the final section of his two-volume work, he summarizes “the story of Karol Wojtyl/a’s Christian journey” by reading it through “the prism of the cardinal virtues as well as through the matrix of the theological virtues.”34 Weigel gives the world a brilliant example of what the Catechism calls the “theologal life”—“the life of faith, hope, and charity.”35 In other words, Weigel demonstrates for us what it means to understand John Paul II from the inside. “Faith, hope, and love combined in Karol Wojtyl/a to form an exceptionally attractive human character and personality.”36 Isn’t it true? The saints best show us the marvelous splendor of the Christian life. Blessed John Paul II affords no exception. “Grasping as much as we can of the person and accomplishment of Karol Wojtyl/a means beginning from the premise that the outside of Wojtyl/a’s life—the public accomplishment—was the by-product of the inside: his interior life, the life of the human spirit (and, he would say, the work of the Holy Spirit within him).”37 In other words,Weigel shows John Paul II as a man transformed through and through by grace. The theologal character of Pope John Paul II’s life and person supplies the unifying thread that runs throughout the hundreds of pages that fall between the front cover of Witness to Hope and the back cover of The End and the Beginning. The last sentence of the final chapter of The End and the Beginning summarizes this motif with striking clarity: “Karol Wojtyl/a, Pope John Paul II, became the prophet of a new and genuine humanism—and changed the world—because he was a disciple: a radically converted Christian whose unshakable faith in Christ gave birth to a world-changing hope for a new springtime of the human spirit.”38 Disciples of God are those who are conformed to the disciplina of the Lord. They are those who are informed by the sacra doctrina. Their lives follow the pattern originally found in the image of Christ. As Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., likes to remark: “The human person is created in the image of God in 34 Weigel, The End and the Beginning, 417. 35 “Ordained ministers are also responsible for the formation in prayer of their broth- ers and sisters in Christ. Servants of the Good Shepherd, they are ordained to lead the People of God to the living waters of prayer: the Word of God, the liturgy, the theologal life (the life of faith, hope, and charity), and the Today of God in concrete situations” (CCC 2607, emphasis in original); see also 2686 and 2803. 36 Weigel, The End and the Beginning, 414. 37 Ibid., 402. 38 Ibid., 517. 10 Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P. order to grow into the image of Christ.”39 From a faithful adherence to this image arise both man’s freedom and his happiness.40 When reviewing Weigel on Wojtyl/a, one may be tempted to frame one’s remarks around the question, What did George Weigel do for Pope John Paul II ? To pose such a question would not prove helpful. Certainly, Weigel himself would shrink from responding to it. Nevertheless, we can say with confidence that Weigel has labored mightily to tell the truth—a truth whose grandeur is perceptible only to those who have eyes to see. To Dominicans, no accomplishment could appear more admirable. Weigel has revealed the Blessed Pope John Paul II to the world just as the Pope presented himself to the world. John Paul II emerges not as an international statesman or a charismatic leader who happened to say Mass daily. Rather, the life and legacy that the astute reader encounters in Weigel’s pages reveal a Christian disciple, a priest, and a bishop. We discover a man who shaped the last quarter of the twentieth century because of the theologal character of his life. To recall what was said above, Weigel’s readers are encouraged to conclude that “the outside of Wojtyl/a’s life—the public accomplishment—was the by-product of the inside: his interior life.”41 * * * The temptation exists to remove Pope John Paul II from the living circle of Thomism. The astute student of the Wojtyl/an corpus admittedly encounters a unique body of writings; the Pope’s works address many 39 See J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., “Imago Dei—Imago Christi: The Theological Foundations of Christian Humanism,” Nova et Vetera 2, no. 2 (2004): 277. Di Noia summarizes St. Thomas’s teaching on the matter: “In the tertia pars, Aquinas arrives at the culmination of the theology of the imago Dei when he shows how Christ, the perfect image of the Father, is the principle and pattern of the restoration and the perfection of the image of God in us. All the mysteries of Christ’s life, but especially his passion, death, and resurrection, bring about the work of transformation in us by which the image of God, damaged by original sin and by our own personal sins, can be restored and perfected. Configured and transfigured in the imago Christi by the power of the Holy Spirit, we return to the Father, and come to enjoy the communion of Trinitarian life that is the essence of beatitude.” 40 “In Jesus Christ and in his Spirit, the Christian is a ‘new creation’, a child of God; by his actions he shows his likeness or unlikeness to the image of the Son who is the first-born among many brethren (cf. Rom 8: 29), he lives out his fidelity or infidelity to the gift of the Spirit, and he opens or closes himself to eternal life, to the communion of vision, love and happiness with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (Veritatis Splendor, §73). 41 Weigel, The End and the Beginning, 402. George Weigel on Blessed John Paul II 11 interpenetrating themes with roots in a variety of influences.We, however, should not ignore the Thomistic foundation of the Pope’s thought.42 Steven A. Long has argued that “the whole ‘meta-structure’ of Pope John Paul II’s teaching has been masterfully and profoundly Thomistic from beginning to end.”43 Perhaps one may duly apply what Jacques Maritain observed about St. John of the Cross to Blessed John Paul II: “St. John of the Cross is, in reality, both far more independent of St. Thomas, and far more in harmony with him, than they [who ‘exercise their ingenuity in inventing conflicts of thought between those two doctors’] imagine. On the one hand, his intellectual formation, the philosophical and theological structure of his thought, owe so much to the scholastic tradition—and especially to the purely Thomistic tradition in theology—that, to obtain real understanding of the element of speculative knowledge in his writings, one should relate their essential principles to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, as to their natural system of reference.”44 We hear another witness to the convergences between Carmel and the Order of St. Dominic. During his 17 November 1979 visit to the Angelicum, Pope John Paul II walked to “Aula 11” where he had defended his doctoral thesis, and there he shared “some of the nostalgia which this special hall, the aula minor, woke in him: ‘every Saturday—like today—we came to hear the lectures of Père Garrigou-Lagrange: a great theologian, a man expert in the spiritual sciences, who at over seventy years of age kept alive a surprising vivacity! A man . . . who showed by his living that he was 42 In his comments about the encyclical Fides et Ratio, Cardinal Dulles summarizes: “While encouraging recourse to the wisdom of Aquinas, John Paul II allows for a plurality of systems. Acceptable systems of philosophy, he believes, must share the metaphysical realism of St. Thomas, including his position on the natural knowability of the existence of God (§53). The Angelic Doctor is an authentic model for all who seek the truth and who wish to profit from revelation without demeaning the just autonomy of reason (§78)” (Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Can Philosophy Be Christian? The New State of the Question,” in The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on Fides et Ratio, ed. David Ruel Foster and Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003], 14). For further information on the Thomist foundations of Pope John Paul II, see Jaroslaw Kupczak, O.P., Destined for Liberty:The Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyl/a/John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 2000). 43 Steven A. Long, “The Thomistic Meta-Structure of Pope John Paul II’s Doctrinal Initiatives” in Reason and the Rule of Faith, ed. Christopher J. Thompson and Steven A. Long (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2011), 29. 44 Bruno, St. John of the Cross, xviii. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P. 12 always teaching.”45 This teaching exercised a strong influence on the young Polish priest. And this influence, no doubt, bore fruit in more ways than one during the long pontificate (1978–2005) that divine Providence accorded Pope John Paul II. Weigel offers a hint of an explanation as to why this might have been the case. He remarks that Garrigou was unique in that “unlike others in the professoriat, he was accessible to students, who were eager to get into his Saturday afternoon seminars on spirituality. Some of the young priest-students took him for their confessor, perhaps the highest compliment that one priest can pay another.”46 The Pope did not forget the personal example of his old teacher. Like all great and holy men, Pope John Paul II eludes facile description. How does one capture a phenomenologist who never rejected his Thomist bearings? Some may find the description paradoxical. Sage commentators like Rocco Buttiglione, however, find no moment for pause.47 As a disciple of Christ entrusted with the keys of Peter, John Paul II recognized with perspicacious clarity the importance St. Thomas holds when it comes to safeguarding and communicating the depositum fidei. Little wonder. St. Thomas Aquinas, too, was a man whose life and teaching can best be described as theologal. During the aforementioned visit to the Angelicum, John Paul II remarked that St. Thomas was “a master profoundly human because he was profoundly Christian, and precisely because profoundly Christian, therefore profoundly human.”48 With Weigel’s adroit guidance, John Paul II emerges as someone equally human and Christian. He remains, as Cardinal Dulles predicted he would, “the principal witness to that witness.”49 Mary Ann Glendon summarizes it well: “To interpret John Paul II ‘from the inside,’ however, requires a biographer with a rare combination of qualities. Such a person must be well grounded not only in Catholic 45 John Paul II at the Angelicum (Rome: Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, 1980), 38-39. 46 Weigel, Witness to Hope, 85. 47 “It would perhaps be wrong to think in terms of an opposition between the doctrines of Garrigou-Lagrange and those of Wojtyl/a. Rather, we can see that the latter as a matter of principle tended to develop the subjective side of the problem, while seeing it not as autonomous but as tightly bound to the objective side” (Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyl/a, 47). Moreover, the more phenomenological approaches for which Wojtyl/a was always famous were decidedly Thomistic in grounding: “Wojtyl/a’s point of reference in his engagement with [Max] Scheler would always be St. Thomas Aquinas, yet Thomas understood through St. John of the Cross” (ibid., 48). 48 John Paul II at the Angelicum, 46. 49 Dulles, “Witness to the Witness,” 57. George Weigel on Blessed John Paul II 13 thought, but in modern secular philosophies; politically sophisticated; independent of mind, yet able to ‘think with the Church.’ Happily, George Weigel . . . possesses all those qualifications plus a gift for explaining without simplifying that any theologian would envy.”50 We gladly join Ambassador Glendon’s opinion. George Weigel deserves our deepest gratitude. He showed the world that only a man of faith can tell the story of a man of faith—“from the inside.”51 N&V 50 Mary Ann Glendon, “Review of New Papal Biography—Pope John Paul II: Witness to Hope,” L’Osservatore Romano (Weekly Edition in English), 29 September 1999, 9. 51 The authors gratefully acknowledge the editorial assistance of Kevin Joyce, seminarian for the Archdiocese of Boston. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 15–25 15 Why Should Christians Study Philosophy?* T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC TO THE SURPRISE of many, and the dismay of some, scholastic philosophy is making a comeback in the Catholic Church. In March of 2011 the Vatican declared that the philosophical formation of every seminarian studying for the priesthood should be intensified, with two complete years of (mostly) Thomistic philosophy, prior to the four years of theological study that is required for ordination. Emphasis, it said, is to be placed in particular on classical metaphysics. So clerics in the diverse settings of Kinshasa, Singapore, and Cleveland are required to undertake a common formation in the study of being, as well as classical logic and ethics. But what is at stake in this renewed insistence that Christians ought to study philosophy? Prior to the Second Vatican Council there was the common presumption in Catholic academic culture of a “perennial philosophy”: a tradition of classical wisdom originating in Plato and Aristotle, subject to healthy Christian influences in the age of the Fathers of the Church, culminating in the scholastic period (with figures such as Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Scotus in particular). Modern thinkers were to be encountered only in the light of a logically prior engagement with this tradition. Heidegger was brought into dialogue with Aquinas. Hume was deciphered in comparison with Aristotle. So is the Vatican now, under the auspices of a “hermeneutic of continuity,” in fact submitting us to a nostalgia for olden times, analogous to the lust for Gregorian chant? . . . the desire for something with its own indisputable beauty, but which is also the irretrievable treasure of a historically bygone age? So some people say. * An earlier and shorter form of this essay was published in First Things (Aug./Sept.), 2011. 16 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Of course there is a robust tradition of criticism regarding the Christian embrace of philosophy. To cite a respectable example: in the twelfth century St. Bernard criticized Abelard as a logic-chopping rationalist, whose writings were symptomatic of the anti-contemplative stance of university theology. The true theologian, he underscored, is a monastic contemplative. Luther had harsh things to say about Aristotle, and the scholastics who appealed to him. The true Christian believes in the God of the cross, not the metaphysical proofs of the unmoved mover. But whatever the examples we might like to choose as historically emblematic for ourselves, the age we live in has its own challenges that are not reducible to the dramas of the past. There can be little question that claims to promote a universal philosophy of enduring historical import face severe challenges in our current cultural setting. So perhaps that is the point we need to examine. Let us consider the chief objections to the Vatican’s new (old) curriculum, and see where they lead. I Take for instance the typical post-conciliar intellectual motif that has been reiterated incessantly for the last fifty years. We no longer live in the age of grand metaphysical schemes.Whatever the glories of Thomism, the claim to a universal philosophical patrimony on the part of Catholics prior to the council was latently saturated with a mind-numbing naiveté. This was the error of thinking one’s self in possession of a comprehensive form of thought which was applicable to all, but which was in fact simply excessively abstract and ahistorical. Precisely one of the key insights of modernity is that we are subjects always, already emerged in the thickets of concrete history. Our thought, our philosophy, even our very beings are historically conditioned, such that we are meshed with other persons relationally in culturally situated contexts outside of which we become unintelligible. Consequently, there is not a way to “freeze” the process of thought around a set of ahistorical essences or ideas that endure through all of time, themselves taking on a necessity for every age. Rather, following Karl Rahner’s intuitions, modern Christianity needs to move in the inverse direction: to adopt most fundamentally a narrative vision of reality. Experience and phenomenological description, not intellectual systems, should be accorded primacy of place. Correspondingly, if we want to find God, we need to experience him in history, not try to escape from history in a flight toward abstract universalism. The historical God has wed our fragile human condition, bound himself to us within time and place, and so it is there we can look for him. This way of thinking leads out into the contextual theologies of our time: libera- Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? 17 tion and feminist theologies, dialogue with the world religions, and various forms of pragmatic evangelical theology that focus on the ethical and psychological concerns of our contemporaries. A very different form of objection comes from the most intense form of modern secularism that continuously confronts the modern Christian: that of scientism. I mean by this term the view that the only real knowledge worth having is that procured through the empirical studies of the modern physical sciences. A Christian version of the objection goes like this: The hard-core empirical scientist who is anti-religious looks on theology as a kind of delusional mythology that is outdated in thought. So some Christians want to engage him or her on the basis of a philosophical vision of reality that hopes to open the empiricist mind to greater expanses of being even on a “natural” or philosophical level. Well and good. But the empiricist also thinks that the classical philosophy being peddled is nearly as useless a folk medicine as the theologian’s potions. That is to say, it is an only slightly less dangerous form of delusion. When thought gets serious, it gets scientific. Now given that this is the prevalent world-view of many of our secular contemporaries, why should we work very industriously to articulate a vision of reality that is infra-Christian (that is, merely philosophical), when in fact what we are peddling from the beginning is just a doomed apologetics? We should simply articulate our core Christian beliefs lucidly, try to live an integral Christian witness, and believe in the power of the Resurrection and the grace of God to convert even the most hardened hearts. St. Paul would counsel us to do nothing less; to seek to do more is in fact implicitly to evade the formal imperatives of the gospel. Last but not least common, there is the post-modern objection. This is the one that is the most friendly but also the most deadly. It is also the viewpoint most prevalent among the professional theologians. Simply stated it runs thus: talk of a perennial philosophy—of an analysis of reality that is of enduring and universally applicable import—is intrinsically attractive.Would that such a thing were possible. But in the end this is fool’s gold. No one human articulation of meaning is necessarily binding on the human intellect. Man is not only a factory of idols, but also an endless forger of intellectual systems, and the metaphysics he formulates are pluralistic, and mutually exclusive in their incompatibility. Tertullian asked “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem,” but we can also ask, what has “Athens to do with Königsberg, or the Sorbonne to do with Cambridge.” Philosophies endlessly and inevitably refute philosophies, and there is no common ground from which to adjudicate what is true philosophically from a supposedly grounded first perspective. In fact, people inevitably disagree 18 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. even on the first principles of rational thought. This is not disturbing, however, once we realize that all of it comes under the sign of the fallen intellect. Because the native terrain of human thought is constantly shifting and unstable, our innate aspiration toward universal knowledge can be redeemed only “from above,” that is to say, from recourse to divine revelation. It is the theological truth of the gospel alone (explicated through Christian doctrine) that provides a universal and enduring intellectual science of reality. Everything else is just a false substitute. II Whatever the power of these objections, they run contrary to the longstanding teaching of the Catholic Church. Already in 1563, the 23rd session of the Council of Trent underscored the necessity of distinct formation in philosophy for every candidate to the Catholic priesthood, and this emphasis on philosophy (scholasticism in particular) was taken up in more recent times by the First Vatican Council, Leo XIII’s famous encyclical Aeterni Patris, the statements on priestly formation at Vatican II, and John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio. John Henry Newman famously argued that when an idea is essential to the Christian religion we see it continually reasserted through time in the doctrinal life of the Church, as it undergoes development of expression in consistent ways. By these standards, it pertains to the essence of modern Catholicism to insist on the importance of scholastic philosophical studies, as an integral part of Christian identity. Scandalous as it may seem to some, this is itself an enduring stance of the Church in the heart of the contemporary world. Why is this? To answer that question, we could do worse than to have recourse to the teaching of Aquinas. After all, if there is a wisdom that is perennial, its past expositors should be able to speak to our current concerns, and thereby prove the relevance of their ideas. In his Commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate (q. 2, a. 3), St. Thomas gives three reasons that philosophy is essential to the study of sacred theology. Let us consider these in turn. The first reason concerns the so-called praeambula fidei, or “preambles of faith.” Christian culture has need of philosophy to articulate truths of reason that “overlap” with truths of revelation, so that the compatibility and harmony of biblical revelation and natural reason can be shown. Some pertinent examples would include the rational acknowledgment of the spiritual soul as a principle of personal identity, which makes human animals radically different from the other animals, despite their shared ancestry. Or the arguments regarding the existence and nature of God, which also entail apophatic arguments concerning what God is not (as a Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? 19 corrective to our caricatures of the divine). Or fundamental truths of human morality touching on issues like human equality, and the dignity of human life from conception to natural death . . . truths of reason which suggest that our mainstream media culture is not as “rational” as it takes itself to be. These are all domains where natural intelligence certainly cannot demonstrate the truth of Christianity, but it can show—from rational starting points alone—our inherent openness to core biblical truths of faith. Philosophy can thus defend the well-founded character of our core religious aspirations. What is being advocated here by Aquinas is not that philosophy should be instrumentalized by Christians as merely an apologetical tool, one that prepares the mind for conversion to theology. Even less is it the idea that philosophy should play the role of a substitute for the grace of faith (a kind of epistemological Pelagianism that passes the work of salvation off onto human reason). The issue, rather, has to do with the integration of faith and reason within a culture of the intellectual life that is simultaneously fully respectful of the native powers of human intelligence and of the demands of grace. A culture of philosophical wisdom and argument within Christianity allows for a robust Christian intellectual life, one in which the Christian qua philosopher can see where human reason leaves off and revealed mystery begins, but also where revealed mystery presupposes and assumes the truths of natural reason. Despite the mockery and jealousy of the pagans, it is true: if rightly understood, the alliance between philosophical realism and supernatural faith is both delightful in its harmony and unbreakable in its inner force. Second, then, the philosophical culture of faithful reason allows Christians to challenge the secularist mentality to acquire a more honest rational openness to religious claims. A culture that can no longer see a rational place for discourse about God, the soul, and objective morality is a culture inherently closed to Christianity, even in the face of divine revelation. But it is also an irrational culture. In this sense, philosophy comes to the aid of theology simply in that it is concerned with the inherent “vocation” of human culture to seek wisdom, or ultimate perspective, in light of the true ultimate causes of reality. Aristotle claims at the start of the Metaphysics that human beings desire by nature to know, and to know ultimately of the first causes of everything. From this point of view, then, realism in the end means coming to terms with what is first not in our consciousness but in the order of reality, whether that be matter, the demiurge, pure chance, a world-soul, or the transcendent God. Our contemporary university system excels in communicating expertise to its students on a range of disparate subjects, 20 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. from modern political economy to the poetics of Chaucer, and from micro-biology to the study of Confucius. But there is a corresponding impoverishment when it comes to the integration of these diverse forms of knowledge into a “vision of the whole.” This is a well-trod observation, as we know, for the post-modernist dilemma begins precisely from the admission of despair of ever finding such a unity. Whereas philosophy really should enter in as the arbiter of human reason’s search for the unity of the sciences and for ultimate perspective, we often see instead simply an indifferent resignation in the face of the deeper questions, or perhaps the arbitrary ideological assertion of false absolutes (often secular ones) through recourse to un-argued intuition. A real response to this dilemma cannot come about solely through the promotion of theological doctrine. It also requires a philosophical renewal of the capacity of the human person for metaphysical realism. In the face of realistic philosophical arguments, the ills of post-modernist perspectivalism, the lassitude of indifferentism, and the smugness of antisupernaturalism can all be seen themselves to be forms of unrealistic thinking: the indulgences of minds that have failed to acknowledge the noble vocation of the human intelligence relentlessly to seek the truth. Last, however, Aquinas underscores that philosophy is essential to theology for its health as theology. Christian thought is not an exercise in mere moral posturing, or an unstructured spirituality soup. It is serious thought about reality. It is also, however, thought conducted in a human mode: by discursive reasoning seeking explanations and insights into God based upon the things God does in the world, things that are both natural and supernatural. This is why Aquinas will say that argumentation and demonstration are intellectual activities that are proper to a theologically informed faith, even when that faith takes its starting points from revealed premises. We don’t know, for instance, “in advance” by mere natural reason that Jesus Christ is God or that God is triune. To accede to such mysteries, which are veiled from the powers of unaided human reason, divine revelation is necessary, a revelation given gratuitously by God to the Church in faith. But we can reason in light of this revelation that if Christ is truly God and man, then he must possess in himself all that is truly human, such as the capacity to learn intellectually, or a human body capable of suffering. Likewise, he must possess as well all that is properly divine, such as the power to raise the dead. Theology assimilates philosophical methods and claims to consider theologically, then, what it means to speak of the vulnerability of Christ crucified as man, or of his saving power as God, and how the two are present simultaneously in one person: the saving power of the crucified Lord. Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? 21 Likewise, philosophical reflection helps us to identify concepts that can be used to express the inner mystery of the life of God itself. Augustine in his De Trinitate saw in effect that he could employ insights into human personhood and the soul from the Greek philosophical tradition in order to speak analogously of the personal life of the Trinity. Aquinas notes that such reflections are based upon the solid indications of Scripture, but through recourse to philosophical methods of reflection they simultaneously seek to clarify what the Scriptures indicate. What does it mean to say, for instance, that there is in God an eternal procession of wisdom that we designate as a person under the proper name of the “Word” or Logos ( Jn 1:1–3)? How is the Holy Spirit to be thought of as an eternal procession of spirated love? In undertaking such reflections, theology assimilates the classical philosophical aspiration for knowledge of God. However, it also transcends it, embracing a knowledge beyond the range of unaided natural reason: that of the inner life of God itself, communicated to us already imperfectly in faith, and reflected upon in view of the union that is promised in the vision of God. Of course such an antiquated image of theological reason might be a source of alienation or even terror to the insular liberal secularism of our time, with its skeptical and antiseptic rationality. But whatever the conventional certitudes of our contemporaries, the mind by its very structure has an innate desire to transcend boundaries, and so it has the capacity and inclination to dirty itself by marrying with revealed religion. Christianity of course understands such “dirt” as a cleansing and healing light, one that elevates the mind into sacred conversation and friendship with God. III To consider our objections: what should we say about the claim that the return to scholastic, or classically inspired, philosophy is a flight toward the irrelevancy of ahistorical abstraction? In one sense this is an ironic objection, since scholasticism is a tradition-based form of inquiry, a historical form of learning that “safeguards” reference to classical sources and renews them cyclically within new contexts by way of new applications. This in contrast to many forms of Enlightenment or contemporary Anglo-American philosophy that would seek to promulgate ahistorically an intuitive appeal to universality, absent the encounter with historical tradition. But we can also make some caveats: the turn toward historical ressourcement in modern theology conducted by Daniélou and de Lubac procured valuable resources for theological reflection, over and against some of the less than reasonable objections of their scholastic interlocutors. The modern theological recovery of emphasis on experience and 22 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. historical consciousness has potential points of contact with the classical insistence on the role of mystical experience, spiritual affectivity, and the contemplative life as a necessary context for theological reflection. This being said, however, the naiveté of the post-conciliar critics of scholasticism is to think that an ecclesial tradition can live by historical erudition alone (or by embracing the philosophical toolkit of the particular moment), without ontological study of the enduring natures and structures of reality. Of course Christian intellectuals need to be concerned about widening the conversation with their interlocutors— both historically and culturally—as a necessary safeguard against intellectual provincialism. But this obsession of our age for experiential novelty is intellectually fertile only if it leads back to a deeper synthetic consideration of the very nature of reality. In fact, to take different viewpoints and attempt to find the truth implicit within them just is the methodology advocated classically within scholastic spheres. Such an aspiration presupposes, however, that we can build up conclusions around some solid idea of what natures are, what human persons are, what the soul is, what we can know (or not know) of God, and so forth. So, principled knowledge is just as essential as the process of conversation, and conceptual understanding is just as crucial as experience of our time and epoch. This issue becomes more acute when we consider the question of God. For if God has come to exist among us as a subject of history, nevertheless, the transcendent author of creation is not himself a history, nor a prisoner of our immediate experience. Kant wanted to underscore precisely the limits of the mind to think at all about the transcendence of God. For him, human understanding cannot consider “causalities” that extend beyond the spacio-temporal realm. This influential idea, however, dooms human thought to the sphere of pure intra-historical immanence. Classical Christianity provides diverse philosophical resources for thinking constructively about the absolute transcendence of God: in Dionysius and Damascene, Bonaventure and Aquinas, the Lutheran and Reformed scholastics, and possibly even—ironically— in the implicitly metaphysical thinking of Karl Barth. But a theology that can no longer think philosophically about the transcendence of God is simply no study of God at all. It is perhaps a description of man’s experience of the encounter with God in time, but ultimately it receives its intellectual determinations from the study of man, and it reinterprets the divine anthropocentrically. To be about God, and to be theocentric in orientation, Christian theology has need of a classical philosophical realism. This response ties into the question raised by the second objection. How ought Christian thought to situate itself vis-à-vis the culture of Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? 23 reductionist scientific empiricism? The issue here is not what we should say to a few angry atheist scientists who are jealous of the intellectual prerogatives of metaphysics and who would seek to “ape” theology in a scientific mode. As long as there are paid book contracts and Manhattan cocktail parties, there will be people of such ilk. We might profit from worrying more about the future of a scientifically literate Christianity— one which rightfully makes complete peace with modern cosmology and the abiding truth of evolutionary theory. This, however, is not the focus of our concern here. The main issue is that classical philosophy (particularly the hylomorphism of Aristotle and Aquinas) permits us to hold together a plenary realism regarding the physical world of the human body and the cosmos with an objective study of the irreducible spiritual life of the human person. This spiritual life is exemplified particularly in the manifold works of human reason, which strives for the truth, and in the life of human free will, which strives for happiness through love. Philosophy here provides a needed intellectual salve in our culture, which is so often divided between a scientism that has difficulty acknowledging the specifically human spiritual life and a post-modern relativism that acknowledges freedom of thought and self-determination, to the denigration of scientific objectivity. There is one human person that is the subject of our biology, mathematical science, poetry of love, ethics, metaphysics of the soul, study of political life, and so on. Man is complex as a being and so requires a complexity of sciences and arts to be rightly understood. Scholastic philosophy, rightly conceived, helps us see the underlying unity amidst this complexity and so assures a larger form of balanced humanism, one that makes room for all the sciences of man, within a larger conversation of concord and mutual enrichment. Lastly, to consider the post-modern concern. Do we lack foundations or starting points that are necessarily binding, by which natural reason might convey a universally compelling vision of the tasks of human thought? Is all authentic universality implicitly theological? Let us concede first of all that in speaking of perennial philosophy as it was developed in the Christian tradition, we are not seeking after a “theologically indifferent” form of thought. After all, scholastic philosophy developed in and through a tradition of theological rumination, one which was subject to profound influences stemming from the grace of faith. And perhaps in our frail and fallen state, weakened reason is healed only under the stimulating and strengthening effects of such grace. If this is the case, however, it does not follow that there is no such thing as essentially necessary rational arguments, but only that more is at work in the openness to a philosophical argument than the workings of a mere 24 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. neutral rationality. Consequently, universal truth cannot be determined by consulting democratic majorities. The truth of the claim that each human being has a spiritual soul, for instance, does not depend uniquely upon whether or not a cogent argument is presented, even if the learner has received sufficient intellectual preparation to understand such an argument. It also depends upon a complex existential and religious context: for I am more likely to consider arguments that I have a soul if I am seeing simultaneously in the faith that the spiritual person who I am needs his soul to be saved. The opposite is true as well, however: even if I believe by faith in the reality of the soul, if I cannot see the rationality of the belief, the faith remains inherently unstable in my person, something extrinsic to reason, and potentially painful to embrace. Philosophical arguments, then, are part and parcel of an integral natural search for understanding, and without them, a culture of Christian rationality becomes inherently undermined and unstable. Whatever its intentions, a post-modern theology that would like to forego appeal to distinctly philosophical formation will inevitably doom itself not only to cultural irrelevance but even to internal incoherence. For without recourse to the explicit practice of philosophical study in its own right, Christians are unable to receive from the tradition they espouse its own classical practices of thought. Ignorance of philosophy sterilizes, then, the intellectual reception of the Christian tradition. Moreover, by failing to sufficiently awaken and maintain in our human culture the native capacity for metaphysical reflection about God, the post-modernist project becomes inadvertently but inevitably a further source of the secularization of the human intellect and of human civilization. It thus reproduces the very problem it seeks to contradict. IV It is common knowledge that we are at the end of a decades’ long struggle in the Catholic Church that arose in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, a struggle to define the identity of the Catholic faith in a modern context. For the most part, the conservative or classical understanding of the faith has won out, particularly under the mantle of the last two pontificates. Meanwhile, however, the world of western Europe and to some extent North America, continues to secularize dramatically. The recovery of the scholastic heritage of the Church today should not signal a renewal of ideological posturing in the decades’ old warfare of left and right, but should strive to address the true challenge of our age: the effective communication of the one Christian faith in the face of the questions and problems of our contemporaries. We should look forward Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? 25 to the task with hope. It has been done before, and we can do it again, with the help of God. Toward this end, the scholastic patrimony of the Church offers us a powerful resource. It has been tested by the fires of time, and its wisdom endures through the ages: If we engage with it intelligently, it will cast intense light even into the very heart of our contemporary world. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 27–59 27 Anaphoras without Institution Narrative: Historical and Dogmatic Considerations A NSGAR S ANTOGROSSI , O.S.B. Mount Angel Abbey St. Benedict, OR A 2001 LETTER of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, addressed to the Chaldean Catholic bishops, judged that Chaldean Catholics may, if necessary, receive the Eucharist consecrated by (Assyrian) Church of the East clergy using the anaphora of Addai and Mari, stating that this anaphora can be considered valid without the Institution Narrative and its words “This is my Body. . . . This is my Blood,” which are absent from the oldest known manuscripts of the anaphora. The Council indicated that this judgment had received approval from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and from Pope John Paul II, although this decision of the Congregation has never been divulged. The letter of the Pontifical Council caused some degree of surprise and perplexity among Catholics. In 2004 the Roman journal Divinitas published a collection of opposing articles on the topic, and 2007 saw the publication in Germany of a volume of studies edited by Uwe Michael Lang. The chapters by Uwe Michael Lang and Ansgar Santogrossi in that volume rebutted arguments of liturgical exegetes who had propounded the original absence of the institution narrative from the anaphora of Addai and Mari, and from the earliest anaphoras in general. Lang and Santogrossi were in turn contradicted by Nicholas Russo in 2010.1 1 See Divinitas, numero speciale (2004); Die Anaphora von Addai und Mari: Studien zu Eucharistie und Einsetzungsworten, ed. U. Michael Lang (Bonn: Nova & Vetera, 2007); “The Validity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari: Critique of the Critiques,” by Nicholas Russo, in Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), 21–62. The letter (Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and 28 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. The debates concerning the history of the anaphora in general and the institution narrative have consisted of warring interpretations of liturgical texts or fragments, along with passages from the New Testament and the Fathers. One side argues for the presence of the words “This is my body . . .This is my blood” (hereinafter “words of consecration” or “words of the Lord”) at the origins of the anaphora of Addai and Mari (hereinafter “Addai/Mari”) and every valid anaphora, and the other side maintains that the institution narrative was in most cases a late addition to the Eucharist (fourth century). Bypassing the debates about the actual history of Addai/Mari, but nevertheless expressing trust in what it took to be the authentic tradition of the Church of the East, the Pontifical Council stated that the words of the Lord are present in the known manuscripts of the Addai/Mari, not literally but in a “dispersed” and “euchological” way, thus introducing a perspective different from that of the discussions of theologians and historical-critical liturgists until then, which were judged to be inconclusive. While validating the Assyrian non-recitation of “This is my body . . . This is my blood” by means of this understanding of “words of the Lord,” the Council also restated the Church’s faith that the Eucharist is consecrated by the words of the Lord. It understandably remained silent on a 1902 response of the Holy See’s Congregatio pro Propaganda Fide which referred to Addai/Mari without institution narrative as an “incredible abuse.” That response presupposed the longstanding consensus expressed by the auctores probati, the approved theological manuals on the requirements for a valid Eucharistic form. The present article presupposes the dogmatic Tradition of the Church, which attributes Eucharistic consecration to the words of the Lord, as it revisits the historical arguments treated in the author’s contribution to the 2007 volume mentioned above, taking into account recent criticism. It will then consider the words of consecration from the dogmatic standpoint of the rule of faith and the nature of the Eucharist, articulating the reasons why many Catholics cannot accept, or fully receive, the validity of a Eucharist without the Lord’s words of consecration asserting the identity of “This” and “My body . . . my blood.”2 the Assyrian Church of the East) of the Pontifical Council, and also an unsigned article that appeared in L’Osservatore Romano (Provision between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East), are available at www.vatican.va, under Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Dialogue with the Assyrian Church of the East. 2 Avery Cardinal Dulles expressed himself as follows in a letter (December 19, 2005) to me: “Quite apart from these two issues, your book [Vers Quelle Unité?] strikes me as valid in its insistence on rigor and consistency in ecumenical statements. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 29 I For Robert Taft, S.J., the anaphora of Addai and Mari pronounced without institution narrative must be accepted as prima facie valid because it is the traditional anaphora of an apostolic church. For liturgists Enrico Mazza and Cesare Giraudo, S.J., the earliest Eucharistic celebrations in a number of local churches, and not only the East Syrian (or Assyrian) tradition, took place without the institution narrative.3 In addition to the manuscripts of Addai/Mari, the most obvious piece of evidence for their claim is of course the Didache. It is sometimes said that regardless of whether a Eucharist contained the narrative or not, the consensus of the Fathers took the Eucharistic prayer as a whole as consecratory, and had no concept of the necessity of the priest pronouncing “This is my body . . .” for the effecting of the mystery. Taft for his part attempts to prove that in the understanding of certain Fathers it is Christ’s pronunciation of these words at the Last Supper, and not their repetition by an ordained priest, which will have consecrated all bread and wine in all liturgies until the Second Coming.4 In the subsections which follow, it will first be shown (I.1–I.3) that these claims overinterpret the historical data cited in their favor; then we will examine both Addai/Mari and the Didache in order to argue for the presence of the institution narrative in the Eucharistic sacrifice of these traditions (I.4). I.1 Defenders of the thesis of valid Eucharists without institution narrative or words of consecration stress the numerous patristic texts which in one way or another attribute the sacramental effect to a “prayer” rather than to the performative affirmation of identity “This is my body, etc.” For example, Ambrose mentions the change in the elements as coming about per sacrae orationis mysterium, and Augustine refers to the anaphora simply as prex mystica. Justin Martyr had already attributed the Eucharistic change to “the These qualities seem to be lacking in the Joint Declaration [on Justification] and in the acceptance of a Eucharist without words of consecration.” 3 For these positions, see the respective articles in Divinitas, numero speciale (2004): Robert F. Taft, “Messa senza consacrazione? Lo storico accordo sull’Eucaristia tra la Chiesa cattolica e la Chiesa assira d’Oriente promulgata il 26 ottobre 2001,” 75–106; Enrico Mazza, “Che cos’é l’anafora eucaristica?” 37–55, and “Le récent accord entre l’Église Chaldéenne et l’Église Assyrienne d’Orient sur l’Eucharistie,” 125–40; and C. Giraudo, “L’anafora degli apostoli Addai e Mari: la ‘gemma orientale’ della Lex orandi,” 107–24. 4 Taft, 100. I am happy to acknowledge that Robert Taft denies the accuracy of the oral remarks which I attributed to him from memory in my earlier published work. 30 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. word of prayer which is from [Christ].”5 Mazza and Giraudo therefore maintain that the Eucharist was originally a prayer of memorial thanksgiving without the narrative of institution; the narrative was added later, in order to commend the gifts to God by linking them to Christ’s own command to give thanks—“do this”—over bread and wine. These conclusions go beyond the evidence presented. The fact that Ambrose, Justin, and others attribute the Eucharistic change to a “prayer” does not imply that they attributed the sacramental change to the entire Eucharistic prayer as such, for the simple reason that within a Eucharistic prayer the words of consecration and the surrounding narrative are grammatically part of a prayer addressed to God. The narrative is recited to God, and is in that sense prayer, without ceasing to be a narrative culminating in “This is my body, etc.” It is therefore illegitimate to conclude from their references to the role of “prayer” in the Eucharist that the Fathers in question would not have considered “This is my body, etc.” as in itself operative of the mystery, had it occurred to them to raise the question. Indeed with the phrase per sacrae orationis mysterium, Ambrose could have been thinking of consecration as the mystery accomplished during the sacred prayer, rather than identifying mysterium with sacra oratio. Another passage from Ambrose,6 longer than the line quoted above, would seem at first glance to support Giraudo’s thesis of the consecratory efficacy of the entire Eucharistic prayer as such, but only if one overlooks certain details in the passage as well as its character as catechesis of neophytes not yet very familiar with the Eucharistic liturgy. The key detail is that Ambrose does not rhetorically ask, with what words is consecration effected, but rather how, and so one cannot claim that he would have considered all the words he goes on to quote as operative of the sacramental change; he is citing passages surrounding the words of Christ, passages which directly or indirectly signify that the Eucharistic change is effected by God’s power and in answer to the Church’s prayer, which is the response to the rhetorical question he had just asked. This interpretation appears even more reasonable when one remembers that an audience of neophytes would still need to become familiar with the surrounding context of the consecrating words of Christ. Furthermore, the passage includes lines which appear to attribute efficacy to the words of Christ, not to the surrounding 5 Ambrose of Milan, De fide libri V, Lib. 4, cap. 10; Augustine, De trinitate, lib. 3, cap. 4; Justin Martyr, I Apología, 65, 1–66, 4. 6 “Do you wish to know in what manner consecration takes place with the heav- enly words?” The beginning of his answer: “Consider what those words are! The priest says . . .” Ambrose, De sacramentis IV, 5–6, 21–27, cited by Giraudo, “L’anafora degli apostoli Addai e Mari,” 109. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 31 prayer of the priest: “Antequam consecretur, panis est; ubi autem verba Christi accesserint, corpus est Christi . . . Et ante verba Christi, calix est vini et aquae plenus; ubi verba Christi operata fuerint, ibi sanguis Christi efficitur.”7 Returning to the famous line from Justin Martyr, “word of prayer that is from Him,” we can say that it focuses attention on Christ’s words at the Last Supper repeated in the liturgy, since Justin goes on to report them as justification for the Christians’ belief that the food over which thanks have been said (which have been “eucharistized”) is not “common,” drawing a parallel with handed-down rites and formulas of the pagans: And this food is called by us “thanksgiving” . . . . not as common bread or common drink do we receive these things; . . . we have been taught that the food over which thanks have been given through (a) word of prayer which is from him . . . is both the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. For the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called gospels, have handed down what was commanded them: that Jesus having taken bread, having given thanks, said, “Do this in my remembrance; this is my body”; and similarly having taken the cup and having given thanks, said, “This is my blood” . . . And the evil demons, having imitated this, have handed it down to be done also in the mysteries of Mithras. For as you either know or can learn, bread and a cup of water are used in the rites of initiation with certain formulas.8 We can thus argue exegetically that consecration is attributed to the repetition of the words of Christ: Justin would not have referred to presbyters’ largely improvised anaphoras as being “from” the Lord, and if the Last Supper word were not being repeated within the anaphora in his time, he would not have referred to it as “from” the Lord. The transformation of the food, expressed in the line “food which has been eucharistized through the word of prayer which is from him,” is therefore being attributed causally to the repetition of the words of consecration. This understanding of the apostolic Tradition is confirmed by similar passages in Justin’s near-contemporary, St. Irenaeus: 7 “Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when the words of Christ have been added, it is the body of Christ . . . And before the words of Christ, the chalice is full of wine and water; when the words of Christ have done their work, then it is made the blood of Christ,” Ambrose, De sacramentis IV, 5, 23; CSEL 73, 56. 8 Justin Martyr, First Apology 66, as rendered by Paul F. Bradshaw in Eucharistic Origins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 62–63. See E. J. Yarnold, “Anaphoras without Institution Narratives?” in Studia Patristica 30 (1997): 395–410, at 407, for extended analysis of the passages in Justin Martyr, and see the comments by David Berger in “Forma huius sacramenti sunt verba salvatoris—Die Form des Sakramentes der Eucharistie,” Divinitas, numero speciale (2004): 184–85. 32 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. Again, giving directions to His disciples to offer God the first-fruits of His own created things . . . He took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks, saying, ‘This is My body.’ . . . And the Church alone offers this pure oblation to the Creator, offering to Him, with giving of thanks, [the things taken] from His creation. . . . But how can they [Gnostic heretics] be consistent with themselves, [when they say] that the bread over which thanks have been given is the body of their Lord. . . . But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. For we offer to Him His own. . . . For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist . . . wheat . . . serves for the use of men, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body . . . of Christ . . .9 Thanks are given over the bread, so that the bread itself comes to be called “thanksgiving” (Eucharist) as it becomes the body of Christ, and the invocation which is the word of God is summarized as the saying of the Lord’s words, which identify the bread as his body. Irenaeus is expressing the fact that the Lord’s Last Supper words repeated in the liturgy transform the gifts. I.2 Once again, before considering the absence of the narrative from actual manuscripts of Addai/Mari and the Didache (I.4 below), we are first examining the claims for the original absence of the institution narrative from the anaphora in general, or for its not being necessary. It is sometimes maintained that in various anaphoral traditions the institution narrative was originally not recited—even though none of the available manuscripts for those traditions lack the narrative. Some liturgists maintain that the grammar, structure, and naming of the parts of certain anaphoras are incoherent and demand explanation, the most likely being a fourth-century addition of the institution narrative to an already finished literary composition. Mazza subjects the Roman Canon and early Iberian anaphoras to reconstruction along these lines, and my refutation of his analysis will not be repeated here.10 Two witnesses 9 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies IV, 17, 5; 18, 4–5;V, 2, 3 in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; rpr. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 484–86, 528. Italics added, and translation slightly revised in light of PG 7:1023–29, 1125–26. 10 For this refutation, see “Anaphoras without Institution Narratives: A Critical Appraisal,” in Die Anaphora von Addai und Mari, 178–83. The exegesis I mean to criticize would take the institution narrative of the Roman Canon as a later enrichment of an earlier commendation of the gifts to God, added in order to Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 33 should nevertheless be added to the dossier in favor of the original presence of the institution narrative in the Eucharist: the primitive literary style of the institution narrative in the Roman Canon, and the Barcelona papyrus, neglected by the liturgists in question here. The history of the Roman Church’s use of Latin cursus practically disproves the speculative claim of modern liturgical exegetes that the Roman Canon may have lacked the institution narrative until some time in the fourth century. From the 1964 study of G. G. Willis we learn that this rhetorical device of arranging and choosing words with a view to repeating certain patterns of accentuation was a standard practice in Roman liturgical composition from roughly A.D. 350 to 650. In the recension of the Roman Canon as it would have been at the time of Gregory the Great (d. 604), we find the cursus in those parts which are lacking it in the form quoted by St. Ambrose around 390.These parts are the central core, from Quam oblationem to the end of Supplices te rogamus, containing only one rhythmic ending in Ambrose’s version, and that outside the Institution Narrative. We can conclude with Willis that the cursus of the later Gregorian version represents a stylistic addition, and that the central part containing the Institution Narrative did not then show a key feature of the style which began in texts composed in the fourth century. Crucial for our study is the fact that collects composed during the period of the cursus are packed with them, whereas the Roman Canon has relatively few for its length, especially in the central and oldest part, and the institution narrative has none at all. This points to the antiquity of the central part of the Canon, and it belies the claim that the institution narrative was added in the fourth century. Given the facts collated by Willis, and the perfect stylistic integration of the institution narrative with the Quam oblationem and the immediately following Unde et memores, the case for an introduction of the institution narrative in the century when the cursus began to be employed on a massive scale collapses.11 The Roman Eucharistic liturgy has often been linked historically with the Egyptian. Be that as it may, the literary evidence supports a pre–fourthcentury presence of the institution narrative in Egypt as well. For decades various liturgists have laid enormous stress on the Strasbourg Papyrus, a torn, incomplete fourth- or fifth-century manuscript of probably Egyptian justify calling the gifts a “figure” of the Lord’s body and blood (Ambrose’s version of the Canon). 11 Willis wrote, “Quam oblationem has two [cursus], but the Institution narrative . . . appears to have none at all. This seems to point to its being the earliest part of the Canon.” See “ ‘Cursus’ in the Roman Canon” in G. G.Willis, Essays in Early Roman Liturgy (London: SPCK, 1964), 113–17. The quotation is found on 116. Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. 34 provenance containing what is either an anaphora fragment, or a complete anaphora lacking the institution narrative. Neglected by these same liturgists is the Barcelona Papyrus, a fourth-century collection of texts of probably Egyptian (Pachomian) origin, which includes a complete anaphora with the institution narrative; the anaphora is found with noteworthy frequency in other manuscripts, which points to widespread use. Like the literary style of the institution narrative of the Roman Canon, this fourth-century manuscript presents some archaic features, which lead Michael Zheltov to suggest the third century for its Ur-text. Its only fourth-century additions would be some patristic citations, not the Sanctus, epiclesis, and institution narrative. Indeed, a principal basis other exegetes sometimes have for considering the institution narrative to be generally a fourth-century addition is its mere absence from an obviously fragmentary manuscript, the Strasbourg Papyrus. But if one were to apply the normal criteria of textual criticism to the Strasbourg Papyrus, its anaphoral portion (lacking various parts) would be taken as a fragment of the liturgy of Mark, which it resembles, not as a complete prayer. By contrast, in the Barcelona Papyrus we have a complete anaphora with archaic features indicating an already traditional character for its various parts. It is in fact the oldest known manuscript containing a complete anaphora, and it has the institution narrative.12 It therefore constitutes a strong defense for those whose sense of the faith takes the institution narrative as essential in the Tradition. I.3 The original absence of the institution narrative in not one but many early anaphoras would constitute a powerful argument in favor of the general validity of such a Eucharist, but we have now shown the claim to be questionable. Before finally considering Addai/Mari and the Didache in particular, we shall examine a view that does grant a consecratory role to the words of the Lord, but only qua pronounced once and for all at the Last Supper, with no need for them to be repeated in each Eucharist in order to change the elements. This view also maintains that, with such an understanding of the dominical words, the Fathers attributed efficacy 12 This paragraph has summarized points in Michael Zheltov’s article, “The Anaphora and the Thanksgiving Prayer from the Barcelona Papyrus: An Underestimated Testimony to the Anaphoral History in the Fourth Century,” Vigiliae Christianae 62 (2008): 467–504, accessible at the author’s website, mzh.mrezha.ru/ indexe.htm. We should note that the Greek of Barcelona reads only “Take, drink the blood,” but the sixth-century Louvain Coptic fragment of the same anaphora has “Take, drink, for this is my blood,” and Barcelona does have “This is my body” over the bread. Perhaps the Greek for the cup is an abbreviation. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 35 to both the dominical words and the Church’s invocation of the Spirit’s power. A wide variety of texts of East and West have been cited in this regard, and they go beyond the issue of Addai/Mari. The purpose of the claim is nevertheless clear: to show that in light of the first millennium communion of diverse traditions of the Fathers, it would be arbitrary for the Catholic Church to insist today that the words of Christ by themselves are necessary and are consecratory by being repeated. Since I have already criticized the claim that even the West in or near the first millennium considered both the dominical words and the surrounding prayers of the Canon as consecratory,13 we will limit consideration here to the most important and relevant texts from the East.14 In accord with Catholic dogmaticians of the past, we will first show that these texts are not nearly as probative as they are usually thought to be. Then (I.3.2 below) we will criticize the claim that Christ’s pronouncing of his words once and for all at the Last Supper consecrates every Eucharist throughout history, independently of their repetition by a priest. 13 Texts from Peter Lombard and others are studied, and the literary structure of the Roman Canon is interpreted, in Santogrossi, “Anaphoras without Institution Narratives: A Critical Appraisal,” in Die Anaphora von Addai und Mari, 184–89. Lombard (Sententiae IV d.13 c.2) does indeed assert the necessity of the angel coming to consecrate the oblation by taking it to the heavenly altar. But he does not say that consecration takes place when the priest says the Supplices te rogamus. Furthermore, he is using a pseudo-Augustinian source as one of several arguments for his unusual position, which denies that a schismatic priest can consecrate: the angels would not be present at a schismatic’s Mass. When Lombard treats ex professo of the form of the Eucharist, he identifies the dominical words and nothing else as the form, so the following words of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet would probably describe Lombard’s experience of the Canon: “It is in order to make more vivid what is being accomplished that the Church speaks at every moment as if the entire action were being accomplished here and now, without wondering if the action has already been accomplished or is yet to be accomplished.” (Explications de quelques difficultés sur les prières de la messe à un nouveau catholique, Oeuvres 17 [Paris, 1864], 74–75). Furthermore, several early medieval authors quoted in Jungmann consider the words of the Lord as consecratory with no reference to the entirety of the Canon; see The Mass of the Roman Rite, trans. Francis A. Brunner (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1986), vol. 2, 231–34. 14 Frequently discussed in the literature are passages from Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Jerusalem. It has been held that the anaphora known to the great bishop of Jerusalem lacked the institution narrative. However, E. J. Yarnold and others have shown the probability that the Jerusalem anaphora in Cyril’s time had the epiclesis immediately before the institution narrative, which means that Cyril’s references to it and to the “completion of the sacrifice” are perfectly compatible with consecration by the words of the Lord in the narrative. See Edward Yarnold’s introduction and commentary on texts included in his Cyril of Jerusalem (London: Routledge, 2000), 41–42, 204–5. 36 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. I.3.1 The famous passage from St. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa IV, 13 runs as follows: If then the Word of God is quick and energising, and the Lord did all that He willed; if He said, Let there be light and there was light, let there be a firmament and there was a firmament; if the heavens were established by the Word of the Lord and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth; if the heaven and the earth, water and fire and air and the whole glory of these, and, in sooth, this most noble creature, man, were perfected by the Word of the Lord; if God the Word of His own will became man and the pure and undefiled blood of the holy and ever-virginal One made His flesh without the aid of seed, can He not then make the bread His body and the wine and water His blood? He said in the beginning, Let the earth bring forth grass, and even until this present day, when the rain comes it brings forth its proper fruits, urged on and strengthened by the divine command. God said, This is My body, and This is My blood, and this do ye in remembrance of Me. And so it is at His omnipotent command until He come: for it was in this sense that He said until He come: and the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit becomes through the invocation the rain to this new tillage. For just as God made all that He made by the energy of the Holy Spirit, so also now the energy of the Spirit performs those things that are supernatural and which it is not possible to comprehend unless by faith alone. How shall this be, said the holy Virgin, seeing I know not a man? And the archangel Gabriel answered her: The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. And now you ask, how the bread became Christ’s body and the wine and water Christ’s blood. And I say unto thee, “The Holy Spirit is present and does those things which surpass reason and thought.” . . . The body which is born of the holy Virgin is in truth body united with divinity, not that the body which was received up into the heavens descends, but that the bread itself and the wine are changed into God’s body and blood. But if you enquire how this happens, it is enough for you to learn that it was through the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord took on Himself flesh that subsisted in Him and was born of the holy Mother of God through the Spirit. And we know nothing further save that the Word of God is true and energises and is omnipotent, but the manner of this cannot be searched out. . . . [T]he bread of the table and the wine and water are supernaturally changed by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the body and blood of Christ, and are not two but one and the same. . . .The bread and the wine are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, “This is My body,” not, this is a figure of My body: and “My blood,” not, a figure of My blood. . . . But Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 37 if some persons called the bread and the wine antitypes of the body and blood of the Lord, as did the divinely inspired Basil, they said so not after the consecration but before the consecration, so calling the offering itself.15 We first ask whether the text implies that Christ’s once and for all pronouncing of the words “This is my body, etc.” at the Last Supper has consecrated every Eucharist regardless of whether the priest repeats them.This does not seem to be the case: in the already established context of the Eucharist in the present, St. John Damascene first refers to the Word of God in the present tense; next he lists a number of divine words from creation and redemption, with their effects, in the past tense; then when he returns to Eucharistic making of the Lord’s body and blood, he reverts to the present tense. One does not have the impression that Christ’s act of speaking in the past would be efficacious without the repetition of his words. Next comes a passage often regarded as asserting the necessity and sacramental efficacy of the epiclesis: as the rain brought forth the plants commanded into being by God’s Word, so “the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit becomes through the invocation the rain to this new tillage” of the making of the Lord’s body and blood. But does Damascene indeed attribute efficacy to “the invocation” considered as a word proferred by the priest? It should be noted that the passage continues with three consecutive references to the Holy Spirit himself, and not to the invocation, as cause of the Eucharistic change, and there quickly follows an exclusively worded attribution of the change to the energizing power of the Word, answer to the question of how the change takes place. Clearly Damascene’s focus is on the mysterious power of God’s Word and Spirit considered precisely as divine, not the invocation. I am not claiming that Damascene attributed instrumental-sacramental efficacy to the words of Christ alone, nor that he even distinguished this kind of causality as such, for the Tradition needed more accumulated inductions from apostolic faith and practices to eventually recognize sacramental form as such, or what it is for a liturgical word to be efficacious ex opere operato, rather than by impetration. But it can be said that when Tradition at a later stage registers this distinction clearly in identifying the dominical words as the sole form of the Eucharist, the passages from John Damascene do not speak against the later development. Rather, given the whole context of these passages, it is a defensible 15 Expositio fidei, 86 (IV, 13), trans. S. D. F. Salmond, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 9 (reprinted Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 82–84. 38 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. hypothesis that Damascene need not have understood consecration to occur “through” the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the same sense that it occurs “through” the repetition of Christ’s words. He may have understood “through the invocation” in the sense of impetratory, not sacramentally instrumental, causality: God grants the consecration through the Holy Spirit in response to his beloved Church’s prayer and not only in fulfillment of Christ’s having invested his sacramental words with authority. And this is all that need be said by one who holds to the words of Christ as the sole form of the Eucharist when debating with proponents of the opposite thesis. Damascene goes on to argue, against objectors generally presumed to have been iconoclasts, that the Eucharist is Christ’s true body and blood, not merely their figure or antitype. He is probably referring to the epiclesis in the liturgy of St. Basil when he says that the word “antitype” refers to the offerings of bread and wine before they are consecrated. Taken as a precisely worded interpretation of the post-institution narrative epiclesis, which asks the Holy Spirit to change the “antitypes,” the passage implies that the offerings are not yet consecrated in the time between the institution narrative and the epiclesis. But it must be remembered that the sentence is not ultimately intended to answer the question, when are the offerings bread and wine, and when are they changed? It is responding to the implied question, if the Eucharist is not a mere antitype of Christ’s body and blood, why did Basil say it is? Given Damascene’s concern simply to affirm the reality and presence of Christ’s body and blood at some point in the celebration of the Eucharist, as opposed to their presence merely through a symbol, it is possible to understand him as meaning the following (clarification in brackets): “But if some persons called the bread and the wine antitypes of the body and blood of the Lord, as did the divinely inspired Basil, they said so [in reference to them] not [as they are] after the consecration but before the consecration, so calling the offering itself.” If this is the real meaning of the passage, there would of course still be a problem with timing, in that the epiclesis would ask for the change of “bread and wine” which have already been changed. For this reason the great Catholic scholar of Oriental theology Martin Jugie was willing to concede that in this particular passage, dominated by the needs of an extraneous doctrinal debate, Damascene’s thought did not square with Catholic doctrine. But as we shall also see below, there is evidence of Byzantine liturgical consciousness praying the epiclesis after the dominical words without attaching instrumental efficacy to the epiclesis, much like Bossuet’s commentary on the Canon cited above. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 39 S. Salaville’s exhaustive study saw John Damascene’s words as having played a major role in hardening much of the East into the position that the epiclesis to the Holy Spirit is necessary for consecration, in contrast to what Salaville saw as the original Eastern theology, which attributed consecration to the words of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.16 His article presented a number of Byzantine and other Eastern witnesses, both before and after Damascene, to the efficacy of the institution narrative. Also summarized in this classic article are the discussions and final resolution of the issue in favor of the “Latin” position at the Council of Florence: with the apparently unique exception of Mark of Ephesus, who of course rejected the entire work of the Council, the Greek bishops publicly agreed that the sole cause of the consecration is the word of Christ repeated by the priest. The reason for not including this point in the dogmatic bull of union was to avoid giving the impression that the doctrine had ever been in doubt.17 Although not himself ascribing sacramental efficacy to the dominical words exclusively, Orthodox liturgical scholar Michael Zheltov has demonstrated that consecration by the dominical words was a widespread position in the East before the polemic with the West solidified. Even an important ally of Mark Eugenikos, George Scholarios, agreed with the Latins on this point, and a passage in the most famous Byzantine liturgical commentary, ascribed to Germanus of Constantinople, seems to presuppose consecration by the words of the Lord.18 In view of the internal variety of the Eastern tradition which 16 S. Salaville, “Épiclèse eucharistique,” in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, vol. 5 (1913), 247–65. 17 Ibid., 258–59. 18 Michael Zheltov, “The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought,” in Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West, 263–306. Zheltov’s article is a groundbreaking one for our own time. Although he does not always agree with the Catholic scholars Salaville and Jugie, much of what Fr. Zheltov brings forward was already known to Jugie, who documented frequent Byzantine affirmations of consecration by the words of the Lord, as well as alterations the Greek Orthodox made to their own traditional rubrics, after the failure of the union of Florence, alterations which ritually deemphasized the words of the Lord and rather emphasized the epiclesis. For this and other findings by Jugie, see his Theologia Dogmatica Christianorum Orientalium Ab Ecclesia Catholica Dissidentium, III (Paris, 1930), 258–84, and De forma eucharistiae: De epiclesibus eucharisticis (Rome, 1943). The words of the Lord have always remained chanted aloud in the Byzantine anaphora, while the epiclesis has traditionally been said quietly, as most of the anaphora came to be; regarding the contemporary practice in some Orthodox parishes of the people chanting “Amens” at the epiclesis, Zheltov says it is “a pure innovation, which has nothing to do with the Byzantine tradition” (Zheltov, “The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought,” 291, n. 92). 40 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. Salaville, Jugie, and Zheltov have shown to be not as monolithically focused on the epiclesis as popularly believed, we wish to suggest a different approach to those Eastern anaphoras in which the epiclesis follows the institution narrative. If the standard history of the development of the dogma of the Holy Spirit’s divinity in the fourth century is correct, then the motive for adding a grammatically distinct invocation “to the Holy Spirit” to various anaphoras was primarily to accentuate the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, a truth of faith then being highlighted explicitly by the orthodox because of the spread of heresies denying the full divinity of the Spirit. At this time various already traditional prayers saw the addition of references to the Holy Spirit as divine sanctifier: in the context of prayer, faith in the Spirit’s divinity was naturally expressed now by praying to him as the one who effects the sacramental action, not only in the anaphora but in some baptismal rites as well. What is attributed to the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic epiclesis by Damascene’s answer to the question of how transubstantiation takes place—omnipotence, supernatural power, presence, energy—is the divinity shared in common with the Father invoked from the beginning of the anaphora and with the Word whose words are invoked over the bread and wine in the institution narrative. His fundamental point is the divine power of the Word and the Spirit, not the personal distinction of the Spirit.True, he speaks of the sacramental change “through” the invocation of the Holy Spirit, but he also says “[W]e know nothing further save that the Word of God is true and energizes and is omnipotent . . . ,” so his fundamental insistence in De fide orthodoxa is on the transcendence and incomprehensibility of divine power.The Spirit changes the bread and wine because he is God, not simply because he is the Spirit. Chrysostom’s and Damascene’s descriptions of the Word of God speaking words that transform the gifts are such as to make the institution narrative itself an invocation: the priest recites a narrative to God and in the same act he proffers divinely powerful words over bread and wine.19 The narrative of the institution is itself a type of epiclesis, although not in the form of a petition; it is an invocation to God the Father with the words of God the Word, for a divine benefit. The Fathers of the fourth century did no such thing as add the epiclesis to the Holy 19 John Chrysostom: “The priest is the representative when he pronounces those words, but the power and the grace are those of the Lord. ‘This is My Body,’ [h]e says. This word changes the things that lie before us . . .” English translation of First Homily on the Betrayal of Judas, 1, 6 (PG 49, 380), modified from Zheltov, “The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought,” 283. We will return to the context and translation of this passage. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 41 Spirit: having always known implicitly that the Holy Spirit is co-adored and co-glorified, they also knew that he is co-invoked when God the Word’s omnipotent words are called out to God over bread and wine. They added a mention of the Holy Spirit in order to explicate the third addressee of the invocation begun with the institution narrative. To cite Bossuet again, “It is in order to make more vivid what is being accomplished that the Church speaks at every moment as if the entire action were being accomplished here and now, without wondering if the action has already been accomplished or is yet to be accomplished.” The anamnesis, offering, and epiclesis form a single verbal reprise of what later dogmatic development will confirm to have taken place at the words of consecration. The epiclesis refers to bread and wine as being changed by the Holy Spirit because at the beginning of the Lord’s action narrated and again accomplished, now verbally recapitulated, the gifts were bread and wine about to be changed as they were “taken.” Since the epiclesis was added immediately after the anamnesis and offering, it could be experienced as the completion of the recapitulation. Therefore it did not necessarily imply that the gifts had not yet been consecrated, although in practice it did for many; nevertheless, there were Byzantine authors who indeed affirmed that the epiclesis manifests what has already taken place. I.3.2 As was mentioned at the beginning of the previous section, another of Taft’s reasons for the non-necessity of repeating “This is my Body, etc.” is the Fathers’ teaching that these words as spoken once by Christ at the Last Supper are perpetually efficacious. The argument would be that, since Christ has already consecrated the elements of all Eucharists past, present, and future, there is no need for “This is my body, etc.” to be repeated; at most it would be necessary for them to be recalled by allusion, in a “dispersed” and “euchological way,” to use the Pontifical Council’s terms. Although the Fathers did indeed preach that the power of Christ’s words spoken at the Last Supper extends through time, the texts cited say no more than that. It does not follow that the words are efficacious without sacramental repetition, according to the same Fathers. In fact, a passage from St. John Chrysostom’s Second Homily on the Second Epistle to Timothy suggests that it is through the repetition of the words that their power is applied in each Eucharist: The things God grants are not such that they could be accomplished through priestly power: everything is from grace; and his is only to open his mouth, but God does everything; he only completes the Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. 42 symbol. . . . This [offering] is in no way less than that one [at the Last Supper], because men do not sanctify this one, but he himself who sanctified that one. For just as the words which God spoke are the same as what the priest says now, thus the offering is the very same, like the baptism which he also gave.20 In this text we note first that the action of sanctifying the current Eucharist is attributed to Christ in the present, not the past, tense. More important, the priest is said to open his mouth, repeat the same words, and complete the symbol—what could this signify except that his repetition of the words completes the symbol? If that is the case, then there is no symbol without repetition of the words, and without the symbol there is no sacrament. Likewise Nicholas Russo21 does not sufficiently examine the subject and tense of “he says” in the key passage of the First Homily on the Betrayal of Judas 6: It is not man who causes what is present to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but Christ Himself Who was crucified for us. The priest is the representative when he pronounces those words, but the power and the grace are those of the Lord. “This is My Body,” [h]e says. This word changes the things that lie before us; and as that sentence “Increase and multiply,” once spoken, extends through all time and gives to our nature the power to reproduce itself; even so that saying “This is My Body,” once uttered, does at every altar in the Churches from that time to the present day, and even till Christ’s coming, make the sacrifice complete.22 Obviously for Chrysostom the words pronounced once and for all by Christ in the past are perpetually efficacious, but this in no way excludes a certain efficacy of their repetition now by the priest. “ ‘This is My Body,’ he [the priest] says. This word changes the things before us . . .”. Because of the preceding line, the subject of “says” is most likely the ordained priest, not Christ as personally distinct from his minister. The perpetual efficacy of Christ’s saying the words is a distinct idea in the passage overall, and does not cancel the first idea of the priest now pronouncing a word that changes the Eucharistic elements. I.4 Thus many of the historical sources considered as directly or indirectly favorable to the validity of anaphoras without the words of consecration are unclear, or call for a different interpretation. We can now move on to 20 PG 62:612. 21 Russo, “The Validity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari,” 35–37. 22 PG 49, 380. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 43 the most important traditions from the ancient Church whose manuscripts incontestably lack the institution narrative: the anaphora of Addai and Mari, and the Didache, which dates from at least the sub-apostolic age. I.4.1 The quasi-official commentary on the Pontifical Council’s letter recognizes that the question of whether the anaphora of Addai and Mari ever contained an institution narrative cannot be resolved by historical science, and so it appeals to the faith of the Assyrian Church of the East as an apostolic church. Robert Taft for his part reminds us that the Roman Church has always respected in principle the traditional practices of oriental churches in communion with her.23 Since he is convinced that the Church of the East celebrated the Eucharist without the institution narrative before the fifth-century schism occasioned by the Council of Ephesus the logical implication is that Rome has no choice but to recognize the validity of Addai/Mari celebrated without the institution narrative. Could such a claim be sustained? Certainly there are noteworthy differences in the celebration of the sacraments between Rome and various Eastern Churches, differences long recognized by Rome as not affecting validity. For example, the form of absolution is deprecatory rather than sentential in the Byzantine Churches. But the case of the anaphora of Addai and Mari is somewhat different, so that a convergence of data surrounding Addai/Mari raises questions about the authentic and original character of the absence of the institution narrative from this anaphora. Enormous amounts of research, together with probable and hypothetical reasoning, have been devoted to the study of this anaphora on the basis of its earliest known manuscripts. No one can contest what is clearly written or not written on a parchment, but there are anomalies in the grammatical and thematic flow of the prayer in those same manuscripts, anomalies which, on the basis of the wider Christian tradition, practically beg to be explained, either as traces of an institution narrative in an earlier manuscript, or as possible places for the celebrant to insert the narrative in an ad libitum form.24 Furthermore, everyone would accept 23 Taft, “Messa senza consacrazione?” 78. 24 For an exposition of Bernard Botte’s textual argument that the incoherencies of the manuscripts signal possible places for the institution narrative, see Louis Bouyer, The Eucharist, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 146–58. A standard source today for the text of Addai/Mari is A. Gelston, The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1992). The articles by A. Raes, “Les paroles de la consecration dans les anaphores syriennes,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 3 (1937): 486–504, 44 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. the possibility that not everything done or said in a liturgy was also written down, and in the case of the Eucharist in the East Syrian sources there is evidence, outside the manuscripts of the liturgy itself, of a traditional recitation of the institution narrative. The most direct evidence of this consists in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century reports by Assyrian priests to Anglican missionaries that they did in fact add the institution narrative in actual celebration of Addai/Mari. We need not conclude on this basis alone that the institution narrative was considered normative by the clergy as a whole, but the reports do show that the absence of a liturgical form from a manuscript does not necessarily prove its absence from actual celebration.25 One should also consider the East Syrian liturgical commentaries, which clearly mention the recitation of the Lord’s words as a part of the Eucharistic offering.26 This is what one would expect if the institution narrative was normative or at least generally used. It is true that the anaphoras of Theodore and Nestorius had the institution narrative, and the commentaries do not say which anaphora is being referred to. Therefore if the commentators were thinking of the anaphoras of Theodore and Nestorius, no conclusions could be drawn about how Addai/Mari was prayed in practice. However, at least one apparent citation in these commentaries corresponds to a line of Addai/Mari that is absent from Theodore and Nestorius. And it is significant that, at the time the commentaries were written, the anaphora of Addai and Mari was the most frequently used. Finally, the commentaries speak of the Eucharistic offering in general terms, in the way one would expect if they were expounding what they considered to be uniform and necessary in the liturgy per se. It is improbable that they would present the institution narrative as simply part of the liturgy if it was used only less frequently, in the anaphoras of Theodore and Nestorius only. The testimony of Assyrian priests to Anglican missionaries, the ancient Christian practice of not consigning everything to writing, and the East Syrian liturgical commentaries constitute a convergence of probabilities and “Le recit de l’institution eucharistique dans l’anaphore chaldéenne et malabare des Apôtres,” OCP 10 (1944): 216–26; and the article by Botte, “L’anaphore chaldéenne des Apotres,” OCP 15 (1949): 259–76, include plausible explanations of a material order for anomalies in manuscripts, for example, the scarcity of available parchment space. 25 U. M. Lang cites the Anglican missionaries in “Eucharist Without Institution Narrative? The Anaphora of Addai and Mari Revisited,” Divinitas, numero speciale (2004): 231. 26 See Lang, ibid., 244–51, and “Zum Einsetzungsbericht bei ostsyrischen Liturgiekommentatoren,” Oriens Christianus 89 (2005): 63–76. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 45 allowing us to say that the recitation of the institution narrative is part of the tradition of the Church of the East in its integrity and authenticity.27 At the very least these testimonies and signs make it improbable that the non-recitation of the institution narrative is an authentic tradition going back to the apostles of East Syria. How then to explain the absence of the institution narrative from the earliest known manuscripts of the anaphora of Addai and Mari, dated to the tenth or eleventh century? Raes and Botte offered various suggestions, but we will offer a new one based on a confluence of facts and parallels that suggest it. First the relevant background facts and parallels: in West Syria, Theodore of Mopsuestia and later Severus of Antioch clearly attest the institution narrative and an understanding of the priest acting in persona Christi, but in later centuries (corresponding to the Latin Middle Ages) it often failed to appear in new anaphoras composed in West Syria.28 The Roman Holy Office in 1843 was aware of not only occasional omission but also variation in the form.29 As for East Syria, there are at least two 27 Another possible explanation for the absence of the words of consecration in Addai/Mari, on the basis of its presumed great antiquity, would be the ancient Christian practice of sometimes not consigning the most sacred things to writing, for fear of their falling into the hands of persecutors and unbelievers. The earliest manuscripts of Addai/Mari may have lacked the institution narrative for this reason, and later copyists could have been conforming themselves to what they had before them, while all along the institution narrative was being added in actual celebration. Lang, “The Anaphora of Addai and Mari Revisited,” 251–56. An edition and translation of their missal published by Chaldean Catholics in 1982 gives this explanation: Missel chaldéen, ed. and trans. F. Y. Alichoran (Paris: Église catholique chaldéenne, 1982), 17. 28 For the liturgical commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia, see Edward Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation (Slough, England: St. Paul Publications, 1971); for Severus of Antioch, see the passage translated by Ernest Walter Brooks in The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, vol. 2 (London: William and Norgate, 1904), 238 (cited by Zheltov in “The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought,” 284). On the late Syrian anaphoras and the important Jacobite commentator Denis Bar-Salibi, see A. Raes, “Les paroles de la consécration dans les anaphores syriennes,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 3 (1937): 486–504. Bar-Salibi uses the phrase “in the person” of Christ. 29 The reply from the Holy Office is in an incomplete state as a response, but clear enough for our purpose: “Sicuti facere nequit Episcopus Jacobitarum nuper ad fidem catholicam conversus, quod abstineant Presbyteri ab usu suarum hostium oleo unctarum, et quod peius est, a mutandis verbis consecrationis—quandoque omnino ea tacent—nec valet illos cogere sine praeiudicio eiectionis suae personae et persecutionis populi sibi bene affecti.—Negative (sic!).” “Since a Jacobite bishop recently converted to the Catholic faith cannot make his priests abstain from using their 46 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. places in the tenth- or eleventh-century manuscripts of Addai/Mari where an institution narrative can be harmoniously recited with preceding and following material, possibly indicating the copyists’ presumption that the celebrant would add the narrative where he chose, for which reason it was simply not written down. This is significant when considered together with the codification of the East Syrian liturgy by the catholicos Isho’yabh III in the seventh century, for the tenth-century manuscripts would have depended on his reforms, and he could have been aware of a traditional variability in the location of the institution narrative in the most venerable anaphora of the Church, a variability in contrast with the fixed ordering of the more recent anaphoras of Theodore and Nestorius.30 The hypothesis suggested by the facts: Isho’yabh inherited a chaotic situation: from time immemorial, the place of the institution narrative within Addai/Mari was variable, ad libitum celebrantis. He would have recognized Addai/Mari as the original prayer of the Orient, and he would have known that the place of the institution narrative was variable. Precisely for this reason, he left a manuscript which did not contain the institution narrative, anticipating that celebrants would continue to supply it in one or another possible location, depending on their choice. Because of the authority of Isho’yabh, this version became a sort of editio princeps, and this explains why the earliest known manuscripts lack the institution narrative. It is easy to imagine an older East Syrian priest training the new priest in the village, and saying “This is where you say . . .”— and priests in different villages having different preferences. Nevertheless it was generally recited, so that centuries later Assyrian priests were able to tell Anglican missionaries that the words were recited from memory, despite the absence from liturgical codices. At the same time, variability in location of the words of consecration, together with their absence from the written versions, opened the way to the abuse of their complete omission by ignorant or careless priests, reports of which reached Rome hosts anointed with oil, and what is worse, changing the words of consecration— sometimes they leave them entirely unsaid—nor constrain them without the disadvantage of expulsion of his person and persecution of the people welldisposed to him.—Negative (sic)!” Sanctum Officium, 1658, n. 3 in Codificazione Canonica Orientale Fonti Fascicolo I (Rome: Sacra C. Orientale, 1930), 191. Perhaps an already-existing practice of making changes in the institution words was the reason for medieval copyists not writing them down, although at least the sanior pars of the clergy would have recited them in some form in every celebration. 30 W. Macomber discusses Isho’yabh’s reform in “A History of the Chaldean Mass,” Worship 51 (1977): 107–20, cited by Lang, “The Anaphora of Addai and Mari Revisited,” 47. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 47 via Catholic missionaries, and thus we have the 1843 and 1902 condemnations of the omission by the Holy See.31 I.4.2 We now pass to a consideration of the Didache; we will show that it too need not imply the non-necessity of the words of consecration for the Eucharistic sacrifice. For someone who accepts in faith the living Tradition at the stage of clarity it has attained after many centuries, it is not necessary to prove by purely rational historical methods that the Didache churches shared the same faith in all particulars, which only gradually came to be clarified in the Catholic Church. Rather it is sufficient to show that this apparently apostolic or subapostolic text can be read in harmony with that faith, and therefore does not legitimate a Eucharist without the institution narrative and words of consecration. After recalling the passages directly relevant to the Eucharist and its celebrants, we will fill in the background in light of the New Testament and some of the most recent scholarship on the Didache, maintaining that our historical reconstruction is defensible and does not contradict any of the data.32 31 No Latin prejudice against the East is implied by formulating such a scenario, for in the West we are familiar with the story of St.Vincent de Paul re-evangelizing the French countryside and discovering a priest so ignorant as to say the Hail Mary for absolution. Despite the scattered reports of omission of the words of consecration in both East and West Syrian rites in the nineteenth century, it seems that in the early twentieth century, non-Catholic East Syrian (Assyrian) clergy became more uniform in using it: some missals published by the Assyrians themselves insert the institution narrative in Addai/Mari, on an added slip of paper, or even into the text itself. W. Macomber stated in 1977 that at all liturgies he had attended in recent years at which the anaphora of Addai and Mari was used, the institution narrative was included: “A History of the Chaldean Mass,” Worship 51 (1977): 119. 32 Recent historical-critical scholarship sometimes includes data that lend partial support to the historical reconstructions offered here. See André Tuilier, “Les charismatiques itinérants dans la Didaché et dans l’Évangile de Mathieu,” in Matthew and the Didache, ed. Huub van de Sandt (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press: 2005), 157–72. K. Stevenson, in Eucharist and Offering (New York: Pueblo, 1986), cited by Lang (234–35), summarizes the obstacles encountered in efforts to reconstruct early liturgical forms with fragmented and scant manuscript evidence. In recent years liturgists have begun to abandon a number of long-held positions that relativized Roman Catholic teaching or were cited as precedent for some of the changes of the 1960s. For example, mainstream scholarship can now be found denying that the Didache reveals an original charismatic style of Church opposed to the hierarchical or institutional; fewer scholars now hold to a Roman origin for the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. 48 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. Chapter 9: As for thanksgiving, give thanks this way. First, with regard to the cup: We thank you, our Father, for the holy vine of David your servant which you made known to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory forever. And with regard to the fragment: We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you made known to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory forever. As this fragment lay scattered upon the mountains and became a single [fragment] when it had been gathered, May your church be gathered into your kingdom from the ends of the earth. For glory and power are yours, through Jesus Christ, forever. Let no one eat or drink of your thanksgiving [Eucharist] save those who have been baptized in the name of the Lord, since the Lord has said, “Do not give to dogs what is holy.” Chapter 10: When you have had your fill, give thanks this way: We thank you, holy Father, for your holy name, which you made dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality, which you made known to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory forever. You, almighty Lord, created all things for the sake of your name, and you gave food and drink to human beings for enjoyment, so that they would thank you; But you graced us with spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Jesus your servant. . . . Allow the prophets, though, to give thanks as much as they like. Chapter 14: Assembling on every Lord’s day of the Lord, break bread and give thanks, confessing your faults besides so that your sacrifice may be clean. . . . This is [the sacrifice] of which the Lord has said: “ ‘to offer me a clean sacrifice in every place and time, because I am a great king,’ says the Lord, ‘and my name is held in wonder among the nations.’ ” Chapter 15: Select, then, for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, mild tempered men who are not greedy, who are honest and have proved themselves, for they too perform the functions of prophets and teachers for you. So do not disregard them, for they are the persons who hold a place of honor among you, together with the prophets and teachers.33 Jesus appointed the Twelve, augmented by many more apostles sent out with spiritual power by the Pentecost event, the Damascus road appearance, and with the laying on of hands in the churches. In every place, the apostles’ ministry of preaching, baptism, and laying hands on the new converts produced further outpourings of the spirit of prophecy, inspired teaching and witness to the truth of God in Christ. Those most richly endowed with the gifts of revealing and systematically teaching the 33 Didache; translation by Aelred Cody (slightly modified here) in The Didache in Context: Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission, ed. Clayton N. Jefford (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 9–13. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 49 mysteries of God were natural candidates for an apostle’s further laying on of hands for diaconal, presbyteral, and episcopal ministry in stable communities, while the apostle would be off to evangelize another village or town. Because of the striking character of their charismatic revelations and penetrating insight into the Scriptures and the words of Jesus, these ordained ministers often continued to be called “prophets” and “teachers” even as they celebrated various types of formal liturgy on a regular basis and were recognized as stable authorities over the community through the laying on of hands.34 A precedent for the picture in Acts 13 is found in 1 Chronicles, which refers to the instituted liturgical singers of the Psalms in the Temple as prophets.35 The title of the Didache renders plausible the hypothesis that its earliest layer was written by a teacher for teachers. Hierarchically subordinate to that prophet who was also a bishop by the laying on of hands of an apostle, teachers could baptize, teach, and preside at the daily meal which was also a primitive liturgy of the pre-sanctified, concerning which we have numerous testimonies to the practice of reservation of fragments of the Eucharistic bread in private homes, and consequent communion on days between the Sunday celebrations of the liturgy by the bishop who consecrated the oblations. Since weekday communion was communal in monasteries, and since the Didache’s emphasis on obedience to the prophets who teach the Way is analogous to the role of an abbot in a monastery, which role comprises both “charismatic” and “institutional” aspects, it is natural to take Didache 9 as referring to the weekday communion of the reserved consecrated bread at the communal meal, taken with a formula of thanksgiving and preceded by thanksgiving for a fresh cup which recalled the cup (naturally not conserved) of Sunday.36 Thus the Didache churches celebrated what is essential to the later liturgies of the “pre-sanctified”: a liturgy which by certain actions and words closely resembled the liturgy properly so called of Sunday, but which 34 Acts 13:1–3, 1 Tm 4:14, 2 Tm 1:6–7, and 1 Cor 12:28–29 manifest a close asso- ciation of liturgy and presbyteral/episcopal authority, which the living Tradition of the Church knows as the first beginnings of the ordained sacred ministry. The hierarchical ranking of “prophets” in 1 Cor may indicate bishops or presbyters who continued to be called prophets. 35 See John W. Kleinig, The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Significance of Choral Music in Chronicles, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 156 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). 36 On the reservation of the Eucharistic bread and communion between Sundays in the early Church, see Stefanos Alexopoulos, The Presanctified Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite: A Compartive Analysis of Its Origins, Evolution, and Structural Components (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 10–31. 50 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. comprised communion of previously consecrated bread and non-consecrated wine. Thus Didache 9–10 witnesses to the mysterious presence of Christ’s true body in the Eucharist, while not undermining the necessity of the words of the Lord for a valid consecration. This reading is further strengthened by the fact that in the Didache only the Sunday celebration, associated with the bishop, is called a sacrifice. The bishop who celebrates the Eucharistic sacrifice on the Lord’s Day is said to perform the liturgy of the prophets, because prophets were so visibly and audibly prominent in the daily gatherings of the Church which in part resembled what came to be seen as the divine liturgy in the proper sense, celebrated on Sunday. The bishop was specifically and formally an overseer, particularly in the management of Church temporal goods, and he celebrated Sunday Mass, giving thanks like prophets, but also offering the sacrifice, for which the Didache gives no instructions for the bishop, since the author of the Didache is only a teacher. Therefore, nothing in the Didache prevents us from presuming that the Eucharist known to the author or authors was consecrated by the words of the Lord pronounced by an ordained minister.37 II Having completed our historical and patristic survey, we proceed to the rule of faith and the sensus fidei as they relate to the question of anaphoras without institution narrative, Addai/Mari in particular. II.1 Referring to the Pontifical Council’s letter to the Chaldean bishops as an epoch-making “decree” and the most important magisterial document since Vatican II, Taft presents not only the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity but also the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Pope John Paul II as the authorities who have approved the “audacious accord” between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian 37 A few words should be said about ministries: If men already known to be filled with the Spirit received laying on of hands for the service of charity, it is reasonable to presume, in harmony with the wider Tradition, that a “prophet” could become a bishop by the laying on of hands for supreme oversight and the plenitude of liturgical service in the Church.The primitive picture of the Church in the earliest sources is frequently characterized by a material overlapping of the charismatic and the institutional, together with a formal distinction between the two. The distinction came to be more visible with the disappearance of prophecy: the churches eventually had to choose “non-charismatic” men as bishops, presbyters, and deacons, so they ceased to be called “prophets” and “teachers” as they often had been in the first generation. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 51 Church of the East. Taft finds the letter to be audacious and courageous because it breaks with centuries of teaching and clichés fostered by the theological manuals. Taft acknowledges papal judgments of the past, which seem to contradict the recent decision, and so he offers suggestions for how to “interpret” them, since, he says, an authentic magisterium cannot contradict itself. Nevertheless it is not common for theologians to refer to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as “supreme magisterium” without nuance. The bishop of Rome himself and the unanimous universal episcopate are normally considered supreme magisterium, and the faculty to protect Catholic doctrine has been delegated to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as a subordinate instrument of the pope’s magisterium. The 2001 letter to the Chaldean bishops from the Pontifical Council, which has never been published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, was an official act of the Pontifical Council, not of the Pope or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Even though the Congregation and the Pope gave their approval to the letter as the culmination of inter-dicasterial consultation, this approval has never been published as an act of magisterium to the universal Church. “Supreme magisterium” is usually associated with acts promulgated to the universal Church, but the Pontifical Council’s letter of 2001 was specifically addressed to a single sui juris particular Church, not to the universal Church. The other well-known promoter of Addai/Mari without institution narrative, Cesare Giraudo, points out that the clearest papal declarations favoring the words of the Lord, rather than the epiclesis, as the form of the Eucharist are found in letters addressed only to a portion of the Church;38 although this allows him to qualify their status as minor, he fails to point out that the Pontifical Council’s 2001 letter was likewise addressed only to a restricted portion of the Church, and is canonically not even an act of the pope himself. To Taft’s claim that the letter in question is a “decree” of the “supreme magisterium,” one can ask how the ecumenical dicastery would have authority to obligate all the baptized to believe new developments of doctrine, for to say that the words of Christ validly consecrate the 38 Giraudo, “L’anafora degli apostoli Addai e Mari,” 111. The strongest statement is by Benedict XIII writing to the Melkite Patriarch: “ . . . non per invocationem Spiritus Sancti, sed per verba consecrationis fieri transsubstantiationem . . .”; “ . . . not through invocation of the Holy Spirit, but through the words of consecration transubstantiation happens . . .”; see Collectio Lacensis, Bd. II (Freiburg/Breisgau, 1876), 440. This passage is cited by more than one author in the special issue of Divinitas, but I do not have access to its full text. Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. 52 Eucharist when they are found only in a dispersed and euchological way is to give a previously unheard of interpretation of the Catholic doctrine that the words of Christ consecrate the Eucharist. Fr. Taft further states that Addai/Mari has never been condemned by anybody. However, an event of restored ecclesiastical communion during the Council of Trent, together with statements of the Roman Congregatio pro Propaganda Fide and the Holy Office require us to nuance this sweeping statement. A bishop from the Church of the East arrived in Rome in the sixteenth century; he asked for and obtained ecclesiastical communion from the Pope, who recognized him as Patriarch. This was the return of a part of the Church of the East to full communion with the See of Peter; it would come to be called the Chaldean Church, inheritor of the catholicity of the pre–Council of Ephesus Church of the East. One Cardinal Amulius made a report to the Council of Trent about the “Chaldeans’ ” faith and sacraments, and his outline of their Mass specifically mentions the narrative of the institution and the words of consecration as a part of their Eucharistic liturgy. This indicates the cardinal’s presumption that, at least from the time of the patriarch’s request for communion with Rome, he and the clergy in union with him would henceforth recite the institution narrative. Even though no condemnation was issued against the anaphora of Addai and Mari without institution narrative, it is significant that when Rome received a portion of the Church of the East into her communion, it was presumed by Cardinal Amulius that their Eucharist would be celebrated with the institution narrative.39 By the late nineteenth century it was becoming known in the Christian West that some liturgical manuscripts from the Assyrian Church lacked the institution narrative. It was at this time that an instruction of the Holy See’s Congregatio pro Propaganda Fide to Catholic missionaries in the Near East instructed them to uproot the “incredible abuse” of Mass without the words of consecration and to instruct about the true form of the sacrament of the Eucharist.40 Like the letter of the Pontifical Council, this instruction of Propaganda Fide also emanated from an authoritative dicastery of the Holy See. At the very least we must say, pace Fr.Taft, that Addai/Mari without institution narrative was once presumed 39 See Placid J. Podipara, The Thomas Christians (London and Bombay: Darton, Longman & Todd and St. Paul Publications, 1970), 61–62. l’incredibile abuso di non pronunciare le parole sacramentali alla consecrazione della messa detta degli Apostoli, che è la più frequente. Instruire sulla vera formola della consecrazione.” Letter dated July 31, 1902, in Codex Juris Canonici Fontes, ed. P. Gasparri and J. Seredi, vol. 5, Rome, 1935, p. 546. 40 “Togliere Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 53 worthy of condemnation. As mentioned earlier, we also have the Holy Office reply of 1843, which strongly implies that the omission of the words of consecration is an intolerable abuse. According to the scheme of the loci theologici, these letters of dicasteries of the Holy See are just as much “monuments to Tradition” as the famous tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts of the anaphora of Addai and Mari. The Holy See’s critical examination of the practices of Eastern churches returning to full communion is not so different from condemnations of errors committed in Western true churches, never out of communion, who occasionally lost or distorted elements of the Tradition. A few Italian dioceses were apparently ordaining women in the fifth century or preparing to, but this was condemned by Pope Gelasius. Somewhere in the medieval Western Church, when a lacuna occurred in the conferring of baptism, namely an omission similar to the non-recitation of the words of consecration, baptisms were declared invalid by Pope Alexander III.41 And in the course of reforming abuses in his diocese, in the tenth century, Bishop Atto of Vercelli conceded that some women had to be ordained priests in the primitive Church because of the insufficient numbers of men.42 Thus the impossibility of female priesthood, taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium, but still needing to be declared as “definitively to be held” in 1994 by John Paul II, shows that being an historic Church with a bishop in the apostolic succession is not sufficient to guarantee the orthodoxy of sacramental practices. If fifth-century Italian bishops could confer invalid ordinations and be corrected by Pope Gelasius, and if Bishop Atto could mention ordaining women in cases of necessity, without in any way condemning such an exception, then it seems a priori possible that Assyrian clergy could celebrate invalid Eucharists due to defect of form, just as anyone else could err in sacramental matters. 41 The verb “baptizo” was not said during the immersion: “Quod si quis puerum ter in aquam immerserit in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Et non dixerit ‘Ego baptizo te,’ in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, non est puer baptizatus.” Cap. de Baptismo, ap. Van Espen, Jus. Eccl. Univ. p. II tit. II cap. I, n. 14, as cited in Wilfrid Raynal, The Ordinal of King Edward VI (London, 1871), 104. The Holy Office decree of December 7, 1690 (see Denzinger, various editions) confirmed this judgment by censuring a Louvain theologian’s opinion in favor of validity. Consider the question: when a priest forgets or mangles the consecration in the Roman rite, would Fr. Taft and others say that such a “Mass without the consecration” is nevertheless valid because “Body, Blood, Christ etc.” are present in a dispersed and euchological way in the epiclesis, anamnesis, and oblation of the Eucharistic prayer? 42 Atto of Vercelli, Epist. 8; PL 134, 114. 54 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. II.2 The sense of the faithful regarding Christ’s institution of the Eucharist was recently expressed by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict as follows: “What exactly did the Lord instruct them to repeat? . . . The instruction to repeat refers simply to what was new in Jesus’ actions that evening: the breaking of bread, the prayer of blessing and thanksgiving accompanied by the words of consecration of bread and wine.”43 Filling in the gaps of Scripture in light of Tradition, we offer the following reconstruction of the Eucharist as celebrated by the Apostles and handed on to the Church (cf. 1 Cor 11). Christ had not only said, “This is my body . . . my blood” at the Last Supper; he had also said to the crowds, “ . . . the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” He had left an indelible memory in the minds of the apostles of his presiding at meals, pronouncing the thanksgivings and blessings, and this memory culminated in the Emmaus appearance. After the descent of Holy Spirit and the baptism of the first converts, the apostles found themselves in the position of having to preside for the first time at the meal of renewed Israel, and so they recalled Emmaus and especially the Last Supper command, “Do this in memory of me.” Presiding and taking up the bread, St. Peter realizes he is standing in the place of his Lord, having to pronounce Jesus’ new and eternal thanksgiving and blessing heard at the Last Supper. Holding the bread in his hands he also recalls the words, “The bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world,” and he becomes aware that this is only bread. This in turn causes the sudden insight that, as in His miracles, Jesus’ words “This is my body . . . my blood” were sermo operatorius44 and Peter understands that the object of the command “Do this in memory of Me” includes repeating the sermo operatorius of the Lord. Realizing that as a mere disciple of the Lord he both stands in His place and cannot stand in His place at the table of the Kingdom, and that it is His body, not his referred to by the words, Peter “catechetically”45 prefaces the words of the Lord with their narrated context (“ . . . he took bread . . . saying . . .”). The narrative surrounding the words of the Lord in the first person singular is 43 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 139. 44 Cf. St. Ambrose, De sacramentis IV.4.14–15: “ . . . non suis sermonibus utitur sacer- dos, sed utitur sermonibus Christi. Ergo sermo Christi hoc conficit sacramentum. Quis est sermo Christi?” Ambrose proceeds to recount the creation of the world through the divine sermo, and concludes, “Vides ergo, quam operatorius sermo sit Christi.” 45 Cf. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins, 14, for this idea, although I see it quite differently from Bradshaw. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 55 thus inseparably catechetical and liturgical, for it expresses the historical context necessary for the proper meaning of the words of consecration. This is the type or model received ultimately from the Lord that St. Paul will solemnly remind the Corinthians of—one standing in the place of Christ as head of the celebrating community “fulfills the figure” of Christ ( John Chrysostom) by an identical doing and saying; at the same time, by narrating Christ’s having done and said, he shows that he merely fulfills the figure.The broad stream of Tradition in the Latin, Greek, and Syrian traditions will go on to speak of the bishop offering the Church’s oblations as a figure of Christ, and of the priest acting in the person of Christ, who as God consecrates by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Tradition reaches St. Thomas Aquinas, he understands the form and minister of the Eucharist as requiring that the priest represent Christ by speaking Christ’s own words in the first person singular, and in the framework of the Last Supper narrative (so that the minister does not signify his own body). St. Thomas sees the rationale for this necessary mimetic representation in the surpassing dignity of the Eucharist, a dignity greater than that of the other sacraments, inasmuch as the consecration of its matter consists in a miraculous conversion of substance itself. After pointing out this substantial conversion, the Angelic Doctor continues: And since the form must be fitting to the thing, for this reason the form of this sacrament differs from the forms of the other sacraments. . . . [T]he forms of the other sacraments are pronounced in the person of the minister; either in the mode of one who performs the act, as when it is said, “I baptize you” or “I confirm you” or in the mode of one who is commanding, as it is said in the sacrament of order: “Receive the power,” etc. or in the mode of one who is praying, as when it is said in the sacrament of extreme unction: “Through this anointing and our intercession,” etc. But the form of this sacrament is pronounced in the person of Christ himself speaking, that it may be understood that the minister in the accomplishing of this sacrament does nothing, except that he pronounces the words of Christ. (ST III, q. 78, a. 1) Out of honor for Christ, the form of the Eucharist is such that Christ’s own words are heard from the lips of a minister who does not speak of Christ in his own voice, that is in the third person, but in Christ’s voice, “This is my body, etc.” The Eucharist is the greatest sacrament because it effects the greatest of all miracles, the change in the substantial being of a creature to God incarnate—its form should be spoken in the grammatical Person of the one whose power accomplishes it. The priest speaking in the person of Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. 56 Christ does a performative and not merely indicative speech act; the words “This is my body” signify the change of substance as instantaneously complete from the viewpoint of the terminus ad quem, which terminus is, “this” being Christ’s body.46 By saying what Christ said, the priest with his spiritual character does, sacramentally, what Christ did. Thomas Marschler has presented an extensive survey of Latin theological teaching in the Thomist tradition on the words of consecration and finds a universal consensus which has entered deeply into the spiritual consciousness of the priesthood in the Catholic Church.47 In this consciousness the priest is essentially a man somehow identified with Christ the priest; as such he repeats Christ’s own assertion of identity over “this” and “my body etc.” Marschler finds that the approval of the anaphora of Addai and Mari constitutes a kind of distancing from the traditional Catholic priestly identity and spirituality of “in persona Christi.”48 This spirituality was vividly expressed in the Apostolic Exhortation on priestly formation by John Paul II: The priest’s relation to the Church is inscribed in the very relation which the priest has to Christ, such that the “sacramental representation” of Christ serves as the basis and inspiration for the relation of the priest to the Church. . . . The apostles and their successors, inasmuch as they exercise an authority which comes to them from Christ, the head and shepherd, are placed—with their ministry—in the forefront of the Church as a visible continuation and sacramental sign of Christ in his own position before the Church and the world, as the enduring and ever new source of salvation. . . .49 The priest’s quasi-sacramental representation of Christ in the liturgy is greater if he speaks Christ’s own words of self-sacrifice than if he merely refers to the body of Christ, as in the anaphora of Addai and Mari.50 46 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, ST III, q. 78, a.2. 47 Thomas Marschler, “Neues und Altes zur Eucharistischen Sakramentenform,” Divinitas, numero speciale (2004): 201–26. 48 See ibid., 223. 49 John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, n. 16. English translation from the Vatican website, with one correction in light of the Latin text available at the same site. 50 The priest in persona Christi is not a purely Latin idea: as mentioned above, the West Syrian commentator Denis Bar-Salibi saw the priest as speaking in the person of Christ. Likewise, although not referred to the words of consecration, the general principle of the sacred ministers as themselves symbols of Christ during the liturgy is clearly expressed by Theodore of Mopsuestia in his catechetical homilies: see Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation, 211, 223, 226. Benedict XVI reads the words of consecration as expressing Christ’s offering and laying down his life in Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week, 130ff. Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 57 Marschler’s survey of Second Scholasticism Thomists shows many theologians who prolonged St. Thomas’s insistence on the necessity to signify transubstantiation in the first person singular of Christ himself. To them we can add St. Alphonsus Liguori and others who imagined a number of invalid formulas characterized by their lack of assertion of identity between “this” and “my body.”51 For this wide-ranging consensus of auctores probati, the stupendous reality of the Eucharist is a miraculous change of substance, which must be signified by an assertion of identity and being, through use of the first person singular possessive pronoun for Christ. When we turn to the anaphora of Addai and Mari without institution narrative, the closest thing we find to a predicative-performative assertion of identity between “this” and “my body” is the priest calling on the Holy Spirit to make the offerings into Christ’s body and blood. The epiclesis can thus be seen as a “euchological” reformulation of Christ’s words; as we mentioned above, the determination that Christ’s words also consecrate when used “euchologically” is the development of doctrine that the Pontifical Council has proposed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the epiclesis does not exemplify the other sign of the surpassing dignity of the Eucharist according to St.Thomas, namely the priest’s speaking in the first-person singular voice of Christ. And none of the “dispersed” references to the body and blood of Christ in Addai/Mari (“the body and blood of Christ on the holy altar” etc.) include a grammatical subject for the identity between “this” and Christ’s body or blood, the identity which is the terminus ad quem of a change. It is not being itself or identity, terminus of a change from “this” bread and wine, which is explicitly asserted in the anaphora of Addai and Mari, but presence on the altar. Thus the words “This is my body” as spoken by Christ at the Last Supper are a divine word of power that makes something be what it is said to be. For critics of the Pontifical Council decision, the very essence of the Eucharist instituted by Christ and handed on to the Church is found in the divine first person singular as well as in the explicit performative assertion of being, which is redolent of the miracles in the Gospel. For these theologians and for the bishop who asked Fr. Taft how there can be a Mass without the words of consecration, this would be nothing more than the sense of the Scriptural passages which present the institution: Christ took bread and gave thanks saying, This is my body, and told 51 St. Alphonsus, Theologia Moralis, vol. 6, ed. M. Heilig (Malines, 1852), 52–55; Felice Cappello, Tractatus canonico-moralis de sacramentis, vol. 1, 5th ed. (Turin & Rome: Marietti, 1945), 254; Matthaeus Coronata, Institutiones juris canonici ad usum utriusque cleri et scholarum: de sacramentis tractatus canonicus, vol. 1 (Turin & Rome: Marietti, 1943), 170. 58 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B. the apostles to do what he did. All he did was give thanks, saying, among other things, “This is my body.” Therefore we cannot do what he did without saying what he said. And his saying was indeed a doing if it was a performative assertion of being and identity. The priest’s doing must also consist in saying the performative assertion of “this” as being the body or blood of Christ. All other senses of invoking divine blessing on things by offering prayer to God over them—in other words, epiclesis and anaphora in general—pale in comparison with the performative, efficacious words of the Word speaking here and now (by the mouth of the priest) in the first person singular. The anaphora as a whole exists only around the narrative of the institution and the words of consecration. To conclude: this study presupposes the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the Eucharist is consecrated by the words of the Lord, and that we know this because it has been received from the continuous Tradition of the Church going back to the Lord himself. That Tradition comprises more than a few scattered, randomly rediscovered manuscripts from earlier stages in comparison with our own time; it is primarily oral and continuous, often proceeding by induction from a synthesis of scriptural passages. To defend the Catholic sensus fidei that the words of consecration have been received from the Lord and as such must be repeated by the celebrant, one need only show that there is not a preponderance of signs of their absence from the earlier stages of the Tradition of the liturgy, and that clear witnesses and indirect signs support their universal presence from the beginning, even if those signs are not strict proofs for a purely rational historical criticism. Examination of the data has yielded such a result, and there are even signs that the authentic tradition of the Church of the East itself is to add the institution narrative to the anaphora of Addai and Mari from memory. Analogously, there was more Byzantine support for the dominical words as consecratory than is generally recognized. Furthermore, we showed the historical plausibility of the apostles’ sensing the necessity of the words of consecration, basing our demonstration on the Tradition of the Church and a synthesis of Scriptural passages. From those scriptural passages, passing through the clearest statements of the Fathers of both East and West, and on to the precision of St. Thomas and the auctores probati, the line of organic development of doctrine is clear, despite occasional inconsistencies or ambiguities, which it is the function of the first See to rectify if they lead to error.52 Grounding the validity of the Eucharist without institution narrative on the present belief of the schismatic Assyrian Church does not take account 52 As in the vehement 1910 letter of St. Pius X “Ex quo” (Denzinger, various editions) to the apostolic delegates in Greece, the Near East, and India affirming Anaphoras without Institution Narrative 59 of the fact that particular Churches can err with respect to the sacraments, despite their possessing a valid episcopate, and all the more so when they are cut off from the universal Church in communion with the bishop of Rome. Furthermore, on at least two occasions prior to the letter of 2001, authoritative organs of the Holy See treated the celebration of the Eucharist without the institution narrative in Syrian Christianity as intolerable, or as an “incredible abuse.” The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, following the unpublished conclusions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has proposed a new understanding of the words of consecration, namely that the presence of the words with which Christ instituted the sacrament is “euchological” and “dispersed” but nevertheless real and efficacious in the anaphora of Addai and Mari celebrated without institution narrative. As a single act of the ecumenical dicastery addressed to one sui juris ritual Church, this way of understanding what is meant by the presence of the Lord’s Eucharistic words has a relatively low weight of formal authority for Christ’s faithful. N&V the sufficiency of the words of consecration, as against the supposed need to invoke the Holy Spirit. In a footnote, Denzinger gives references to four other papal interventions on this topic. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 61–66 61 Introduction to the Symposium on Aquinas and the Environment C HRISTOPHER T HOMPSON St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity St. Paul, MN T HE IMMEDIATE context of the following eleven essays was a conference in October 2009 entitled “Renewing the Face of the Earth:The Church and the Order of Creation,” held at The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity and co-sponsored with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.1 Approximately fifty participants from philosophy, theology, law, and the social sciences gathered to reflect on issues of environmental concern, with a special focus on the intellectual tradition inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas. To our knowledge, it was one of the first of its kind— Thomists gathering to discuss environmental issues—and we hope these efforts encourage others to take up the conversation from here. The proximate context for these essays is more complex and reaches into the many eddies and currents of the Catholic intellectual life. In the year prior to our gathering, Pope Benedict had alluded frequently to the problems of environmental stewardship facing us and stated in his World Day of Peace message that we need “to rediscover those values which can serve as the solid basis for a brighter future for all.”2 This call to re-establish a “solid 1 Special thanks to Mr. James Ennis, Executive Director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, and Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan, Rector of The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity, for their support of this effort. 2 Pope Benedict XVI, Message of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI: For the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 2010: If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation (online at the Vatican website). Though the Holy Father’s comments came a few months after the conference, the remarks provide much of the ecclesial context in which our overall project was situated. 62 Christopher Thompson basis” upon which a sound, Catholic stewardship of the earth could be built was, in many ways, the desideratum of our meeting and supplied the necessary catalyst. No less significant, the conference was animated by the Church’s repeated request to turn to St. Thomas and draw from his perennial wisdom the resources to form an intellectually astute and ecclesially centered response to challenges we have met over the years—indeed, the centuries. Environmental stewardship strikes us as especially apt for consideration for, despite its uniquely contemporary profile, it raises a series of questions that Thomism in particular is especially suited to address. From many vantages, the questions surrounding our care for the environment quickly evolve into some of the most important questions about the meaning of existence—creatures, the universe, our place, and the call to responsible living. For Thomists at the service of the Church, here is a vital opportunity for evangelization, for an engagement with the culture in its efforts toward self-transcendence, for the re-engagement of perennial philosophical and theological principles that lie at the foundation of any responsible, practical solution to these problems. The time seems apt for a “green Thomism,” if you will, to provide the outlines of a Spirit-filled, prudential counsel on matters of stewardship. There are many deformations in any project that enjoys such broad and popular support as the “environmental movement.” (Recall St. Thomas’s opening remarks in his Summa theologiae about the inadequacy of human reason and the need for divine revelation.) But at the core of the movement, it seems, lies an essential principle vital to our intellectual heritage: that the created order is intelligibly arranged, and to live in a manner that ignores that order is to do so at one’s own peril. Environmental awareness has arisen as an unthematic revolt of conscience against the reductive philosophies of nature that emerged in the Enlightenment and have dominated our imaginations ever since.3 Many scholars have chronicled the impact of reductivist methods concerning our approaches 3 Two years following our conference, speaking to Germany’s lower house of Parlia- ment in September 2011, Pope Benedict echoes a similar sentiment. “I would like to say that the emergence of the ecological movement in German politics since the 1970’s, while it has not exactly flung open the windows, nevertheless was and continues to be a cry for fresh air. . . .Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship to nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and we must follow its directives.” Benedict XVI, “The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law,” online at www.zenit.org/article-33495?l=english. Introduction 63 to nature; significantly fewer have noted the promise of Thomism in addressing these questions in light of our vocation as stewards.4 The convertibility of being and goodness, the teleological ordering of creation, the existence of God as First and Final Cause, the concepts of form, of substance, of secondary causality, of providence, the capacity of reason to grasp the meaning of things and its dependence upon sensible substances, the natural law, our vocation to beatitude and the meaning of embodiment—these and many other topics read like chapter headings in an “Introduction to St. Thomas.” They could just as easily serve as points of departure for a Catholic consideration of environmental stewardship. The happy convergence here is rooted, we believe, in the fact that the projects are in many ways the same—an apprenticeship in Thomas is a primer in stewardship. To be sure, the project of St. Thomas was about so much more, as is the vocation of every Catholic, than merely the mundane considerations of the care of creation in this life.Yet, he was insistent that the beatitude made perfect by God’s grace in the life to come extends into the vicissitudes of this one, albeit imperfectly, and that the promise of infused contemplation of the beati does not nullify the participated life of the viatores. Thomas’s account of the fulfillment of redemption does not render the care of creation meaningless, as some have suggested,5 even if that order of creation will be spiritually transformed. Indeed, one may argue that the principal contribution of Thomas to a Catholic environmental ethic is precisely his comprehensive vision, a vision that extends beyond the horizons of our presently configured ecological diversity, however beautiful it 4 A few have taken up the task in engaging ways, with varying degrees of success: Willis Jenkins, “Biodiversity and Salvation: Thomistic Roots for Environmental Ethics,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 401–20; idem, Ecologies of Grace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Fr. Robert Grant, A Case Study in Thomistic Environmental Ethics: The Ecological Crisis in the Loess Hills of Iowa (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007); Jill LeBlanc, “Eco-Thomism,” Environmental Ethics 21 (1999): 293–306; Jaime Ehegartner Schaefer, “Ethical Implications of Applying Aquinas’ Notions of the Unity and Diversity of Creation to Functioning in Ecosystems” (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1994); Pamela A. Smith, “Aquinas and Today’s Environmental Ethics: An Exploration of How Vision and the Virtue Ethic of ‘Ecothomism’ Might Inform a Viable Eco-ethic” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duquesne University, 1995); related, Judith A. Barad, Aquinas on the Nature and Treatment of Animals (Lanham, MD: International Scholars Press, 1996); also William French, “Natural Law and Ecological Responsibility,” University of St. Thomas Law Journal 5.1 (2008): 15–36. 5 Francisco Benzoni, “Thomas Aquinas and Environmental Ethics: A Reconsideration of Providence and Salvation,” Journal of Religion 85 (2005): 446–76. 64 Christopher Thompson seems to us. His gift lies in leading us to see how our attentiveness to what is surely passing can nonetheless have eternal significance. Nor will it be sufficient simply to repeat Thomistic aphorisms, to reenact as in a living history museum the life of a thirteenth century mendicant. Newer formulations of perennial truths will be called forth in the light of contemporary circumstances; nothing less could be expected of a living tradition. Nonetheless, the near-universal call for a more circumspect use of earthly goods, the collective examination of conscience concerning our lifestyles of consumption, the increasing receptivity to the importance of creatures, their species and their habitats, and the impress of our obligations to others, all point to a cultural moment in which the foundations of our attitudes toward “nature” are being re-examined. The reductive scientisms of modernity seem to have run aground on the blighted shores of the contemporary landscape. What vision of nature, of the person, of technology, of creation or cosmos will replace it? The essays of this symposium address these questions. The questions not addressed in this collection are too numerous to identify. There is a marked lack of applied considerations, case studies, concrete solutions to specific problems. To offer these would have taken us away from what we considered to be the central focus of this first “goround.” It also would have run the risk of a too hasty engagement of practical reasoning without the proper attention to the necessary speculative preambula that must frame every responsible exercise of prudence. Even in speculative matters, an epistemic stance of humility is warranted here, as the many questions raised only point in the direction of the need for a much deeper and profound set of reflections on the implications. To what extent, for example, does the so-called the “teleological grammar” of nature extend to our consideration of lower creation—plants, animals, organisms—and thus to what extent can we appropriately engage in the technological manipulation of organic life? What kinds of social relations will need to emerge in the light of these newer stances toward the use and development of created goods? As Christopher Franks poignantly remarks, “Thomas understood that by resisting some practices of a developing profit economy, he was defending the very notion that reality is penetrated by divine reason.”6 Also, virtually no mention is made of the work of the likes of Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Madonna House, of Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. The intersection of the 6 Christopher A. Franks, He Became Poor:The Poverty of Christ and Aquinas’ Economic Teachings (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), 184. Introduction 65 speculative and practical lines of this Thomism-in-action is begging for further articulation—yet for this original meeting, a bridge too far, but one that needs to be crossed. Still other lines of inquiry need to be pursued, especially by those taken with the “theology of the body” and the more recent reflections of John Paul II. So much light has been shed on the importance of the body and the human being’s “gift of self ” to another in embodied love. Much less, it appears, has been said about the body as that medium of receptivity—not simply of another, but of the world. There is nothing in the intellect that does not first come through the senses, St. Thomas asserts, a principle essential not only to a realist epistemology, but to a theology of the body—of embodiment—within a nexus of intelligible creatures. Who could become a gift for another who is not first a recipient of a gift received—the world of intelligible creation? As the threshold of the soul and the world, the body is the medium through which creation is received, tilled, kept, and given. With all of these occasions for intellectual ferment, one would think that the Church’s engagement with environmental issues would be voluminous; but this, too, is a matter for further research and reflection— namely, the somewhat distant regard the Catholic magisterium has given to environmental concerns until recently.7 Milestones in environmental efforts came and went with rather scant attention from the Catholic theological community. It’s not unfair to say that Catholicism, broadly conceived, seemed to be in a position of “catching up” to what was a developing consensus in the cultural sphere. One possible line of reasoning points to the notion that “nature” was undergoing something of its own transformation within Catholic circles, independently of secular venues, as the extended debates concerning “nature” and the “supernatural” occupied the energies of theologians immediately preceding and following Vatican II. Devoteés of the nouvelle théologie, as well as their interlocutors, might do well to revisit the status of the natural ordo within these probative, theological debates. All of these remarks are offered by way of invitation to those of us in the academy whose business it is to consider such things. By default, and no doubt with some hubris, they have a distinctively academic character to them. But this, too, might be a bias worth addressing in still later conversations. Consider the very rich reflections taking place outside of 7 Perhaps it is time to consider, in light of the systemic issues raised by a consid- eration of these and other questions, the establishment of something along the lines of a Pontifical Institute on Agriculture and the Environment, dedicated to faithfully discerning the original, common vocation to till and to keep the earth. 66 Christopher Thompson the academy, indeed well outside the academy, in the verdant fields of Catholic farmers who participated in the work of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. Established in 1923 at the rise of the industrialization of our food production, the conference was committed to thinking through the implications of this revolution for Catholic rural life, especially Catholic family life. Members of the conference often turned to the principles of St. Thomas to guide their reflections. Many began to see then what we are now more willing to admit: that our practices regarding our care of the earth are out of sync with our convictions about the dignity of creation—especially in matters of food—and that a re-evaluation of our stance toward the meaning of our vocation to steward the earth is necessary. It may surprise some to discover that the widespread embrace of “local, organic food” that characterizes the most contemporary of cultural postures these days was, in fact, long supported and defended by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.When the history of the organic food movement within Catholicism is written, its intellectual pedigree will extend into the social traditions of Leo XIII and his successors and thus into the aquifer of Thomistic principles. There’s a remarkable déjà vu to be had as one reads the earliest documents of the Conference and then the recent editions of Mother Earth News or the postings of the Organic Consumers Association. All of which is to say that for those who are seeking to reflect more deeply on the principles that are to guide our conscience in the prudential matters of stewardship, now is the time to renew our commitment to the study of St. Thomas, not only out of devotion to this saintly sage, and certainly not out of some nostalgia for an age long past, but in service to our brothers and sisters and the promotion of the common good of all, in praise of Him from whom all good things come. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 67–80 67 Perennial Wisdom: Notes Toward a Green Thomism* C HRISTOPHER T HOMPSON Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity St. Paul, MN I N HIS 2010 World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict XVI made an urgent appeal for a fundamental renewal of our thinking on the comprehensive question concerning the stewardship of creation. “Humanity needs a profound cultural renewal,” he asserted, “it needs to rediscover those values which can serve as the solid basis for a brighter future for all.”1 The arguments proposed here suggest that the principal resource from which a “solid basis” for a renewal can be constructed lies in the intellectual tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. My objectives are positive in character and are directed toward encouraging a relationship between Thomists and environmentalists, between Catholicism and the green movements.2 My aim is to plant the seeds for a green Thomism, if you will—a Thomistic appropriation of environmental concerns. * This is a revised and updated version of the keynote address given at The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity conference on “The Church and the Order of Creation,” October 2009. 1 Pope Benedict XVI, Message of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI: For the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 2010: If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation, online at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_benxvi_mes_20091208_xliii-world-day-peace_en.html. 2 Others who have sought to integrate these issues include: Willis Jenkins, “Biodiversity and Salvation: Thomistic Roots for Environmental Ethics,” Journal of Religion, 83.3 (2003): 401–20; idem, Ecologies of Grace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Fr. Robert Grant, A Case Study in Thomistic Environmental Ethics: The Ecological Crisis in the Loess Hills of Iowa (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007); Jill LeBlanc, “Eco-Thomism,” Environmental Ethics 21 (1999): 293–306. For an opposing view, see Francisco Benzoni, “Thomas Aquinas and Environmental Ethics: A Reconsideration of Providence and Salvation,” Journal of Religion 85 68 Christopher Thompson There are many challenges before us.3 First, from within secular circles, there is the charge that Christianity itself is, to a large extent, responsible for the ecological crises that are upon us today. Roderick Nash develops this thesis about the Christian roots of our ecological distress.4 In his book, Wilderness and the American Mind, he chronicles the history of the efforts in the United States to preserve “wilderness areas,” (giving special attention to the historic accomplishment achieved by the U.S. Congress, namely, the passage of the Wilderness Preservation Act, signed into law in 1964). Nash argues that Christianity is replete with notions of unfettered “dominion” over the earth—an earth which is seen for the most part as a barren wasteland: fallen, and in need of a developing hand in order to be made useful. The Christian man dreams, Nash suggests, of a life without “wilderness,” and he suggests that wilderness—that is, pristine, undeveloped regions—is often seen in the Christian tradition as the sign of a divine curse and abandonment. This negative view continues through the New Testament, he says, and finds various spokesmen throughout the Christian tradition. In the more immediate context of American religious history, Nash points to Deism, Transcendentalism, and more broadly to Romanticism as the intellectual forebears of any authentic environmental awareness. Christian tradition, he argues, supports a kind of eco-ignorance. To some extent, Nash’s cultural history is borne out. We find that those who are concerned for the environment are often at odds with those who might hold to a traditional Catholicism. But ought Catholics themselves adopt such a narrative stance? Are we to understand our Catholicism, more broadly our Christianity, as the source of the environmental crisis? Nowhere does Nash make mention of the creation accounts of Genesis, the canticle of Azariah and his companions in the Book of Daniel, the Wisdom Literature, including the many psalms5 in which the created (2005): 446–76; also his Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul: Aquinas,Whitehead and the Metaphysics of Value (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). For an engaging critique of the latter, see Christopher Brown’s review at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, online at: ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13765. 3 Portions of this section have been taken from my “Beholding the Logos: The Church, the Environment, and the Meaning of Man,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 12.3 (2009) 33–52. 4 Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, rpt. 1978).To quote Nash, “If paradise was early man’s greatest good, wilderness . . . was his greatest evil.” Wilderness, 9. 5 While the themes of creation’s splendor are noted throughout the Wisdom literature, Psalms 8, 19, 104, and 148 seem especially apt for our consideration. Notes Toward a Green Thomism 69 order is celebrated as not merely good, but very good. Nowhere does he recognize the logos theology of the early Church, which points in a similar direction; that is, in encountering the beauty and splendor of the untamed cosmos, one encounters the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, who is its source and summit. Nor does he recognize any of the countless witnesses of the artistic tradition of the Church. One recalls briefly the image of Christ’s cross depicted in the mosaic of the apse of San Clemente in Rome: there the cross is set amidst the splendid array of all manner of flora and fauna which surrounds it in illuminating gold and glory. That is simply one instance among thousands that affirm the splendor and dignity of all creation, “which rightly gives you praise.” Perhaps not surprisingly, he makes no mention of Saint Thomas. And yet, while the Catholic intellectual tradition has a long and extensive history of contemplating the splendor of creation and its status as the vestigia dei, indeed the vestigia trinitas, in some important ways Catholicism has not developed an equally robust theology of the stewardship of that creation. Scholars like Nash are not without some legitimacy in criticizing the Christian legacy on these questions. Granted, we have seen an emerging emphasis concerning the call to stewardship, especially during the papacy of John Paul II6 and more recently with Benedict XVI. These efforts are relatively recent in the overall conversations and in some ways appear to be a reaction to what is taking place outside Catholic theological circles, rather than as catalysts for new and engaging reflections.7 Consider the publication of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to highlight the Church’s attitude toward environmental stewardship, entitled From Stockholm to Johannesburg: An Historical Overview of the Concern of the Holy See for the Environment, 1972–2002. The author Marjorie Keenan comments, “Within the social teaching of the Catholic church, the environmental question is often considered of only recent concern.”8 6 John Paul II, Peace with God, Peace with All of Creation: Message of His Holiness John Paul II for the Celeberation of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990, marks one of the more important moments in the Church’s magisterium concerning our responsiblities for stewarding creation. 7 Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent comments for the World Day of Peace, 2010, signal an important step forward in urging the intellectual community to a vigorous engagement with these questions—precisely at the level of first principles, not only policy. 8 Sr. Marjorie Keenan, R.S.H.M., From Stockholm to Johannesburg: An Historical Overview of the Concern for the Holy See for the Environment (Vatican City: Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2002), Preface. 70 Christopher Thompson And so, it seems, there is a discrepancy in our account, a fundamental contradiction in the exposition of our tradition: on the one hand, there is an extensive tradition speaking of the beauty and value of the created order; on the other, there is a ready admission, even on the part of the Church’s magisterium, that her doctrinal teachings on matters pertaining to the environment are conspicuously brief and relatively new. Is Nash correct in declaring the true character of the Christian heritage to be fundamentally hostile to any kind of care of the earth? Is the emerging environmental awareness—so captivating to contemporary imaginations—on a collision course with Catholicism? Can Catholics be trusted as faithful stewards? One could try to reconcile the elements by arguing that issues of stewardship are especially acute only in the light of more recent technological developments and that the Church is not unexpectedly slow to develop a doctrinal position on these complex matters. But this approach masks a deeper issue and would fail to take into consideration the marked difference in the development of thought in secular and in theological circles. Gaudium et Spes, for example, defends the notion that man cannot use earthly things without reference to the creator. But the remarks are largely said in support of technological development and the fundamental compatibility of science and faith—not primarily for reasons of stewardship, much less the preservation or conservation of earthly things. Underscoring the lacuna, John Paul II two decades later commented, “One must add that the problem of ‘the legitimate autonomy of earthly things’ is also linked with today’s deeply felt problem of ‘ecology,’ that is, the concern for the protection and preservation of the natural environment.”9 The absence of an explicit call for stewardship in Gaudium et Spes is conspicuous in light of the fact that, while the document was being crafted, one of the most important pieces of legislation in environmental efforts was ratified in the United States, namely, the Wilderness Preservation Act of 1964. When one places such milestones in secular circles against the effort of a Church hoping to come to terms with the “modern world,” an interesting difference between the two ambits emerges. What accounts for the discrepancies among narratives: an unbroken tradition concerning the significance of creation along side a reticence to call for its care? To put the matter in a more focused way: what accounts for the fact that Thomists, in particular, seemed especially aloof in the conversation concerning stewardship, a conversation that would seem to be central to their tradition? 9 John Paul II, General Audience, April 2, 1986, at www.disf.org/en/documenta- tion/12-860402_Creation.asp; for another example among several; see also his general audience of January 24, 2001, at www.ncrlc.com/eco_conversion.html. Notes Toward a Green Thomism 71 In the remainder of this essay, I want to offer some reflections on how this might have come about. * * * The dissonance between a tradition that affirms the value of creation and the call for an environmental stewardship is due to a nexus of distinct conditions which constitute the overall challenge facing the church today.There are reasons, in other words, that a fissure appears between the theoretical affirmations of the goodness of creation and the apparent reticence to engage the practical aspects of stewardship: reasons which have their roots in both secular and theological circles, but which together comprise the overall climate in which the issues are treated even now. The first condition concerns terminology. In fact, to speak of “creation” and to speak of the “environment” is to speak in two distinct modes; the two orders are not synonymous. To put it succinctly: as far as Catholic theological tradition is concerned, while the human person may live in an environment, the human person is not exhausted by that environment. Rather, the human person, at once corporeal and spiritual, dwells in a world—a created cosmos. And to conflate the two orders, as if we were speaking of the same things in the same way, distorts the issues at hand. Specifically, one runs the risk of disfiguring the portrait of the human person who lies at the center of a created cosmos, not merely an environment. Thus, learning to appreciate the significance of a doctrine of creation, as opposed to developing an environmental sensitivity, provides both the necessary hermeneutic for an appropriation of the tradition as well as a sufficient preamble for all those who are rightly interested in the obligations of stewardship. Josef Pieper, in an essay entitled “The Philosophical Act,” speaks of the difference in meaning when we speak of something in a “location,” something in an “environment,” and something in a “world.”10 What differentiates proper usage, Pieper argues, is not a consideration of the object’s ambient circumstance; rather, it is the distinct capacities of the object itself. Thus, we speak of the “location” of rock, the “location” of 10 The essay forms the second half of his famous Leisure: The Basis of Culture. See Josef Pieper, Leisure:The Basis of Culture, trans. Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 98. Ironically, it was Sigurd Olson, the Minnesota naturalist, who first alerted me to this insight of Josef Pieper. For an introduction to Olson’s works, see Sigurd F. Olson, The Meaning of Wilderness: Essential Articles and Speeches, ed. David Backes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). To what extent Olson studied Aquinas directly is not known, but historians have noted that Olson’s copy of Pieper’s Leisure was heavily marked. 72 Christopher Thompson shale, or the “location” of oil because rocks, shale, and oil are rather simple in their operations, their activities. But when it comes to plants and animals, we speak not only of their location, but now of their environment, because plants and animals do not merely occupy a position; they inhabit a place and interact with the elements surrounding them, drawing their ambient resources into their more complex operations. But there is only one kind of creature, Pieper suggests, who occupies a world, a cosmos, and it is precisely the human person. The human person, with his or her capacity for intellectual comprehension and understanding, occupies not merely a location, not merely an environment, but a cosmos. And it is this unique spiritual capacity which renders all conversations about “humans and their environment” inadequate. This unique spiritual capacity of the species differentiates us from the rest of the created order and it grounds our position in a world —as more than creatures dwelling in an environment. To be human, Pieper writes, “is to know things beyond the ‘roof ’ of the stars, to go beyond the trusted enclosures of the normal, to go beyond the ‘environment’—to the ‘world’ in which that environment is enclosed.”11 Thomas’s vision of creation and man provides for us today a methodology still adequate to our task of developing a sound Catholic environmental stance, for it recognizes the priority of the person as an intellectual creature, as a creature comprising something more than a fabric of material causes, as one that is situated within the broader plan of a theologically charged cosmos, a created order whose finality ends in the fulfillment of the plan of salvation. At the same time, however, it needs to be kept in mind that the development of a sound ecological praxis will not be achieved simply by reiterating a few principles of anthropology concerning the intellectual capacities of the human being, however compelling those capacities may be. In order to develop a sound vision of our relationship within the created order we need to reaffirm the ontological priority of that same order which is the intellectual creature’s necessary habitat. For no human being, not even one capable of contemplating an intelligible cosmos, does so in a vacuum. Rather, the native habitat of the human person as an embodied, intellectual creature is a material cosmos of created natures, the ontological density of which prepares the person for an engagement with Being. St. Thomas insists that, despite the dignity of the human being as an intellectual creature, the human person nonetheless occupies the lowest order of intellectual beings because the human person is 11 Pieper, Leisure, 94. Notes Toward a Green Thomism 73 utterly dependent upon a material phantasm in order to engage in intellectual acts. Thus at the heart of a sound environmental ethic consonant with Catholic tradition lies a metaphysics and natural philosophy of being which provides, among other things, a robust vision of an order of intelligible creatures, utterly dependent upon a provident God, whose causality extends to the operations of individuals—their formal intelligibility, as well as their finality.12 It is not enough to “return to the subject,” then, to the spiritually rich capacity of the imago, even when such a notion of the person is rightly contrasted against the reductive visions of its materialist rivals. Rather, in order to properly cast the human person as an intellectual creature inhabiting a material cosmos one will need a realist philosophy as the necessary complement of the human person as precisely an intellectual creature. In addition, then, to the contemplative character of human intellection, one needs the intelligible object as the intellect’s proper referent: material creatures, charged with formal meaning and finally ordered toward the common good of the universe are the proper objects of human intellection and as such material creation in its intelligible splendor is the fitting “environment” of the human person.13 In such a realist world, the order of causality is understood to inhere in things.The formal intelligibility of living organisms as well as the finalities toward which they naturally tend are objectively constituted in reality. Such an order is not derived from a set of clear and distinct ideas of a disembodied cogito (Descartes); it is not the imposition of a transcendental reason (Kant); nor is it the mere force of habit or custom (Hume). Such an order is intrinsic to things and its apprehension by reason is an exercise in objective knowing.14 12 Summa theologiae I, q. 48, a. 5; I, q. 47, a. 1. 13 One wonders, in passing, what a theology of the body might mean within the context of a theology of the bodies that constitute the unique environment of man, as the composite being of rational soul and body.Yet this author is unaware of any attempt on the part of those engaged in the “theology of the body” to consider its implications for the embodiment of human beings within an intelligibly constituted universe of creatures—an environment. There is no entry for “environment” or its allied notions in the otherwise copiously prepared index of Michael Waldstein’s remarkable achievement Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006).What is needed is a theology of embodiment, a theological anthropology that extends beyond the confines of the corporeal human being. 14 “The first act of the intellect is to know, not its own action, not the ego, not phenomena, but objective and intelligible being.” Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, trans. Patrick Cummins, O.S.B. (Saint Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1950), 388. 74 Christopher Thompson What is needed is an understanding of the human person as an intellectual creature precisely as situated within a natural order of intelligible substances, a multi-textured complex of teleologically ordered wholes, whose existence is ordered toward God as first and final cause. Recovering the significance of formal and final causality of the material creation as articulated in the classic Thomistic natural philosophy would go a long way toward restoring an appropriate grasp of the environmental questions at stake.15 In many ways, one can understand the increasing emergence of environmental awareness as the unthematic revolt of conscience among those descendants of the Enlightenment who intuit that something is deeply flawed in our approaches to the natural order and that our habits of treating nature as a mere raw datum of purposeless matter is not consonant with the “facts on the ground,” so to speak. To the extent that Thomism can contribute to the renewal of an eco-realism, to that extent its contribution will be significant, for it will supply not only a richer notion of the person as the subject who stewards, but also a richer notion of created things as objects to be stewarded.16 To be sure, as a matter of practical exhortation, it is important to affirm that “without the Creator the creature would disappear,”17 that the denial 15 For an excellent discussion of the place of formal and final causality, see Giuseppe A. Tanzella-Nitti, “The Relevance of the Aristotelian-Thomistic Concept of Nature to the Contemporary Debate between Science and Theology,” Annales Theologici 9 (1995): 107–25. Also, Faith, Reason and the Natural Sciences: The Challenge of the Natural Sciences in the Work of Theologians (Aurora, CO: The Davies Group, 2009). Not only would the recovery of form and finality aid in the speculative grasp of lower creation, it would facilitate the task of evangelization, by leading others to a consideration of the first and final cause of creation. The Church’s consistent affirmation that the existence of God can be discerned by reason alone through a consideration of the created order is not merely a statement about the capacity of unaided reason, or grace, or epistemology. By implication, the claim affirms the objective intelligibility of things, the order of which provides the rational basis for deducing a supreme first cause. 16 ST I, q. 79. “For by way of discovery, we come through knowledge of temporal things to that of things eternal, according to the words of the Apostle (Rm. 1:20), ‘The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made’: while by way of judgment, from eternal things already known, we judge of temporal things, and according to laws of things eternal we dispose of temporal things.” For St. Thomas, subjectivity and objectivity do not exhaust the parameters of the discussion; rather, Creator and creature form the poles of the Thomistic cosmos. He cannot, then, be charged with an anthropocentrism or geocentrism, when neither “anthropos” nor lower creation is at the center of his cosmology. See Josef Pieper, Living the Truth:The Truth of All Things and Reality and the Good (Fort Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 1989). 17 Gaudium et Spes, 36. Notes Toward a Green Thomism 75 of God in one’s consideration of this life leads to a profound distortion and abuse of things, especially each other. Yet this claim about the practical order needs to be complemented by the claim about the prior order of wonder: namely, that without the creature the Creator would disappear! That is, the first and proper object of the human intellect is neither God, nor the soul, nor any other immaterial principle,18 but the intelligibility of sensible substances of lower creation.19 Our knowledge of God begins, classic Thomism asserts, with the intellect’s grasp of the sensible order of creatures, not with the intuition of God’s existence. No theologically motivated account of stewardship which takes such philosophical realism seriously can abandon this fundamental starting point. Commenting on this same “Creator/creature” passage from Gaudium et Spes, John Paul II “reverses the polarity,” placing priority on the intelligibility of creatures as the basis upon which a Creator/first cause is postulated. This truth [of creation] is fully manifested in revelation. But it is per se accessible to human reason.We can deduce this from the overall reasoning of the Council text and in particular from the phrase: “Without the Creator the creature would disappear. . . . When God is forgotten, however, the creature itself grows unintelligible.” These expressions (at least indirectly) indicate that the created world postulates an Ultimate Reason, a First Cause. By virtue of their very nature, contingent beings, in order to exist, require the support of the Absolute (of Necessary Being), which is Existence per se (Subsisting Being). The fleeting and contingent world “cannot exist without the Creator.”20 The point here is to emphasize that whereas Thomists and environmentalists might part ways on the intellectual/spiritual nature of the person, each side can at least agree that the starting point for a consideration of our position in the world is an affirmation of the intelligibility of created things. Indeed, for the Thomist, the task of developing a theologically informed doctrine of stewardship will have to unfold as every practical inquiry does, namely, beginning with the speculative grasp of intelligible things. The stewardship of nature will require the recovery of a realist philosophy of creatures.21 18 ST I, q. 88, a. 3; ST I, q. 87, aa. 1–4; ST I, q. 88, a. 1. 19 ST I, q. 84, a. 7; q. 85, a. 8; q. 87, a. 2, ad 2; q. 88, a. 3. 20 John Paul II, General Audience, April 2, 1986; emphasis mine. 21 Though his position on many aspects of these issues was to evolve, Étienne Gilson provides a poignant remark. “It is because there is causality in nature that we can go back step by step to the first cause, God. In a universe stripped of second causes, the most obvious proofs of the existence of God would be impossible, and His highest metaphysical attributes would remain hidden from us. Inversely, this whole 76 Christopher Thompson * * * Still, it seems, the questions persist, and in some ways become more intense, because more focused. How can it be that an intellectual community with the heritage of St.Thomas has remained largely on the sidelines of the ongoing and increasingly important questions of environmental stewardship? Granted that the realist language of formal and final causality had long been challenged within secular scientific circles, why would it not be the case, then, that within Catholic theological circles—indeed Thomist circles—a vigorous environmentalism would not have emerged? Citing historical causes is a necessarily dangerous endeavor, as the principles are accidental and virtually endless. Nevertheless, it seems not implausible to suggest that yet another reason the Church was reticent to enter the ever growing movement of environmental engagement is that, at the very moment in which created nature was emerging as a reality to be revered and protected (albeit often in a distorted, unthematic way, within secular circles), that same understanding of created nature was diminishing in philosophical and theological circles. More specifically, certain emphases of Catholic thought, certain approaches, among Thomists in particular, that were in the ascendancy at the time of the Second Vatican Council, appear to diminish the significance of the natural order. Indeed, it was the specific emphasis of the nouvelle theologians to regard talk of natural ends, especially a natural end of man, as problematic.To be sure, the disputes surrounding the issues of nature and grace were predominantly concerned with the specific conditions of human nature in distinction from lower creation. Nonetheless, without in any way diminishing the theological contributions of these movements, it is not unfair to say that one unintended consequence of these approaches to Saint Thomas was a hyper-critical sensitivity to investing the natural order (lower creation) and man’s place within it with too great a teleological or theological significance.22 In seeking to redress what was perceived to be a bias toward the purely natural, an over-correcting swarm of beings, natures, causes and operations which the universe presents us with, can no long be regarded as existing or acting for itself.” Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 184. 22 Steven A. Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on the Nature/Grace Controversy,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 167; also, The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007). See also Matthew Levering, Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach (New York: Oxford, 2008); Dennis Crawford, “Natural Law and the Body: Deductivism and Parallelism,” Communio 35 (Fall 2008): 327–53, especially Notes Toward a Green Thomism 77 emphasis on the supernatural end of man seems to have emerged. From the perspective of the traditional parameters of a “philosophy of nature,” psychology appears to have eclipsed cosmology, leaving the necessary anthropological connections to lower creation behind. “There is nature and nature,” Henri de Lubac asserts, repeatedly emphasizing the distinctive character of the intellectual creature in contrast with “natural beings.”23 Human “nature” will have “two partially different meanings,” he says, “according to whether it is to be applied to this particular species which we form, among the other species in the universe, or to the nature of spirit in so far as this is something which goes beyond any particular species because it is innately opened to the universal and directly related to God.”24 And though he insists that his position “does nothing to compromise the unity of the human being,” it is not altogether clear that his approach does not strain the unity of the human being in regards to its natural habitat—the created order of material, intelligible creatures. Ironically, a new two-tiered order seems to emerge, not as much between the natural end of man and his supernatural beatitude as between the spiritual nature of man and his natural place within a material cosmos.25 The unity of the human composite, as a substantial being at once spiritual and corporeal set within an ordered, intelligible cosmos, seems compromised.26 While our final destiny points 346–47; Rudolf Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac (Fort Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 2007), 131; also Tracey Rowland, “Natural Law: From Neo-Thomism to Nuptial Mysticism,” Communio 35 (Fall 2008): 374–96. 23 Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967) 131, 133, 141. 24 Ibid., 137. 25 As Lawrence Feingold states, “The denial of the possibility of a natural end for man, as is very common today, would take away the foothold in nature for a supernatural extension of happiness through the beatific vision. Paradoxically, the denial of the possibility of a natural end for man would create a kind of “extrinsicism” (!), for it would mean that our supernatural end would not be the superabundant and divine continuation or extension of nature’s proportionate tendency.” See his “Man as Imago Dei and Capax Dei: Man’s Specific Obediential Potency,” in Reason and the Rule of Faith: Conversations in the Tradition with John Paul II, ed. Christopher J. Thompson and Steven A. Long (Lanham, MD: University Press of Amercia, 2011). 26 Though he will later reject such a notion, Stephen Duffy provides an apt summary of this more “terrestrial” vision of human nature suggested here. “One might,” he says, “understand the concept of pure nature in another way. One might assimilate human nature in all its dimensions to natures, animate or unanimate, that are inferior to it. Each nature is a species. Pure human nature will then refer to humanity insofar as it fully manifests all the characteristics of the natural 78 Christopher Thompson toward beatitude, our proximate status as viatores is grounded in an intelligible, material, order, and thus the stewardship of creatures to which we are inextricably bound remains one of the principal tasks in this “novitiate on earth.”27 In the period leading up to and immediately surrounding the council, we have the historical confluence of distinct movements within intellectual circles, a confluence which in many ways persists to this day: on the one hand there is the emergence of an environmental awareness among secular circles, circles that long ago abandoned the ancient philosophy of form and finality; and, on the other, there is a reading of the theological tradition among Thomists themselves that appears to backpedal on the questions concerning the meaning and status of created nature. What they share in common, if for different reasons and with varying emphases, is a reading of the human person as existing within a natural setting that is, in itself, theological and philosophically irrelevant. And thus there emerges the unhappy coincidence of the secular movement of a “denatured” environmentalism without a sufficiently robust theological response on the part of the Church. Seen “from below,” from the perspective of the natural sciences, the human person is a creature impelled to steward an environment whose natural telos is devoid of divine significance; seen “from above,” from a certain theological vantage point, the human person is a supernaturalized, anomalous being, impelled to eternal beatitude, yet lacking sufficient standing within a natural order. Like two prisoners from two camps who tunnel past each other, they pass in the open field of an eviscerated philosophy of nature, only to end up in disappointment. beings.” He then later adds, “One cannot deny that by reason of its corporeal dimension humanity does largely share the conditions of the other natures.” My concern here is that we run the risk of denying precisely this point. Through a too zealous front-loading of the natural order with supernatural drama, the natural teleology of created natures, including man, is eclipsed by an over-extended supernaturalism. Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier Press, 1992), 42. Moreover, in his excellent survey of the nouvelle théologie, Hans Boersma remarks that, according to the nouvelle theologians, “God had created the natural world in such a way that at its depth it bore the supernatural stamp of its divine origin and end.” Strike the term “supernatural” from the sentence and nothing seems lost; but much is gained: a preservation of the notion of an intelligible, terrestrial order of ends which leads the searching soul to God as first and final cause, and then, only by grace, the infused soul to that same God as Divine friend. Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7. 27 De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, 177. Notes Toward a Green Thomism 79 Many aspects of this situation persist to this day and extend to other areas of theology. In debates concerning the natural law, one encounters approaches to St. Thomas that minimize the importance of the objective natural order and instead champion a vision of the human person’s participation in the eternal law as limited to an exercise of practical reason alone.28 Despite protests to the contrary, it is difficult to see such approaches to the natural law as much different from those movements which have struggled to maintain a confidence in a natural teleology. * * * In conclusion, whether it is the secular notion of the human being as a material creature in a theologically neutered environment, or the theological notion of the human person as a creature bereft of a natural setting, or the ethical notion of the human person as exercising a practical reasoning that is devoid of any speculative roots in objective reality, these approaches all share in common a vision of the human person as a creature devoid of a place within a natural order, a cosmos that would supply the proper context for a theological engagement of creation. Taken as a whole, these approaches more than account for the Church’s truncated capacity to evangelize in the arena of environmental stewardship. In order for us to engage effectively in a new evangelization, several distinct but related claims will need to be re-emphasized: first, a robust defense of a realist philosophy of created natures as formally intelligible and teleologically ordered; also, an account of the human person as a spiritual creature essentially situated within a material cosmos—naturally ordered, supernaturally fulfilled; and finally, a vision of stewardship that elucidates principles to guide the human person’s reasonable participation in this theonomically ordered cosmos.These are the outlines of a renewed Thomism, a green Thomism, and it is these features which will underwrite our efforts to evangelize those concerned for the care of the earth. In concluding, it needs to be admitted that many have already labored to retrieve such a vision. The recent statements of Benedict XVI and of John Paul II, as well as several bishops’ statements, can supply a remarkable treasury of wisdom for constructing a positive engagement with the issues. Many of these materials are well known to us all and are gaining in significance. In particular are the important though less-known efforts of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, whose long tradition of engaging the 28 For an excellent account of various approaches to the meaning and significance of “nature” in natural law ethics, see Matthew Levering’s Biblical Natural Law, note 22 supra. 80 Christopher Thompson questions of land stewardship have drawn upon many of the elements that I have raised here today, Thomism in particular. Their central concern has been, not surprisingly, agriculture and the rural community, but their consistent call for a responsible stewardship has been rooted in something much broader. Agriculture, they argue, cannot escape the normativity of nature. To forget the normativity of created being is to forget one’s reason for being. The history of the origins of sustainable agriculture, the organic food movement, and other environmental practices within the Catholic Church is yet to be written, but when it is, I believe it will be discovered that many of the practices now espoused by the most progressive minds of our times were, in fact, voiced in a prior era by those Catholics engaged in the issues of environmental stewardship.29 Long before the Wilderness Preservation Act of 1964, before Aldo Leopold penned his classic Sand County Almanac in 1948 and launched the environmental movement,30 before E. F. Schumacher drafted Small is Beautiful in 1973 and inspired a generation of economic reflection,31 before Sigurd Olson’s wrote Listening Point (1958),32 before Michael Pollan crafted Second Nature (1991)33 and Joel Salatin turned the first shovel of dirt on Polyface Farm,34 before the Organic Consumers Association,35 Mother Earth News, and the Slow Food Movement came into being, there was a consistent Catholic community championing the importance of created nature and the imperative to steward it.Thomists who today seek to renew those principles, which for a time seemed to have been lost, can take comfort in knowing that there were intelligent voices of concern, coming from the verdant fields of Catholic stewards, working in the springtime of evangelization, anticipating a perennially green Thomism. N&V 29 Monsignor Luigi Ligutti, Rural Roads to Security (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publish- ing Company, 1940); George Speltz, The Importance of Rural Life According to the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003); National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Manifesto on Rural Life (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1939). Peruse virtually any volume of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference Bulletins during its first few decades and one finds an astonishing sympathy between the views expressed there and some of the most recent advocates for an environmentally sensitive way of life. 30 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Ballantine Books, rpt. 1990). 31 E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper Perennial, 1989). 32 Sigurd Olson, Listening Point (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, rpt. 1997). 33 Michael Pollan, Second Nature (New York: Grove Press, 2003). 34 www.polyfacefarms.com/. 35 www.organicconsumers.org/. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 81–94 81 Towards the Reciprocity of Man and Nature: Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity K ENNETH S CHMITZ John Paul II Institute Washington, DC S INCE THE beginning of his presence on earth, man has never been simply reactive, though his participation in the life of the planet has, for the most part and until very recently, been overshadowed by the geologic events of global power and movement in earthquake, flood, and the formation of land and seas, of mountains and plains. With the formation of cities and the growth of numbers, however, he has left a deeper footprint and a more definite profile on the surface of the earth than have many other life-forms, so that instead of the pre-historic reactivity, his presence is better remarked upon as interactivity. That interaction has played itself out through the more than two millennia of so-called Western culture and its antecedents in and through several paradigms or patterns that expressed the significance of the earth and the character of the relation of man to his global context.1 If one considers the question of the origin of man and nature, he must either dismiss the issue as do the positivists such as Auguste Comte, who banished the questions from serious consideration as incapable of receiving a plausible answer or, on the other hand, one must look beyond both man and nature to a radically transcendent source resident in the most intimate center of things, the Source which religious consciousness acknowledges as divine at the heart of the more limited things we encounter. A varied sense of the limitations of man and his fellow-beings gives rise to the differing religions of the world. These religions give 1 See my earlier reflection on the topic, “Paradigms of Nature in Western Thought,” in Man and Nature: The Chinese Tradition and the Future, ed. Tang Yi-Jie, Li Zhen, and George F. McLean (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989). 82 Kenneth Schmitz expression to fundamental belief systems within and among the various cultures of the world, validating human action and showing forth an ultimate meaning of human life. Insofar as the question focuses on the origin of finite things, it raises the issue of the existence of things grounded in the very Being of all that is and can be. God’s own self-affirmation, given in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, reaffirms this primacy of Being in the words: “I am Who I am.” However else this may be understood, e.g., as an affirmation, intended to clarify the singular and exclusive self-identity of the First Principle in distinction from the putative claims of other so-called gods, it has been understood as a proclamation of non-finite Being which, in creating the world, has given it and continues to give it the existence incorporated in the very reality of all being. In the words attributed to Gottfried Leibniz but implicitly present in the whole Biblical tradition, it addresses the issue: Why anything at all? Why not Nothing? And, finding no satisfactory answer in and among the world of finite things, including man, it points to the Infinite Being of the Godhead. Accepted in faith, Christian philosophers have set forth arguments that, while they have not penetrated the fully mysterious depths of such a God, have sought to validate the rational meaning and truth of such an Infinite Reality, present in the affairs of man and nature. There can be no doubt that the link of such a God with the character of Being has been enriched by the Greek insight into Logos or rational thought. And it is such a participation of logos with being that was celebrated by Parmenides and others. The association of thought with being took several forms within Greek culture, none of them, however, as influential as the coupling given expression by Aristotle. If we can distinguish the condition of limitation from that of finitude, it is the limited character of the being we experience that engrossed Aristotle, thereby raising the limited character of being to the status of a primordial order, even to the inclusion of the gods within the sphere of being. Such a cosmos proceeded in its orderly way through the governance of several causes: first, the originating cause (causa efficiens), brought into being by other limited beings and basically by the movement of the heavenly bodies; secondly, that cause or principle by which things were formed in their nature (causa formalis), in accordance with which they exercised their proper being; third, the directive ordination towards the fulfillment of their given nature as the completion of their limited existence (causa finalis); and finally, where appropriate, the substrate or matter in which the other principles and causes played out their roles (causa materialis). The physicality of such limited being has, in our own day, tended to be identified with materiality, but initially in Aristotle it had a Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity 83 broader meaning, indicating the natural or formal modality of such limited being. In all of this constitution of the world of limited being, one can recognize the primary and fundamental role of form and finality and, where appropriate, of materiality. It is this chiefly Aristotelian paradigm that celebrated the limited and primarily formal character of the natured beings and that played out their limited roles within the Greek cosmos. And it is this paradigm that continued to leave its own active imprint in various ways throughout the course of Western cultures, including Christian and Moslem cultures during the mediaeval period. Receptivity With Christianity and its biblical inheritance, however, philosophy was awakened to a deeper sense of the origination or the created world and to the final destiny of man as explicit themes of creation and redemption that, while properly theological, had a pronounced effect on philosophical enquiry itself. And so we arrive at the second paradigm of enquiry, the first being the Greek reflection on limited, though not explicitly finite, nature and man. For the arrival of Divine Revelation radicalized the issues of origin and finality in a way that, while it was not fully open to ultimate philosophical resolution, deepened the sense of philosophical enquiry. And with this deepening, what had been considered limited now came to be seen as finite, with an implicit and sometimes acknowledged sense of the Infinite. With that the entire question of origins was transformed, as was the status of the “limited” now become “finite.”2 But with the elevation of Being to its derivation from the Infinite, even created being received a new context for its properties, now enumerated as the transcendental properties of being and summarized by St. Thomas in QD De Veritate I, 1 (esse, essentia, unum, aliquid, verum, bonum) and in the Commentary on Dionysius’ On the Divine Names (pulchrum). This deeper sense of the intrinsic character of being had already begun to be voiced by such thinkers as Boethius and came to a certain definitive maturity in the thought of St. Thomas. If the pervasive appeal to the four causes in Aristotle may be said to have provided for thinkers as diverse as Christians and Moslems a widely held and influential interpretive paradigm, centered upon physis, one might recognize in the transcendental an ontological complex that rendered the character of being through the elaboration of its inner and omnipresent constitution. 2 It is just this that Heidegger had to deal with in denying the role of the Infinite in the texture of being, giving to Nothing (das Nichts) an indispensable and positive role of engaging Being (das Sein) in a correlative constitutive relationship. 84 Kenneth Schmitz While this ontological paradigm grew increasingly prominent and persuasive during the European Middle Ages, the development of fundamental paradigms did not stop there. As with other instances in the history of thought, with newly emergent problems the next principal paradigm to emerge was not the ontological depth inherent in things but the search for mathematical precision in the clear and distinct ideas of Descartes and the practical exploitation of nature in Bacon. So that if physis in Aristotle and being in Thomas signaled their first principle, one might understand the new initiative to be an enquiry into the natural constitution of things best exemplified in the mathematical empiricism of Newton. Indeed, the expansion of rational enquiry flowered in expansive ways in the early modern period, and one might even venture the opinion that, in many quarters at least, it has retained a position of preeminence even in our own time. There remains however, a further, less pronounced and less noticed fourth paradigm of rational enquiry: the new sense of historical development that has played out its role and without which I would undoubtedly not be writing this all-too-brief depiction of the development of thought in this historically appreciative way. One might look first to Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) [La scienza nuova, 1725; the New Science] for his critique of the dominance of Cartesian mathematicism and his appreciation of the role of history broadly understood in the foundational development of thought. It was not, however, until later in the century that wider attention was given to the historical character of thought, in scientific theories of evolution and, in the early nineteenth century Hegel’s account of the development of thought itself, in which historical development played the paradigmatic role of first philosophy. As we ourselves, immersed in a sense of historical development, look back over the twenty-five-hundred-year history of philosophy, and looking at the general character of its complex development, we might see in the foregoing account four primary paradigms of learned discourse that have served as first principles in the search for understanding: Aristotle’s appeal to physis (understood not in our restricted sense of material being, but rather in the ancient sense of eidos, essence or kind); followed by St. Thomas’s and others’ appeal to being (ens, esse); and then by the early modern concentration on the mathesis of motion in the natural course of things; and finally, the appeal to the current sense of historical development in the recapitulation of our human journey and that of the earth’s as well. Given these four claimants to the status of first principle, the question now arises: which of these deserves the right to bear the responsibility for such a primordial and foundational role? Each makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge and our life: (1) nature contributing to our Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity 85 experience of the relative stability of the things we encounter without which we could not count on the constancy and regularity without which all would be in chaos; and (2) being which grounds the very existence of things; and (3) the precision and exactitude, often of otherwise hidden forces that underpin the very movement of things; and (4) finally the temporal sequence of our progress, without which we would be enclosed within singular and discrete moments of sheer presence, without the knowledge of that from which we have come and without the hope for our future outcome. Thus, in sum: physis/eidos, ens/esse, number/quanta, and time/event. There are presuppositions underlying each of these contenders for first principle. The Aristotelian account of physis presupposes the ordered cosmos, the mechanistic world of modern science presupposes the system of laws, and the later historical principle describes, but does not account for or explain the presence of, the forces operating to produce it. Only ontology does not presuppose the underlying operative role of the totality, and—more important still—only ontology recognizes that the finite beings that populate the universe are themselves incapable of accounting for their own existence. In the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Nothing finite, even if realized [i.e., if actual], has ever come to be of its own. It has for its horizon a ground to which it owes its existence.” And again: “No worldly entities can attain the coinciding of essence and reality (essentia-esse), even in the case of consciousness, because it can never create its own reality but must accept a reality already given to it . . . grounded, not in itself, but in what is trans-essential.”3 That is, either the universe is inexplicable or we must search out its origin. Are we entitled to do so? How absolute is the demand to explain, to account for our own existence? And for the existence of others? If we set the question aside, we should ask: Why does it arise in us? If we do not face this question, then all meaning is ultimately stalemated, restricted to secondary matters that finally remain unaccounted for, and what we call the search for truth is left in abeyance. For we cannot rest in a question about the mere beginning of things; rather we must rest in a knowledge—however incomplete and inadequate—of their source, their origin; for without that we are left without the very accounting of meaning itself. Such a search is built into our expectation of the fulfillment of meaning. The other three principles are pursuant of different questions: The nature of things (their physis) points up the way things are, not that or whether they are; the mechanism of modern science describes with 3 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Epilogue, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 50 and 49. 86 Kenneth Schmitz commendable and reliable exactitude the way things behave, the way in which they carry out the laws of nature; the history of things recounts how they have emerged in temporal progression. None, however, raises Leibniz’s questions: Why anything at all? Why not rather nothing? It is being—and being alone—that even makes sense of the question. Let us turn, then, to an enquiry into the inner constitution of this principle of origins, to seek out the radical power which underlies all that is. The term that comes to mind is actuality (esse actuale, actus essendi ), that which stands out in contrast to nothing. The contrast of being and nothing occurs in our language and thought and in language alone—and not as in Heidegger’s attempt to render the finite order absolute by giving to nothing a primary and positive role. For in the domain of being, nothing is simply the absence of being; it is not some counterweight that limits being. But we seek the power of being, of what it is to be, to exist (once again, to use our language, to stand out from, to ex-sist, one might almost say to in-sist), not simply to be present but to present itself. For this is the absolutely fundamental and radical presencing from which all else flows. In its primordial character it is derived from nothing else, and is a primal self-presencing, even as it loans itself to others as it shapes and grounds their limited participation in being. It is the absolutely first principle within the order of finite being: the originating receptivity and participation in that actuality that becomes its very act of existence (actus essendi, esse actuale) in which all else is grounded. Normativity Finite being, however, is not simply pure being, but—as we have already said—participation in the act of being.This discloses the radically composite constitution in the finite being: not, however, a co-equal duality of separate entities, but rather the way or manner in which the finite entity possesses and carries out its finite existence. For the second factor within each finite being is not another being, something-in-itself, but the manner or mode in which such being presents itself, as this or that limited kind of being—if you will, this “version” of being, its essence determining the entity to be what it is. Now, this apparent “duality” within each and every finite being is a very peculiar differentiation within finite being, and it is easily misunderstood. One speaks of a “real” distinction between the essence and the existence constitutive of a finite being which might suggest that the essence is somehow a res in its own right, as possessing the wherewithal to be something in and through its own self-identity. This would make the essence into a kind of entity somehow existing in its own right and really Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity 87 separate from its existence. But that would be to confuse a distinction with a separation. The issue is more striking than that, for while essence and esse are distinct within the constitution of a finite being, they are in no way separate, as though they formed two beings. Truly understood, they are not even “half-beings”: whatever that would be! During the early modern period, drawing originally upon Avicenna, it was not uncommon to speak of the “being of essence” and the “being of the existence” (esse essentiae and esse existentiae), but this gave to the term “being” something other than actuality. Instead, properly understood the distinction is meant to acknowledge the limited character of finite being, its non-identity with the infinite fullness of being as such. It possesses being only to a limited degree and in a certain way, that is, by participation, in accordance with a modality or way of being that constitutes the essence or nature of the finite being, its way of being as a limited kind of being, existing only in and through participation in the actuality of being with definite but limited characteristics that comprise the essence that defines and discloses what the thing is (quidditas), as a substantial way of being further modified by accidental qualities. The Latin does not serve us well, for if we speak of a real distinction we are tempted to posit existence as actuality and essence as something other, some thing else, whereas it is other from the act of being, but not something other in the sense of another thing. Even the more frequently used term “real composition,” which expresses the intrinsic relation between essence and existence in the composite being, may still leave the impression of two realities, whereas there is only one reality, the finite being. It is important to notice that—in discussing essence and existence— we have passed beyond Aristotle’s limited being to a different and deeper order of analysis, passing from the limited to the finite order. With these three principles (esse, essentia, and unum) we encompass the primary make-up of each and every finite being. The unit formed by these first principles in the constitution of finite beings forms a composite of a singular kind. This composite transcends in its unity the sort of compound we find in chemistry, since in a chemical compound the principles of formation are additive, joining two already existent elements, whereas in an ontological composite the participation of essence in esse is reductive, drawing upon existence but not in its fullness. For the distinction of essence and existence gives expression to the limited character of the participated act of existence even as it “celebrates” its radically affirmative and positive character. And it is to the form of the finite thing, to its essence or nature, that we attribute those positive features that define its essential identity and character along with its association with its accidental attendants. Indeed, 88 Kenneth Schmitz it is to these that most ordinary knowledge of things pays attention, tending to accept its existential status without explicit comment. Kant gave only passing attention to the being of things, and even Husserl in his phenomenology gave methodical precision to his delineation of the essential character only of the phenomena of experienced essences. To call the distinction “real” is to indicate that the reality (res) possesses a limited nature or modality and not the absolute fullness of being. This said, it remains to remark that the nature or form of a finite being, through its participation in esse, manifests positive features within its limited essence or mode that distinguish it from other finite beings as a way in which it differs from other beings. In sum, then, these three properties— existence, essence, and unity (esse, essentia, et unum)—are the primary constituent principles that form the ontological core of each and every finite being: the actuality of existence, the modality of its character or essence, and the union of the two in the singular finitude of each being. With this intrinsic ontological unity one can speak of the integrity of each finite entity. The finite entity is not, however, in any way a closed totality, for it participates in a twofold manner in the being of others: first of all, as already indicated, it participates in the primordial and absolutely original Source of existence, and secondly, it engages in relations with other finite beings whose singular unities in various ways form a community of interrelated beings, a community of others (aliquid ), all participating in the gift of existence, each in its own way or mode. For accompanying each singular being we find it in relation with others, with “something else” (aliquid ). With the co-participation of these four principles we have the primary make-up of the finite order of beings. One might speak of these four properties as constitutive transcendental principles comprising the community of beings. If we are able to speak of each finite being as singularly integral, and in a qualified way as complete, it is even more fulsome to acknowledge the integral character of the universe of finite beings. It is within this community that Aristotle’s physei, Newton’s laws, and Darwin’s evolution have their deeper ground, as each finite being plays out its own received and directive nature within a variety of environments, some native to them and cooperative, others in tension and even in conflict through their actualized differences. As each natured thing plays out its existence, their mutual co-presence and interrelationship forms the normative structure of the natural world, if I may so term it in a sort of pre-ethical sense of ordered activity (cf. the Greek sense of mos, moris as habitual action). In this way the things of nature act out the finality resident in their nature. And it is to this pattern of natured activity that the Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity 89 positive sciences direct their inquisitive energies, with well-known results, in probing the intelligibility and truth of the ordered movement of finite things, what I have called their “normativity,” by which I mean their measured movements in accordance with a system of causal laws that flows from their inherent nature or essence. It is upon the regularity and repetitivity of movement that we rely in our ordinary experience, even if we do not have, as scientists do, an intellectual grasp of the inner motivation and play of even the more familiar things of our experience; and it is trust in such regularity that provides the basis for ordinary as well as learned and scientific knowledge of natural behaviors, constituted as they are of the four primary transcendentals: existence, essence, unity, and alterity (esse, essentia, unum, et aliquid). Procreativity4 At this point, we might set forth the remaining transcendental properties of being which enter the world with man. In a sense they are already present in nature, or rather, they are in waiting for the disclosure that comes about through human consciousness and human action and not through other existent things, as humans play out their presence in their relations with others and even with themselves. And with this, the values of the true and the good come into explicite play, and even—as we will see— so too does the presence of beauty. For with the emergence of the human being a truly remarkable phenomenon occurs by which being itself discloses its inherent and intimate meaning and character, its universality, its original depth, and its actuality. For being is present in its actuality, at the very origin of all that is, and wholly comprehensive, but—if I may so put it—until man comes on scene, not yet comprehended by agents in the created world. Drawing upon the text of St. Thomas, Josef Pieper expresses it well: I am speaking of the spirit’s universality [and precisely in its intellectual activity] as essential to its very nature: the spiritual soul, in a certain sense, is itself “the universe,” quodammodo omnia [i.e. in a certain manner all that is, quoting Aristotle, De anima 3, 8: 431b; in St. Thomas, De veritate 1,1] and from the beginning designed “to correspond to all that exists,” convenire cum omni ente. 4 The term “procreativity” in my present use is not synonymous with original creation (creatio), in that the latter is reserved for the absolute coming to be of things, whereas “procreation” refers to the coming to be of things on the basis of already existent beings. Kenneth Schmitz 90 He concludes: “This very same totality of all being is the object also of the philosophical theoria.To philosophize means nothing else but to reflect on the whole of reality.” And passing from the absolute universality of being to its originative actuality, he adds: “This power and potency to relate to absolutely everything that exists cannot even be called—strictly speaking—a quality, something that the spirit would ‘possess’: the spirit itself is this [active] potency, this relational energy oriented toward the totality of all things.”5 These three characterstics: the open universality, its fundamental originality and its radical actuality and presence comprise the basic charactersitcs that are constitutive of all things, but such being is also intrinsically rich, containing within itself a treasury of properties, through which it discloses its inner character in and through what tradition has called the “transcendental properties” of being. And it is to these that I now return in order to disclose—and even to celebrate—the inner resources of being. We have already touched upon the constitutive properties of being in and through which each and every finite being participates: the reception of existence, the defining character of its essence, the unity of esse and essentia, and its relation to others. With the emergence of man, however, these very properties become open to explicit recognition. The “re-” in recognition is important, since the human capacity for understanding is not— in and of itself—creative in the primary and originative sense of that term. As a knower, no man is a creator, least of all of his own existence. But he does open to the reception of other beings in a distinctive way that preserves their own being even as it situates that limited being in the universal and comprehensive context of all being, this is the open universality so clearly just described by Josef Pieper. And indeed, in coming to know the truth of things—no matter how deficiently and humbly—each of us releases other beings to their own inherent intelligibility. It is something so ordinary in our every day experience that we scarcely stop to wonder at the remarkable transformation that comes about in and through our knowing. I say “transformation” in a very paradoxical sense, however, for when we come to know the truth of things or of a situation nothing in the thing or situation is changed thereby, though an alteration may subsequently flow from and be based upon such knowing. What is central in knowing, however—even as it resituates things within the knower—is not any change in the essence or identity of the thing itself; quite the contrary! For any such change would falsify our knowledge of the thing. Rather, coming to know the thing is to re-cognize the 5 Josef Pieper, In Defense of Philosophy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992; German original 1966). Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity 91 thing in its intelligibility, in what it is, in its essential character as well as its accidental conditions. Moreover, one must be careful in speaking of situating the thing in the knower, even if one insists “in a non-physical way.” For in another sense the thing known is also “resituated” in the world within which it exists. We have here a double paradox that yields the truth of that which is. And this is—if I may speak somewhat poetically—for the thing to receive a new home. If the thing does not change in any physical way, neither does the knower, for—if this does not sound too playful!—an idea doesn’t weigh the millionth part of an ounce. We are in the intellectual domain of the spirit. This is not in any way to deny the role of the body and its sensory powers in the processes by which we come to acquire knowledge, i.e. through the sensory receptors and the mental processes that are attendant upon and even contributory to the activity of knowing. As embodied beings, physical processes play a contributory role in our coming to know things. The engagement of the senses and the internal processes of the brain are necessary, though—in the strict sense—they are not part of the essence of what it is to know. If the actual physical being of the room were transferred physically we would become the room we sit in with some difficulty in trying to get out of it. And yet, paradoxically there is a transformation and we do become the room we sit in. This means that we must acknowledge that knowledge receives its warranty only with the identification of the knower with the known, if we are to legitimate any claim to coming to know the thing in its own being. The primary and ultimate test of true knowledge is this identification of the knower with the known, though failing the immediacy of such presence we may refer to memories of the thing, or trustworthy witnesses and even cogent reasoning. Nevertheless, the origin and validity of true knowledge lies in the presence of the known to the knower.6 So that we are able to say: Oh yes! I know who you mean when you speak of John, and of what you mean when you ask for a glass of water. Such humble examples 6 Not wishing to prolong my reflection, I put in this footnote a common objec- tion to such a realist account of knowledge. It is said that knowledge is a photograph album in our mental reservoir, so that to know something or someone is to possess a reproduction of him or her in consciousness or memory. Ordinary language testifies to the difference. The author of a biography on Winston Churchill may know a great deal more about him than one of his cigar-smoking friends, but the difference is caught by the word “about.” For such knowledge is indirect, whereas the primitive friendship is contact with, an encounter with, the real person. If someone asks: Do you know so-and-so, I may answer: No, but I’ve heard a lot about him; this is indirect knowledge, which is validated only by the reality of the known. 92 Kenneth Schmitz remind us that there is much we do not know about the most ordinary of things, and some that we must simply be open to in faith. But the very nature and character of knowledge is assured as being opens itself up to us in these seemingly ordinary but really quite remarkable ways. For even in our ordinary encounters with things and persons, if we are open to receive them, they disclose themselves in their intelligible value grounded in and expressive of the illuminative power of truth. And it is this illuminative power of truth that lights our path in our encounter with others, persons and beings. To the four constitutive transcendentals of existence, essence, unity and relationality, we participate in the first of the so-called relational transcendental properties of being. But there is more in the way in which we address the things about us. For, if in knowing we seek out their identity, their meaning, their truth, we also relate to their value. Sometimes it is in a narrow sense, their value for us, that is, their utility. And so we relate to them as good, understanding what is good as what is simply and narrowly good-for-us. But that is not all that things have to “tell” us, and tell us about themselves. Two recent incidents have come to my attention that illustrate the range of our relationship to the things of nature. It is reported that several young men took great pleasure in the random shooting of ducklings in a pond, finding in it nothing but the pride of destruction. It is significant that authorities arrested the perpetrators for killing the young birds in violation of the protection afforded them by law. In a quite opposite action, we recently learned of zoo keepers in several North American cities who carefully nurtured members of a threatened species (of amphibians), and, upon the appropriate time and conditions, and with expert skill and care, transferred them to their traditional and appropriate habitat in the South American jungle. There are other such examples of such rescues in the Arctic and among avian species, certain types of bears; the list goes on and on and is testimony to a growing concern for the preservation of endangered species, not as serving the practical needs of a food supply or potential domestication, but simply in and for themselves as they enrich the variety of life-forms that have value in and for themselves, and sometimes as contributing to the general health of the environment. As conditions change, it is to be hoped that we too grow in experience and wisdom, and outstrip any reduction to utility, for the environmental crisis is leading many to ask: Are these creatures not good in themselves and not simply for the purposes we put them to for ourselves? That we derive pleasure from the contemplation of their interesting variety does not reduce our relation to them to one of mere utility, but to touch a certain depth in things that is rooted in their very being, as when we see beauty Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity 93 in a sunset, or the charitable act towards another in need, and many other such matters that take us beyond our own immediate self-concerns. In this we see a truth and a god beyond ourselves and resident in others, and in their being. And there arises in us a movement of acceptance and even of gratitude that there are such things, even to agreeing that there be such variety of goods in the community of beings. Note that the variety of goods includes beings that—in the ordinary course of human affairs— either contributes nothing directly good for us, such as poisonous plants, vicious snakes and the likes, or are indifferent to our well-being. It is here that judgment is required and the freedom of response, so that, unlike the dynamics of natural things which spontaneously seek to realize their given nature, the human resident is called upon first to understand, i.e. to exercise the first of the relational transcendentals that pertains to knowledge and is to be governed by truth. This transcendental carries with it not only the intentional response to things but responsibility for how we relate to things. If all things are good in their being, this does not mean that all things good in their being are also—without needed qualification and judgment—indiscriminately good for us. We have been equipped to distinguish through the transcendental properties of being, through the true and the good, to respect all and judge the character of their relation to us. Here, then, we touch upon the well-springs of the growing concern for the good of natural things that may not be—at least in some situations— good for us, thus acknowledging the universal and transcendental value that is inherent in being (bonum). Often our concern touches upon our own well-being, as in our present concern for the cleanliness of our atmosphere, the healthy condition of our foods, the positive use of medicines for our health. But beyond such legitimate self-oriented concerns— and even contained within them—we may have an opportunity to act in defense of other beings not immediately related to our practical needs. It is perhaps too much to recognize that the good inherent in all being comes to us in the presence of other beings, including those that have no obvious benefit to offer us other than their interesting variety? Our concern for the various species that populate the natural environment, such as the types of fish, birds, animals, and plants that do not contribute directly to our food supply, do add an interest and sense of vitality to the environment. In this way we come to acknowledge, not only the truth and intelligibility of things and their value and goodness but also that more elusive transcendental property that is inseparable from the context of being, that is, the beauty of nature which releases an environmental concern from total absorption in the practical needs of 94 Kenneth Schmitz humanity and welcomes the presence of others in the world, others different from ourselves and in some instances indifferent or harmful to our safety and well-being. For there is a profound connection between the human beauty of art and the natural beauty of the world, and it is in both that we find freshness and joy. In conclusion and summation, then, I have found in the thought of St. Thomas a key to a metaphysical understanding of the being of nature and man. For the first four transcendentals—existence, essence, unity, and relationality—form the community of beings. It is, however, with great appreciation that I find in the remaining three relational properties an explosion of meaning and value through the experience of the intelligibility and the good of being raised to explicit and thematic status. It is in the first four properties that we find the ontological core of being, waiting to be enlightened and transposed by what can only be understood as the human spirit, by which—while remaining true to the reality of being—releases it to its own intelligibility and in freedom to its own selfaffirmation, even as it lifts that being to a higher level consonant with its inherent character as participating in spirit. In recognizing the non-physical re-presencing of being as it becomes known and valued, we let that being participate in the activity of spirit. Moreover, we enter upon that open universality that is the horizon of being as such; and with that we expand the horizon of our own search for the good. For what is initially an ethics of human freedom seeking to participate in the properly human good, now takes that ethics into a larger horizon that operates within a more universal concern for the truth and goodness of being, and that results in more than an anthropological ethics centered upon man and expands into a growing concern over the good of nature, so that it might well be called a cosmic ethics. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 95–104 95 On the Recovery of Experience and the Search for a Christian Environmentalism C HRISTOPHER B LUM Thomas More College Merrimack, NH The world is the most beautiful—for it is god’s making. —A saying ascribed to Thales.1 “TO DEFEND the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are,” in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “exacting and indispensable forms of charity.”2 Truth is indeed a universal good; prudently and dispassionately to bring the light of truth into human affairs always serves the cause of humanity, especially where truth is most fragmented or veiled. Among today’s leading cultural trends, environmentalism may be the one standing most in need of the careful analysis of principles, the far-seeing weighing of consequences, and precise, non-ideological speech. The Pope’s discussion of the environment in Caritas in Veritate is, therefore, an important example of the very intellectual charity he describes. Environmentalism, much like contemporary economic and political life, does seem likely to benefit from a dose of papal reasonableness. Yet Benedict XVI does not merely correct; in Caritas in Veritate he also praises certain contemporary economic and political initiatives, even secular ones. Following his example, we would do well to ask what contemporary environmentalism might have to offer to our common pursuit of the good of “the whole man and [of] every man.”3 Perhaps the most salutary feature of contemporary environmentalism is its concern that our generation recover first-hand experience of 1 Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd edition (London: Penguin, 2001), 15. 2 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §1. 3 See Caritas in Veritate, §18: “The truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development.” 96 Christopher Blum nature. If the search for a Christian environmentalism were to lead to a genuine recovery of experience, not only would a deeper and more widespread gratitude for the Creation likely result, but we might also discover fruitful soil for the renewal of Catholic philosophy envisioned and called for by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Beginning in Experience Many environmentalists are devoted students of nature; most naturalists, it seems, are also environmentalists, at least with some degree of commitment. Such a coincidence can hardly be accidental.We can love only what we know, and we tend to study what we love. In his popular ecological primer, Reading the Forested Landscape, Tom Wessels suggests that learning to perceive the essential structural features of a stand of trees can help to bring about a change in sentiment: “This new way of seeing creates reverence, respect, a sense of inclusion, and accountability. Reading the landscape is not just about identifying landscape patterns; more importantly, it is an interactive narrative that involves humans and nature.”4 The ability to perceive and to understand the effects of disturbance upon a forest, gained by repeated walks in the woods, can promote a sense of responsibility for the land. If experience shapes our desires, it just as plainly shapes knowledge and skill. In an essay published several years ago in the American Naturalist, marine ecologist Paul Dayton warned that even should the desire to conserve the environment be present, the knowledge of how to do so will not unless our ecologists and conservationists gain more extensive first-hand experience of nature. “Very few students,” he lamented, “are offered the opportunity of observing nature and accumulating the background natural history essential to the ecological understanding” that the task of conservation requires. His point is worth underscoring. Practicing ecologists readily admit that the work of “knowledgeable local” biologists exercising “sound judgment” about the ecological communities they study is indispensable for any useful or trustworthy assessment of the healthy structure and function of a given ecosystem.5 Dayton’s universal 4 Tom Wessels, Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England (Woodstock,VT: Countryman Press, 1997), 21. Although Wessels’s use of “reverence” is fraught with ambiguity, it may very well be fruitful if understood correctly. Consider, in this regard, De Koninck: “Descartes may have been a good man, indeed a good Christian, but in philosophy he lacked pietas, just as he lacked true reverence toward the things of nature.” Charles De Koninck, “Three Sources of Philosophy,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 38 (1964): 13–22, at 20. 5 See James R. Karr, “Assessment of Biotic Integrity Using Fish Communities,” Fisheries 6 (1981): 21–27. The Recovery of Experience 97 conclusion is, then, well-stated: “We cannot protect or restore what we do not know.”6 Is the first-hand experience of nature now something rare? So argues Richard Louv in his much talked-about book, Last Child in the Woods. This wide-ranging and ambitious essay points out the dangers of what Louv thinks to be so common a condition as to merit the clinical name of “nature-deficit disorder.” By this phrase he means “the human costs of alienation from nature” such as the “diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.”7 Thanks to the progressive urbanization of our society (less than 2 percent of the American population now lives on farms), to a habit of an immoderate use of television, and to the spread of air-conditioning, children growing up today are likely to be appallingly ignorant of the most basic natural phenomena and, what is more, utterly carefree in their ignorance. Louv cites a recent British study showing “that the average eight-yearold was better able to identify characters from the Japanese card trading game Pokemon than native species in the community where they lived: Pikachu, Metapod, and Wigglytuff were names more familiar to them than otter, beetle, and oak tree.”8 Alarmed by the near-total victory of computer games over the activities that were the source of his childhood delights—especially building tree houses and romping through the woods—and fearing that “as the care for nature increasingly becomes an intellectual concept severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors,” Louv asks with some urgency, “Where will the future environmentalists come from?”9 Like the ecologists Wessels and Dayton, he sees the remedy in a renewed cultivation of the first-hand experience of nature. A recovery of the experience of nature, however, will only come about as the result of a determined effort, for, as Edward S. Reed has argued, both our shared habits of mind and our common way of life have made meaningful first-hand experience difficult to attain. In his 1996 essay The Necessity of Experience, Reed criticized the notion that the emerging information-based economy would pay dividends in happier workers more able to employ their creative talents and to thrive in worker-centered environments. Our reigning management styles and doctrines, he argued, would ensure that most would instead be “doomed to spend much of 6 Paul K. Dayton, “The Importance of the Natural Sciences to Conservation,” The American Naturalist 162 (2003): 1–13, at 12. 7 Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (New York: Workman, 2005), 34. 8 Ibid., 33. 9 Ibid., 145–46. Christopher Blum 98 [their] work time . . . pushing buttons, dragging light beams, and responding like machines to symbols created by someone else.”10 Nor did he think us more likely to experience reality at home, for there we tend to encounter the world not directly, but through various media. “Now people look at television,” Reed observed, “they no longer look at things for themselves.” The danger of this habit stems not only from the fact that the information is selected for us, but also that it is increasingly presented to us in the form of what he called a “multilevel montage” in which a variety of sounds and images are spliced and re-presented in ways in which they never could be by nature.This technique, he admitted, “makes for fast-moving, snappy commercials and music videos,” and, we might add, flashy websites, but it also “by definition replaces the causal structure of real experience with narrative structure(s) and voice(s).”11 In other words, both at work and at play, we are continually presented with secondhand information and pre-packaged perception. Such a condition, in Reed’s estimation, is an eery reductio ad absurdam of the tendency common to modern philosophy to degrade or even to reject primary experience as naive and pre-critical.12 And even if most Catholic philosophers defend the reliability of our sense impressions—and thus our experience of the world—in one way or another, these are defenses against arguments, not attempts to adjust and to correct widely shared and deeply ingrained habits. If Reed, Louv, and the naturalists are correct, however, our divorce from the world is a problem in need of practical remedies. Common to these arguments in favor of experience is that they dwell upon the consequences of our loss of it, consequences as diverse as psychological disorder, the loss of understanding, and changes in desire. This common feature should not, upon reflection, be a cause of surprise. It is hardly possible to vindicate the necessity of sense experience by an appeal to some prior principle; how, after all, would such a principle come to be known if not through experience? What can be added to their diagnosis, however, is an attempt to identify the kind of experience they seek to recover and to explain its salient features. The kind of person who enjoys the experience promoted by the environmentalists seems plain enough: it is the student of nature, the naturalist. But what kind of experience of nature does the naturalist enjoy? In order to sketch an answer, we can do no better than to attend to the example and the writings of the first of naturalists, Aristotle. 10 Edward S. Reed, The Necessity of Experience (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 1. 11 Ibid., 108, 110–11. The parentheses are Reed’s. 12 See ibid., 10–18. The Recovery of Experience 99 Pied Beauty Born to a physician’s family, Aristotle took a keen interest in living things and their bodies, and, what is more, he paid close attention to the more extensive and specialized experience of those who were entirely devoted to some aspect of nature. Physicians, accordingly, figure in his works not only as examples of artisans but also as authorities in their own right, at least, that is, when they are what he called the “more philosophical kind” of physicians. Even fishermen were to him a source of knowledge about nature.13 As to Aristotle’s own field work, no less a naturalist than Darwin called him “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, observers that ever lived.”14 It is a commonplace among scholars that Aristotle’s biological studies helped to shape his view of substance and to support his confidence that the universal names we predicate of individual living things are less the products of human willfulness than signs of constraints imposed by the things themselves. “Aristotle, as much as any naturalist,” wrote G. E. R. Lloyd, “appreciated that while it is the individual specimen that the biologist investigates, he does so from the point of view of the species as a whole and of what is common to all or most of its members, not from the point of view of the peculiarities of the individual specimen itself.”15 In a similar vein, Marjorie Grene asked why we should “take all this trouble with the arid texts of Aristotle?” Precisely because Aristotle was a biologist, and “biology can teach us better and more directly than the exact sciences the all-important role of pattern in the world and of comprehension in our knowledge of it.”16 Both comments point to the essential contours of the naturalist’s way of knowing: he first distinguishes the differences among individual things, and then perceives the patterns that rise above the differences. Let us consider how a young naturalist might come to learn about the woods near his home. The first impressions, of course, are vague: the woods are dark compared to the grassy yard. The trees are tall, with brown trunks and green leaves. Soon, however, attention is repaid with the awareness of 13 On the physicians who “study their art more philosophically,” see Aristotle, Sense and Sensibilia 1 (436a20) and also his On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration, 27(21) (480b26ff.). Fishing and fishermen appear, inter alia, in History of Animals, 8.2, 8.19, and 9.37. All quotations of the works of Aristotle are taken from The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 14 In a letter of 1879, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (New York: Norton, 1959), 169. 15 G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 91–92. 16 Marjorie Grene, A Portrait of Aristotle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 229. 100 Christopher Blum differences. Some trees have needles, others have leaves. Of those with leaves, some are compound, others simple; some have leaves in pairs on opposite sides of the branches, others have leaves that alternate, first on one side of the branch, then on the other. The needle-bearing trees sometimes have needles arranged singly on the branch, sometimes in bundles of 2, 3, or even 5 needles each.With the help of some additional study and a guidebook or two, the student is soon able to perceive that common features bind together different trees in spite of marked differences among individuals. A young Black Cherry growing on the edge of a field looks very different from an older one growing amidst the forest; a Pitch Pine on deep, moist soil almost looks like its aristocratic cousin the White Pine, but on a dry, rocky, south-facing slope it reverts to its normal, misshapen self. To the beginner, this wide variation among individuals causes confusion, but as more time is spent comparing individuals, the common nature becomes perceptible. This comparison is, as Aquinas notes, a “kind of reasoning,” for what is required of the naturalist is to interrogate his senses by repeatedly asking himself to attend to the differences they reveal: are the lobes of the leaf tipped in spines or rounded? Are the lobes deeply or shallowly incised? Is the leaf smooth or velvety? Is the tree growing in a wet area or a dry one?17 Eventually, from the forest and its welter of differences, the kinds of trees begin to stand out and to be recognized for what they are, and being known, they are named.18 As his wanderings in the woods continue, the naturalist is able to see patterns in the distribution of these kinds: the Hemlocks and Red Maples are often found near stream beds or in wet soils, the Hickories and White Oaks on the dry hillsides; here is a pure stand of Sugar Maple, there is a mixed stand of Red and White Oaks, Sugar Maple, and Hickory, with Paper Birch, Red Maple, and White Pine on the margins. These patterns both shed further light upon the specific characteristics of the trees and also prompt the naturalist to wonder about their causes. In all of this wondering and wandering, the naturalist’s attention is taken up by the trees themselves, which he contemplates in the condition in which they are found, as independently existing individuals. Here lies the most striking difference between the practice of the naturalist or natural historian and of the contemporary scientist, who analyzes from the first. Thus Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum, argued that the 17 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Book II, Lectio 19, trans. Richard Berquist (South Bend, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 2007), 339. “Experience requires a kind of reasoning about particulars, a reasoning that compares one thing to another.” 18 Compare Aquinas, ST I, q. 94, a. 3, sed contra: “Nomina autem debent naturis rerum congruere.” The Recovery of Experience 101 study of plants ought to begin with the consideration of the tree, for the tree is a complete plant, in addition to being the easiest to study because the longest-lived and the largest.19 Today’s typical botany textbook, by comparison, begins with the cell, which, though doubtless worthy of attention, is hardly first in our experience.20 Aristotle, likewise, considers animals as integral wholes and compares them to one another “in their modes of subsistence, in their actions, in their habits, and in their parts”; even his consideration of the differing parts of animals is made in view of how the whole animals relate to one another and how the different kinds of animal bodies relate to the human body.21 This emphasis on understanding the individual living thing as an integral whole accords well with the moral impulse of contemporary environmentalism. Although in some quarters attempts are being made to redefine the concept of biodiversity in the broadest possible terms, we are not likely to see many placards calling for us to “Save the Viruses.” Bluebirds, dolphins, and orchids motivate environmentalists because they can be seen and appreciated as growing, living, and reproducing beings. Birdhouses are built and Starlings and Sparrows are evicted from them because conservationists are able to recognize the goodness of Bluebirds, a goodness sufficiently plain to trump the claims of pluralism. Environmentalists fight for the lives of these creatures because they have seen them, beheld their beauty, and come to appreciate their goodness. In their considering and beholding, naturalists develop a certain virtue that is worthy of wide imitation. Nature, as the sage put it, “loves to hide,” and anyone who has spent some time in birdwatching knows the truth of that saying.22 A firm disposition to attend to nature must be acquired if one is to learn about living things. Not only must one brave inclement weather, wet feet, bug bites, and poison ivy, but, most importantly, the naturalist must learn to be still and quiet. It may in part be thanks to his own field experience that Aristotle said that “the possession of understanding and knowledge is produced by the soul’s settling down out of the restlessness natural to it.”23 A trip into the field with a naturalist in early autumn may help to show how this is so. Our first impressions are of the colors: blaze-red maples against a backdrop of green pines and a light blue 19 See Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants [1.1.11], trans. Sir Arthur Hort (London: Heinemann, 1956), I:15. 20 See “The Plant Cell,” the first section of Peter H. Raven, Ray F. Evert, and Susan E. Eichhorn, Biology of Plants, 4th edition (New York: Worth Publishing, 1986), 13–67. 21 This quotation is from Aristotle’s History of Animals 1.1, 487a11–12. See also History of Animals 1.6, 491a14–22. 22 Heraclitus, quoted in Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, 68. 23 Aristotle, Physics 7.3, 247b18–20. 102 Christopher Blum sky. There are no birds to be seen, so the naturalist bids us to listen. At first, there is nothing but road noise to be heard.Then harsh caws and jays stand out, and, in the distance, the honking of geese. As we settle down further and attend more carefully, other sounds emerge: the liquid note of a Robin from atop a pine; a persistent chip followed by a flash of red through the alders—a Cardinal; an odd, almost frog-sounding mawk, mawk from a tree trunk, and from the same tree, “dee-dee-dee”—the Nuthatch and the Chickadee. A few moments later we hear the rhythmic per-chicko-ree of a Goldfinch flying overhead followed by the mewing of the last Catbird to linger in the north. Such are the sounds of a modest but good trip into the field: the students heard and saw what the naturalist expected and were able to profit from his ability to direct their senses.24 The excellence that the naturalist-teacher has attained through practice is in turn handed on to his students; it is an excellence of the use of the senses, an attentiveness that seems to make his hearing more acute and his eyesight more sharp, because he has learned how to watch and to listen.25 This attentiveness is not merely a physical skill like the ability to ride a bicycle; it is also an intellectual disposition that manifests itself in studious practices.26 Here the example of John James Audubon is instructive. In the introduction to the final volume of his Ornithological Biography, Audubon left his readers a piece of advice. Expecting them to be “full of ardor” to learn about birds, he counseled them to “leave nothing to memory.” “Note down all our observations,” he said, and “with ink, not with black-lead pencil; and keep in mind that the more particulars you write at the time, the more you will afterwards recollect.”27 It is surely a home truth that the eye, like the mind, tends to wander. Every parent knows the importance of insisting upon eye contact with errant children: if the message is to go home, the eyes must be met. Audubon’s practice reveals a similar home-spun wisdom.Who 24 Compare Aquinas’s “On the Teacher,” in Thomas Aquinas, Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Ralph McInerny (London: Penguin, 1998), 199: “The teacher leads another in the same way to knowledge of the unknown as one by discovery brings himself to knowledge of the unknown.” 25 In his attempt to secure the primacy of vision, Hans Jonas has, I think, overstated the case about the comparative passivity of hearing. The kind of “attentiveness” that he admits to be necessary for good hearing in fact requires considerable discipline. See Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” in The Phenomenon of Life:Toward a Philosophical Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 139. 26 Compare Thomas Hibbs, Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion: Metaphysics and Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 36: “Can we conceive of the full range of our activities, including intellectual activities, as practices, involving a host of relevant virtues?” 27 John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography [1839] in The Audubon Reader, ed. Richard Rhodes (New York: Knopf, 2006), 608–9. The Recovery of Experience 103 has not sat on a stone wall or bench and enjoyed a distant view of a mountain or a sunset or a shoreline? In mere seconds the mind is dulled by the loveliness of the scene and the eyes, in concert with dreamy sentiment, begin to glaze over. Only the most vague impressions are likely to remain because, in fact, few details were seen. As if to guard against this tendency, Audubon habitually focused his mind and his eyes by taking notes and by sketching, and so do all serious naturalists. And the reason why is plain: “The mere attempt . . . to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh look at the visible reality; it requires authentic and personal observation.”28 By cultivating such a habit of observation, we can come to employ our senses more attentively, and perhaps even, as Pieper so insistently recommended two generations ago, learn how to see again. It is all to the good to have more detailed and memorable experiences of the natural world, but how, one might ask, do they contribute both to the grounding of an environmental ethic and to the renewal of philosophy? The answer, I believe, is that genuine first-hand experience of nature gives rise to wonder.29 Like Thales marveling at the regularity of the heavens, the naturalist perceives patterns and order in nature and is prompted to ask the reason for the orderliness. Real wonder—and here the Latin admiratio may be more suggestive—implies a recognition of the beauty of the created order, an intelligible beauty that points to the possibility of wonder’s fulfillment in knowledge. Aquinas even maintains that wonder, though a species of fear, can be “a cause of delight to the extent that it has joined to it a hope of attaining the knowledge of what one desires to know.”30 We do not admire random occurrences; we are frightened by them. Yet even a blizzard can be admired, though its power is feared, because it follows an intelligible course. If wonder is in the first place a “path towards the seeking of wisdom,” it can also be “the deepest source of the moral impulse.”31 “Tell me what you admire,” said the late Servais Pinckaers, “and I will tell who you are.”32 The naturalist, ever-attentive to 28 Josef Pieper, “Learning How to See Again,” in Only the Lover Sings (San Fran- cisco: Ignatius, 1990), 31–36, at 35. 29 For a suggestive approach to this point, see James V. Schall, “The Metaphysics of Walking,” in The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 91–107. 30 ST I–II, q. 32, a. 8, corpus: “Et ideo admiratio est causa delectationis inquantum habet adiunctam spem consequendi cognitionem eius quod scire desiderat.” 31 ST I–II, q. 32, a. 8. The second objection begins “admiratio est principium sapientiae, quasi via ad inquirendum veritatem.” 32 Servais Pinckaers, O.P., A l’école de l’admiration (Paris: Editions St. Paul, 2001), 5. “L’admiration constitue, à notre avis, la source la plus profonde de l’énergie et de la qualité morale.” 104 Christopher Blum differences, to “All things counter, original, spare, [and] strange,” may occasionally catch a glimpse of the source, of the one “whose beauty is past change,” and, if his spirit has not been entirely beaten down by the grim rhetoric of Darwinism, may be moved to “Praise him.”33 The movement of the soul captured in the 104th Psalm is most natural to human beings in the presence of the wonders of nature. The contemporary environmentalist’s love for “cedars of Lebanon” and “high mountains” with their “wild goats” is lacking not so much in gratitude as in gratitude’s proper object. The language employed by Pope Benedict in Caritas in Veritate ought therefore to be congenial to open-minded environmentalists, for it affirms the goodness of the earth: “The environment is God’s gift . . . it is prior to us . . . it is a wondrous work . . . containing a ‘grammar’ which sets forth ends and criteria for wise use.”34 That grammar, we might add, may only be learned from the Creation itself; the fabrications of human theory, when imposed upon nature, all too often result in ugly wounds. A grateful admiration of the beauty, intelligibility, and goodness of the Creation also holds much promise for the renewal of philosophy.That there is a moral disposition necessary for the attainment of truth has become a common theme in the last two pontificates. Benedict XVI has told us that we need “courage” in order to “engage the whole breadth of reason”; and in order for our inquiries to be fruitful, they must be undertaken, John Paul II taught, “with mind and heart rightly tuned.”35 A revivified philosophy will, of course, take the form of sharper arguments, clearer propositions, and more expansive explanations, but it will not be brought about by love of argument alone. The love of argument makes us disputatious; it is the love of truth that enlivens the philosophical soul and inspires courageous study. And though we catch mere glimpses of it, this truth is written into the natures of things. Philosophy’s daily work is indeed like a meaty fist thumping with an argument the Manichees cannot answer, but its origin and growth are in gazing over hills and asking “What is God?” If concern for the condition of the earth prompts the next generation of students more often to stare admiringly at the hills, and by attentive watching and listening to nourish their capacity for wonder, then the cause of truth will have been well served by environmentalism. N&V 33 Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty,” in Hopkins, The Major Works, ed. Catherine Phillips (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 132–33. 34 Caritas in Veritate, §48. 35 Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflection”; John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §48. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 105–20 105 At Home in the Cosmos: The Revealing of the Sons of God S TRATFORD C ALDECOTT Oxford University Oxford, England I N THIS ESSAY I want to think about the meaning of the words “saving the planet.” As a believer I am specifically interested in the Christian meaning of “salvation.” So, what exactly is the relation between ecology and redemption? I will also touch on the question of hope, and hopelessness. Despair is a serious issue these days, and it needs to be addressed. More and more ecologists today seem to require counseling. My subtitle comes from the eighth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans (18–23), where the Apostle writes: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Italics added) This passage is quite dense, and has been much commented upon. It seems to imply, first, that the “revealing of the sons of God” will liberate the natural creation as a whole from entropy, death, suffering, and decay,1 and, next, that 1 A fall (and a resurrection) that directly affects the laws of physics raises huge ques- tions, but unfortunately most of these will have to remain unaddressed in what follows. 106 Stratford Caldecott this revelation of the sons of God is equivalent to our “adoption as sons” and with the “redemption of our bodies.” But what is the link between adoptive sonship and the redemption of our bodies, and how can a spiritual process like this affect the whole of creation? Along the lines suggested by my book Beauty for Truth’s Sake, which is about reconstituting a Christian cosmology, I interpret the “revealing of the sons of God” in terms of man’s role as microcosm and mediator. Rather than dwelling on the eschatological implications of the passage, or the intriguing questions raised by the notion of a “cosmic fall,” my emphasis here will be on the call to holiness as a key to understanding Christian ethics, and therefore on a spiritual anthropology. I hope the relevance of all this to the discussion of stewardship will become clear. Man as Microcosm Living in Oxford makes me a bit sensitive to the meanings and use of words. So I might start by questioning the way we often fall into talking about the “environmental movement,” or about a modern concern for the “environment.” The term “environment” implies an opposition between humanity and its surroundings, which reduces nature at best to a kind of backdrop, and at worst to a complex set of raw materials, as Dr. Thompson has discussed elsewhere.2 The insight that ecologists have come to in the second half of the last century runs counter to this view of nature as a mere “environment” for man. It reveals the interdependence of all living things, including man, in a world that is more a home than a house, much more than a collection of scenery, more than a collection of resources lying around for us to consume. This is little more than a rediscovery in scientific terms of what had already been understood in previous civilizations. Our pre-industrial ancestors right up to the time of Aquinas and beyond viewed the world as an organic whole, ordered from within, possessing a sacred and spiritual value by virtue of its creation by God and the continued divine presence within it. The stars were thought to be angelic creatures, the movements of their dance helping to determine the pattern of events unfolding below. The physical elements themselves were imagined as conscious beings, participating in a cosmic intelligence. It is quite in keeping with this ancient tradition for the Bible in the Canticle of Daniel to call upon all of creation to bless the Lord, including the sun 2 Christopher J. Thompson: “We occupy a place in an ordered cosmos with a univer- sal plan of redemption, not merely an environment” (“Beholding the Logos,” Logos 12, no. 3 [2009]: 43). See also Thompson’s Introduction in the present volume. As he points out, the distinction is explored in Josef Pieper, Leisure:The Basis of Culture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998). At Home in the Cosmos 107 and moon, stars of the heavens, clouds of the sky, showers and rain.3 The animals, plants, and minerals, the stars and elements, can be said to “praise” their Maker, either simply by their very existence, or else through man, who gives them a voice they do not possess in themselves. In this view, man occupies a central place in the universe, but he does so as a microcosm containing all the elements of nature, and faculties or powers corresponding to both animals and angels. Adam’s role in the cosmos is a priestly and mediatory one, radically compromised by the Fall, but restored in Christ, who by assuming human nature assumed the whole of nature by taking on a body.4 The historical processes by which Western man migrated from a spiritually ordered “cosmos” of the kind I have just described to the secular “universe” most people now take for granted have been analyzed in great depth and detail by Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age. But religious believers even today still manage to keep a foot in both realms. To take religion seriously, to participate in a religious faith, is to inhabit a cosmos, rather than just a universe. That is, unless we have begun the migration by reducing religion to a set of moral laws and customs. For it seems to me that what makes the difference between a universe and a cosmos is not morality so much as prayer. In a cosmos, prayer is the fundamental human act. The view of man as microcosm and the universe as a sacred cosmos was given a new lease of life in modern Catholic thought by Blessed John Paul II. Philosophical personalism gave him a new language in which to express the insight that all of creation is somehow bound up with man and his destiny. And if man is bound up with creation in this way, disorder in the macrocosm may be understood in part as a reflection or projection of our own interior failure and alienation from God, as many of the ancient writers believed.5 In his 1984 Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliation and Penance (15), John Paul II wrote: “Since by sinning man refuses to submit to God, his internal balance is also destroyed and it is precisely within himself that 3 Dan 3:57–88, 56. 4 See for example Maximus the Confessor, “Ambiguum 7,” in On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2003), 45–74. For Maximus all things are united in the one Logos through their logoi, which are the intentions of God in their behalf (combining aspects of formal and final cause). 5 According to the Book of Wisdom, creation “exerts itself to punish the unrighteous” (Wis 16:24). There are, of course, obvious ways in which even the most secular-minded will agree that our behavior and decisions have a massive impact on the fabric of the world. Industrial pipelines blocking migration routes, deforestation by logging companies, pollution of the oceans with plastic refuse, destruction of biodiversity, climate havoc—the litany of ecological sins and disasters could be extended indefinitely. Each of these problems has something to do with human decisions made in ignorance or greed. 108 Stratford Caldecott contradictions and conflicts arise. Wounded in this way, man almost inevitably causes damage to the fabric of his relationship with others and with the created world.” Thus in the Pope’s view, the original sin of Adam and Eve, precipitating us into a new state of being outside Eden, could hardly fail to affect the rest of the natural world with which we are connected, as well as our own bodies. The Pope affirmed a mystical bond between ourselves and the rest of creation, and sought to recall us to our original mission as stewards and priests of nature, receiving the creation from God’s hand, cultivating it or making it fruitful, and giving it back to him in sacrificial worship. The healing of the world around us depends on a re-ordering and a healing of the inner world of imagination, intelligence, and will. Man was intended to be the mediator of creation, the one in whom all things connect, through whom all things are reconciled, the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15–20). This high calling is fulfilled in Christ, the new Adam, into whom we are baptized when we receive the Holy Spirit.6 In his encyclical on the Holy Spirit (Dominum et Vivificantem, 50), he puts it like this: The Incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into unity with God not only of human nature, but in this human nature, in a sense, of everything that is “flesh”: the whole of humanity, the entire visible and material world. The Incarnation, then, also has a cosmic significance, a cosmic dimension. The “first-born of all creation,” becoming incarnate in the individual humanity of Christ, unites himself in some way with the entire reality of man, which is also “flesh”—and in this reality with all “flesh,” with the whole of creation. Pope Benedict XVI picks up Pope John Paul’s cosmic personalism in his own teaching, for example in Caritas in Veritate, which in unfolding the various aspects of economic and cultural development anchors the whole argument in the “centrality of the human person” (47) and the relational nature of man (53–55). For both popes, in fact, “human ecology” is inseparable from environmental ecology, because respect for nature must 6 As background to the present article, please see the very useful document of the International Theological Commission, “Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God” (2002), available at www.vatican.va. Celia Deane-Drummond provides a useful survey of the literature in Eco-Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2008). Catholic teaching on ecological responsibility was summarized in The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Vatican Publishing House, 2004), and has been consolidated further by Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate (2009). At Home in the Cosmos 109 include respect for ourselves, for our sexuality, and for human life in all its stages and manifestations: The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. (Caritas in Veritate 51) Subjected in Hope I have been speaking of man as microcosm, and as priestly mediator of creation, and of the restoration of this role in Christ. But this restoration takes place in the midst of our fallen state. It does not involve an immediate return to the conditions preceding our exile from Eden—even if the saints sometimes give us a glimpse of prelapsarian innocence. Christ, though without sin, adopted the condition of fallen man, and as such he was subject to pain, entropy, and death. We who come after, in the time of the Church, are living within his body and to some extent measuring out the years before his resurrection is fully revealed to all. The Book of Revelation speaks of a “new heavens and new earth” (Rv 21:1) where mourning and crying will cease, but for now there are still tears a-plenty. In Romans 8 there are three references to “groaning”: creation groans in travail (v. 22), we groan inwardly as we wait for our adoption as sons in the Son (v. 23), and the Holy Spirit—the personification of God’s self-gift to us—groans in supplication on our behalf, since we do not know how to pray as we ought (v. 26). This word “groaning” signifies the sadness, suffering, and expectation of the whole world, its longing for liberation, and the misery of decay. Groaning expresses the tension between what we are now and what we will become, and is a measure of the distance and difference the overcoming of which is anticipated through the virtue of hope.7 Once again, it may help to consider the meanings of words. The author of The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien, in constructing a language for the Elves of Middle-earth, gives them two main words for hope.8 The word 7 It is also an expression of desire, of eros. So, for example, Maximus the Confessor quotes the prophet-king David; “Crying out I will be satisfied when your glory appears (Ps 16:15). And: My soul thirsts for the strong and living God (Ps 42:2).” (On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, Ambiguum 7, 49.) Deus Caritas Est, with its analysis of the close relationship between eros and agape, could be used to explore in greater depth this aspect of “groaning.” 8 See J. R. R. Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 320. 110 Stratford Caldecott Amdir or “looking up” refers to optimism, the expectation that things will turn out well or get better. The assumption that the ecological crisis can be solved, that big corporations can be persuaded to change their ways, these fall under the heading of Amdir. The second word, Estel, means “trust”— trust in our deepest nature and the being of things, or in their source of being, despite the apparent victory of evils known and experienced. That, I would say, is the hope of the virtuous pagan. It is perfectly valid, and in its own way quite consoling. To these two kinds of hope we must add a third, for which there is no Elvish word. Christian hope is not psychological or metaphysical, but theological. It rests on the gift of faith. This is the hope with which Pope Benedict is mainly concerned. In section 31 of Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict writes that while “we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day . . . these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain.” The fact is that we can struggle for a better world, we can fight for the trees and animals and defend the coral reefs, but optimism or Amdir alone cannot sustain us. Not only is a hope for some future generation not exactly a hope for me personally, but also the battle itself goes badly. Estel is better, more deeply rooted in the nature of reality, and gives a certain sense of detachment, but many ecologists are deprived by their atheistic convictions even of this natural piety of being. That is why today we see so many of them falling into bitter despair. And many of them are specifically blaming religious hope for keeping us enslaved all these years while the earth is being destroyed. “Hope is a way of keeping us in line,” as Derrick Jensen put it in Orion magazine a while ago.9 He thinks that resorting to hope means we have given up; that we no longer believe in our power to change things. He therefore suggests we give up on hope, turn away from fear, and act out of love alone—love for the beautiful creation that is perishing before our eyes. He is right about love; but as Pope Benedict teaches, hope cannot be separated from love and faith (Spe Salvi 31): God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives 9 “Beyond Hope,” Orion (May/June 2006). Online at www.orionmagazine.org/ index.php/articles/article/170. At Home in the Cosmos 111 us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. It is our experience of love that gives us our intimations of what it might be truly to live life to the full, and not necessarily as part of the status quo. Hope is in fact founded on love. Pope Benedict diagnoses Jensen’s problem thus (Spe Salvi 35): All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action. . . . Yet our daily efforts in pursuing our own lives and in working for the world’s future either tire us or turn into fanaticism, unless we are enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance. If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. In other words, the Pope reverses Jensen’s conclusion. “Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere.” And he is quite clear what actions are called for. We can free our life and the world from the poisons and contaminations that could destroy the present and the future. We can uncover the sources of creation and keep them unsullied, and in this way we can make a right use of creation, which comes to us as a gift, according to its intrinsic requirements and ultimate purpose. This makes sense even if outwardly we achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face of overwhelming hostile forces. For Pope Benedict, we do what we must and what we can here and now, even without Amdir, just as we try to alleviate suffering in a world where death will always win, because we have a “greater hope,” a hope not in the future but in the present and in the eternity to which the present is inseparably connected, the “substance of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1, cf. Spe Salvi 7–9), namely the Kingdom of God which is already with us in faith. Spe Salvi also identifies another important mistake that the ecological community is prone to make. The secular mentality responds to our state of decay and suffering by trying to overcome this weakness through technology. But technology employed without an understanding of the Stratford Caldecott 112 world’s relation to God always tends to makes the situation worse. Using technology, we try to anticipate the “glorious liberty of the children of God,” through medicine, drugs, surrogates, and avatars. But if we rely on technology to save the world, we end by reducing the world to a machine. As the Pope writes in Spe Salvi (17), the modern mistake is that our hope of redemption is placed in technological progress. It is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis. It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level—that of purely private and otherworldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. This programmatic vision has determined the trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Placing our faith in progress involves two components: a false idea of reason and a false idea of freedom. “The kingdom of reason . . . is expected as the new condition of the human race once it has attained total freedom,” and this freedom is defined as an “overcoming of all forms of dependency.” The passage from Romans 8 speaks of us as having been “subjected” in hope. The modern mentality views any subjection as oppressive and tyrannical, and it attempts to overcome subjection by technical means alone. But we are dependent by our very nature as creatures. That is why elsewhere the Pope writes, “Moving beyond the fascination that technology exerts, we must re-appropriate the true meaning of freedom, which is not an intoxication with total autonomy, but a response to the call of being, beginning with our own personal being.”10 (That call of being is felt in Estel, but Christianity reveals the identity of being and love, so hope for us should be both deeper and stronger.) Without religious faith and hope, environmentalism will end in fanaticism or despair. But at the same time the Pope reminds religious believers that secular environmentalists have had good reason to reject them as potential allies—for “modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation. In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task” (Spe Salvi 25). This restriction of Christianity to the individual level is, I take it, precisely what we now need to overcome. As Christians we have been too hasty to “limit the horizon of our hope,” so that hope has indeed become a feeble-minded excuse for inaction. 10 Caritas in Veritate, 70. At Home in the Cosmos 113 What Do We Do? I want to come back to the idea of the microcosm by way of philosophy, and especially ethics, since ethics deals with the way we make practical decisions. Most pragmatically minded people don’t realize that they are philosophers. They may have no training and no interest in philosophy, but the way they think about the world, about themselves, about right and wrong, and about what is important to them and where their priorities lie, necessarily reflects a set of philosophical commitments. In our culture it is common to adhere unconsciously to a philosophy that is both incoherent and false. Cartesian dualism and reductionist empiricism have had effects well beyond the philosophical community. It would be nice to think that defeating these philosophical errors would have positive cultural effects on a similar scale. That is probably unrealistic. Nevertheless, by overcoming the split between soul and body we should be able to reconnect the human person with the cosmos and with the other creatures that share existence with us, rendering the ideas of man as microcosm and of bodily redemption at least intelligible. That would be no small achievement. I think by now we have a number of good accounts of how to do this. The reason why Descartes was left needing to prove the existence of an external world, whereas the medievals were not, is that he started on the subjective side of the divide between subject and object. He reduced being to thinking. This was surely a mistake, since being is prior to the distinction. What we grasp before I think, before even I am, is that being is, or that “there is an Is” (as Chesterton puts it in his book on Aquinas).11 It is from this fundamental intuition that medieval metaphysics unfolded, and why it constituted an ontology, a philosophy of being. Thus we can say with Étienne Gilson that “Man is not [first of all] a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good, 11 In chapter 7 of that book he writes: “Men of another school answer that grass is a mere green impression on the mind; and that he can be sure of nothing except the mind. They declare that he can only be conscious of his own consciousness; which happens to be the one thing that we know the child is not conscious of at all. In that sense, it would be far truer to say that there is grass and no child, than to say that there is a conscious child but no grass. St. Thomas Aquinas, suddenly intervening in this nursery quarrel, says emphatically that the child is aware of Ens. Long before he knows that grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically (with a blow on the table), ‘There is an Is.’ That is as much monkish credulity as St. Thomas asks of us at the start. Very few unbelievers start by asking us to believe so little. And yet, upon this sharp pin-point of reality, he rears by long logical processes that have never really been successfully overthrown, the whole cosmic system of Christendom.” Stratford Caldecott 114 and who enjoys them as beautiful.”12 Values belong (objectively) to things that exist outside ourselves; they are rooted in being, beginning with transcendental properties such as truth, goodness, and beauty. But we need to go one step further. Just as Estel alone does not reveal the identity of being and love, so the transcendental properties of being do not reveal the human self as such in its deepest reality. It is in the eyes of another that I find my own identity, just as it is perhaps the “mother’s smile,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s famous expression, that first awakens me to self-awareness as an infant. At the beginning of his series Theo-Logic, Balthasar conducts a phenomenological meditation on the concept of truth that emphasizes the relationship of subject and object in the act of consciousness. He concludes that the subject discovers being (including its own) by receiving the object and serving it: “only in going out of itself, in creatively serving the world, does the subject become aware of its purpose and, therefore, of its essence.”13 And the object can be revealed only in the space provided by the subject, in which it becomes more than it was. Karol Wojtyl/a develops a similar insight in The Acting Person. “Since Descartes,” he writes, “knowledge about man and his world has been identified with the cognitive function. . . . And yet, in reality, does man reveal himself in thinking or, rather, in the actual enacting of his existence . . . ?” And he adds, “In fact, it is by reversing the post-Cartesian attitude toward man that we undertake our study: by approaching him through action.”14 Wojtyl/a believes the Transcendental Ego posited by Husserl (following Descartes) cannot be the essence of the self, the real “thinker” of the Cogito, for the “I” in “I think” is not revealed through the intuition of one’s own pure subjectivity, but solely through action—and even thinking is a kind of act. The future pope’s analysis of human consciousness centers around what he terms its “reflexive” function—the awareness of oneself as the subject of one’s own acts and experiences; in other words, the revelation of oneself not primarily as object or as idea, but as actor.15 In this reflexive function of consciousness lies the key to vertical transcendence or what he later calls the “original solitude” in which we come face to face with God, the supreme Other and source of our ultimate identity. 12 Étienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 255. 13 H. U. von Balthasar, Theo-Logic, I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 62. 14 Cited in Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyl/a/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 69. 15 Ibid., 73–77. At Home in the Cosmos 115 In other words, the mystery of who “I” am is to be solved, not by turning inwards and excluding the outer world from consideration, even provisionally, but by turning outwards and discovering myself in relationship.16 The self is invisible to itself and discovered only in the other, and completely only through love. The encounter with love, and the response to that encounter, is the drama of the human person though which one may be said to “enact” his existence. It is in this way that he discovers his own nature, not as a consciousness, a mind, or a ghost in a machine, but as a person. He discovers at the same time being, which now reveals itself as pure gift and therefore as love made concrete in the other, in the self, and in the relationship between them. Naturally this all gives us a very different perspective on ethics. The kind of morality that goes along with Cartesian assumptions tends to be consequentialist, utilitarian, or proportionalist in form. This means that I can judge the morality of an action only by its consequences, whether likely or actual. I decide what would be a good outcome, or society decides this for me, and I choose to act in a way that will bring it about. I may myself be judged on the basis of my intentions, or on the basis of what actually results from what I do, but either way the rightness or wrongness of my action depends on its end. And indeed, one cannot deny there is something very natural and believable about this philosophy. Surely I will be judged partly on my choice of goal, as well as my prudence in reaching it. But of course the weak point, even for the pragmatist, is that I cannot ever truly predict the outcome of my actions. How far ahead must I look? This weakness is particularly obvious when we have to make decisions that affect something as complex as an ecosystem, where each component affects the others in unpredictable ways—not to mention the effects on human cultures and populations. Furthermore, since “there are no intrinsic values,” the good or evil of the end is always something of an arbitrary decision. Alternative “deontological” theories reject the idea that the end is enough to justify the means. I believe it was Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from the means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. Ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.” I wrote down this quotation some years ago because it seemed to me to ring very true. This organic relationship 16 Cf. also Marjorie Grene, The Knower and the Known (Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of America, 1984), 86. 116 Stratford Caldecott between means and ends is something that people understand intuitively, just as they understand that any of our actions might bring about a state of affairs quite different from the one we intended. We cannot absolutely distinguish between means and ends. If the means is itself an action, it has a moral value of its own apart from the intended outcome. We have both to decide the goal we are aiming to reach, and to discern whether a particular means is appropriate or organically connected with the goal, before we know how to act. Consequentialism makes sense only in a world of constricted rationality, where the interior connectedness of things is denied in order to control them mechanically by outside forces. Here it would easy to appeal once more to Pope Benedict, and his continuing appeal to “broaden” our reason. For modern science, like modern ethics, is based on a constriction of rationality. Aristotle argued for four types of cause: final, formal, material, and efficient. Formal causality was due to the inner shaping idea or essence, and final causality to the plan or intention for which they exist and to which they are directed. But once modern science had practically eliminated any reference to interior formal principles and relationships with God, all that was left to investigate was the world of “horizontal” causes—material causality in the sense of what something is made of, and efficient causality, or what brings about a change. That is why the modern mentality has such a problem with ethical rationality, which concerns formal and especially final causality, and as such hardly lends itself to mathematical treatment or measurement.17 It cannot be denied that the restriction of reason to two of the four causes, like the forcing of water into a narrow channel, gave it enormous force. But purely at the level of sense-making, something was lost. Eventually the notion of cause became reduced to that of a constant, regular, and predictable conjunction of events lacking any deeper reason at all. The important distinction between controlling and understanding nature became increasingly blurred. The goal of science, it seemed, was to give the simplest possible account of how things actually behave without worrying about any “why.” Ironically, this reduces it once more to the task of “saving the appearances,” as it once did with the old Ptolemaic 17 The origin of the idea of the four causes seems to lie in Plato’s Timaeus, where they appear as the Demiurge, Matter, Forms, and the Good. Christianity traced these back to God, who as Creator is “efficient” cause of existence itself, creating materially ex nihilo, according to the form of his own divine ideas, for the sake of his own finality. Nevertheless the causes remain distinct, and all are necessary—just as for Aquinas, in order for an action to be good four elements are needed: the existence of the act, appropriate circumstances, what is done, and the ultimate goal or intention. At Home in the Cosmos 117 system. Perhaps we are waiting today not only for a new St. Benedict, but for a new and very different Galileo. Formal and final causality had not, of course, disappeared from the scene altogether, but they had been, on the one hand, reduced to a set of mathematical descriptions, and, on the other, usurped by man, since it was now our own plans and designs that were to be imposed on nature through science—as Francis Bacon had made plain enough.To the extent there was held to be no intrinsic telos or end to be drawn towards or to seek, man was now forced to choose the very end itself. Kenneth Schmitz’s brilliant book The Recovery of Wonder is partly about this development.18 It was much the same with formal causality. Lacking a natural end in God, or an interior order that determined his relation to that end, man’s freedom must mean liberation from all external constraints except those he chooses for himself—even nature is now seen as an obstacle to be overcome. What happened to ethics is bound up with all this. Consequentialism reduces human action to a choice of ends and of instrumental means to those ends, but the inner (“organic”) relationship of means to ends drops out of sight. No wonder we so often get things wrong. No wonder “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” No human mind can compute all the variables in play, nor can we even agree on the good, since it is no longer anchored in our nature. But this is where a renewed sense of cosmology, and a broadening of reason, might come in. Having recovered our sense of connectedness through the “interiority” of each action in the Logos, it becomes possible to make decisions not just on the basis of calculation, nor even from a sense of obligation or duty (which is another way to evade problems with consequentialism), but out of a “spirit” that is in tune with reality as a whole. In other words, the artificial boundary between ethics and spirituality has been dissolved. This does not make decisions any easier than before, but it opens our decisionmaking to a source of wisdom greater than ourselves. 18 The Recovery of Wonder deals explicitly with the change in our understanding of causality and the new sense of freedom that it brought about. The modern focus on interiority, consciousness, and subjectivity—the long road back to a metaphysical view of reality—has borne immense fruit. We may now be moving back into a cosmos, but it is a much larger cosmos than before. Not only do we have a much richer appreciation of the variety and splendor of the physical world and the richness of its history, but we have discovered in ourselves a creativity that was previously hidden from us, but which is surely part of the divine image in man (as, in their different ways, J. R. R. Tolkien and Nicholas Berdyaev both insisted). 118 Stratford Caldecott The Ethical Microcosm Even in ethical terms, man is a microcosm. Cosmology, anthropology, and ethics come together finally here, at the crossroads of human behavior. I find the image of ethical microcosm most clearly and succinctly expressed in Balthasar’s “Nine Propositions on Christian Ethics.”19 There Christ is the “concrete categorical imperative,” the “formally universal norm of ethical action” made personal and concrete as an individual man. From Christ, who carried out “the entire will of the Father (every ‘ought’ in the world),” we receive the “freedom to fulfil God’s will and to live according to our nature as free children of the Father”—a freedom that includes a genuine creativity on our part, which is one of the points made by Prof. Schmitz in his book.20 This, then, is the “revealing of the sons of God” for which nature has been yearning. I will have to leave it pretty much at that. I have not done justice to my original intention to explore the relation between ecology and redemption, but the integration of ethics with spirituality and cosmology through the notion of an “ethical microcosm” is too big a topic for me to do more than roll into the room. I will conclude briefly by telling you what I see in it that is worthy of further reflection. Dr. Thompson has suggested that the nouvelle théologie contributed to the weakness of the Catholic response to the ecological movement, since for man to lack a natural end is to lack the “proper context” for an engagement with nature. My own impression is that the nouvelle theologians did not deny a natural end for man so much as a purely natural end. They insisted that the natural end for man was, in fact, a supernatural one that could not be attained without grace. You could even put it round the other way and say that they denied a natural end for nature—since nature exists for man, and is oriented to him, and man is oriented to God. Nature is an extension of man’s body, and as such is implicated in his divinization. It is only when this complementarity of man and nature is forgotten that the nouvelle théologie appears to undermine the notion of stewardship. The essence of our existence in Christ is love, which is why for St. Thomas love or charity is the “form” of the virtues. Virtues are the powers or habits that conform us to that image and likeness of love. Thus Balthasar writes, “The distinctive ethical task laid upon man is that of 19 In Heinz Schürmann, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Principles of Christian Morality, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 77–104. 20 “Thus, our ‘drink’ becomes a ‘spirit’ within us” (ibid., 81)—a “spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14; cf. 7:38). See, at note 14 above, the point made by Kenneth L. Schmitz. At Home in the Cosmos 119 ethicizing . . . his entire spiritual-bodily nature; success [in this task] is called virtue.”21 In the simplest terms, I take this to mean that it is more important than codifying a list of rights belonging to nature or to animals, and then legislating to enforce them, to become the kind of people who are never cruel to animals or needlessly destructive. Laws are clearly necessary, but we at least should know that they will not succeed in solving anything (no matter how rigorously they are enforced) if we do not also acquire virtue in ourselves. The portrait of the virtuous, which is also the portrait of Jesus and of the restored image of man in the Blessed Virgin Mary, is given for all time in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness (we remember the “groaning” of creation), the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. Thus the one-sided Kantian emphasis on moral law may be transcended by integrating the notion of duty within an anthropology, an understanding of the human being called to holiness in the image and likeness of God. We must act in certain ways not because we are ordered to do so by a divine legislator, but because we are yearning to unite ourselves with the divine Beloved. This anthropology is “nuptial” (to use John Paul II’s expression). The purpose of history, you might say, is to bring about the liturgical consummation of cosmology, which the Book of Revelation describes as the “wedding feast of the Lamb.” Another way of putting this is that the stewardship of creation is nothing less than the service of Christ. The world is a kind of monstrance, or, better, an altar and a sacrament through which we become participants in the divine nature. Viewed in this way, the Mass or Divine Liturgy becomes a kind of “school of stewardship,” in which we learn the correct relationship of all things, and the right manner of behaving towards each other and towards the elements of creation. Therefore the children of God are revealed in a life of holiness, which is a life where love has become tangible.The sign of love is not the creeds we adhere to, or the ideas we carry in our heads, but the spirit in which we behave towards each other and the world. The true liturgy and Eucharist begin where philosophy begins, in amazement and gratitude, in praise for the sheer existence of so much beauty, so much actuality. Forests and mountains, deserts and stars, animals, plants and insects are here and gone in a day, and their existence is fraught with sorrow, but God made them. In our obscure desire to unite ourselves with the Giver, to find the source and thank him, somehow, for the community of being, 21 Schürmann, Ratzinger, and Balthasar, Principles of Christian Morality, 98. 120 Stratford Caldecott we begin to recall the reason we were made, and to play our part in the redemption of the world. The Holy Spirit prays within us, since we do not know how to pray, and groans for us in supplication, since we do not know what to ask. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 121–34 121 Renewing Husbandry: Wendell Berry, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas on “Economics” J OHN A. C UDDEBACK Christendom College Front Royal, VA “W E SEEM to have been living for a long time on the assumption that we can safely deal with parts, leaving the whole to take care of itself. But now the news from everywhere is that we have to begin gathering up the scattered pieces, figuring out where they belong, and putting them back together.”1 Thus Wendell Berry in his 2004 essay “The Purpose of a Coherent Community.” Picking up pieces, and putting them back together: what seems to be a matter of child’s play, may well be a succinct statement of the fundamental task for all those concerned about the good human life. If the good human life is anything, it is a whole, and it is a lived in a community that is a whole. Pieces have their place in a whole, and thus pieces—or parts—can be what they are supposed to be only when they are woven into a whole. And only someone who has a conception of the whole, and its end, can truly weave the parts together. Husbandry, according to Berry, is an art that is all about weaving parts into a whole. Indeed, all arts are ultimately about this. But “husbandry” names an art that concerns properly human wholes: the wholes wherein the good human life is lived, most especially family.The name “husbandry” of course also refers to the realm of farming or agriculture. The rich analogicity in this name points to a connection that is of the first importance: the connection of care for land and living things, and the care for family and home. Berry holds that a return to the practice of husbandry could solve many of the problems in agriculture, since farming is best 1 Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance (Berkeley, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005), 77. 122 John Cuddeback practiced in the context of the economy of the home. The home is the whole of which farming is naturally a part. Berry’s point about agriculture is an instance of a broader point: the home is the whole of which most economic endeavors are naturally a part. Home economy is, or should be, the economy, in the most important sense. When economic endeavor is conceived and pursued as fundamentally within the context of the home, it can be properly woven into the whole—the good life of the family, that it should most of all serve. This is also the economic view of Aristotle and of Aquinas. Oeconomica, or the art of household management, is an art by which the household manager orders all things, including wealth-getting, in view of the good life of the family community, itself a part of a broader community. My thesis then is that the husbandry that Berry recommends for a renewal of agriculture, as well as for a broader economic renewal, is supported by Aristotle and Aquinas’s understanding of oeconomica.2 Here is the order I will follow. We will first consider Berry’s critique of the present state of agriculture, and the broader society, focusing on dissolution—a dissolution especially connected with making monetary profit the primary end of economic endeavor. Then we will take a brief look at his proposed solution: husbandry, the art that weaves parts into a whole in view of the true end. We will then turn to the thought of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. In their political and economic doctrine, I find the basic principles that are at work in Berry’s critique and solution. Most importantly, in their understanding of the art of household management, oeconomica, economic endeavor is understood and practiced as immediately subordinated to the good life of the family, as opposed to monetary profit.3 2 That both agriculture and the broader economy suffer from fragmentation and are in need of renewal, I ask leave to take as given. I recognize that there are many successful parts or aspects of agriculture and the economy today. I would contend that their fragmentation and need for renewal is most clear in agriculture’s failure to conduce, as well as it could and should conduce, to the good health of people and land, and the broader economy’s failure to conduce, as well as it could and should conduce, to the good life of the community. Recognizing that these are profoundly complex issues, I ask leave to focus on an approach that I believe is very timely, regardless of precisely how we judge the current state of affairs. For Berry’s exposition of the failures of contemporary agriculture, as well as of the broader economy, I would especially recommend The Unsettling of America (see note 4 below). 3 As regards this difficult point we must note that there is no implication here that monetary profit, or the seeking of monetary profit, is evil. At issue is the governing end of economic endeavor. As we will have some occasion to see, Aristotle and Aquinas, as well as Berry, hold that when monetary profit, as contrasted with Renewing Husbandry 123 I. Berry’s Critique: Things Are Falling Apart In many of his essays Berry subtly connects things agricultural with things broader and even more fundamental. I want to look first at what I take to be, according to Berry, the principles of a broader demise of human life and culture, and then turn to see the realm of agriculture as a specific and telling instance of that broader demise. Berry writes: The inventors of this agriculture assumed, in short, that the human will is sovereign in the universe, that the only laws are the laws of mechanics, and that the material world and its “natural resources” are without limit.These are the assumptions that, acknowledged or not, underlie the “war” by which we humans have undertaken to “conquer” nature, and which is the dominant myth of modern intellectual life.4 Berry points to several fundamental aspects of the dominant modern worldview. Of particular interest is his identification of the root of the war to conquer nature: taking the human will as sovereign in the universe. Here, it seems to me, is a point of the first significance. At the root of our problems is the assertion of a certain autonomy of the human will: an assertion that is more a moral matter than a theoretical one.5 A will that is sovereign does not find its good in discovering, and living by, an objective and received order, an order inscribed in nature. The sovereign will pursues its own private desires, and finds nature something to be conquered. A first fruit of the stance of the sovereign will is blindness to the order, the natural order, of the universe. And central in the order of the universe is its own wholeness, and the wholeness of many of its parts (e.g., the wholeness of one person’s life, of the family, of the farm, of the nation, of an ecosystem). Consider Berry’s words in The Unsettling of America, in the chapter titled “The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character”: The good of the whole of Creation, the world and all its creatures together, is never a consideration because it is never thought of; our culture now simply lacks the means for thinking of it. It is for this reason that none of our basic problems is ever solved. Indeed, it is for this reason that our basic problems are getting worse.6 the flourishing of the family, becomes the governing end of economic endeavor, significant negative consequences follow upon this disorder. 4 Berry, Way of Ignorance, 106. See also Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 53. 5 I believe that assuming the stance of being sovereign in the universe is a “practical” stance that, unfortunately and contradictorily, is assumed by many of us who have a “theoretically” Christian stance. 6 Berry, Unsettling of America, 22. John Cuddeback 124 We do not know how to think and live in terms of wholes. To use another way that Berry captures this point: we do not know how to think and live according to true context. “Contexts,” he notes, “become wrong by being too small.”7 This statement is from the essay entitled “Renewing Husbandry.” In that essay he expresses the cause of the demise of agriculture as “the emergence of context as an issue.”8 At the heart of what Berry means by context is the truth that parts are truly understood only in relation to the whole or wholes to which they truly belong. Thus when parts are not seen and treated in relation to the proper wholes, or in other words are taken out of context, they are perverted or misused. I believe, and I think that Berry would concur, that this issue of context is an issue of teleology. The relation of part to whole is fundamentally one of order to the end (telos).9 Thus when what is in reality a part is not recognized as such, that is, it is not seen in its proper context, then it is destroyed by the loss of its true end, the true source of its purpose and importance. Let us consider Berry’s understanding of the demise of agriculture. Without purporting to give an adequate summary of his critique of contemporary agriculture, I think that we can capture much of his position in this point: business corporations have replaced families as the primary agents of agriculture, and as a result monetary profit has replaced the health of the family and community as the end of agriculture. When farming is done in the context of a family (“Once, of course, the idea of a farm included the idea of a household . . . ”),10 farming itself tends to be, and to be seen as, a part of a larger whole: the life of the family and of the broader community. When farming is done by a business corporation, it tends to be reduced to a means of profit. Here farming is not a part of a larger whole, or at least not a part of the whole to which it naturally belongs. As a result, farming becomes redefined, “to suit the purposes of a businessman.”11 Berry sketches some consequences: The consumer wants food to be as cheap as possible. The producer wants it to be as expensive as possible. Both want it to involve as little labor as possible. And so the standards of cheapness and convenience, 7 Berry, Way of Ignorance, 100. 8 Ibid., 93. 9 See the prologue to Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics. “And nature in its activity goes from simple things to composite things, so that what is most composite in things produced by natural activity is complete and whole and the end of other things, as is evident in every whole in relation to its parts.” 10 Berry, Unsettling of America, 31. 11 Ibid., 35. Renewing Husbandry 125 which are irresistibly simplifying and therefore inevitably exploitive, have been substituted for the standard of health (of both people and land), which would enforce consideration of essential complexities.12 The word “standards” is important. Standards are determined in view of the end. Rather than the richer end of a wider whole—which end Berry often refers to as the “health” of the human community as well as of the ecosystem13—contemporary agricultural science takes the end of agriculture to be quite limited: efficiency, productivity, and ultimately, profit.14 The problem of making profit the governing end is not limited to agriculture. Berry observes in The Gift of Good Land: For complex reasons, our culture allows “economy” to mean only “money economy.” It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement.15 This second sentence is a very strong assertion. Berry holds that the modern, capitalist economic environment has a powerful, negative influence on human thought and action. “The most forceful context of every habitat now is the industrial economy that is doing damage to all habitats.”16 Whether or not it is true that our culture lacks any other standard of measurement, it seems to me that we can say this: When monetary profit becomes the primary goal, explicitly or implicitly, of practically all economic endeavor, it likewise tends to become the regnant standard of judgment outside of economics, indeed, in life itself. II. Berry’s Solution: Husbandry In looking at Berry’s critique, I moved from his more general cultural critique to the specific analysis of agriculture. In looking briefly at his solution I will do the opposite, starting with the more specific husbandry of agriculture and moving to a more general husbandry. Farming done by those whose first thought is of family and home is different from that done by business corporations. In the notion of husbandry, one and the same agent looks to the household and looks to the 12 Ibid., 32. 13 E.g., Way of Ignorance, 124. Berry’s notion of “health” needs to be taken in a broad sense, one that transcends simple bodily flourishing, as is clear in his speaking of the health of communities. 14 Cf. ibid., 118, “ . . . though the aim of science, more often than not, is to connect capital with profit.” 15 Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land (New York: North Point Press, 1995), xiii. 16 Berry, Way of Ignorance, 76. John Cuddeback 126 farm. Indeed, this agent looks to the latter because of the former. Farming is a rich part, of a broader and richer whole, the “health” of a family. Husbandry pertains first to the household; it connects the farm to the household. It is an art wedded to the art of housewifery. To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals—obviously because of the importance of these things to the household.17 Berry is suggesting that farming pursued in the context of the household is more apt to be true farming, as it were, since the agents of the farming are specifically motivated by the health of family and land.18 Berry addresses the alienation of household and farm in The Unsettling of America. “The understanding of kindly use in agriculture must encompass both farm and household, for the mutuality of influence between them is profound.”19 When the determinative end of the farm’s economy is the economy of the household, the farm itself naturally is the object of a unique solicitude and preserving care. But when the office of directing the farm is separated from the office of directing the household, competition tends to replace collaboration. The household becomes largely consumptive, and the farm primarily productive. And as quoted above: “The consumer wants food to be as cheap as possible. The producer wants it to be as expensive as possible. Both want it to involve as little labor as possible.”20 One might ask: But is Berry’s suggestion of husbandry for the renewal of agriculture as simple as: restore the family farm? It goes without saying that “families” can be in the business of agri-business. But if by “family farm” we mean a farm united to a household by the care of persons who look first to the health of family, land, and broader community, I think we can affirm that for Berry restoring such farms is the heart of the renewal of agriculture. At the same time, Berry is keenly aware that farming is not done in a vacuum. The renewal of agriculture will go hand-inhand with a renewal of husbandry in a broader sense. When Berry says that the renewal of agriculture will “require us to accept again, and more competently than before”21 the true ends of agriculture, it is clear that the “us” is not just farmers. 17 Ibid., 96–97. 18 I omit a consideration of the specifics of how such farming is different. 19 Berry, Unsettling of America, 31. 20 Ibid., 32. 21 Berry, Way of Ignorance, 103. Renewing Husbandry 127 Husbandry is just such a competent acceptance of true ends. It is the vision and acceptance of health of the community as giving form and meaning both to agriculture and to other parts within the whole. In other words, husbandry in the broader sense looks to the true good of family and community, and it takes from there the principles of, among other things, all economic activity. This broader husbandry brings about societal conditions in which the farmer’s husbandry can grow and thrive. Inasmuch as husbandry is an art that looks to the good of that which is husbanded, the practitioner of husbandry tends to be one who habitually looks beyond his own private good or gain. In conclusion then regarding Berry’s notion of husbandry, we are dealing here with a solution that is fundamentally moral.To restore husbandry is most of all to change our desires. “The corruption of community,” writes Berry, “has its source in the corruption of character.”22 Likewise, the restoration of community, and the good life that is truly lived only in community, can come only through a reformation of character, that is, the reformation of desire. In the title essay of The Unsettling of America, following a critique of the American attitude toward work and life itself, Berry concludes: “To see these things is to come up against the question: Then what is desirable?”23 Indeed: what is desirable? It seems to me that to practice husbandry, even imperfectly, is precisely to practice desiring well. It is to practice looking to what is naturally first: the good life of family, and the broader community, and then desiring all else in that context. III. The Aristotelian/Thomistic Tradition: Oeconomica Aristotle’s understanding of oeconomica, or the art of household management, can serve as a basis for Berry’s understanding of husbandry, as well as his critique of the modern economic “context.”We will examine some basic principles of oeconomica, following Thomas Aquinas’s understanding as found in his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics. We will see first how wealth-getting, including farming, is intrinsically tied to the household. Then in an examination of “moneymaking” we will see how seeking monetary profit without limit threatens the household, the primary locus of economic activity. Oeconomica names the art of governing the household. The end or goal of this art is the good life of the family community.24 A foundational principle is that the one governing, the paterfamilias, looks to the common 22 Berry, Unsettling of America 19. 23 Ibid., 13. 24 “ . . . since the household manager has the good life of its members as his goal (finis).” Aquinas, In pol. I.8.4. Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Richard 128 John Cuddeback good, a good beyond his own private good. The common good of the family community is the good life of a whole that has many parts. This good life is primarily a “spiritual” affair, in the sense that it most of all consists in living the virtues—both moral and intellectual. While primarily a spiritual affair, it is by no means exclusively so. Since oeconomica first of all concerns the good human life, it is an art that must be firmly rooted in an understanding of human nature and its true flourishing. Thus, because oeconomica is primarily concerned with spiritual goods, it is also essentially concerned with bodily goods.25 For Aristotle and Aquinas the paterfamilias, or the one who practices oeconomica, practices or oversees the various arts concerning material possessions precisely because his end is the virtuous human life. This conception of the end of oeconomica is determinative of how the realm of wealth-getting26 is conceived. There are two fundamentally distinct kinds of wealth-getting: what we can call natural wealth-getting ( possessiva naturalis), and moneymaking ( pecuniativa). To distinguish these kinds of wealth-getting, it is helpful first to distinguish between natural, or true wealth, and artificial wealth. Though the distinction between true wealth and money may seem obvious, the manner in which Aquinas distinguishes them is instructive. He says: . . . true wealth consists of such things as alleviate the needs of nature. And so these things are true wealth because they take away need and make their possessors self-sufficient, namely, to have enough to live well.27 Regan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2007), 57. All quotations will be from this translation. It should be noted that the good life of the family is only properly conceived when understood in relation to broader communities to which the family belongs, which is why oeconomica is subordinate to the art of politics. See Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993), Bk. I, lect 1, no. 6 (on the division of moral philosophy into three parts, one of which is oeconomica) and nos. 25–30 (on the primacy of politica). 25 It seems to me that this is crucial; it is a principle that stands at the center of all true culture. The material realm has its greatest importance precisely from its place in service of things spiritual. It is no accident that usually those persons, communities, and cultures that believe in the primacy of the spiritual are the ones who steward the material world, beginning with their own bodies, and likewise practice the fine arts, in a most exemplary fashion. 26 To discover how Aristotle and Aquinas think about what today is considered the realm of “economics” we need especially to turn to this part—wealth-getting— of oeconomica. 27 Aquinas, In pol. I.6.10; p. 48. Renewing Husbandry 129 There are several key inter-related notions here: nature, needs, and living well (bene-vivendum). Nature for Aristotle and Aquinas is that fundamental standard, that given in reality that is a foundation for all judgments regarding the human good. Nature has certain determinate needs; and these needs are determined in relation to the end: the end of living well, or, the virtuous life. True wealth, again, consists of those things that can actually fulfill the needs of nature, these needs understood in relation to the virtuous life.28 Money, or artificial wealth, which was invented to facilitate the exchange of real wealth,29 cannot itself fulfill the needs of nature.30 And thus Aristotle and Aquinas unabashedly conclude: “Therefore it is clear . . . that those who abound in things necessary for life are in truth richer than those who abound in money.”31 This is not, it should be stressed, an assertion of the primacy of spiritual goods, that is, those with spiritual goods are richer than those with money. The point pertains to material wealth: true wealth is an abundance of those real things that are needed for human life.32 We can now return to distinguishing two kinds of wealth-getting: natural wealth-getting and moneymaking. The art of natural wealthgetting is the art of securing a certain amount of natural wealth: the amount that is needed, according to human nature, for the good life. Aristotle and Aquinas consistently emphasize that this amount is limited by nature. As a result they call this art a “natural” art, Aquinas explaining that by it “a person acquires what nature made for the person.”33 Now farming (agricultura) is a part of natural wealth-getting; the other part with which we are not concerned is called praeditiva, which especially 28 While the “needs” of nature are first of all determined by the bodily aspects of human nature, the natural ordination of things bodily to things spiritual provides the fuller context in which bodily needs are determined. Put otherwise, what the human body needs is ultimately determined in view of the virtuous life, the life to which human nature as a whole is ordained. One example might illustrate this point. If there is a natural obligation to offer some portion of the fruits of the earth in the worship of God, then this has bearing upon the determination of how much of these fruits a man “needs” to produce. 29 In pol. I.7.6; p. 52. 30 “And so such wealth is not true wealth, since it does not satisfy the desire of human beings.” In pol. I.6.10; p. 48. 31 In pol. I.7.11; p. 54. 32 In my experience, the interesting thing is this: it is usually those who either explicitly or implicitly hold the primacy of spiritual goods who accept and, more importantly, live this point. 33 In pol. I.6.8; p. 47. We might also note that the term “natural” points to a determinatio ad unum that is from nature. John Cuddeback 130 includes hunting and other forms of acquiring animals for food. Aquinas writes in his commentary: Then he concludes from the foregoing that a natural kind of acquiring property . . . is part of household management [oeconomica] insofar as we call anything subordinate a part. For the natural kind of acquiring property is subordinate to both household management and the political community. And this is so because statesmen and household managers need to provide that things in reserve for the necessities of life and the benefit of both the household and the political community exist or are acquired.34 Farming, then, an art within natural wealth-gettting, is naturally a part of oeconomica. It is intrinsically ordered to oeconomica. Such an ordering, far from being an oppressive servitude, is precisely what gives form, meaning, and dignity to farming. Farming, as Berry observed, belongs to the household. By a brief examination now of the other kind of wealth-getting, that is, moneymaking, we will find the principles to understand the perennial possibility of the demise, not only of farming, but of the broader social and economic structure. There are two kinds of moneymaking, and the difference between them makes all the difference. In short, moneymaking1 is an art of acquiring money precisely so as to assist and enhance what natural wealth-getting does, unto the end of satisfying limited human needs.35 In other words, there is a moneymaking wherein money is sought only for the sake of need. Moneymaking2, associated with the merchant and the trader,36 is an art that seeks to multiply money itself. This art, says Aquinas, is concerned with making “the greatest profit.”37 Aristotle and Aquinas do not consider this art to be in itself evil.Yet they are unequivocal in emphasizing the following: Unlike oeconomica, and the subordinate arts of natural wealth-getting and moneymaking1, moneymaking2 has no natural end, is un-limited, and therefore is intrinsically dangerous.38 The danger consists especially in this: those who run house34 In pol. I.6.9; p. 47. 35 See In pol. I 8.3; p. 56. Moneymaking1 is also called natural (8.9) and necessary (8.6). 36 In the commentary on the Politics, Aquinas uses the term “campsores”—merchants. See In pol. I 8.3; p. 57. In ST I–II, q. 77, a. 4, quoted in a footnote below, Aquinas speaks of “negotiatores”—traders. It would seem that bankers fit here too. 37 In pol. I.7.7; p. 52. 38 A central text in Aquinas is ST I–II, q. 77, a. 4, in which he distinguishes between two kinds of “trading,” the second being identical to what I have called Moneymaking2: “The other kind of exchange is either that of money for money, or of Renewing Husbandry 131 holds may not see the difference between the two kinds of moneymaking, and so they are drawn to seek money without limit (moneymaking2), in lieu of seeking only the money that is needed for the household (moneymaking1). Aquinas explains: In household moneymaking, the acquisition of money is directed to another end, namely, governance of the household, but in commercial moneymaking [moneymaking2] . . . increasing money is the end. And so, since commerce [moneymaking2] is similar to household management, it seems to some household managers that what belongs to merchants, namely, to be zealous to maintain and increase money without limit, is their duty.39 Since the household does need money, and thus moneymaking1 has a natural place in household management, it is easy for the household manager to slip into the practice of seeking money without limit. When this happens, the household manager begins to misunderstand and mispractice his own art, oeconomica.40 But the danger of moneymaking2 consists in more than just its similarity—both seek money—with moneymaking1. Aquinas points to another any commodity for money, not on account of the necessities of life, but for profit, and this kind of exchange, properly speaking, regards tradesmen, according to the Philosopher (Polit. i, 3). The former kind of exchange is commendable because it supplies a natural need: but the latter is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity. Hence trading, considered in itself, has a certain debasement attaching thereto, in so far as, by its very nature, it does not imply a virtuous or necessary end.” It is important to note that Aquinas proceeds to explain how such trading can be ordered to a virtuous or necessary end. But the distinction must not be missed between that which by its nature is ordered to a good end and that which is not. And further, in the case of the second kind of trading, or moneymaking2, its very unlimitedness—its tending to infinity—appeals to human concupiscence. Aquinas will make this point again in the texts quoted below from his commentary on the Politics. 39 In pol. I.8.3; pp. 56–57. I have revised the translation. 40 Aquinas’s point here brings to mind the account of Berry and so many others of the pressures brought to bear in the twentieth century on family farmers. When those around us assume as their fundamental “economic” approach that of moneymaking2, the art of multiplying money without limit, it is very difficult not to see this as the norm, as what we are supposed to do. One thinks of Andrew Lytle’s “The Hind Tit,” in I’ll Take My Stand (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 204–5, speaking of industrialized society’s influence on farmers: “Through its philosophy of Progress it is committing a mortal sin to persuade farmers that they can grow wealthy by adopting its methods. A farm is not a place to grow wealthy; it is a place to grow corn.” 132 John Cuddeback key piece of the picture when he notes that moral weakness makes the household manager especially susceptible to the aforementioned problem of mistaking one moneymaking for the other. . . . the reason for this disposition, namely, that household managers seek to increase money without limit, is because human beings are eager to live howsoever, not to live well, which is to live virtuously. For, if they were to strive to live virtuously, they would be content with things sufficient to sustain nature. But since they omit this effort and want to live according to their own will, each of them strives to acquire things with which to satisfy the individual’s desire. And because the desire of human beings [as opposed to their needs] has no limit, they desire without limit things whereby they can satisfy their desire.41 Here we have a significant contrast. The effort to live virtuously yields contentment: contentment with limited wealth, or those things that are “necessary.”42 On the other hand, the desire to live according to one’s own will leads to unlimited, and therefore insatiable, desires. And moneymaking2, given its want of any limit, is especially attractive, indeed tempting, because of these unlimited desires that fallen humans tend to have. Aristotle and Aquinas seem to be keenly aware of an ever-present danger that those who run households will seek to multiply money without limit, thereby undermining the proper exercise of oeconomica.43 It goes without saying that these thinkers recognize a place in society for moneymaking2. At the same time, it is clear that for them the household, the center of economic activity, exercises what should be the dominant approach44 toward money—seeking it for the fulfillment of need alone. If household managers do not act like household managers, then the family and household will not be the center of economic activity, even if most of those 41 In pol. I.8.3; p. 57 (emphasis added). It should be noted that “sufficient to sustain nature” should not be taken to mean “sufficient to keep the body alive,” but rather “sufficient to live the fully human good life, to flourish.” 42 Again, what is “necessary” for human life is understood in view of the full flourishing of human nature. 43 Aquinas, expounding Aristotle, after giving the reasons that household managers begin to seek money without limit, proceeds to give “three abuses” that follow. The third is that “they abuse their faculties (i.e., their virtues, skills, or position) in ways contrary to their nature” (p. 57). In explaining by example he notes: “But some use military and medical skills to make money [i.e., to acquire money], subordinating such skills to money as the end to which all other things need to be directed. And so Eccl. 10:19 says: ‘All things yield to money’ ” (p. 58). 44 One fruit of its dominance would be that commerce and banking, for instance, would be truly in the service of household economies. Renewing Husbandry 133 pursuing wealth are members of families. In such a situation, not only are farms alienated from the home; economy itself is alienated from the home. IV. Conclusion Here is a summary of what I have seen in the writing of Wendell Berry regarding our topic: 1. Farming needs to be practiced in the right context and for the right end: namely, in the context of the family, for the end of the health of the human community and the environment. 2. Husbandry is farming in the right context and for the right end. 3. Husbandry, as a broader art to be practiced by all in various ways, looks to the health of the community, and in light of that end, uses, conserves, and protects all that is within its care. 4. Husbandry names an art with a virtuous attitude; thus, to restore husbandry is most of all to change our desires. 5. Our biggest problem is that we do not desire well; that is, we do not desire, as end, the health of the community. 6. A major result of this problem, as well as a major cause and perpetuator of this problem, is an economy characterized primarily by its ordination to monetary profit. Now every one of these points is either explicitly or implicitly in the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas.45 In commenting on Aristotle’s Politics, Aquinas says that farming is a part of oeconomica, the art by which the household manager directs the family community to bene vivendum, true human flourishing. If the household manager desires and thus strives toward the truly good human life, the virtuous life, then this true end assumes the place of standard and source-of-order in all that the family does. How the family pursues wealth is a major aspect of the proper ordering of family life. And how the family pursues wealth should be the dominant and determinative economic force in society. Aristotle and Aquinas 45 I do not assert that the worldviews of Berry, Aristotle, and Aquinas are at root the same, though I do believe there is deep commonality. More specifically, as regards our topic, Berry does not, to my knowledge, speak of virtue as the end of community life. At the same time, I think his notion of “health” has more in common with virtue than may be immediately apparent. The point of this essay has been to emphasize a couple of shared themes in the work of these thinkers, and as such I do not attend to any differences. John Cuddeback 134 see an economy wherein parents, acting as parents, drive the economic project. Here the pursuit of money is limited according to needs, as understood in light of the end of virtue. Again, in Aquinas’s words: “if they were to strive to live virtuously, they would be content with things sufficient to sustain nature.”46 Berry says, “A creature can live only in a context that favors its life.”47 Aristotle and Aquinas hold that the context that most favors true human life is a community where the virtuous life is consciously accepted as the most central “health” and as the true “standard of living.” Among other things, such conscious acceptance, such husbandry, gives proper form and limit to farming, and economics. Looking to the future Berry remarks: Putting the pieces back together is going to be slow work. The pieces can be scattered in a hurry merely by indifference or neglect or violence. But the same forces that scattered them cannot put them back together. For that, we are going to need the hope and the purpose of a coherent community, clearly articulated and steadily borne in mind. And we are going to have to resign ourselves to patience and small steps.48 Bracing, realistic, and hopeful words. 46 In pol. I.8.3; p. 57. 47 Berry, Way of Ignorance, 75. 48 Ibid., 79. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 135–42 135 The Gift of Wonder: Chestertonian Resources for Creation Stewardship?* DAVID PAUL D EAVEL University of St. Thomas St. Paul, MN Introduction C HESTERTON IS , as Quentin Lauer put it in his marvelous little book, a “philosopher without portfolio.”1 Or, as Stephen Clark put it, he is “an excellent philosopher of a non-academic sort” who can also make academic sorts of philosophical arguments.2 Happily, since he was not an academic philosopher, his writings are a joy to read. Unhappily, since he was not an academic philosopher, one must look for his philosophy everywhere in his writings, his dictum being that in order to talk about anything, one must talk about everything. And since his premises are not always neatly lined up, and his conclusion may be interrupted by the opportunity to tell a good joke or criticize another writer, one must pay attention and follow the thread of argument oneself. In this paper I want to line up three important philosophical aspects of Chesterton’s thought that are important for anyone trying to think about how it is that we care for the cosmos in which we dwell: (1) Chesterton’s emphasis on metaphysical realism and the goodness of creation; (2) proper ordering of our love of the Creator and Creation; and (3) the necessity of self-limitation for proper care of Man and his environment. * An earlier version of this essay was presented at “Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Environment,” a conference at St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, in October 2009. My thanks to Steven A. Long and Catherine Jack Deavel for their comments. 1 Quentin Lauer, S.J., G. K. Chesterton: Philosopher without Portfolio (New York: Fordham University Press, 1991). 2 Stephen R. L. Clark, G. K. Chesterton: Thinking Backward, Looking Forward (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2006), ix. David Deavel 136 Metaphysical Realism and the Goodness of Creation Realism and Knowledge Quentin Lauer notes that in talking about Chesterton as a realist or even as a Thomist one has to be very careful. Was Chesterton indeed a realist of a Thomist stripe? If that means one who constantly emphasizes the primacy of the idea (ideal, exemplar) over its exemplification in the concrete world of particulars, no one of which measures up to the idea, the answer has to be yes. If that means one whose feet were not always firmly planted in the homely—and homey—solidity of material reality, the answer is a resounding no. In the sense that he considered reality—including but not exclusively material reality—as really real, yes. In the sense that material reality is real without any reference to mind as its source, a very strong no.3 This set of distinctions is very important. Chesterton insists on the reality and the goodness of the material creation. Concerning the reality of things he notes that “the philosophy of St.Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble.” But Thomists stand “in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God.”4 We see in nature not mere chaos that we adjust through the filters of our minds, though sometimes parts of nature may appear so, but quite often cosmos: an ordered creation the designs of which we intuit and do not merely create or assume. Is this a naïve realism? As Lauer notes, Chesterton was not a realist with reference to the idea that reality—material and spiritual—is real apart from reference to a mind. As has been made clear, he doesn’t think reality is all in our minds, but it is in God’s mind first. So reality is not dependent on our minds, but Chesterton does believe that this reality is perceptible—perhaps “comprehensible” is too strong—by our minds at some level. We might note the placement of the word “strange” in the follow3 Lauer, Philosopher without Portfolio, 36–37. 4 G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1956 [1933]), 148. The Gift of Wonder 137 ing statement: “[T]he essence of the Thomist common sense is that two agencies are at work; reality and the recognition of reality; and their meeting is a sort of marriage. Indeed it is very truly a marriage, because it is fruitful. . . . It produces practical results, precisely because it is the combination of an adventurous mind and a strange fact.”5 Facts are strange; our ability to know many facts about created things does not mean that we know them in the same way that God knows them. Turkeys and humans, Chesterton argues, are “ships that pass in the night” since we know as little of their ultimate meaning in the universe as do they of ours. “A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels.”6 But we can know a great deal of things about them. For Chesterton, the boy who is brought up to ride horses knows that “horse and man together” make a “human and civilized” image. And further, he will know that “ill-treatment” is not something that should be given to horses.7 This condition of knowing something but not everything can be applied to our knowledge of ourselves as humans as well. As Chesterton points out many times, we ourselves are a part of nature and we can know something about ourselves, but not everything. And because of original sin, Chesterton argues, knowledge of ourselves is often the most difficult to gain. “One may understand the cosmos,” he tells us in Orthodoxy, “but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself.”8 If we are talking about resources for the stewardship of the rest of the creation, which we are, then the problems we face are much deeper than technical knowledge. Self-knowledge is key to promoting practical steps to ensure that horses and turkeys, as well as wetlands and forests, are properly taken care of. Chesterton suggests that “there ought to be a real study called Anthropology corresponding to Theology.”9 One might note that John Paul II, whose writings in various encyclicals were driven by his own theoanthropological studies, encouraged both a carefulness in the treatment of humans as well as of the world in which they dwell. Goodness of the World What we can know, again, from our own experience of the world and from revelation, is the thesis of St. Thomas, in Chesterton’s words, that concerning material things, “there are no bad things; but only bad uses of 5 Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 185. 6 Chesterton, All Things Considered (London: Methuen, 1908), 220. 7 Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Garden City, NY: Image, 1955 [1925]), 17. 8 Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image, 1959 [1908]), 54. 9 Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 161. 138 David Deavel things.”10 “The work of heaven alone was material;” he says, “the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual.”11 This is, we might say, a philosophical-theological thesis, since it is something that one might discover on one’s own, apart from Christian or Jewish faith, simply from the wonder that the world evokes—or should evoke—in us. But it is especially seconded by the doctrine of Creation and emphasized and illuminated yet again in the re-creation of the world in Jesus Christ. Even if much of the early Christian philosophical work was done under the influence of Plato, things were, says Chesterton, bound to change. “After the Incarnation had become the idea that is central to our civilisation, it was inevitable that there should be a return to materialism; in the sense of the serious value of matter and the making of the body. When once Christ had risen, it was inevitable that Aristotle should rise again.”12 We know the world is good according to Christian tradition, not only because God made it (and said it was good, by the way) but because God chose to be a part of that world, not for a time, but for all time. The Ascension of Christ, a feast that is often ignored these days by bumping it to Sunday, is key to understanding Christian materialism. A man, or more properly “Man,” is now joined to God in the body that God made and made again imperishable. Christian doctrine is not that God’s creation of the earth was a lark that interrupted the pure spirituality of eternity. God made the material creation and intends to keep it around—forever. This theological angle also reveals something else about the goodness of creation. It is not the thesis that we live in a world of the best possible things, for as Chesterton says, “The defect we see, in what is, is simply that it is not all that is. God is more actual even than Man; more actual even than Matter; for God with all His powers at every instant is immortally in action.”13 Even in a world of the best possible things, we would be able to say this sentence because God alone Is unconditionally. We exist only because of him. This leads us into our second topic. Proper Ordering of Our Love of the Creator and Creature Two special emphases of Chesterton suggest themselves to us as we try to formulate how it is that we approach the cosmos around us. We have noted first of all that only God truly has being—and if being itself is 10 Ibid., 107. 11 Ibid., 108. 12 Ibid., 119. 13 Ibid., 171. The Gift of Wonder 139 goodness, then only God is truly Good, capital “G.” Also we have noted that our own knowledge of the created order, solid and helpful as it is, runs up against a barrier when we come to the knowledge of that strangest of all creatures, ourselves. But if proper knowledge of ourselves is necessary in order to face the various problems and indeed crises of our day in our stewardship of nature around us, then what are we to do? The answer, it would seem, is not simply to study the world around us or even to study ourselves. The answer is to study God. Chesterton’s own concern about the destructive aspects of nineteenthand twentieth-century industrialism was great. His belief in the abilities of mankind to understand the world was also great. But as great was his skepticism about the ability of a world, no matter how technologically advanced, to confront our problems, particularly ecological problems, unless there was a great turning toward God. As Richard Gill notes, Chesterton believed that the world was not capable of confronting its ecological problems out of its own resources.14 One observes the common utterance that someone is “too heavenly minded to do any earthly good.” Yet, in Chesterton’s view, the exact opposite is true. One’s attitude to the earth is dependent on one’s heavenly-mindedness. Who could be more heavenly minded than St. Francis? And yet who was more zealous for the care of Mother Earth than he? Of Francis, Chesterton wrote that he “was content to call himself the Troubadour of God; but not content with the God of the Troubadours.”15 Of St. Francis and St. Thomas together: “It seems to be strangely forgotten that both these saints were in actual fact imitating a Master, who was not Aristotle, let alone Ovid, when they sanctified the senses or the simple things of nature; when St. Francis walked humbly among the beasts or St. Thomas debated courteously among the Gentiles.”16 In order for Christians to play a part in the solution of various this-worldly problems, what Christians bring to the table is not more scientific knowledge about the way the world works—though Christians who are scientifically able should do their part there, too—but the gift of knowing and loving this world in proper order. I noted that Chesterton’s suggestion about the need for a separate branch of study called anthropology was met in, among others, the body of writing of John Paul II. It is no coincidence that John Paul’s key to the understanding of the human person fits well with 14 Richard Gill, “Hannah Arendt, G. K. Chesterton and Ecological Populism,” Ph.D. thesis, Keele University (U.K.), Chapter 2, “Chesterton on Wonder and the Theory of Thanks,” www.angelfire.com/folk/richardjgill/two.html. 15 Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 28. 16 Ibid., 35. 140 David Deavel Chesterton’s citation of Thomas and Francis as imitators and followers of the “Master”—Christ. John Paul relentlessly cited the Second Vatican Council’s declaration that “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.”17 Christian faith is not extrinsic to questions of how to face the problems of the world; it is necessary to facing them. It tells us that we are to love God first above all things, then each other, and finally, in the light of those loves, to take care of the rest of the world. I think that despite his love of St. Francis’s poetic references to Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Chesterton would agree with the contemporary theologian Thomas Sieger Derr’s warning against making love of nature a sort of third great commandment, since “love and reverence are due nature only derivatively, as the creation of a good God, and that nature may not be personified, endowed with selfhood, or otherwise treated on a par with man in Biblical religion.”18 Christian faith tells us not that man and turkey are brothers, but that man has a special place in the creation as a steward of God. The good of creation is not simply an egalitarian good. It is hierarchical. Man’s dignity is greater even than that of the lilies of the field since, as Christ taught us, God cares even more for us than he does for them. And if God loves us more than he loves other parts of the creation, then it is our duty to treat man as the highest priority.The problem with attempting to bring the level of animals up to our own in order to induce better treatment of them is that precisely the opposite happens. To say that humans and animals demand the same dignity may bring about in certain cases a better treatment of animals, but this is almost always accompanied by the worse treatment of humans.The “instinct against cannibalism,” Chesterton notes, “is founded on the Divinity of Man.”19 Or to put it the other way around, “Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice.That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience.”20 For to say that all creatures whatsoever are equal ends in absurdity since, as Robert Royal notes, this would mean “the AIDS virus has as much ‘right’ to fulfill its own needs as the AIDS patient.”21 17 Gaudium et Spes, 22. 18 Thomas Sieger Derr, Ecology and Human Liberation: A Theological Critique of the Use and Abuse of Our Birthright (New York: World Student Christian Federation Books, 1973), 33. 19 The Thing, in Collected Works 3 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 280. 20 Illustrated London News column, January 17, 1914, in Collected Works 30:26. 21 Robert Royal, The Virgin and the Dynamo: Use and Abuses of Religion in Environmental Debates (Washington, DC and Grand Rapids, MI: Ethics and Public Policy Center and Eerdmans, 1999), 36. The Gift of Wonder 141 Self-limitation for Proper Care of Man and His Environment In Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy:The Making of GKC, 1874–1908, the very talented study of the early maturity of Chesterton’s vision, William Oddie remarks on the “love of frames and limits” that “runs like a leitmotif throughout his intellectual life.”22 Oddie quotes a 1904 essay of Chesterton’s in which he declares his allegiance to limited things: An empire is above all “utterly undefined and unlimited. Not to see how this frustrates genuine enthusiasm is not to know the alphabet of the human heart. There is one thing that is vitally essential to everything which is to be intensely enjoyed or intensely admired—limitation.Whenever we look through an archway, and are stricken into delight with the magnetic clarity and completeness of the landscape beyond, we are realizing the necessity of boundaries. Whenever we put a picture in a frame, we are acting upon that primeval truth which is the value of small nationalities.”23 I am told that the modern secular commentator on ecology, Michael Pollan, has declared that the prime category for thinking about nature is not wilderness but the garden. Chesterton would no doubt agree. He believed that for humans to care about and learn to care about anything, as he learned as a child building and maintaining a toy theater with his father, one must be able to see it within manageable limits. What would he make of the argument that the move to the cities has allowed a lower impact on much land in the US and Europe? After all, current patterns of movement to cities have allowed large areas of land to be preserved from human contact. I think he would respond that the alienation of so many people from the natural order makes the trade-off inadequate, since the goal is not to preserve land from use entirely, but to ensure that humans know and are able to care for nature. If men and women grow up thinking of nature as something completely alien, then what can the future hold for the land that has been “preserved” from use? This is not to say that he would disapprove of parks or commons areas. These are preserved not from use but for use. The key is to see them as our own rather large gardens, with clear and definite borders. And all people, city and country, should have the opportunity to see these frames and learn how to care for them at some level. They need to be able to know the natural order to know when to plant and when to leave fallow. 22 William Oddie, Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, 1874–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 21. 23 Chesterton, England: A Nation, ed. Lucian Oldershaw (London: R. B. Johnson, 1904), 16–17. Cited in Oddie, Chesterton, 21. David Deavel 142 While the seemingly untamed areas of deserts and mountains have always held an attraction for humans, since they symbolize the complete otherness of God,24 nevertheless for Chesterton the essential attitudes to human life come from the biblical bookends of the Garden of Genesis and the heavenly city of the book of Revelation. The command of the Lord in the beginning is not to preserve the land from use, but to till it and make it fruitful. The ending is similar. Chesterton would no doubt agree with St. Irenaeus that “the world itself, restored to its original state, facing no further obstacles, should be at the service of the just.”25 The “original state” to which the earth is restored is not the low-density living of Eden; instead, it is the life of a city crowded with people and “at the service of the just.” Chesterton writes, “A city is, properly speaking, more poetic even than a countryside, for while Nature is chaos of unconscious forces, a city is a chaos of conscious ones.”26 The heavenly city does not put a stop to the use of creation, but is its true beginning. Then, as St. John’s vision tells us, we will see “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”27 In the New Jerusalem, the chaos of conscious forces has become cosmos. The indispensible good that the Christian tradition brings to questions of environmentalism and stewardship is its moral vision, its understanding of the relations of God, man, and creation. This vision can then serve as a foundation from which to plan out and assess practical plans to address difficulties. In the glimpse of our end is the beginning of our action. N&V 24 On this theme, see Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 25 Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 5, 32, 1, quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church §1047. 26 G. K. Chesterton on Detective Fiction, compiled and edited by John Peterson (Sauk City, WI: Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2010), 14. 27 Rv 22:1–2. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 143–91 143 Nature’s Finality and the Stewardship of Creation According to Saint Thomas Aquinas S TEPHEN A. H IPP University of St. Thomas St. Paul, MN Introduction M ORE AND MORE people have become aware of the crisis of unrestrained technology and its corresponding devastation of the environment. The solution to contemporary ecological concerns, though most often sought in technology itself, can only come from a profound transformation of man’s way of viewing the world and of relating to it. It is here that theology has much to contribute toward healing man’s relation with the created order.The real root of the ecological problem is sin. The solution involves healing through a discovery or rediscovery of the mystery of God the Creator and Redeemer, of man, and of nature. It is often argued today that the Christian doctrine of creation and the Christian understanding of God have fostered, rather than opposed, the destructive relationship existing between man and nature. The perceived anthropocentrism of Christianity and its, allegedly, patriarchic conceptions of God and of man’s dominion over the world have contributed, it is argued, to a domineering and disinterested attitude toward the world, with regard to which the Christian views himself as superior and removed.1 1 For salient examples of this viewpoint see: Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, trans. P. Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997); Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978); A. Primavasi, From Apocalypse to Genesis: Ecology, Feminism and Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991); idem., “Ecology and Christian Hierarchy,” in Sacred Custodians of the Earth?:Women, Spirituality, and the Environment, ed. A. Low and S. Tremayne (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 121–39; R. Ruether, Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992). 144 Stephen A. Hipp From this perspective, the categories and attitudes of traditional Christianity are inept to express the true meaning of man’s relationship to the rest of the world; its outmoded doctrines must be substituted with environmentally salutary concepts, such as those of “equality” (non-hierarchy) and “interrelationality,” “healing,” “community,” and the “rights of nature.” Nothing could be further from the truth about Christianity. The Catholic response to the environmentalist critique offers a vision of the world in which man and nature form an inseparable and symbiotic unity, in which the well-being of the world is intimately bound up with that of man, and vice versa. Four distinct subjects—the inhabitants of the visible world besides man, man himself, the universe as a whole (of which man too forms a part), and God—are brought together in a complexus of dynamic and mutually constructive relationships according to which the perfection of the whole world and of each of its members, in accord with the intentions of their divine author, are brought to fruition. Drawn into a synthesis through the philosophical and theological apparatus of St.Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic view of the relationship between man and nature attains a coherence, clarity, and beauty offering a pathway to environmental reconciliation in many ways unmatched by any other system of thought. Within this system, the distinction and adequation (harmony) between man and the elements, between reason and faith, between nature and grace, and between the universe and God simultaneously defends the deepest truths about man and nature (safeguarding their intrinsic value) and manifests and honors the sublime wisdom of the Creator. In the pages that follow, I intend to examine, from a Thomistic theological perspective, several basic structural features of the relationship between the constantly changing world (including man) and God, and between the world and man, features that, in the final analysis, reveal a fundamentally Trinitarian (and Christological) physiognomy of the ecological world. The primary goal of this exposition is to unfold the Thomistic understanding of the overall perfection of the universe, in which the general principles of Thomas’s doctrine of natural finality and its implications for man and the rest of the world illustrate the contours of a responsible stewardship of creation.2 The special place that the Trin2 It must be emphasized that the purpose of this article is not to spell out specific regulatory norms or to suggest particular solutions regarding contemporary environmental practices; it attempts only to trace the general contours of Christian stewardship from the perspective of St. Thomas. The article prescinds, therefore, from questions concerning the concrete application of the general principles explored. Nevertheless, these principles are numerous, complexly interrelated, and Nature’s Finality 145 ity and Jesus Christ hold in the drama of nature’s perfection and purpose will also be intimated, since these revelatory data are indispensable to Thomas’s cosmological vision. However, I shall treat in fuller detail the specifically Trinitarian and Christological aspects of the origin, perfection in fieri (movement), and finality of the world in a follow-up to this study. While Thomas’s doctrine of finality may have received its fair share of attention in various works on Thomas, it has not yet been sufficiently developed in connection with the environmental/ecological issues so relevant to our day.3 The present study is intended to contribute (in an introductory way) toward filling this lacuna. It has been said that Thomism is impotent to speak about the enivironmental crisis of modern man. I want to show that this is not so, while allowing the wisdom of Thomas to illuminate the true meaning of the vibrancy of creation, its intimate relation to man, and the Thomistic meaning of Christian “stewardship.” Following the procedure of Aquinas, I will begin with considerations of more general or more readily known features of creation’s perfection/end and move from there to a consideration of their implications or more hidden preconditions. The arguments contained here are predominantly philosophical but unapologetically informed by a Christian theology of creation; they are sometimes corroborated (if admittedly also outstripped) by the data of Revelation, and other times complemented by (and necessarily deferring to) revealed truths wholly beyond philosophy’s connatural scope. The ministration of angels, the centrality of Christ, the Trinitarian roots of creaturely identity—these and their significance for stewardship are all theological concerns. However, they concretely correspond to, confirm, exemplify, and more fully illuminate the very things natural reason has to tell us about a proper stewardship of creation. Therefore I include them, either as points of reference for, or as metaphysically and theologically sovereign regarding man’s interactions with creation.The goal here is to organize them in a synthetic manner, and this has not yet been done in the current literature. 3 Studies that address the significance of Thomas’s worldview for ecological and environmental questions are only very few and recent. Particularly noteworthy are: Francisco Benzoni, “Thomas Aquinas and Environmental Ethics: A Reconsideration of Providence and Salvation,” Journal of Religion 85 (2005): 446–76; Celia Deane-Drummond, The Ethics of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); Robert Grant, A Case Study in Thomistic Environmental Ethics: The Ecological Crisis in the Loess Hills of Iowa (Lewiston, NY:The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007); Willis Jenkins, “Biodiversity and Salvation: Thomistic Roots for Environmental Ethics,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 401–20; Jill LeBlanc, “Eco-Thomism,” Environmental Ethics 21 (1999): 293–306; Christopher Thompson, “Beholding the Logos: The Church, the Environment, and the Meaning of Man,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 12, no. 3 (2009): 33–52. 146 Stephen A. Hipp auxiliary demonstrations of, or as necessary supplements to, what is knowable on the basis of sound metaphysical reasoning. Thus the properly philosophical content of this study—concerned primarily with the teleological structure of reality and occupying most of the first half of the article—finds its culmination and deepest meaning precisely in connection with the theological truths brought into fuller relief in the second half.4 These theological connections are not artificially superimposed on Thomas’s thought. It is precisely the height of Thomas’s speculative grasp of these revealed mysteries, combined with the analytical depth of his natural philosophy, that allows him (indeed impels him) to view creation and its deepest ontological principles in terms of a highest cause who is simultaneously flesh and transcendental multitude, relationship and order. The Perfection of the Universe Consists in Order (Relation) According to Thomas Aquinas, the good of the universe consists primarily in relation, in the order of things to themselves and, more fundamentally, in the order of things to God. Removal of this order results in confusion and disintegration, in a manner analogous to what happens to an army when it is deprived of coordination and subordination among its soldiers.5 The architecture of this order is expressed in terms of finality: creatures (and their operations) are ordered to specific ends, and the fulfillment of these ends is itself ordered to higher ends.When treating of the finality or purpose of the created world, Thomas distinguishes several, harmoniously related, layers of finality.6 Their major divisions can be schematized as is seen in Figure 1.7 4 Because of limitations of space, I cannot address certain methodological issues that this alternating between philosophical and theological argumentation will inevitably raise for some. The context of the discussion should suffice to distinguish them. Of course, for Thomas, the exercise of theology often is simultaneously a philosophical enterprise, insofar as rational argumentation, through the medium of any number of premises, philosophical or otherwise, supplies conclusions on the basis of a revealed premise (cf. ST I, q. 1, a. 8; In Boethii. De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3). “Those who use the works of the philosophers in sacred doctrine, by bringing them into the service of faith, do not mix water with wine, but rather change water into wine” (In Boet. De Trin., q. 2, a. 3, ad 5). Translations of this work will be taken from Thomas Aquinas: Fatih, Reason and Theology, trans. A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987). 5 See Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 100, a. 6; ScG, Bk. I, c. 42; De potentia, q. 7, a. 9. 6 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2 & ad 2; q. 73, a. 1; q. 103, a. 2; I–II, q. 5, a. 6, obj. 1; ScG, Bk. I, c. 78; Bk. II, c. 42; Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Bk. V, lect. 2; De pot., q. 1, a. 2, ad 1; q. 7, a. 2, ad 10; a. 9. 7 Figure 1 represents only the most general divisions of finality considered in precision from further distinctions able to made, for example, between the finis operis and the finis operantis, or between the finis qui, finis cui, and finis quo. Nature’s Finality 147 In a concrete realization, these are mutually inclusive Considered in itself (the very fact that the universe is an ordered whole/cosmos). It consists in the ordering of the parts of the whole toward one another. Intrinsic finality This represents an extrinsic end for each of the parts of the whole; however, it is an intrinsic end for the universe considered as a whole. All members of the created order, whether individuals, species or proximate genera, have the following twofold finality. The order of the whole Although extrinsic with respect to particular members or portions of the whole, the realization of this end is integral to the realization of the intrinsic finality of those members — since their individual good is also a function of their harmonious relationship with the other members of the whole (the theological notion of “hierarchy” best expresses this). ordained to this as to its end Extrinsic finality Considered in relation to God. This is the extrinsic finality of the universe as a whole. It consists in the fact that the ordering of the universe accords with the intention of its author and, as a complexus of relationships among a multitude of beings, more fully manifests his perfection. The end here is the glory of God. Manifestation of the perfection of God (as effects resemble their cause). The end here is the glory of God. having its realization primarily (and in a qualitatively superior way) at this level—thanks to the causal interaction between entities through the exercise of secondary causality (by which they constitute an ordered whole) Figure 1. Principle Divisions of Finality Stephen A. Hipp 148 The Ordering of Things to Their Proper Ends Every creature in the universe tends toward its natural good, the good for it, which it seeks through its natural operations.8 Through these natural operations, which (as a rule) are consistently the same, creatures actualize themselves and come to resemble their causes (which possess the perfections proper to their effects in a more eminent manner).9 The fact that the acts of natural things always, or nearly always, attain to the same object illustrates that their proper activity is ordered to obtaining a particular effect or goal.10 This is called “intrinsic finality”—the ordering of a faculty or natural capacity to a specific object (for example, eyes to seeing, lungs to breathing, hands to grasping, etc.). Thomas summarizes the principle in this way: A natural thing, by the form that perfects it in its species, has an inclination to its proper operations, and to the proper end to which it attains by its operation: since, such as a thing is, such is its operation, and such the end to which it tends.11 The idea of intrinsic finality is established from observation and common sense. For every being there exists a natural good, a good proportionate to the kind of being that it is, and which it tends naturally and spontaneously to pursue.To deny the principle would be to deny that there are distinct activities truly proper to diverse kinds of beings. Such a denial would be to subtract from modern science the very foundation for its predictive claims and its inductive conclusions concerning the world around us. Evolutionary biologists and proponents of philosophical naturalism (whose theory of causes excludes the order of finality) often contest the notion on the basis of the observably non-productive, even self-destructive, activity sometimes found in nature. Death, disease, pain, and other imperfections are pointed to as evidence that natural things do not have a natural tendency directed toward their perfection and survival. The objection bears weight; however, there are a number of considerations that abate its force. First of all, the self-destructive activity in question appears to be not the rule but the exception. Most proponents of evolution acknowledge this; any evolutionary theory based on the principle of adaptation and natural selection implies that selected natural 8 See especially, Aquinas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 1; ScG, Bk. III, c. 3; cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 7, obj. 1 & ad 1. 9 See Aquinas, ScG, Bk. I, c. 29; De substantiis separatis, c. 12. 10 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 2, a. 3; q. 44, a. 4; q. 65, a. 2; q. 115, a. 6; I–II, q. 1, a. 2; III, q. 46, a. 3, ad 1; ScG, Bk. II, c. 24; Bk. III, cc. 2–3; Bk. IV, c. 19; In De anima, Bk. II, lect. 4 (sect. 266); De ver., q. 22, a. 1. 11 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. IV, c. 19. Nature’s Finality 149 changes—those that, de facto, made (or will make) the cut—are those favoring survival, those which benefit their subjects. Moreover, the simple occurrence of harmful agency in no way negates the (far more prevalent) occurrence of self-promoting agency. In the second place, nature, in any case, is not perfect, and a whole variety of factors can be responsible for defects in nature affecting the agency of things (wherefore, in a worst case scenario, even were self-destructive activities an apparent norm, it would not follow from this that they are natural).12 Third, a certain measure of destructiveness in nature is a necessary condition for the existence of a specifically diversified material order. Unlike moral evil, physical evil, Thomas explains, was caused (indirectly) by God himself when he determined to bring forth such a material universe.13 Such evil is integrated within a higher finality that gives it meaning, but outside of which it appears to have no value or purpose. There is no reason to preclude the possibility that even self-destructive forces recognizable in nature can similarly serve a more universal good. The existence of such a higher finality is the whole point about the “extrinsic finality” we have yet to consider. Fourth, the very recognition of such self-injurious activities and imperfections requires the recognition of an ideal of natural activity and perfection with respect to which standard the agency is being compared and judged to be defective. To the extent, therefore, that the objection employs the language of “defect” and “imperfection,” it seems to presuppose the very object of its denial.14 12 Besides the inherent corruptibility of matter, there are other antagonistic forces that can intervene against particular cases of natural agency, not least of which is sin, the effects of which upon the world cannot be underestimated. 13 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2; q. 49, a. 2; q. 103, a. 7; ScG, Bk. III, c. 1. 14 The very concepts of self-injury, imperfection death, disease, destruction, etc. are meaningful only with reference to the positive reality of which they are the negation. By itself, however, this is not a refutation of the objection, since the adversaries of intrinsic finality could reply that there exist indeed the positive realities with respect to which alone the negative notions make any sense, but this does not mean that individual beings have any tendency toward those positive realities; certain things might simply always tend toward self-disintegration instead of self-preservation.The difficulty for opponents of intrinsic finality arises when they (intuitively and rightly) begin to interpret and describe instances of self-disintegration (at least when it concerns living organisms) as instances of “imperfection,” or as “harmful,” or “evil,” etc. For one cannot refer to the relevant destructive activities as “defective” unless he is willing to admit that there exists a “perfect” or “ideal” form of activity, and such a form of activity would have to be rooted stably within the agent (in other words, it would have to characterize a thing’s nature), lest it cease to be a standard of measure at all. 150 Stephen A. Hipp The Proper Intrinsic End or Good of Natures Is, for Thomas, a Matter of Being It is important to note that Thomas’s teleological view of nature and natural activity cannot be accused of committing the “naturalistic fallacy.” For Thomas, an action is good or (for what concerns rationally governed activity) morally acceptable, not merely because of its regular occurrence in nature; nor is it good because of its identity or intrinsic connection with some natural property or properties in terms of which the nature of the good is defined. The notion of the “good” in Thomas is conceived in terms of the fullness of being,15 in terms of the fulfillment of a thing’s capacities for being, with respect both to a thing’s substance as such (essence as a potency for being) and to its end (along with all its intermediary ends).16 This (intrinsic) end, however, which admits of various degrees of realization (as, for example, in the developmental stages in living beings), is determined by the thing’s natural constitution, nature. The “good,” from this perspective, is an actualization of the potencies rooted in the formal cause (essence) of a thing.17 Understood as the perfection of a being and as that which is “desirable,”18 the “good” is objectively set forth in the formal principles of each being. The “desirable” responds to what is teleologically inscribed in form; and the notion of “desire” in this context expresses the appetitive élan toward that fulfillment flowing from (and built into the subject by reason of) the same form.19 15 See Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 18, aa. 1–2; a. 3, ad 3. 16 Cf. See Aquinas, ST I, q. 22, a. 1; I–II, q. 18, a. 1; ScG, Bk. III, cc. 6–7. 17 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 5; q. 26, a. 2; I–II, q. 18, a. 2; a. 4, ad 2; II–II, q. 141, a. 6; ScG, Bk. III, c. 129; In Boethii De hebdomadibus, 2. “The good or evil of an action, as of other things, depends on its fullness of being or its lack of that fullness. Now the first thing that belongs to the fullness of being seems to be that which gives a thing its species. And just as a natural thing has its species from its form, so an action has its species from its object. . . . And just as the primary goodness of a natural thing is derived from its form, which gives it its species, so the primary goodness of a moral action is derived from its suitable object” (ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2); “Whatsoever has a determinate nature must have determinate actions, becoming to that nature, since the proper operation of a thing is consequent to its nature. . . . Those things are natural to every man, whereby he tends to his natural end; while those which are of a contrary nature, are naturally unbecoming to him” (ScG, Bk. III, c. 129); “Each thing first of all and as such desires its own perfection, which is the good of anything, and is always proportioned to what is perfectible of it” (In Boeth. De hebd., 2; emphasis mine). 18 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1; a. 5; ScG, Bk. 1, cc. 39–40; In Boeth. De hebd., 2; De ver., q. 22, a. 1. 19 As a consequence, neither is the “good” defined according to this or that natural property with respect to which the value of all things and their actions must Nature’s Finality 151 Everything is said to be good so far as it is perfect; for in that way only is it desirable. . . . Now a thing is said to be perfect if it lacks nothing according to the mode of its perfection. But since everything is what it is by its form (and since the form presupposes certain things, and from the form certain things necessarily follow), in order for a thing to be perfect and good it must have a form, together with all that precedes and follows upon that form. . . . Further, upon the form follows an inclination to the end, or to an action . . . for everything, in so far as it is in act, acts and tends towards that which is in accordance with its form. . . . Hence the essence of goodness, so far as it consists in perfection, consists also in mode, species and order.20 The notion of intrinsic finality is central to any form of moral objectivism that is not reduced to a mere voluntarism ex parte Dei. It also harbors, if in a strangely elusive way, tremendous implications for questions of environmental responsibility. From the theological standpoint, the perceptible teleological ordering of natural operations is the fruit of God’s creative work and is intended to be there. Creatures behave as they do because it is their nature to do so; and creatures are what they are— even if they are in the process of becoming what they yet are not21— because of the creative intention of God. The Ordering of Natures to Their Respective Ends Is Itself Ordered, in a Hierarchic Manner, to Other Ends Every created ens exhibits both an intrinsic and an extrinsic finality. “Extrinsic finality” concerns the realization of an end that is outside of the being of a thing, whence the purpose of its existence is the well-being of other things.22 Such finality consists in the subordination of one thing to be measured, nor is it arbitrarily assigned to diverse natures. While the good for natural beings is indeed conceived with a certain relativity—particular goods being determinable only with respect to the nature or natures in question (as, for example, the good of a frog is not the same as the good for wheat, or the good for a man)—that good is objectively determined by the natures of things, and the latter is objectively determined by God, even if, because of the limitations of human understanding, we might never come to know just what the nature of any material substance really is. 20 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 5. 21 The reality of evolution (even the possibility of macro-evolution) in no way undermines the doctrine of intrinsic finality. It simply integrates all instances of intrinsic finality within the broader scope of a greater system to which those instances are ordered. The latter pertains to “extrinsic finality,” the reality of which is a necessary presupposition to any intrinsic finality on the part of created (dependent) being. I address this in what follows. 22 See Aquinas, In Meta., Bk. V, lect. 2. 152 Stephen A. Hipp another and is necessary for the harmonious ordering of a multitude. The existence of ends extrinsic to the being of a thing does not imply self-alienation or disintegration of identity: multiple final causes are not in competition with one another, but “for one another.” This is reflected in the fact that, in a system of interdependent agents, the good of the whole serves the good of the individual parts and vice versa.23 What is more, all intrinsic finality is established on the basis of extrinsic finality, for no particular end can have real meaning unless it is integrated into (subordinated to) a superior universal end that gives it ultimate meaning.24 Now, the ultimate end of all things corresponds to the ultimate principle of their being: The end of a thing corresponds to its beginning. . . . Therefore, since the beginning of all things is something outside the universe, namely, God . . . we must conclude that the end of all things is some extrinsic good. . . . For it is clear that good has the nature of an end; wherefore, a particular end of anything consists in some particular good; while the universal end of all things is the universal good, which is good of itself by virtue of its essence . . . whereas a particular good is good by participation. Now it is manifest that in the whole created universe there is not a good which is not such by participation.Wherefore that good which is the end of the whole universe must be a good outside the universe.25 God is this ultimate, unparticipated Good (goodness as such), which is the ultimate end, therefore, of the whole universe. This divine finality of the universe can be looked at from two points of view. From the perspective of extrinsic finality, the ultimate purpose of creation (the reason for which it was made) is to manifest God, giving him glory, a purpose that is achieved pre-eminently through the communication of his goodness to others: “for he brought things into being in order that his goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them.”26 However, as intimated in Thomas’s use of the language of participation (in the quote further above), even the intrinsic finality of a thing is also God in a 23 The good of the whole is a properly “common good.” It belongs not only to the whole as such, but to all of the parts; and while communicated, it is never diminished by this extension. To the contrary, the very good of the parts and of the whole consists in the communicative ordering among the parts. Indeed, the common good is not an aggregate of individual goods, but a good transcending the sum of the whole’s parts and having its own formal identity. 24 See Étienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 78–80. 25 Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 2. 26 Aquinas, ST I, q. 47, a. 1. Cf. ST I, q. 65, a. 2: “The divine goodness is the end of all corporeal things.” Nature’s Finality 153 sense: it is the divine goodness, as participated in a way proper to the creature in question.Thus it is said that all things “long” for God and tend toward him as their end: All things desire God as their end, when they desire some good thing, whether this desire be intellectual or sensible, or natural, i.e. without knowledge; because nothing is good and desirable except forasmuch as it participates in the likeness to God.27 Theocentrism, Cosmocentrism, and Anthropocentrism While God is the definitive point of reference for all finality in the world, there exists a layering of ends in the order of extrinsic finality. Each member of the whole exists not merely for itself (intrinsic finality), but precisely for the higher-ordered finality of the whole (extrinsic finality). Thus the universe, precisely as a “uni-verse,” is the reason for the existence of the multiplicity of beings. In this sense, we may speak of a “cosmocentric” finality of all things. This end, which is extrinsic to any part or portion of the universe taken alone, itself remains integrated within the higher extrinsic finality of creaturely glorification of God (which is, in fact, more perfectly accomplished thanks to the realization of the order of the universe as whole).28 Thus we observe a subordination amongst multiple extrinsic ends. Furthermore, the material world itself was created for the sake of man—since he alone in the visible universe is spiritual, eternal, and valuable in his own right.29 “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19), for “the final perfection, which is the end of the whole universe, is the perfect beatitude of the Saints at the consummation of the world.”30 This subordination of the 27 Aquinas, ST I, q. 44, a. 1 & ad 3. See also I, q. 6, a. 1, ad 2; q. 65, a. 2; ScG, Bk. III, c. 19; De ver., q. 22, a. 2; Compendium theologiae, Bk. I, c. 103; and ST I, q. 44, a. 1: “Every creature intends to acquire its own perfection, which is the likeness of the divine perfection and goodness. Therefore the divine goodness is the end of all things.” 28 Of course, from the point of view of the whole as such, the order among its parts constitutes its intrinsic end. See Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 2, ad 3: “A good existing in the universe, namely, the order of the universe, is an end thereof; this, however, is not its ultimate end, but is ordered to the extrinsic good as to the end: thus the order in an army is ordered to the general”; ScG, Bk. II, c. 42: “The best among all things caused is the order of the universe, wherein the good of the universe consists.” 29 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2; q. 73, a. 1; II–II, q. 64, a. 1; ScG, Bk. III, c. 112; Comp. theol., Bk. I, c. 171; cf. Gaudium et Spes, 24; Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1703. 30 Aquinas, ST I, q. 73, a. 1; see also ST I, q. 65, a. 2; Comp. theol., Bk. I, c. 171: “the ultimate end of the movement of the heavens is the multiplication of men, who are to be brought into being for eternal life.” 154 Stephen A. Hipp visible world to man (“anthropocentrism”) not only represents another layer of extrinsic finality, but is an essential component of the very order of the universe just described. Subordination to man is part and parcel of both the extrinsic finality proper to each member of the universe and the intrinsic finality of the whole universe considered as such. The place of man in the realization of the ends of the visible creation is a special case among countless instances of a more general law, namely, the subordination of less noble beings to those which are more noble, and the subordination of all such relationships to the realization of an ordered whole, itself subordinated ultimately to a transcendent cause extrinsic to the whole: Now if we wish to assign an end to any whole, and to the parts of that whole, we shall find, first, that each and every part exists for the sake of its proper act, as the eye for the act of seeing; secondly, that less honorable parts exist for the more honorable, as the senses for the intellect . . . and, thirdly, that all parts are for the perfection of the whole, as the matter for the form. . . . So, therefore, in the parts of the universe every creature exists for its own proper act and perfection, and the less noble for the nobler, as those creatures that are less noble than man exist for the sake of man, whilst each and every creature exists for the perfection of the entire universe. Furthermore, the entire universe, with all its parts, is ordained towards God as its end, inasmuch as it imitates, as it were, and shows forth the divine goodness, to the glory of God.31 Even the beatitude of the saints understood as the final end of the whole universe reflects this law, for the extrinsic finality of this consummation is nothing other than the glory of Christ (and of God) who is its author.32 As I shall develop more fully below, the material world is ordered to man primarily as the genetic foundation upon which man’s most proper operation, intellection, is erected. Here we encounter the highest and most Godlike activity among the inhabitants of the material universe, the ontological foundation of which is the transcendent spiritual nature of man. To his existence, and to his specifically human activity (contemplation of truth), the whole visible world is finalized, according to the intelligent plan of its intelligent author. 31 Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2. See ScG, Bk. I, c. 42; ST I–II, q. 5, a. 6 & obj. 1. 32 See Council of Trent, sess. VI, c. 7 on the final cause of justification. Nature’s Finality 155 The Goodness of Individuals, and of Species, or of Any Portion of the Universe, Is Inconceivable without Reference to That of the Whole to Which They Are Ordered As is plain from the foregoing, a central principle in all of Aquinas’s natural philosophy is that the goodness of individuals, and even of species, is inconceivable without reference to that of the whole to which they are ordered. “The goodness of any part is considered in comparison with the whole . . . nor can the whole be well consistent unless its parts be proportionate to it.”33 It is this whole which is first in intention for God, the perfection principally desired by the Creator, and primarily to be sought (because it is better than any particular good) on the part of each existent, whether implicitly and unconsciously, or explicitly and consciously. It is part of the best agent to produce an effect which is best in its entirety; but this does not mean that he makes every part of the whole the best absolutely, but in proportion to the whole. . . . Thus, therefore, God also made the universe to be best as a whole . . . whereas he did not make each single creature best, but one better than another. And therefore we find it said of each creature, “God saw the light that it was good” (Gen 1:4). . . . But of all together it is said, “God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good” (Gen 1:31).34 If we wish to assign an end to any whole, and to the parts of that whole, we shall find . . . that all parts are for the perfection of the whole, as the matter for the form, since the parts are, as it were, the matter of the whole . . . each and every creature exists for the perfection of the entire universe. Furthermore, the entire universe, with all its parts, is ordained towards God as its end.35 Man too forms part of the whole. Therefore his own good is ordered (and subordinated) in some way to that of the whole. This whole, however, is the entirety of creation, including all that is inferior in natural perfection to man, man himself, and the multitude of intelligences ontologically superior to man. One fundamental feature of man’s special place should be noted right here. In permitting the rest of the visible world to serve his own natural and supernatural perfection, man serves— by that very fact—the perfection of the rest of the visible world; and while either side of this bilateral exchange already represents a perfecting of the whole, the synergy between them represents a superior perfection (belonging to the whole) qualitatively exceeding the sum of the two. 33 ST I–II, q. 92, a. 1, ad 3. 34 Aquinas, ST I, q. 47, a. 2, ad 1; see also ScG, Bk. II, c. 42. 35 Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2. 156 Stephen A. Hipp What is more, the realization of the ends of both is reduplicatively amplified when man’s own (contemplative) end is furthered through his understanding and appreciation of the relationships just described. One thus discovers in the reflexivity of human knowledge the possibility of bestowing upon nature an additional capacity to bless man in the exercise of his most proper operation (and, therefore, in the attainment of his natural end).36 (Note that this additional capacity goes beyond that which the visible creation already possessed as the experiential foundation for all human knowledge.) Something analogous can be said with regard to man’s supernatural end, inasmuch as the sacramental economy of salvation elevates the material order to the dignity of serving (in a wondrous and objectively efficacious manner) his supernaturalized operations and supernatural end. This law of reciprocity between man’s finality and that of the rest of the visible world extends to man’s relationship with the invisible creation as well. Just as inferior creatures are the occasion for man to achieve his proper perfection through directing lower things, so man, in being subject to the mediated governance of God on the part of the separated substances (angels), is the occasion for the perfection (in the order of subordinated secondary causation) of those superior to himself. Just as man becomes perfect, more Godlike, in shepherding nature toward its various ends, so angels reflect and are assimilated more perfectly to God through the assistance they render to man. There is this fundamental 36 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 94, a. 2: “the intellectual operation of the soul has a natu- ral order to external things . . . and so by the knowledge thereof, our intellectual operation can be known perfectly, as an act through its object. And through the intellectual operation itself, the human intellect can be known perfectly, as a power through its proper act.” Man not only knows corporeal things, but, through knowing them precisely as the objects of his knowledge, he comes to know himself better; and to appreciate this is to more fully appreciate the very purpose of the corporeal objects of his knowledge. As shall become clearer below, the whole point of the ordering of creatures to one another is for contemplation, and ultimately the contemplation of God in his effects. “Now, in virtue of this [man’s natural] mode of understanding, there are three degrees of movement in the soul, as Dionysius says. . . . The first is by the soul ‘passing from exterior things to concentrate its powers on itself ’; the second is by the soul ascending ‘so as to be associated with the united superior powers’, namely the angels; the third is when the soul is ‘led on’ yet further ‘to the supreme good’ that is, to God” (ST I, q. 94, a. 2). Although sin has obstructed the manner in which the hierarchy of beings might elevate man toward God, the redemptive mystery of Christ reestablishes the right relationships by which man ascends to God through the illuminations received from the reflected light of every one of his creatures (see ST I, q. 94, a. 1). Nature’s Finality 157 difference, however: men perfect themselves, as well as the rest of nature, through using nature; angels, on the other hand, perfect themselves, as well as man, not through using men, but by serving the needs of men according to the decrees of God (the superalternate object of these actions). Man is not an instrument to be used by angels, but an occasion for the angels to perfect themselves in second act through contributing to the perfection of the whole, of which men and angels are parts. That men cannot be instrumentalized owes to the fact that, unlike beasts and other beings inferior to man, men exist for their own sakes. “Intellectual creatures,” explains Thomas, “are ruled by God as objects of care for their own sakes, while other creatures are ruled for the sake of rational creatures.”37 The critical difference between human beings and the rest of the visible world is freedom, the fact that men are self-determining, having dominion over their own actions. This freedom expresses the essential perfection of man by which he infinitely surpasses irrational creatures; it implies the intellectual capacity of man to know and to love God, and the permanency in being (incorruptibility) deducible from that.38 On this basis, men can never (morally) be made mere instruments for the ends of another agent. For what concerns other earthly creatures, however, not only can they be used as instruments for the ends of man, but that is precisely what they are for. While they give glory to God as a multitude of perfections dynamically unified, the proximate finality and immediate reason for this ordered activity is man himself, and it is only through serving that end, moreover, that they achieve the order they are intended to have and suitably give glory to God (their ultimate finality). The principal reason for their existence, therefore, is that they should be made the instruments of man’s cognitive ascent to God.39 This total subordination to man is not in contradiction with the principle that every member of the universe exists for the sake of the whole. For, as Thomas explains, “all the parts are directed to the perfection of the whole, insofar as one part serves another.”40 Material beings besides man thus serve the good of the whole precisely by way of their service to man. The good of the whole is thus a mediate extrinsic end for them, while 37 ScG, Bk. III, c. 112. The point is explicitly restated several times in this chapter. 38 See ibid. 39 “An instrument is required, not for its own sake, but that the principle agent may use it.” Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 112. It follows from this understanding that man actually has the duty to use nature as an instrument. Of course, built within that very duty is the duty to make it an instrument of ends proportioned to the nature of man. 40 Ibid. Stephen A. Hipp 158 man himself is their immediate extrinsic end.This nowise implies that the good of man takes precedence over or is superior to that of the whole, but only that the good of the whole itself is always dependent upon, indeed formally determined by, the good of the intellectual creature (which, in the case of man, is achieved only through his interaction with the rest of the visible world). As already noted, angels too are directed toward the good of the whole precisely through their attending to the affairs of men. They, however, like men, are also ends unto themselves, wherefore the realization of their own advenient good in this matter of reciprocal actualization consists in much more than being “instruments” for the human good. They do not exist for the sake of man. Nevertheless, the perfect ordering of the whole hinges on the interaction of all things visible and invisible with man, and the very God-like perfection of angels largely consists in the measure in which they mediate goodness to men.41 But it is especially because of the Incarnation and the redemptive order in Christ that man occupies an essentially pivotal (and, indeed, chief) place in the consummation of the finality of the world. Man being a compound of a spiritual and a corporeal nature, occupies as it were the borderland of two natures, such that whatever is done for man’s salvation pertains to all creation. . . . And thus it is appropriate to see the universal cause of all creatures taking to himself in unity of person that creature whereby he is more readily in touch with all the rest of creation.42 In the order of grace, we even witness a kind of inversion of priority and posteriority among angels and men in the excellence of nature’s dignity (that is, the dignity accidentally accruing to the nature), in the hierarchical structure of beings. Within this ordering, Jesus Christ—as man—is the summit of creation as well as the central point out of which that order unfolds.43 A Corresponding Ecocentric Theocentrism on the Part of Man This anthropocentric theocentrism of the whole world is complemented by what may be described as an ecocentric theocentrism on the part man. On account of the ordination of the parts to the whole, and of the whole to God, everything in the universe is ordered (and, therefore, can 41 See also ST I, q. 62, a. 9, ad 3. 42 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. IV, c. 55. 43 In a follow-up to this study I will deal directly with the thought of Saint Thomas regarding the Christological dimensions of creaturely finality. Nature’s Finality 159 be properly understood only with reference) to God: a philosophical grasp of nature is necessarily theocentric. To properly understand man’s relationship to the rest of creation, it is necessary, therefore, to understand his relationship to God. Conversely, however, to understand man’s relationship to God correctly, we must understand his relationship to the rest of the universe. As Thomas affirms, man stands between the rest of the visible universe and God, forming a bridge, as it were, that unites the physical world to the divinity.44 In man, the entire universe (matter and spirit together) is propelled toward God as to its goal in a more perfect and complete manner.45 Thus all creation comes to God through man and in man. This is what makes the Incarnation so extraordinarily potent and universal or “cosmic.” The substantially fleshly existence of God signifies his entry into solidarity not only with man, but with the whole of creation and its historical destiny. That destiny will be fulfilled at the end of time, when Christ, in the second coming, will consummate God’s eternal plan for the whole universe by his physical indwelling.46 Here we encounter yet another way in which man is a blessing to the rest of the visible creation. Not only does he serve the world by ordering it to himself, not only does he introduce the element of freedom into the network of agency constitutive of dynamic universal order and responsible for the unfolding of creation’s history, but he brings the life of the living God to earth, to dwell in it as within a temple. The very Godcentric quality of man, the fact that he is capax Dei, becomes (in conjunction with the self-diffusive goodness of God) the ratio for the transcendent elevation of the material order. Thus the finality of the whole universe is ultimately made known to us in the revelation of its Christological and (more foundationally) Trinitarian dimensions, mysteries directly corresponding to the very origin of the universe.47 44 See Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 68; Bk. IV, c. 55. 45 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 80, a. 1. 46 See International Theological Commission, Communion and Stewardship (2004), no. 75. 47 Man’s stewardship, therefore, consists primo et per se in the role he plays in the (theo-logical) reditus of creation, a role that is specified and set in motion by the incarnational character of the redemption: the universe flows forth from God and returns to God by the power of God through and in man. The Christological shape of this reditus and the transcendent efficaciousness of the material order brought about by the economy of the Incarnation have meaningful (permanent) consequences for the whole of nature, including the physical world. For, even if, according to Thomas, the visible world will at the end of time cease to exist as it does, its eschatological status is rescued insofar as its inhabitants endure in precisely three ways: (1) in their effects (in effectibus); (2) virtually and preeminently (indeed, according to a more perfect mode of being containing the fullness of all 160 Stephen A. Hipp This Hierarchy of Ends Is Normative for the Exercise of Dominion over Nature The motive for creation was the self-diffusive goodness of God, and his desire to communicate that goodness to others. It is realized in the substantial or constitutive perfection of each being (first act) and in the perfections they acquire through their proper operations and interaction (second act). The end of the same creative act was the realized perfection of the universe as a whole (including, and by way of, the realized perfection of each of its members), in order to manifest the infinite perfection of and providential plan of God, in which his (extrinsic) glory consists.48 Precisely in helping creatures to be what they are called to be, what they were intended by God to be, and to operate as they were intended to operate, man fulfills that part of his vocation prescribed in Genesis 1:26.49 But how can we know what things are supposed to be and do? Neither natural philosophy nor the physical sciences seem capable of telling us much about what things are, or about what they are supposed to do; for we come to know “nature” only inductively and indirectly, through observing the operations and other accidental features of things, accidents which leave the mystery of the inner nature of things more undisclosed than disclosed to us.50 Because of this, were the finality of their “being”) in their causes (in causis); and (3) in their recapitulatory mode of embodiment in Christ and his members (secundum modum recapitulationis). See Aquinas, ST I, q. 12, a. 8; suppl., q. 92, aa. 2–3; ScG, Bk. I, c. 31; In Ioannem, c. 1, lect. 2 (ed. Weisheipl, no. 90). 48 See in this regard Aquinas, ST I, q. 47, a. 1. 49 The notion of assisting creatures to be and do what they were intended to be and do is equivalent to the Christian idea of “utilizing” creation and exercising “dominion” over it. 50 “A definition ought to reveal a thing’s accidental qualities, as well as its essential principles. If indeed the latter could be known and correctly defined there would be no need to define the former; but since the essential principles of things are hidden from us we are compelled to make use of accidental differences as indications of what is essential. Thus to be two-footed is not of the essence of anything, yet it helps to indicate an essence. . . . It would indeed be easier to grasp even what is accidental to the soul if we could only first understand its essence. . . . Hence the difficulty of our present position.” Aquinas, In De anima, Bk. I, lect. 1 (sect. 15); translation is taken from Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, trans. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries (South Bend, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1954). See also Bk. II, lect. 2 (sect. 235 & 237); lect. 3 (sect. 245–246). Cf. ScG, Bk. III, c. 56; ST I, q. 94, a. 2; De ente et essentia, c. 4: “Their proper differences are hidden from us. For in sensible things likewise the essential differences themselves are unknown; hence they are signified by means of the accidental differences which arise from their essential differences, as a cause is signified by means of its effect, as for instance biped is posited as the Nature’s Finality 161 things limited to purely intrinsic finalities, our ability to steward creation would be severely truncated. Fortunately, the finality of things is intelligible also at another level, that of extrinsic finality and the interdependencies exhibited among different natural kinds. Natural philosophy can delineate the general principles of this kind of finality, and Revelation in this regard speaks even more decisively. Not only does each creature have its own nature with its unique operative dispositions, but, in the final analysis, it is man and his well-being that supplies the fuller answer to the question. The rest of creation comes to itself when, through man’s assistance, it best serves man’s own perfection. The natural world exists for the sake of man, affirms St. Thomas.51 But this is no sanction for arbitrary exploitation. It is precisely the good of man, an authentically human culture that specifies the higher (intermediate) ends of earthly ecological structures. This culture must be understood—in keeping with the etymological sense of the term, and in the words of Gaudium et Spes—as “a cultivation of the goods and values of [human] nature,”52 a nature that is both bodily and, more specially, spiritual. True culture perfects the spiritual side of man, inasmuch as it conserves and fosters religious sensitivity, moral sensitivity, and social sensitivity; such is culture’s finality formally considered. These values are expressed in the attitudes of admiration of truth, goodness, and beauty and contemplation, qualities that express and intensify (in second act) human dignity.53 This anthropological perspective has far-reaching consequences for the exercise of human freedom in the harnessing of nature. Does the exercise of our mastery over creation better illuminate to man the truth about the world? Does it bring into relief the wisdom and goodness of God who designed the world? Does it nurture our sense of gratitude and contemplative awe? These are the sorts of questions that must be posed antecedently to those concerned with a purely material, technological or economic gain, the latter of which categories are but means to the former.54 Authentic stewardship means interacting with nature so as to facilitate its serving the spiritual finality of man. The extrinsic difference of man. But the proper accidents of immaterial substances are not known to us, and accordingly their differences cannot be signified by us either by virtue of themselves or by virtue of their accidental differences.” 51 Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2. See also ST I, q. 73, a. 1; ScG, Bk. III, c. 112; Comp. theol., Bk. I, c. 171. 52 Gaudium et Spes, 53. 53 See Gaudium et Spes, 59. 54 It stands to reason that some form of authoritative guidance is required for man to address these questions in a non-arbitrary way. That authority comes down to natural reason (as perfected by grace), on the one hand, and, on the other, the revealed word of God. Catholic anthropology, Catholic theology of creation and 162 Stephen A. Hipp finality of things inferior to man is, immediately, the well-being of man and, mediately, the perfect ordering of the whole (of which man also forms a part). By serving the intrinsic finality of man (contemplation, and a civic order conducive to contemplation and spiritual communion), the various parts of the visible creation fulfill their extrinsic finality both vis-à-vis man himself and vis-à-vis the universe as a whole, the latter of which is a function of the former and a necessary component in the fulfillment of the intrinsic finality of the universe as a whole—since the intrinsic finality of the universe resides precisely in that order whereby lower beings exist for the sake of the higher, and the higher act upon the lower.55 What implications does this hold for responsible human action in regard to nature? Namely, that man use and direct other creatures always in a manner that enhances his humanity, for to act so is to enhance the very good of nature.56 This fulfillment of the extrinsic finality of creatures beside man (and of the intrinsic finality of the universe) is not without concrete checks. For, on the one hand, the true good of man delimits the scope of acceptable activity: something truly advantageous to the spiritual nature of man must be achieved through man’s interaction with nature;57 and, on the other hand, the very intrinsic good of the natural objects in question (however vaguely understood) similarly delimits the parameters within which man can pursue his self-promotion: no attempt to fulfill the extrinsic finality of things (to subordinate inferior creatures either directly to man or to the cosmological whole) can knowingly violate the intrinsic finality of those things without a compelling reason (it being necessary for the good of man).58 Although that intrinsic finality is known to us very imperfectly, science remaining particularly ignorant of the properly specific differences among natural kinds, certain things, and indeed many things at a more generic level, are obvious to a Catholic understanding of providence are the necessary starting points for a humanly (i.e. spiritually) fruitful and responsible engagement with nature. 55 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2; q. 109, a. 2; ST I–II, q. 5, a. 6, obj. 1. 56 In the words of Gaudium et Spes, “all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown” (12). 57 Again, the ultimate authority in this matter is none other than the Catholic Church, to whom the ultimate truths about man have been entrusted (Gaudium et Spes, 22). In regard to the normativity of the Catholic vision of man, see the Wednesday audience of Paul VI, “Authentic Christian Life Develops Social Spirit,” L’Osservatore Romano, September 12, 1968. 58 The good of man to be obtained in this case, moreover, it seems, must be proportionately superior to the perceived intrinsic finality of the creature in question. For Thomas, the killing of animals and of other men always finds its justification with reference to a superior and superordinate good (whether the common good or good of the whole, or a superior good of a higher-ordered being): see ST II–II, Nature’s Finality 163 us—such as, for example, the responsibility to avoid all unnecessary suffering on the part of animals in their utilization to the benefit of man (suffering being contrary to the intrinsic finality of every living being);59 or the responsibility not to destroy the capacity of a natural kind to effectively reproduce (thus effacing it from the ecosystemic whole) unless it is necessary to defend an essential good of man.60 While this appears to constitute a recipe for an (environmental) ethics of proportionality, it q. 64, aa. 1–3. “It is lawful to kill dumb animals, in so far as they are naturally directed to man’s use, as the imperfect is directed to the perfect. Now every part is directed to the whole, as imperfect to perfect, wherefore every part is naturally for the sake of the whole” (ST II–II, q. 64, a. 2). Notwithstanding Thomas’s repeated claims that man can do whatever he want with animals (for example, ScG, Bk. III, c. 112; ST I–II, q. 102, a. 6, ad 8), the hierarchy of created goods and their subordination to that of the whole supplies the premise that is implicit in his thinking. Both the “unrestrained” and “restrained” sides of Thomas’s thought in this regard are expressed with particular concision when he declares: “There is no sin in using a thing for the purpose for which it is” (ST II–II, q. 64, a. 1). In other words, a thing can be used “in any way whatever” (ScG Bk. III, c. 112), provided its use is governed by the hierarchy of ends that defines its ordination. Here again, the spiritual good of man is the ultimate criterion for stewardship. 59 Note that the proscription pertains to unnecessary suffering, and not to every form of suffering under any circumstance. For some suffering on the part of animals may be (and, in fact, often is) required to procure a good for man the magnitude or quality of which outweighs that of the good deprived by suffering. 60 The necessity able to justify such an act cannot be just any good of man whatsoever, but must be an essential good, or at least one which meaningfully—i.e. qualitatively, and with relevance to the good of the universe as a whole— outweighs the losses incurred. Only thus, it seems, is such a subordination of the intrinsic finality of creatures to that of man permissible. Moreover, only in so valuing and seeking to preserve (if only to an extent compatible with the human good) the intrinsic finality of inferior creatures can the finality of man himself be attained, since man also exists to perfect the rest of creation (by which he imitates God). Regardless of the human good to be obtained, however, that good is never a sanction for performing an action which is intrinsically evil (even were it, ex hypothesi, to secure an essential good for man). The deliberate performance of any intrinsically evil action is necessarily destructive of the essential good of man, in any event. The implication of the above, therefore, is that such uses of nature are not intrinsically evil, even if they require a substantial reason for their justification. If, however, those actions were to hinder the intrinsic finality of the universe as a whole (to which man’s own activity is subordinated as to the end intended by his maker), they would constitute objectively evil acts; and, were man to have knowledge of this, it would be intrinsically evil on his part to perform them. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be gleaned from this is the need to be extremely cautious in the manner in which we manipulate creation, given the radical deficiency of man’s understanding of natures and their intrinsic finalities and the relationships these bear toward the good of the universe as a whole. 164 Stephen A. Hipp remains guided by the objective features of both human nature, on the one hand, and the (disparately known) generic and specific natures of things themselves, on the other. Furthermore (as discussed in footnote 60), any deliberate action contrary to the intrinsic finality of the universe considered as a whole must be considered intrinsically evil and can never be permitted, regardless of questions of proportion. Therefore our understanding of the relationship between the intrinsic finalities of the various members of the ecological system, on the one hand, and the intrinsic finality of the universe as a whole, on the other, also imposes constraints on (and offers recommendations for) man’s environmental practices. Unfortunately, man is in no real position to judge these relationships, since he has little grasp of the exact natures of things. Consequently he must proceed with great caution.61 Indeed, man’s freedom to utilize and manipulate natural beings must, in certain respects, be measured by the degree to which he is ignorant of nature. Not unlike the case of a hunter whose moral obligation it is not to shoot at an undetermined source of movement behind a group of bushes that may be hiding another man, our technological domination of the world may owe the benefit of a doubt to nature and its hidden role in God’s plan for the world. Nevertheless, unless we are content to be agnostic about the world around us (a position that is theologically problematic in light of the divine authorship of man’s rational nature),62 we must be able to make certain reasonable assumptions about the natures of things—as, for example, that the genetic substitution of the DNA of a tomato with the foreign DNA of human beings constitutes a direct alteration of the tomato’s proper nature (whatever it might be); or that it is inappropriate to employ a banana as a hammer, or a dog as firewood. Furthermore, at the level of extrinsic finality, the harmonious ordering of different natural kinds of beings is exceedingly clear even to the simplest observer. The marvels of ecosystemic interdependency are a spectacular, symphonic drama to the probing eyes of the modern biological sciences. The complex interspecific associations of the natural world (symbioses of cooperation, competition, and predation) arouse man’s admiration, lead him to knowledge of God, 61 Ultimately, he must depend on a higher authority which, humbly accepted, can steer him toward a fuller understanding of the mystery of creation, a mystery hidden in the mystery of Christ. 62 If man could not know ens, if he could not know the essences of material substances (which is the proper object of the human intellect), then the human nature will have been made in vain. See Aquinas, ST III, q. 9, a. 4; ScG, Bk. III, c. 48; Comp. theol., Bk. II, c. 4; In libros Politicorum Aristotelis expositio, Bk. I, lect. 1; In De caelo, Bk. I, lect. 8 & 12. Nature’s Finality 165 and solicit his care. Wanton destruction of manifest ecological balances for any reason other than human survival itself is an abuse of the role given by God to man within the greater whole of the cosmos. But Revelation tells us something more. Because of man’s vocation to intimate communion with God and because of the redemptive means by which that communion is brought about, the construction of an authentically human culture means infusing human life and the whole of creation with God, through the mediation of Jesus Christ. Ordering the world to man means ordering it to, and according to, Jesus Christ. Ultimately, the cosmic and historical Lordship of Christ must inform the way in which we view and treat the reality around us. Every scientific investigation and every exercise of mastery of nature should seek to discover and manifest to others the mystery of Christ there contained.63 Through the contribution of man to the rest of the world, moreover, “humanizing” the world—that is, centering it on man and the true good of man—means nothing less than “divinizing” the world; for, notwithstanding his distinction, man remains in intimate communion with the rest of creation, to which he gives (himself) in the very act of taking from it. The special, intermediary place of man between the rest of creation and God allows man to shepherd creation through its sanctification. It is God’s will not only to fill man with his fullness, but to fill the entire creation with divine life, that the whole world should be his temple. “Far from encouraging a recklessly homocentric disregard of the natural environment, the theology of the imago Dei affirms man’s crucial role in sharing in the realization of this eternal divine indwelling in the perfect universe. Human beings, by God’s design, are the stewards of this transformation for which all creation longs.”64 63 This is by no means the only or even the first thing scientific activity should pursue; the natural sciences are defined and methodologically determined by their respective formal objects, which constitutively hold the center of their attention. But the relationship of creation to man and to Jesus Christ should never be bracketed out of consideration, not only because the material order is included in the Incarnation and in the spiritual perfection of embodied human beings, but, more to the point here, because the very truth about (i.e., the reality of) every being is intrinsically tied up with and dependent upon Christ. No material object of scientific investigation can be adequately understood outside of its Christological (and Trinitarian) dimensions. If, among other things, stewardship means using the material creation to enrich human life, and if the enrichment of human life means ordering man to Christ, then, if the practice of stewardship should indeed affect the way (or reasons for which) science is done, God and Jesus Christ must, at some point, be brought into the picture (even if this is not formally the task of the scientist as such). 64 International Theological Commission, Communion and Stewardship (2004), no. 76. 166 Stephen A. Hipp A Dynamic and “Interrelational” Conception of Order and Perfection in Thomas For Thomas, the ordering of creatures is especially manifested in two things. First of all, it is apparent in their consistently acting for specific ends proportionate to their natures.65 The ordering here consists at once in the teleological (objective) determination of the acts and in the consistency with which they are performed.66 Second, the ordering of creatures is evident in their exercise of secondary causality, that is, their subordination in the collaborative causing of other effects, by which they are mutually instrumental in bringing about the perfection of the whole (and benefit to each other).67 “Creatures do not attain to the perfection of their goodness through their own being alone, but through many things.”68 “Therefore things tend to a divine likeness by being causes of other things.”69 From the perspective of Thomas, therefore, the ordering in the universe is something much greater than merely a static arrangement of parts, like the relative disposition of the pieces of a mosaic. Cosmic (and ecological) order consists especially in the interdependency of distinct entities and principles of causation at the operative level. It is ironic that, in the controversies over evolution, advocates of what is usually referred to as “intelligent design” tend (often inadvertently) to limit their understanding of design to more or less statically conceived notions of complexity and order (essentially amounting to the notion of “arrangement” responsible for “functional advantages”). What is too often lacking is a fuller understanding of “order,” enlarged by a consideration of the consistency of natural operation, teleology, and the interdependency of essentially subordinated natural causes. Thomism attempts to synthesize these. 65 “Each and every part [of a whole] exists for the sake of its proper act, as the eye for the act of seeing. . . . So, therefore, in the parts of the universe also every creature exists for its own proper act and perfection.” Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2. See also ScG, Bk. IV, c. 19: “A natural thing, by the form that perfects it in its species, has an inclination to its proper operations, and to the proper end to which it attains by its operation: since, such as a thing is, such is its operation, and such the end to which it tends.” 66 The success of the observational sciences is based on the latter matter of fact. On the relationship between consistency or regularity of operation and determinate finality, see especially Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 3. 67 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 22, a. 3; De ver., q. 5, a. 9, ad 3–4; q. 11, a. 2: “God wills not only that man should be, but that he should be a cause.” See also Comp. theol., Bk. I, c. 3. 68 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 20. 69 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 21. Nature’s Finality 167 Specific Nature as the Foundation for Mereological (Ecological) Perfection The distinctive operations of each creature, by which they are instruments of order through dynamic inter-action, are the consequence of each creature’s constitutive structure; they are, in other words, the consequence of “nature.” It is the different operational capacities of differing natures that provides for the possibility of a “collaboration” in causation on the part of diverse creatures—for their being related to one another as mutually instrumental in the bringing about of joint effects dependent upon the causal interaction of each. This is the meaning of the classical axiom “operatio sequitur esse.”70 The communication of form moreover, is the very essence of and reason for causation in nature; for whenever a being operates, something of itself is always communicated to its effect.71 Formal causality is, therefore, the necessary presupposition and naturally prior to any sort of physical interaction among creatures on the basis of which an ecological system arises. What is more, the fact that the relationships of specific natural forms to one another in the order of operation account for the unity and identity of an ecological system (the collective whole that is thereby formed) reveals that form (a higher-ordered form) is also logically prior to the same ecological dynamism—inasmuch as the formal ordering among the members of an ecological system is itself the (ulterior) finality of their individual causal contributions to the system.72 70 See, for example, Aquinas, ST I, q. 75; ScG, Bk. II, c. 21; Bk. III, c. 42. 71 “Now in every disposition of providence, the order of effects is derived from the form of agents: since the effect must needs proceed from its cause in some kind of likeness. Now it is for the sake of an end that the cause communicates the likeness of its form to the effect. Hence the first principle in the dispositions of providence is the end; the second is the form of the agent; the third is the appointment of the order of effects. Consequently in the order of the intellect the highest degree is the consideration of the idea of order, in the end; the second degree is the same consideration, in the form; while the third is the knowledge of the disposition of order in itself and not in a higher principle. Wherefore the art which considers the end governs the art which considers the form, as the art of sailing governs the art of shipbuilding. And the art which considers the form governs the art which considers only the order of movements which prepare the way for the form, as the art of shipbuilding governs the handiwork of the builders.” Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 80. In some respects, even certain final causes of things are rooted in the formal cause, inasmuch as the intrinsic finalities of beings, the ends which they pursue through their operations, are predetermined by their specific natures (on the basis of which they operate). “Each thing is ordained to its proper end by the nature of its species, whence is derived its inclination for that end.” Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, a. 7, obj. 1. 72 See Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 42: “Secondary causes . . . are directed to the end of the first cause . . . and this is the distinction and order of the parts of the universe, 168 Stephen A. Hipp The Manifest Causal Interdependencies of the Natural World Rest upon Another, More Hidden Level of Order It must be emphasized that the scope both of the causal coordination discussed in the last two sections and of the mereological subordination spoken of in the sections preceding them is not limited to the convergence or coincidence of multiple partial causes of the efficient order (à la Scotism),73 but finds its highest and metaphysically most profound expression in the reciprocal causality of mutually ordered total causes—as is the case with matter and form in the constitution of a material substance, or with the efficient and final cause as principles of motion.74 The ordering that occurs between the essential components of a subjectively indivisible ens or of a single operation is, for Thomas, integral to the relational perfection of the universe. In fact, the dynamism between them is the very source of the distinction of natures (and not only of numerically distinct individuals) necessary for structural order in the world.75 It is especially clear in the case of total and reciprocal causes that the “parts” are ordered not only to one another, but especially and primarily to the whole of which they are the cause. Furthermore, this ordering of the essential parts of the individual substantial whole is itself ordered to the higher finalities of that which order is the ultimate form, so to speak.” (See also ScG, Bk. II, c. 39.) As already noted, particular finality is always integrated into universal finality, wherefore the intrinsic ends of natural non-violent activity serve (are finalized toward) an extrinsic finality determined by a superior agent. 73 See Scotus, Ord. I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4; d. 3, p. 3, q. 2, nn. 497–500, 503 & 545; d. 4, p. 1, q. un; d. 8, p. 1, q. 4, n. 192; Ord. II, d. 1, q. 5, nn. 203–209; d. 3, p. 1, q. 4, nn. 91–92; p. 2, q. 1, nn. 271, 278, & 280–281 (ed.Vatican for all the above); d. 25, q. un., nn. 22–24 (ed. Wadding); Ord. IV, d. 11, q. 3, n. 46 (ed. Wadding). 74 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 45, a. 3, ad 3; q. 77, a. 6; De pot., q. 7, a. 2, ad 9; De spir. cr., a. 8, ad 9. On the soul and its relation to the body, as well as on the general relationship between matter and form, see Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, a. 3; q. 76, a. 1, ad 5; aa. 3–4; In De anima, Bk. II, lect. 1–2; De ente et essentia, cc. 1 & 5 (ed. Leonine); De principiis naturae, cc. 4 & 6 (ed. Leonine). On the inseparability of final causality from the very notion of efficient causality, see Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 1, a. 2; ScG, Bk. III, c. 2; In Meta., Bk. V, lect. 2; De ver., q. 22, a. 2; De princ. nat., c. 4 (ed. Leonine); Expositio libri Posteriorum Analyticorum, Bk. II, lect. 9. 75 Although matter is a principle of numerical distinction among members of a common nature, the very matter in question is proportioned to the kind of form, of which it is a principle of individuality. Matter exists for the sake of its form, Thomas explains, not vice versa (see Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 128; ST I, q. 47, a. 2; q. 65, a. 2; q. 76, a. 5; q. 91, a. 3). In order for certain forms to exist, in order for the world to be populated by certain specific natural kinds, properly proportioned matter must be provided as the subject of their instantiation. Thus a specific hylemorphic relationship is a necessary condition for the realization of the natural kind in question. Nature’s Finality 169 substantial whole (in relation to the greater whole of which it too is but a part and to the glorification of God for which it exists).76 Thus the foundation for all other order is what we might call “deep order,” reflected not only in the relation between matter and form, but also in that between essence and existence. In the final analysis, these relationships (all of which are related to one another according to an analogy of proportion) come down to the distinction between potency and act. If we consider that all of the operations of nature and every active and passive principle responsible for ecosystemic unity are ordered to the actualization of specific, ecosystemic and cosmic potentialities, the movement/dynamism of the whole world represents a “groaning”77 on the part of potency for act,78 on the part of the creature qua creature (whose very essence is a potency for being and whose distinction from God is rooted in the limitation of esse by that potential principle)79 for God (who is pure Act). This infrastructural “deep ordering” between potency and act, in all of its forms, translates, furthermore, into the infrastructural order of the 76 Interestingly enough, even from a Scotistic angle regarding the unity of a supposit of a natural kind—where the possibility of a multiplicity of substantial forms within a single individual, and the possibility of distinct existence on the part of partial substantial principles appear to dissolve real formal unity or nature—the identity of the subsistent and the concept of a unitary concrete nature are safeguarded by recourse to another principle of unity, namely, the unity of order, which is responsible for a truly singular essence of a really unified being (see Scotus, Quaestiones quodlibetales 19, n. 2, 13 & 23; Ordinatio III, d. 1, p. 1, q. 1, nn. 2, 8–14, 23 & 79–84; In Meta. 7, q. 7, nn. 21–24). The role that this kind of unity plays in the thought of Scotus manifests—in some respects more vividly even than the system of Aquinas—the subordination of a multiplicity of beings to the ordered whole they constitute and the primacy of the order among them. On the other hand, it diminishes the centrality of operation in one’s concept of nature and, correspondingly, in the manner in which many beings effectively constitute an ordered whole. By way of contrast, the Thomist doctrine in this regard recognizes not only the strictly unifying and actuating role of substantial form, but also its indispensable contribution to a cosmic order essentially constructed on the causal interaction between specifically different kinds of things—where things (res) are differentiated precisely on the basis of distinct operational capacities proper to the subsisting whole as such. 77 See Rom 8:22–23. 78 Indeed, the very definition of motion, for Thomas, is “the act of a thing in potency.” “That is being moved which is midway between pure potency and act, which is partly in potency and partly in act. . . . Whence the Philosopher most aptly defines motion as the entelechy, i.e., the act of a thing existing in potency insofar as it is in potency.” In libros Physicorum, Bk. III, lect. 2. 79 See Aquinas, De ente et essentia, c. 3. 170 Stephen A. Hipp analogicity of being. Creatures “are,” in a derivative and sub-ordinated sense of “being,” because God “is,” in the plenior and ordering sense of “being”/“act.”80 Thus it is in terms of the distinction between potency and act that the radical and first-ordering distinction between Uncreated Being and created being is articulated in Thomas.81 This analogy of being is the first concrete principle of order in the universe. All creatures are ontologically ordered, by the participatory character of their very being, toward Unparticipated Act. And this order is a question not merely of origination and dependence, but also of the tendential dynamism (finality) rooted in natures.The very trajectory of creaturely existence is first of all (and continuously) defined by this ordination to God. Such is the meaning of “analogy”: it is an ordo ad unum (the “ò e>´ ” of Aristotle).82 An important corollary must be mentioned here.The singular point of reference upon which all of the movement of nature is focused is God understood as Pure Act. Act as such, then, is the intrinsic end of the universe. But act is the fundamental principle of intelligibility for everything. Time and again, Thomas reminds us that a thing is intelligible precisely insofar as it is in act.83 The whole universe along with each of its parts, therefore, is ordered toward intelligibility, toward cognition and truth in both its objective and subjective senses. I deal specifically with nature’s ordination to truth below. Note here, however, that on the basis of the same analogy of being between God and creatures, for Thomas, all things are “true” through uncreated Truth84—such that creation’s ordination to truth and its fulfillment of that destiny are themselves grounded on, and an expression of, the “deeper order” examined above. The relationship between matter and form, finally, also illustrates, in an extraordinary way, that law of natural order by which less noble beings (and principles) are subordinated to higher beings (and principles). Every material substance, inasmuch as it is a composite being with operative 80 With respect to existence (and any pure perfection), created ens stands in relation to God according to an analogy of intrinsic attribution. Creatures are “beings” because they participate in the divine self-subsistent being (being per essentiam), the prime analogue with respect to which “ens” is predicated of all of the secondary analogates (being per participationem). See Aquinas, ST I, q. 13; I–II, q. 66, a. 5, ad 4; In I Sent., d. 19, q. 5; In Meta., Bk.VII, lect. 4–5; De princ. nat., c. 6. 81 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 2, a. 3; q. 54, a. 1; De ver., q. 24, a. 7; De pot., q. 2, a. 1. 82 “There are many senses (multis modis) in which being (ens) can be said, but they are related to one central point (ad unum/ò e>´ )”—Metaphysica, Bk. IV, c. 2 (1003a33). 83 See especially ST I, q. 16, a. 3; q. 87, a. 1; q. 89, a. 7, ad 3; ScG, Bk. II, c. 98; Bk. III, c. 54; In De causis, lect. 6; In Perihermeneias, Bk. I, lect. 5. 84 See Aquinas, In I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 2. Nature’s Finality 171 capacities distinct from those of its physical constituents, is a selfcontained microcosmic expression of this law. In a unique way in man, moreover, hylemorphism expresses the orientation of the whole material order to the spiritual order. As has already been alluded to, according to Thomas, man’s bodily nature exists and is proportioned as it is precisely for the sake of man’s rational activity, that is, for his unique (abstractive) mode of understanding by which he constitutes an ultimate grade upon the spectrum of intelligent life.85 Ultimately, the natural order found in creation is directed to the supernatural enjoyment of God on the part of his rational creatures. In fact, nature is nothing less than a presupposition to and potency for the supernatural agency and supernatural life of God in his creatures. This last point will be developed more fully with reference to Christ (and the sacramental economy), where the exalted dignity of the material order is revealed in its capacity to receive the very divinity and to communicate (instrumentally) divine life. Necessity of Inequality and Hierarchy in Light of the Purpose of Creation Intimately related with Thomas’s essentially Aristotelian understanding of the role of nature and formal causality in natural movement, is another critical element in his cosmology, one that is common to the whole theological tradition but especially prevalent in the thought of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, and within which Thomas fully deploys his doctrine of participation: namely, the necessity, in light of the purpose of creation, of inequality and hierarchy. “The perfection of the universe required various grades of being,” Aquinas affirms.86 Differentiation, in other words, is required for order: telos determines form. The distinction and multitude of things come from the intention of the first agent, who is God. For he brought things into being in order that his goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because his goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, he produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever.87 85 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 76, a. 5; q. 78, a. 3; q. 84, aa. 6–7; q. 85, a. 1; q. 91, a. 3; ScG, Bk. II, c. 68. 86 Aquinas, ST I, q. 89, a. 1; see in this regard especially ST I, q. 47, a. 2. 87 Aquinas, ST I, q. 47, a. 1. 172 Stephen A. Hipp The purpose of creation is to manifest the goodness of God. For this reason, the good of the whole is greater than the good of any part—for the whole is more Godlike, because it more fully represents the infinite goodness of God.88 (The principle has broad consequences not only for our theology of creation, but also for the political order, the order of social justice, and our understanding of the ecological order). But this variety among creatures, by which the universe is a more perfect reflection of God, requires that things differ not merely numerically but formally; and formal distinction implies inequality: A twofold distinction is found in things; one is a formal distinction as regards things differing specifically; the other is a material distinction as regards things differing numerically only. And as the matter is on account of the form, material distinction exists for the sake of the formal distinction. Hence we see that in incorruptible things there is only one individual of each species, forasmuch as the species is sufficiently preserved in the one; whereas in things generated and corruptible there are many individuals of one species for the preservation of the species. Whence it appears that formal distinction is of greater consequence than material. Now, formal distinction always requires inequality, because . . . the forms of things are like numbers in which species vary by addition or subtraction of unity. Hence in natural things species seem to be arranged in degrees; as the mixed things are more perfect than the elements, and plants than minerals, and animals than plants, and men than other animals; and in each of these one species is more perfect than others. Therefore, as the divine wisdom is the cause of the distinction of things for the sake of the perfection of the universe, so it is the cause of inequality. For the universe would not be perfect if only one grade of goodness were found in things.89 For a gradation of perfection in the world, formal diversity is necessary. Material diversity in number as such contributes nothing directly to the degrees of goodness that make the universe a more perfect reflection of God. Material distinction is necessary, however, for the preservation of a species, since the existence of a diversity of natural kinds in the visible world is ensured thereby. But it is formal distinction—which is ultimately responsible for the different chemical, thermal, and physical properties of things on the basis of which ecosystemic and cosmic order come about— that really counts. Thus, as intended by the wisdom of God, and for the sake of its perfection, the universe exhibits a hierarchical arrangement of beings according to degrees of natural excellence. Without hierarchy and 88 See especially Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 42; Bk. III, c. 17. 89 Aquinas, ST I, q. 47, a. 2; cf. De ente et essentia, c. 4 (ed. Leonine). Nature’s Finality 173 inequality, no order, universal or ecosystemic, is possible.90 It is perhaps worth noting here that the distinction, as well as the relationship, between numerical individuation and specific differentiation (the fact that material distinction exists for the sake of formal distinction) has the implication that, with regard to irrational creatures, our treatment of an entire species is of far greater significance than our treatment of the individuals of a species.91 While (under the acceptable conditions) individuals of a species may be (and often are) expendable by way of deliberate human intervention, this is no indication that the species as such is expendable through a like intervention on the same basis. Only the demands of the universal order desired by God, the inner finality of the universe as a whole (much of which escapes our understanding), can legitimately impose cases of specific extinction—occurrences to which natural history (which is ultimately the instrument of providence) amply witnesses. Here, of course, natural reason and Revelation both illuminate something of the proper ordering among the diverse grades of being essential to the inner finality of the universe as a whole. On such a basis, de iure at least, we sometimes can and must make judgments about the protection or 90 On the hierarchical arrangement of the world, see especially: Aquinas, ST I, q. 65, a. 2; q. 96, a. 3, ad 3; II–II, q. 64, a. 1; ScG, Bk. III, c. 81; c. 112; Comp. theol., Bk. I, c. 148. Note that inequality and hierarchy are the proximate reason for multiplicity and diversity, the remote (and ultimate) reason for which is the fuller imitation on the part of the universe of the singular and indivisible divine perfection. 91 Even with respect to man, we should note, the species remains, in a certain respect, more important than the individual, inasmuch as the purpose of created ens is the glorification of God through the manifestation of his perfections. Ontologically (not morally) speaking, it is primarily the human kind as such, not the distinctiveness of the individual, that reflects the perfection of the Creator. Nevertheless, the individual man is of infinite intrinsic value. The spiritual basis of this infinite worth (which is a function of specific perfection) makes it possible for the individual man to participate, primarily at the moral level, in a personal, individual way in the universal glorification of God on the part of creation. At the level of operation, in his self-realization in second act, an infinite horizon for the glorification of God is open to man. Within this horizon, assuming we include the reality of grace, the value of the individual indeed surpasses that of the species as such. Even with respect to first act, however, it should be noted that creatures also glorify God in their individuality as such, not merely because singularity is rooted in some positive ontological principle, but because, precisely in their distinction, they are reflections of the divine transcendental multitude. From the point of view of the chief purpose of nature, Thomas explains, incorruptibility is the goal to be obtained (without which perpetuity nothing would have lasting meaning). But because individual men are incorruptible (on account of the soul), individuals are equally included in the ultimate purpose of nature (see ST I, q. 98, a. 1; q. 113, a. 2; cf. q. 62, a. 6, ad 3). 174 Stephen A. Hipp non-protection of a species, precisely with reference to its contribution or threat to the universal order intended by God. Thus, when an essential good of man is at stake, the survival of an inferior species must cede to that higher end. But hierarchy is more than a means to a quantitatively greater glorification of God on the part of creation; it ultimately serves a purpose far beyond multiplying the sheer number of species in the world. Indeed it can be said, inversely, that the very purpose of multiplicity and diversity is inequality and hierarchy. For the very hierarchical relationships among the diverse species—relationships of causal influence that are responsible for their dynamic cohesiveness—bring about, at once: (1) a virtual infinity of ways in which God is imitated in the world, according to their inexhaustibly numerous relationships and the relationships of these real relations to one another;92 and (2) a qualitatively unique glorification of God, according as that relational dynamism constitutes an operatively unified and ever-evolving whole, and insofar as the very relationship of hierarchical dependence among secondary causes represents a greater good for the members of the universe and a more perfect reflection of God. According to Thomas, such a hierarchical arrangement is necessary for the functioning of secondary causes in the execution of God’s providence: We may consider a twofold order between creatures and God: the first is by reason of creatures being caused by God and depending on him as on the principle of their being. . . . But the second order is by reason of things being directed to God as to their end; and it is here that there is a medium between the creature and God, since lower creatures are directed to God by higher.93 God governs the lower beings through the higher beings, and this form of governance is more perfect, for it involves God communicating the dignity of causality to others.94 For a beautiful illustration of the principle, see Aquinas, ST suppl., q. 76, a. 3, ad 2, where the consummation of material 92 From the metaphysical perspective, this network of relationships entails a vastly complex and potentially infinitely populated universe, inasmuch as relation constitutes a real category of being. The network also implies, from a theological perspective, a qualitative leap in the capacity of nature to manifest the perfection of God, the mystery of whose tri-personality is grounded in relation. Note that Thomas and Scotus alike argue in favor of the reality of relations (and against the theory that they are mind-dependent) as a necessary condition for the unity of the universe: see Aquinas, De pot., q. 7, a. 9; Scotus, Ord. II, d. 1, q. 5, n. 224. 93 Aquinas, ST III, q. 6, a. 1, ad 1. 94 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 6; cf. ScG, Bk. III, c. 22; ST I, q. 47; De ver., q. 11, a. 2: “God wills not only that man should be, but that he should be a cause.” Nature’s Finality 175 creation in the transformative event of the final resurrection —nature’s quintessential (supernatural and redemptive) “evolutionary” step95—is executed primarily through the mediatory agency of one angel, either in whom or by means of whom (respectively) the whole angelic hierarchy, including those of every superior order and those of every inferior order, is operative. It is of the very nature of hierarchy to universally engage secondary causation in such a way that all members of a differentiated whole receive their proper functional dignity, becoming jointly responsible for the emergence of effects that exceed the operational capacities of any one member taken alone and which work to the benefit of all. In fact, hierarchy consists first and foremost in this relationship of essentially subordinated causality, the fact that some things are the causes of the causal activity of others. Through this causal dignity, secondary causes act upon one another in the construction of an ordered, governed world. They become sources of goodness for others.96 Such is the real point of hierarchy: to allow creatures to participate in God’s providential governance of the world, and to allow creatures to communicate goodness to others, to lead others toward their proper (relational, mereologically defined) end: 95 The fact that this step is supernatural means that it is not taken or performed by nature as the active principle of motion; rather, such a stride is undergone by nature, on the basis of its obediential potency. Thus the notion of evolution is used analogously here, since the transformation in question does not flow from the intrinsic vital operative powers of the creature. Nevertheless, the term “evolution” is not used in a purely equivocal sense, for: (1) the obediential potency of bodies remains a real principle of this transformation; and (2) the Christological unity and finality of all creation situates the latter within a “whole” that only makes sense with reference to redemptive grace and the world’s supernatural elevation as the terminus toward which it was initially, and remains intrinsically, ordained. 96 One can clearly see in Thomas’s view of hierarchy the influence of PseudoDionysius, both as to the purpose of hierarchy and as to the manner in which that purpose is fulfilled, namely by way of natural (communicative and receptive) operations. The providential relationship between hierarchically distinguished secondary causes—their mutually beneficial differentiation—manifests itself primarily in activity. This activity (positively considered, i.e. in abstraction from destructive or diabolical forces as such) always consists either in giving or in receiving, in actualizing another or in being actualized by another. Accordingly, it is described in terms of a twofold kind of motion, christened “linear” and “circular” by Pseudo-Dionysius, complemented by a third, “spiral,” which is a combination of the two. In distinct ways, corresponding to each of these sorts of movement, natural agents are able to give glory to the Creator by imitating him and sharing in the completion/perfection of the world. Thomas’s treatment of these three kinds of motion (with particular attention to “circular motion”) will be examined in the follow-up to this article. 176 Stephen A. Hipp It is a greater perfection for a thing to be good in itself and also the cause of goodness in others, than only to be good in itself. Therefore God so governs things that he makes some of them to be causes of others in government; as a master, who not only imparts knowledge to his pupils, but gives also the faculty of teaching others.97 It is, perhaps, especially here that man discovers the meaning of the “stewardship” intended for him by God, inasmuch as man’s own role visà-vis the created order is to communicate, in imitation of God himself, goodness to the world around him. How can man do that? In two fundamental ways, according to Thomas. He does so, first of all, each and every time he utilizes the goods of creation to achieve a properly human end; for in so doing, man renders the natural world an instrument (with all the causal dignity that this implies for Thomas)98 of effects which transcend the material order as such (and, when the actions are ordered by charity, the natural order altogether).99 In another and more astounding way, man is a source of goodness for creation through his power to interact with beings superior to himself. One of the most striking features of Thomas’s treatment of divine providence and the role he accords to mankind in its historical execution is the special place he reserves for prayer.100 By his union with God through Jesus Christ (who is the principle and end of the whole creation), the efficacy of man’s prayer knows no limits. There are no boundaries, neither intensively nor extensively, restricting the field of man’s spiritual mediation on behalf of nature. He who prays for the earth (by way of oration, sacrifice, and love) in union with Christ becomes an instrument of God’s fatherly and properly divine care for creation. Man’s special dignity in relation to the rest of the universe is not 97 Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 6; see also ScG, Bk. III, cc. 19–20 & 22. 98 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 45, a. 5; III, q. 13, aa. 2–3; q. 48, a. 6; q. 56, a. 1, ad 2; q. 62, a. 1 & ad 2; a. 4; q. 79, a. 2, ad 3. The notion of “instrumentalizing” creation is distasteful to, or met with fear by, many environmentally minded thinkers seeking to defend the dignity of creation. This is ironic in light of the real significance of instrumental causality, in which a natural agent is elevated to the production of effects transcending its natural capacities through the very exercise of its proper operation as moved by another. To put it simply, to view and treat non-rational beings as instruments of human ends assigns a greater dignity to them than can be recognized on the basis of their intrinsic value or goodness. 99 In keeping with the principles of all causality, according to which every cause as cause communicates something of itself to its effects, man communicates goodness to the created order by infusing it with a human element, “humanizing” it, through ordering it according to reason and according to man’s intelligible end (see infra, “The End (Order) of the Universe in Terms of Truth”). 100 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 23, a. 8; II–II, q. 83, a. 2 & ad 2; suppl., q. 72, a. 2 & ad 2. Nature’s Finality 177 merely to stand at its summit, as its “head” and end, but to stretch across and within it, as its “heart” and impelling force.101 One will note that this understanding of the functioning of hierarchy places an emphasis on the qualitative perfection of the universe. Were the hierarchical perfection of creation to be viewed exclusively in quantitative terms—such as tends to be favored by conceptualizing the multiplicity of natural species after the manner of distinct numbers—we would be hard-pressed to explain the possibility (and even harder-pressed to justify the deliberate provocation) of the extinction of certain species. While the discreteness of numerical symbolism helps us to understand the real gradation/inequality of beings (which are related to one another according to ascending degrees of perfection understood as determinate participations of God),102 the causal dynamism of interspecific relations with its corresponding operatively achieved unity should help to temper inordinate fears of losing a species the “numeric value” of which may never grace the world again. Although the loss of any specific kind represents a subtraction from the full complement belonging to the whole, outside of the influence of sin, its substitution by another kind, or its inducing of new ecological relationships, eventually returns something new and (at least potentially) beneficial to the whole which is always progressing toward its divinely established state of rest.103 Order among the Parts of the Universe Depends upon Their Prior Order to God The relationship of creatures to one another (and to the whole that they constitute together) is dependent upon and derived from their relationship to God: Things that are ordered to something must be really related to it, and this relation must be some real thing in them. Now all creatures are ordered to God both as to their beginning and as to their end: since the 101 More will be said about this “priestly” quality of Christian stewardship in the follow-up to this article. 102 See Aquinas, In De anima, Bk. I, lect. 4 (sect. 49–50); In Meta., Bk. I, lect. 16. 103 “All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell. . . . And for all this, nature is never spent; there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Lines 6–10 of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” in Gerard Manley Hopkins:The Major Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 128. Sin, of course, is a destructive force, and there is reason to lament the ongoing loss of species provoked by human irresponsibility and selfishness. The point here is not to deny the value of quantities of different species (that was already defended above); rather, we are here invited to prioritize our concerns according to the predominantly qualitative nature of the world’s perfection. 178 Stephen A. Hipp order of the parts of the universe to one another results from the order of the whole universe to God: even as the mutual order of the parts of an army is on account of the order of the whole army to its commander (Meta. xii). Therefore creatures are really related to God, and this relation is something real in the creature.104 The real relationships between creatures are themselves functions of the relationship of the whole world to God. Relation to God, in other words, determines the kinds of relationships by which creatures constitute an ordered whole, and this relation to God—as principle and ultimate end— is something really in the creature, and responsible for the part the creature plays in contributing to the perfection of the universe (to its dynamic and hierarchical order). This dependency of inter-creaturely relationships upon the relationship of creatures toward the Creator is clarified by Thomas when demonstrating the unitary government of the universe: The mutual order of all diverse things that are directed to each other is on account of their order towards some one thing: even as the mutual order of the parts of an army is on account of the order of the whole army to the commander-in-chief. For that certain diverse things be united together in some relationship, cannot result from their own natures as distinct from one another, because from this there would rather result distinction among them. Nor can it result from different causes of order: because these could not possibly of themselves as differing from one another have one order in view. Accordingly either the mutual order of many is accidental, or it must be reduced to one first cause of that order, who sets all in order towards the end which he intends.105 The reality of finalized (as opposed to random)106 order implies a unifying principle, a principle that must be other than the distinctiveness 104 Aquinas, De pot., Bk. III, q. 7, a. 9. See ScG, Bk. III, c. 17: “Just as the supreme agent moves all second agents, so must all the ends of second agents be directed to the end of the supreme agent: since whatever the supreme agent does, it does for its own end. Now the supreme agent is the active principle of the actions of all inferior agents, by moving all to their actions, and consequently to their ends. Hence it follows that all the ends of second agents are directed by the first agent to its proper end”; ScG, Bk. II, c. 42: “If, therefore, in the production of things there are any secondary causes [as in the causation of order in the universe], it follows that their ends and actions are directed to the end of the first cause, and this is the last end in things caused.” 105 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. I, c. 42; see Bk. II, c. 24; Bk. III, c. 17. 106 It is certain that the order of the universe is more than a result of chance, for the universe is the product of finalized/intentional agency: “the origin of beings from the first being is by an action directed to an end, since it is according to intellect” (Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 42); see especially ScG, Bk. II, c. 24; cf. ST I, Nature’s Finality 179 of the natures so united, and that cannot consist in a multiplicity of directive agents (since these would themselves need to be unified by an ulterior common principle). Thus, Thomas concludes, the mutual order of the parts of the universe is caused by the first cause of the whole—who is also the first cause of each of the parts, but who is the cause of each of the parts only insofar as he causes the whole, which is logically prior to the parts and first in intention (the end in view when creating the parts), the parts being created precisely as members of a whole and for the sake of that whole. This first cause “sets all in order towards the end which he intends.” A twofold causality is expressed here. First, the setting of the multitude of beings in order requires an efficient act on the part of God, both as the origin of beings (Creator) and as the first mover (primary agent of secondary causal activity)—which he accomplishes by making their respective natures with their determinate operational habits,107 and by causing their activity according to their natures. Second (and this is Thomas’s principal point here), the many beings are set in such an order according to the intended effect of that order—the end, which determines, in the order of final causality, the mutual order among the parts. If, therefore, in the production of things there are any secondary causes, it follows that their ends and actions are directed to the end of the first cause. . . . Therefore the distinction and order in things is not on account of the actions of secondary causes; but rather the actions of secondary causes are on account of the order and distinction to be established in things.108 Here “interrelationality”—the mutual relations between creatures and their relative equality in this respect—is dependent upon the naturally prior relationship of creatures to God, as the common origin of all and the supreme end (sovereign good) toward which all are ordered. Transcendental relation to God is, therefore, the necessary condition for any kind of consonant, unified ordering of eco- and cosmic systems. In the light of the Christian doctrine of creation, “interrelationality” presupposes a transcendent ground and point of reference. It is the very creativity of q. 2, a. 3. See below (within this section) for a brief description of the insufficiency of “chance” as such in accounting for the mutual order among the parts of the universe. 107 This he accomplishes as an ultimate principle, though not necessarily directly, since he employs a variety of secondary causes as instruments through which the world and its inhabitants are brought forth. Human nature alone, because of its spiritual form, requires the direct intervention of God’s creative power. 108 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 42. 180 Stephen A. Hipp God that accounts for the most basic feature of ecological unity.109 This creature-Creator relationship, a relationship of radical dependence and participatory actuality, is common to every finite being. All are “equals,” therefore, in this regard, and all are intrinsically ordered at the deepest level of their identity (as res creata) according to the singular finality of God’s creative act.110 The creature-Creator relationship, moreover, determines the specific perfection and ecological “place” of every being in its relationship to others, on the basis of which, by way of their respective natural operations, the universal finality of the world is brought to fruition through the realization of their many specific intrinsic ends. As shall become clearer in what follows, the existential equality as well as the specific inequality of created ens are both rooted in the creative activity of God. They are a function of the esse-conferring love and specifying wisdom of God, whose very goodness and truth the world was intended to reflect and to seek. * * * At this point, however, a brief remark about a critical premise in the reasoning of Thomas seems due. In Book I, chapter 42 of the Summa contra Gentiles, Thomas argues from the mutual ordering of the parts of the universe to a unitary cause of order. But the argument rests upon the assumption that the order in question is not accidental, but finalized according to the intention of one first cause. In other words, his argument presupposes that the order in question is not a product of pure chance, of purely random events.To the contrary, it is the product of an intentional act, guided by a specific end, on the basis of which every intelligent agent acts.111 To many in the contemporary scientific field, however, this claim 109 Several theologians prominent in ecological discussions have developed this point: see S. Dunham, The Trinity and Creation in Augustine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 7–8; James Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), 95. 110 This is not to deny the ontological incommensurability between the material and immaterial orders according to Thomas. Although there exists no common natural genus for immaterial and material substances—wherefore their essences are radically disproportionate—there does exist a common logical genus, whence a certain proportionality obtains and something positive concerning spiritual substances can be known according to a common notion by way of analogy with material beings. That something positive, according to a common notion, has precisely to do with the distinction between essence and existence, and not with specific nature. See Aquinas, ST I, q. 88, a. 2, ad 1–4. 111 Besides ScG, Bk. I, c. 42, see Aquinas, ST I, q. 15, a. 1; I–II, q. 1, a. 2. Nature’s Finality 181 is everything but self-evident, and the counter-claim is put forward, that everything in the universe is the consequence of unguided chance events. Has Thomas made a gratuitous and fatal assumption? Could chance as such be responsible for the kind of order we have been discussing? The answer to the question requires not only a proper understanding of the nature of “order,” but also of the nature of “chance.” Thomas’s understanding of “chance” follows that of Aristotle, for whom nature (that is, determinate operation, per se causality) is prior to chance (indeterminate accidental causality), not vice versa.112 Appeal to chance to account for the unity, or even the various activities, of an ecological whole is insufficient by itself. Chance by itself simply cannot account for the complexity, natural diversity, or functionally oriented activity (as displayed, for example, in the cell, or in organ physiology) observed in nature. Here it is particularly important that “chance” be viewed in its inseparable relationship to (not just its distinction from) determinate causes and natural necessity. Chance itself is nothing other than the clash of causes striving to attain their appointed ends: it is intelligible only on the basis of determination.113 In this context of trying to explain the (as yet highly opaque) principles of the order observed in the world, it is furthermore important to distinguish our limited human understanding of nature from the comprehensive vision of God: the ultimate outcome of the world (and the overall means to its achievement) is not a matter of “chance” for God.114 Nevertheless, random or chance events can and do serve as significant (partial) explanatory factors (in the efficient causal order) when viewed as instrumental secondary agents of a superior agency: contingency, and randomness or chance, are not incompatible with the Catholic notion of Providence.115 But philosophical naturalism seeks other ways to remove God from our concept of the world. Often the ultimate rationale for the universe is sought within the invariable physical forces governing its behavior from within. However, appeal to inexorable physical “laws” will not put the question to 112 See Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 39. For Thomas’s understanding of “chance,” see In libros Physicorum, Bk. II, lect. 5 & 9; In Post. Analytica, Bk. II, lect. 9; In Meta., Bk. VI, lect. 3; Bk. VII, lect. 6; ST I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 1; q. 115, a. 6; q. 116, a. 1; In Perihermeneias, Bk. I, lect. 14. 113 Such is it defined both by Aristotle and Boethius: see Aristotle, Physica, Bk. II, c. 8 (196b20–24 & 197a32–35); Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Prose 1, lines 53–58 (ed. Stewart-Rand). See Aquinas, In libros Physicorum, Bk. II, lect. 10; ScG, Bk. I, c. 44; Bk. II, c. 39; Bk. III, c. 3; c. 74; ST I, q. 116, a. 1; II–II, q. 64, a. 8; In I Sent., d. 13, q. 2, a. 1; In De caelo, Bk. II, lect. 7 & 11. 114 See Aquinas, In Meta., Bk. VI, lect. 3, no. 26 (ed. Leonine). 115 See especially Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 94; ST I, q. 116, a. 1 and ad 2. 182 Stephen A. Hipp rest. How do you explain nature’s inexorable inclination to determined kinds of action (on the basis of which the laws themselves are derived)? Some have claimed that the universe simply is not so beautifully designed. But Thomas is not talking merely about a “pretty pattern” (which might be disputed on subjective grounds); he is talking about determinate operations and essentially subordinated causality. The coordination and consistency of these behaviors results in the kind of order we are concerned with (that of an “ordered whole”). Such an ordered and intelligible structure is the presupposition to all natural science. Appeals to evolution (as an attempt to oppose the doctrine of creation) only prove the point. There has been an explosion in the direction of teleological order recently in connection with astrophysics and microbiology.116 Given the breathtaking complexity of even a single cell, the tumult in which the origin of life studies currently finds itself, and the “fine-tuning” (defiance of probability) exhibited by the values of the fundamental physical constants (including those of electromagnetic interaction, gravitation, the proton to electron mass ratio, and other forces), science itself tends more to confirm than to challenge the physical, metaphysical, and theological principles enunciated in Aquinas. The End (Order) of the Universe in Terms of Truth At every level of finality—intrinsic, proximate extrinsic, and ultimate extrinsic—the end of the universe ought to be conceived, according to Thomas, in terms of truth, the good or perfection of being that is relative to an intellect. The last end of each thing is that which is intended by the first author or mover of that thing: and the first author and mover of the universe is an intellect. . . . Consequently the last end of the universe must be the good of the intellect: and this is truth.117 For Thomas, the perfection of the universe in truth means much more than cognition of truth, even ultimate Truth, on the part of the rational creature. Truth constitutes the end of creation in a fourfold sense: (1) as something to be acquired subjectively by creatures endowed with knowl116 See W. L. Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 157–65. 117 Aquinas, ScG, Bk.I, c. 1. The fact that there is any finality at all in things implies ordination by, and to, an intellect. Even the tendencies of those things that act by nature alone and not by intelligence resolve to an intellect, the intellect which is the first cause of such determinate operations (see Aquinas, ST I, q. 2, a. 3). Nature’s Finality 183 edge; that is, knowledge of ultimate reality and specifically of God in his mystery on the part of men and angels; (2) as the achievement of the natural perfection of all creatures in conformity with the essential structure of each thing as conceived in the mind of God; that is, conformity with the objective criteria by which the essential perfection of a thing is measured, and this is “objective truth”; (3) as the realization of the order of the universe as a whole as intended by its author and first mover, which too is “objective truth” (and is inseparable from the preceding point of which it is an extension, as the collective and communal dimension of creaturely perfection); and (4) inasmuch as the manifestation of truth is the end of all creation, all things being created in order to manifest not only the objective truth which corresponds to their essence or nature, but also the efficient, exemplary, and final cause of this objective truth which is the tri-personal God. In man, progression in (1) is necessary for (2) and (3), for (2) and (3) consist essentially in (1). For all creatures, the realization of (2) is as necessary for the realization of (3) as the realization of (3) is for the realization of (2); accomplishing (4) is essential to (2) and (3); and fulfillment of (2) and (3) intensifies the accomplishment of (4). For all creatures inferior to man, the fulfillment of (2) and (3) is ordered to and realized in the fulfillment of (1) in man, for human cognition is the very raison d’être of the visible creation inferior to man. The true, according to Thomas, is nothing other than being considered as that toward which an intellect inclines.118 But things can bear a relationship to an intellect in more than one way: either accidentally or essentially. The relationship is accidental when a thing’s essence does not depend upon the intellect by which it is known; but it is essential when its essence is dependent upon the knowing intellect, on the basis of which alone its nature (and, therefore, any other knowledge of that nature) can be judged.119 The divine intellect is the cause of natural forms. All natures as such are dependent upon the mind of God, in which they are “conceived”; and every being is “true,” therefore, inasmuch as it is a realization of the idea of it in the mind of God (the ideal according to which it was produced). This truth is a property in things, and, to the extent that they express the ideal form of their natures in the mind of the Creator, things are said to be true “absolutely” or “objectively.” Thus God himself, his wisdom and Word, is the measure of these realities. Human 118 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 16, a. 1 (cf. a. 3).Truth always expresses a relation to an intel- lect; it is, furthermore, predicated primarily of the intellect and secondarily of things, for nothing is called “true” except insofar as it conforms to an intellect. See Aquinas, De ver., q. 1, a. 2. 119 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 16, a. 1. Stephen A. Hipp 184 knowledge, on the other hand, does not make the natural forms it seeks to understand; rather, such objects of human knowledge are prior to our knowledge of them and are the measure of that knowledge.120 God’s Mind measure correspondence/ adequation natural reality measure objective truth makes possible correspondence/ adequation For human knowledge (subjective truth), man must come into conformity with reality the way that God has made it. subjective truth my mind Figure 2 The purpose of creation is truth in both its subjective and objective senses. This is because the perfection of knowledge stands above the rest of the perfections in nature, because it implies a spiritual reception of forms, that is, a sort of “generation” in the spiritual order.121 Intellection, moreover, is a spiritual reality which, operatively speaking, is wholly separate from matter. Entirely spiritual, it is the basis on which man is the image of God, whose very essence is truth and knowledge.122 In God, objective truth and subjective truth are idem in re; God is not merely in conformity with an eternal type (the idea in God’s mind), but he is the eternal type (since, on the basis of simplicity, the divine ideas are nothing other than his essence).123 He is thus the cause and measure of all other truth. Now man’s highest faculty is that of reason. Accordingly, the perfection of man consists essentially in contemplation, perfected principally in 120 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 14, a. 8, ad 3. 121 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 78, a. 3; q. 84, a. 1; In De anima, Bk. II, lect. 24; De ver., q. 2, a. 5, ad 1–3. 122 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, aa. 2–3; q. 93, aa. 4–5; In De anima, Bk. III, lect. 7. 123 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 16, a. 4; see also ST I, q. 16, a. 5; ScG, Bk. I, cc. 45–47. Nature’s Finality 185 the contemplation of God.124 As the highest perfection in the visible world, everything else in nature must be ordered to this contemplation in some way. Indeed, the whole of the material order exists for the sake of man’s knowledge. Creation is a bridge between two intellects. Constructed by the act of cognition, this bridge unites the mind of man with the mind of God. A natural thing, therefore, being placed between two intellects is called true in so far as it conforms to either. It is said to be true with respect to its conformity with the divine intellect in so far as it fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect.125 The objective truth (and intrinsic perfection, therefore) of natural things lies in their realizing the various finalities for which God made them, the end toward which they were ordained by God. But that end, extrinsically considered, is to lead men to truth (and, by this, to glorify God). Therefore the realization of the objective truth of the material universe— which is nothing less than the realization of the intrinsic finality of the universe as a whole—consists in the very fulfillment of its proximate extrinsic end, its facilitation of human contemplation. Creation, in other words, becomes itself (fully actualizes its potencies) and is “true” precisely in propelling men, cognitively, toward God—in serving to perfect man and bringing about man’s objective truth, which is realized in his acquisition of subjective truth concerning God.126 “To this end the whole world was made,” observes Thomas.127 The reason for this relationship between the visible creation and man’s ascent to God is rooted in the nature of man. For “man stands at the border between two worlds.”128 While he is highest among the visible creatures, he is lowest amongst intelligent beings. Because of the limitations of his intellectual power, man’s proper (abstractive) mode of knowing is bound up with the material world. All human knowledge has its origin in sense experience, and all human knowledge concretely terminates, in a certain way, in sensible representation, inasmuch as the intellect depends upon and turns toward images in every act of knowing.129 In a twofold way, then, at its beginning and at its end, the intellectual activity 124 See Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 180, a. 4. 125 Aquinas, De ver., q. 1, a. 2. 126 See Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 180, a. 4. 127 ST I, q. 1, a. 1: “It would seem most fitting that by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known; for to this end was the whole world made.” 128 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. IV, c. 55; cf. Bk. II, c. 68. 129 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 84, aa. 6–7; q. 85, a. 1; q. 86, a. 1. 186 Stephen A. Hipp of man is entrenched in the visible dimension of creation.130 As Thomas explains (with regard to the genesis of ideas), man abstracts an intelligible species from the material conditions of the phantasm, and then he knows concrete reality according to its universal intelligible content through a return to the phantasm. The sensible features of things thus constitute the environment for human thought. That is their reason for being: As the senses are situated chiefly in the face, other animals have the face turned to the ground, as it were for the purpose of seeking food and procuring a livelihood; whereas man has his face erect, in order that by the senses . . . he may freely survey the sensible objects around him, both heavenly and earthly, so as to gather intelligible truth from all things.131 According to Thomas, the very body, by means of which man enters into cognitive contact with the sensible realm, exists for the soul and its spiritual operation.132 Sensible reality thus constitutes the substratum within which human knowledge takes form. The manifold complexity of material beings actuates the variety of sense powers of the human soul, in order that a transcendent activity called intellection might occur. Culmination of Truth and the Finality of Creation in Divine Wisdom The hierarchical structure existing between man’s knowledge of natural realities, the realities themselves, and God’s creative knowledge of the same has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the role of God’s knowledge and the personal expression of that knowledge in his consubstantial Word, not only in the ordering of the universe with respect to final causality, but also in the constitution of its intrinsic structures, and in the leading of creation toward its end through the intellectual agency of man—by which man, who is as dependent upon that Word as any other creature, and in all the same ways (efficient, exemplary, and final), participates in the shepherding role of the Word. Truth must be the last end of the whole universe . . . and for this reason divine Wisdom, clothed in flesh, declares that He came into the world to 130 Therefore, while a large portion of human cognitive activity may be “theory- laden observation,” all of human knowledge is “observation-coated theoria.” 131 Aquinas, ST I, q. 91, a. 3, ad 3. 132 “The proximate end of the human body is the rational soul and its operations; since matter is for the sake of the form, and instruments are for the action of the agent.” Aquinas, ST I, q. 91, a. 3; cf. ScG, Bk. III, c. 128; ST I, q. 47, a. 2; q. 65, a. 2; q. 76, a. 5; q. 91, a. 3. Nature’s Finality 187 make known the truth, saying ( Jo. xviii. 37): For this was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth.133 Given the place of creaturely objective truth in the perfection of the universe, its essential place in human cognition, and its intermediary position between human knowledge and God, the supreme perfection of God’s work ad extra through the Incarnation of his Word, “first-born of all creation,” invites us to see in Christ, in his sacred humanity—perfectly adequated (and indeed subsistentially identical) to the mind and wisdom (and will) of God, ultimate measure of human acts, and perfectly inclined toward the rest of nature—the supreme and concrete realization of every aspect of truth described above and the perfect coordination of the relationships among them. In the language of finality: perceiving truth as the end of the universe leads directly to recognizing Jesus Christ and the glory of Christ as the proper end of the world. For Christ is nothing less than that “divine Wisdom clothed in flesh,”134 subsistent truth itself considered in its personally subsistent expression, that is, as the expressive term of the productive act of divine knowing, in whom the fullness of the content of divine knowledge resides, and in whom all things were conceived and brought forth. In the Summa contra Gentiles,Thomas displays simultaneously, and in an architecturally poetic manner, not only the Trinitarian and processional law of creaturely existence (a circulatio a Deo ad Deum), but also the centrality—in the orders of efficiency, exemplarity, and finality—of Christ. The first book of this work, which considers “that which belongs to God in himself ”135 (examining God’s existence and his attributes, with special attention to his intellectual perfection), is essentially a presentation of God as subsistent Truth. Book II “concerns the coming forth of creatures from God.”136 God’s immanent operation (Bk. I) is the source of this operation (Bk. II) and precedes it as a cause precedes its effect. The whole universe is designed according to God’s eternal Wisdom and Word (the inner product of the divine self-knowledge): personally and essentially subsistent Truth is the font of creation. Book III “concerns the ordering of creatures to God as to their end.”137 It studies the order of creation to this end, and the special ordering of man, who is 133 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. I, c. 1. 134 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. I, c. 1. 135 See the divisio textus of Thomas: ScG, Bk. I, c. 9; cf. Bk. II, c. 1; Bk. III, c. 1; Bk. IV, c. 1. 136 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. II, c. 1. 137 Aquinas, ScG, Bk. III, c. 1. 188 Stephen A. Hipp endowed with intelligence, to the same end, which is Intelligibility itself. Truth is the aim and purpose of the universe. Finally, Book IV studies the Trinity, the Incarnation and the supernatural end of the universe. Truth and love subsist in personal form; and wisdom has assumed flesh and come into the world to make divine truth known to men, and to lead creation back to Truth. It is significant that the opening chapter of the first book sits us within the sapiential literature; the whole of the Summa contra Gentiles is intended to reflect the vision proper to the wise man, who, enlightened by the Wisdom of God, considers the whole universe in its beginning and end, which is Truth. The very notion of “wisdom,” therefore, serves as a template for the entire work—expressing the truth as ordered, harmonious, and flowing from a unifying principle. The centrality of Christ, both doctrinally and structurally, moreover, wholly corresponds to the sublime role of God’s “Word,” which brings forth man in and for the truth and reintroduces mankind to truth in its objective and subjective senses, its theoretical and existential senses, and its created and uncreated senses.138 The ordering of the universe—the laws of its motion and the action of one creature upon another—is discovered and made perfect only within (not merely with reference to) the mystery of Christ. The Ordination of the Visible Creation to Truth Is Verified even in the Supernatural Realm The natural world continues to perform its role as mediator of truth to man even as pertains to truths of the supernatural order, that is, to supernatural revelation in this life. For the divine truths that are the object of faith come to us under the garb of human language, in the form of historical deeds, persons, things, and events. All of our supernatural knowledge of God in this life is packaged in the form of concepts drawn from our experience of the material world around us. There is no emancipation from phantasms even when our concepts are purified, in the act of analogous predication, by way of “negation” and “eminence.”139 Only in the next life, when, through the grace of glory, our natural mode of knowing will be succeeded by intuitive vision, will this (proximate) extrinsic finality of the natural world cease to exist. No longer will knowledge of God be mediated through material beings, but, conversely, all reality, the material creation included, will be known directly and fully 138 Thus the very opening chapter of the Summa contra Gentiles already announces the pivotal significance of the revelation of all truth in him who is Truth itself. See ScG, Bk. I, c. 1. 139 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 84, a. 7. Nature’s Finality 189 in our knowledge of the essence of God. Yet, even though the world as we know it will pass away, matter and sensation will continue to play their essential role in the perfection of human nature; they will continue to serve man’s fulfillment in contemplation. For the elect shall behold the majesty of the Godhead in the glorified humanity of Christ and in his saints, whose bodily natures have become transparent to the divinity. Here it is not so much that man’s knowledge of God benefits from matter as an embodiment of divine fullness, but that matter itself profits from the knowledge of God which redounds to the transformation and delight of the body. It is in this “beatific” experience that the material creation reaches its ultimate fulfillment. We receive a glimpse and experience a true beginning of these relationships between matter, spirit, and glory, and their relationship to Christ and to the glorifying knowledge and love of the Triune God in the exercise of the Christian rites. Christian liturgy is simultaneously the preeminent manifestation and the catalyst of the ordering and advancement of the visible world toward its destiny, through man, in God. A Lesson for Stewardship If we are to respect nature and “steward” it toward its proper end, we must seek to interact with it in such a way that it continuously directs our minds to truth, and to ultimate truth, which is God: God’s effects show us the way to the contemplation of God himself. . . . Hence Augustine says (De vera religione, xxix) that “in the study of creatures we must not exercise an empty and futile curiosity, but should make them the stepping-stone to things unperishable and everlasting.”140 The finality of nature is incomprehensible outside of the finality of man; therefore, to treat nature wisely is to orient its use toward the acquisition of wisdom. To do this, man must see creation in its proper relationship to man and to God; he must recognize the intermediate position it holds in the intellectual ascendency of man to God and in God’s condescending love toward man. In concrete practice, this entails reintroducing God into the science classroom; it means looking for the vestiges of God in nature within the very exercise of scientific investigation; it implies the harmony of faith and reason and invites the theologian to dialogue with science about the goals of the latter; it means studying nature in order, first of all, to understand its layered complexus of finalities and the bearing that this has upon contemplation and worship. 140 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 180, a. 4. 190 Stephen A. Hipp Conclusion Although, in Aquinas, we find no direct undertaking of the notion of “stewardship,” several fundamental concepts in his philosophy and theology of natural finality mark the parameters and indicate the central features of a responsible stewardship of creation. Among these concepts are, first of all, the relational perfection of the universe and its members, the goodness of which resides primarily in their order toward one another and especially toward God. Stewardship from this perspective entails, amongst other things, placing God at the center of our activity with nature, and the conscious recognition and implementation of the hierarchical relationship between nature and man—that is, the subordination of the former to the latter, as well as the dependency of the latter upon the former—intended by God. Second, the good of the whole must be understood to take precedence over and to be logically prior to the good of any part. Here stewardship implies a mature consideration of the purpose of the whole of creation in the light of divine revelation.The manifestation of God to man and the facilitation of man’s participation in the divine life constitute the ultimate value-conferring purpose of the world inferior to man. What we do with the latter must always, and predominantly, be evaluated from this perspective. Third, the dignity of creatures is to be sought in the degree to which they communicate goodness to others, in the causal interaction through which they bring about an ordered unity and serve the ends of others. Stewardship in this connection implies and requires treating some things as means to the goods of others. This does not signify reducing things to objects of subjective whim; it means ennobling them as instruments of superior effects, through which they share more intimately in the order of divine providence. Fourth, such a subordination of ends is governed by the formal ontological differences among things, lower beings existing for the sake of superior beings, and transitory beings existing for the sake of what is eternal. The intrinsic finality of the whole universe (its proper order) is fulfilled precisely in the subordination of the visible creation to man and of matter to spirit. On this account, authentic stewardship always seeks to actualize the properly human mode of existing, namely, knowledge of truth and ultimate truth. It is the privilege of nature to nurture human understanding, and especially a human understanding of first causes. No greater service can be rendered by man to nature than to make of it the medium of his cognitive ascent to God who is Truth itself. Finally, as truth itself is the end of the whole universe, the Word Incarnate is the singular finality of all creation. In him, the perfect ordering of all things Nature’s Finality 191 is simultaneously made known to man, visibly displayed, set into motion, and concretely achieved. Effective stewardship means relating to things in such a way as to discover within them the Christological mystery of their origin, constitution, and destiny; it means bringing them into contact with the mystery of Christ, for their sanctification and for their utilization in the communication of divine life; in a word, it means exercising the priestly quality of God’s people so as to mediate (through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ) the reditus of the entire creation to the Father. Only the man of Christian faith can shepherd the world that surrounds him; and it is primarily through the celebration of the Christian rites that he can do so. Above all, in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the intrinsic and extrinsic finality of man, along with the proximate and ultimate extrinsic finality of the whole visible creation, as well as the intrinsic finality of the universe as a whole, are at once proclaimed and accomplished in an incomparable way, foreshadowing that glorified state of repose in which God will be all in all. Surely, these are but very general conclusions regarding the actions of man with regard to his environment. But it becomes clear from these principles that, for Thomas, the created world that surrounds man is of inestimable importance to him and must be treated in accordance with the relationship God has established between man and the rest of creation on the basis of their essential constitutions. Man’s natural and supernatural perfection are inextricably tied up with the natural world. It is precisely in virtue of its instrumental value to man that the visible world, moreover, is able to more fully reflect (and, therefore, glorify) God, which is the first reason for its being. Therefore, man is every bit as important and good for nature as nature is for him. Furthermore, the spiritual perfection of man toward which creation is ordered is itself intended ultimately for the glory of God. The anthropocentrism of Aquinas is thus, in reality, a form of theocentrism. The glory of God and its relationship to the dignity of man is the final arbiter in Thomas’s understanding of the significance and possible uses of non-rational beings. The theocentricity of this anthropocentrism wholly guards against a despotic and selfish exploitation of nature. Indeed, the “form” of Thomistic stewardship, taken as a virtue, is nothing less than charity. Then, in loving obedience before God, and following the lead of Augustine, we may indeed, in the words of St. Thomas, do whatever we please with an irrational creature141: dilige et quod vis fac.142 N&V 141 ScG, Bk. III, c. 112. 142 Augustine, In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos tractatus decem, tract. VII, 8. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 193–213 193 Thomistic Reflections On The Cosmos, Man, And Stewardship S TEVEN A. L ONG Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL Introduction T HE FOLLOWING remarks attempt a very formal speculative treatment of cosmos, man, and stewardship, fecundated by the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas.1 In what follows below, I shall first emphasize the speculative principles required to address the character of man’s relation to, and limited stewardship over, the material cosmos—principles whose understanding slowly is re-emerging from the tunnel of an anti-realist eclipse within philosophy, systematic theology, and moral theology. While their consideration here is as propaedeutic to the contemplation of the dignity of the lower creation and of man’s stewardship over it, nonetheless there is a strong case that the account of these principles is of greater value than their application in the ensuing analysis. Indeed, it is the absence of an appreciation of these principles that haunts contemporary thought in its relation to revealed truth, metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, and ethics. Thus almost half of the following remarks regard the principles that are necessary to address the question in hand. Some of these are remote and some proximate, and so the treatment of these principles is accordingly divided. Second, on the basis of these principles I will set forth an account of man’s relation to the lower creation, to the cosmos as a whole, and to 1 I take this occasion to acknowledge and thank Christopher J. Thompson, Academic Dean of The Saint Paul School of Divinity, for his invaluable inspiration, example, conversation, and criticism. Whatever may be good in the following work must trace its etiology to his encouragement; whatever falls short of its promise must redound to myself. 194 Steven Long God. This account seeks to vindicate the limited but real dignity of the lower creation and the importance of stewardship precisely on the foundation of the role of the lower creation in the overall order of the cosmos and in relation to God. Third, I will consider cosmic order in relation to the good for man, arguing that the dignity of the lower creation, man’s call to stewardship with respect to it, and the subordination of the lower creation to the good of man, all flow from the same foundation: the role of the lower creation in the hierarchic constitution of the cosmos. Fourth, an argument will be presented against the “boundary hypothesis,” that is, against the view that the lower creation is demarcated from the zone of human agency and transformative technology by a mobile boundary that implies a constant shrinkage for the scope of undiluted nature as opposed to the growing chrysalis of human technology and technologically transformed nature. I argue that such a view fails to discern the foundation of the second in the first, and therefore fails to discern that what is in view is a limited and prudential, rather than an absolute, distinction. Fifth and finally, a few brief conclusory remarks will be offered regarding the prudential character of human stewardship of the lower creation.2 The account that follows is Thomistic both in its principles and in its insistence that any true regard for the lower creation has, finally, a theistic provenance which alike implies hierarchic subordination of lower to higher, and the dignity of the lower creation precisely with respect to our attainment of the most important truths. Itinerary of Principles General Considerations There are of course dramatic and profound questions regarding the nature of human stewardship of the physical world. Yet manifestly, nothing in this consideration can proceed intelligently if knowledge of nature and being—in particular knowledge of the terrestrial cosmos and its 2 It will be noted that I use the phrase “lower creation” rather than “environ- ment”—this is for two reasons. (1) Man, as a rational creature, does not merely have an “environment” but a “world” which is indeed the ordered whole of the cosmos. (2) It is, as a function of metaphysical demonstration, true that all finite being is created, so that what we are speaking of with respect to the physical order is quite literally, vis-à-vis creatures endowed with intellect and will, the “lower creation.” Moderns and postmoderns, having lost the praeambula fidei and so being deprived of the rigorous character of the metaphysical demonstrations for the reality of God, naturally tend toward reductionist formulae with respect to the order of the universe. The language of the Catholic tradition is otherwise, and should be stressed, just as Catholic authors speak of “procreation” rather than merely “reproduction.” The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 195 normative relationship to the human good—is impossible. Under the circumstances, this is the moment when most contemporary environmentalists should be checking out of the discussion: because most of our contemporaries either do not believe that fixed knowledge of human nature and of the cosmos—of being and nature—exists; or else, alternately, they believe that our sole knowledge of the cosmos is through positive science, such that whatever knowledge of the cosmos there may be is minimal, tentative, provisional, and wholly separate from ethical wisdom and metaphysics. Those who reduce knowledge and science to the confines of positive science, and those who deny the adequatio of human intelligence to the real as such, can found no inference regarding human stewardship with respect to the lower creation because they can found no properly metaphysical, cosmological, anthropological, or ethical understanding whatsoever. This, in itself, goes far toward explaining why it is that reasonable engagement of what are called “environmental issues” often is lacking. Thus it is manifest that significant rational deprivations afflict the effort to understand man’s relation to the lower creation. The first of these is the denial of the metaphysical adequatio, the conformity of intellect with being and nature. The principle of noncontradiction is widely today supposed to be a merely logical principle, rather than—as Thomas noted in question 94, article 2 of the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae—“founded upon the opposition of being and nonbeing.” Although nonbeing is merely conceptual, being is real. Just as it is eternally true that the divine nature is not a created nature (and this proposition would be true even had there never been creatures, such that it is manifest that divine nature is really distinct from created nature), just so, being is by its real nature—analogically understood—really distinct from nonbeing. There is no real relation of being to nonbeing: nonexistent things have no real relations, and nonbeing is pure negation. But there is a real distinction: the real distinction between being and nonbeing is founded on being which is itself real. In Book III of the Will to Power Nietzsche observed that to take this distinction as a real distinction implies a prior contact of the mind with reality. Just so: it does. The mind has immediate and direct contactus with the real—initially and chiefly (and this is not without importance for our discourse) with the sensible real, sensible being. Likewise pertinent to our discourse is the datum that this contactus with sensible reality is a function of the human intellect’s openness to the entire universe of being. The purely natural but immaterial powers of intellect and will constitute in man the lowest foundational stratum of the imago Dei, the image 196 Steven Long of God, in man. Were man’s intellect and will not open to the universe of being, true, and good, then to be made a friend of God through grace man would need to cease being man and become a different species. But man’s spiritual powers enable him to receive the divine aid and so to be uplifted to the divine friendship. This reflects the remarkable uniqueness of man’s capacity to receive the entire material cosmos not physically but rather intentionally and spiritually, through knowledge: the universal openness of the intellect to being and nature. Without such openness, the very question of man’s relation to the cosmos, and his responsibility with respect to it, could not arise. Man images God in an essentially nobler way in grace, and in an even nobler fashion in everlasting glory in beatitude, than is true simply according to the constitution of human nature in itself. But the nobler aspects of the imago Dei presuppose a natural substratum in man which is lowest in the order of perfection, but without which the imago Dei in grace and in glory would not be possible. Even to raise the question of stewardship is implicitly and actually to acknowledge the distinctive openness to being, true, and good that characterizes the human creature as a function of man’s rational nature. Man has not merely an environment, but a cosmos, because intellect is not materially reducible to physical limitations, howsoever much it is in its exercise correlated with these and dependent upon these. Of course, the intellect is dependent not with respect to its act as such, which transcends material limits, but with respect to the prerequisite conditions for attaining the object of its act: as the power of eyesight needs light to see, so the power of intellect needs its object attained through abstraction from the sensible phantasm in order to know; but knowledge is not sensation, as eyesight is not simply light. Were intellection supposed to be reducible merely to some modification of an intermediating (intermediating as between knower and known) material substrate—as is for example proposed in the view that knowledge is merely a function of the modeling of the real by the structure and activity of the brain—the following question arises. If all one’s “knowledge” is limited to an intermediating model, and there is no direct knowledge of the real as such, how is it possible to judge that a model or intermediating medium accurately reflects the real? If a photograph is said to be a likeness of my father, this makes sense only insofar as one may compare it to the original; but if the original cannot be known as such, one is in no position to say whether the likeness is good or not. To remain momentarily with the language so often used of our knowledge as a function of a sort of neural “encryption” in the medium of the brain: if there is no direct knowledge of the real as The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 197 such, how can one know that this “encryption” or this medium and its structuring are in the least adequate to reality? On the hypothesis of knowledge as a function of the modeling of the real by the brain, the brain must be adequate to model the real, and hence adequate to model itself too—but without direct knowledge of the real we are in no position to know that this is so, and indeed thus in no position even to know that the brain exists. If, and only if, the intellect has the capacity to conform in the intentional order to the real—to become intentionally rather than physically its object—is objectivity possible. If objectivity is not affirmed, then there is no foundation even for the claim that brain activity exists. The idea that intellectual intentionality, which is intrinsically immaterial, can be replaced by reductive physical causality (as opposed to the explication of intentionality and knowledge in relation to ontological causal analysis in terms of act and potency) is a self-immolative proposition wholly inconsistent with rational objectivity. That brain activity, and sensory activity in general for that matter, may be a predispository requisite for the mind to obtain its object via abstraction, does not alter or obviate the intrinsically immaterial nature of the supervening intellective act performed with respect to the object so obtained. Likewise presupposed to this consideration of cosmos, man, and stewardship are the four causes—material, formal, efficient, and final—and the real division of being by act and potency, a proposition whose apodicticity is today little understood. These principles are important because they enter into the articulation of the cosmological order that is participated by the lower creation. We must largely leave aside a more thorough examination of the four causes, with the exception of a consideration of finality in the next section below, where the analysis sustaining unified normative teleology is discussed. Yet it would be a mistake not to comment further on the doctrine of the division of being by act and potency, and to leave unobserved just how close is the real distinction of potency and act to the principle of noncontradiction understood as a real metaphysical principle. The division of being by potency and act is a proposition perhaps developed initially with respect to the physics, but developed in answering the essentially metaphysical challenge of Parmenidean monism and pregnant with implicit and actual metaphysical significance. For it is not enough to see that being is in fact many, limited, and changing either in order to account for and explain what it is in being that enables it to be many, limited, and changing, or to reconcile this judgment with the principle of noncontradiction. It is the discovery of potentia as a real principle dependent upon act but distinct from and founded upon 198 Steven Long it—a principle that is a principle of being and not identical with mere negation—that answers this formal metaphysical interrogatory. As the capacity for being represented by a certain nature is potentia vis-à-vis its actual being, or as the sculptability of marble is potentia vis-à-vis its actual sculpting, so potency is not act, but is founded upon act and limits it. The challenge of Parmenidean monism—that being is identical with itself and therefore radically unitary; that nothing exists outside of being that could limit it, so that being is unlimited; and that being is not nonbeing, cannot be nonbeing, and so cannot change—is answered by the discovery of potency as a real principle in being that accounts for manyness, limit, and change. Act is not self-limiting—the very denotation of “act” is of itself not a denotation of real limit—but is limited only by its relation to potency.3 This foundational discovery of being as divided by potency and act is at the heart of Thomistic metaphysics, of the real distinction of essence and existence (which, one recalls, in De ente et essentiae philosophically hinges on the argument that all the ways in which being is plurifiable presuppose potentia),4 and indeed is the real foundation for the doctrine of participation (which Thomas always, after his Scriptum 3 This of course does not mean that potency temporally antecedes act, nor that an initially infinite act is somehow contracted by potency (as though the existence of the frog were infinite but at the last minute limited by the frog nature). Rather it means that act as such is not self-limiting; when God causes a thing to be, its actuality is received by and proportioned to a potential principle in relation to which the limit of act occurs.This is clear when one considers essence as potency vis-à-vis existence as act. God ordains that a being whose nature represents a certain capacity for existence comes into being, and potency and act are caused simultaneously, the potency depending upon the act (as the essence depends upon existence) and the act (e.g., existence) being limited by the potency of which it is the act. But the priority of act is natural, not temporal; and although act as such is not self-limiting, this is not to say that first a created existence was infinite and then it was limited by potency, because what makes for created existence as finite perfection is precisely its delimitation by potency.Yet act as such, most formally considered, is not self-limiting: nothing in the real analogical denotation of “act” designates potency as such. Act is limited only in relation to potency. This analysis seems to rule out the interpretations associated with Rudi A. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), especially 152 and 154. On this matter, it would appear that John F. Wippel—cf. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 129—is correct regarding Thomas’s teaching. 4 Text from the Corpus Thomisticum, S.Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, made available online by the University of Navarre (www.unav.es/filosofia/alarcon/amicis/ ctopera.html#OM), De ente et essentia, Caput 3: “Ergo patet quod esse est aliud ab essentia vel quiditate, nisi forte sit aliqua res, cuius quiditas sit ipsum suum esse; The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 199 on the Sentences, articulates in terms of the likeness of diverse rationes of act as limited by potency, which is the evidence upon which the mind rises to the affirmation of the reality of God). These remote principles are all bound up with, and indeed, derived from, a knowledge of the absolute object (universal being), formal object (the true), and proper object (quiddity in corporeal matter) of the human intellect. Not to be aware of the metaphysical profundity of the knowledge available to man, is in a sense not to be capable of understanding the dignity of the lower creation and its place in the hierarchic ordering of the cosmos. The very question of stewardship over the lower creation itself implies a real relative transcendence with respect to it on the part of man—a relative transcendence that materialist anthropology cannot in the least explain. Likewise, the metaphysical roots of theism deriving from the analogicity of being as the likeness of diverse rationes of act as limited by potency are required for the causal analysis reaching to the reality of God, and for the subsequent account of participation, both of which provide the general context for contemplation of the role of the lower creation within the cosmic order. Proximate Considerations The principles considered above—metaphysical realism; the adequation of mind to the real; the relation between the first principle of noncontradiction and the real division of being by act and potency as the foundation for the theistic proofs; the reality of the four causes—are formally necessary but in a certain sense remote. By contrast there are three crucial principles that must here exact from us a greater consideration, because they are most formally and proximately essential to this analysis. These principles are first, normative unified natural teleology; second, the primacy of the speculative vis-à-vis the practical reason; and third, the transcendence of the common good. On these three principles hang not only the correct approach to the subject of cosmos, man, and stewardship, but a proper insight into the nature and implications of the natural law. et haec res non potest esse nisi una et prima, quia impossibile est, ut fiat plurificatio alicuius nisi per additionem alicuius differentiae, sicut multiplicatur natura generis in species, vel per hoc quod forma recipitur in diversis materiis, sicut multiplicatur natura speciei in diversis individuis, vel per hoc quod unum est absolutum et aliud in aliquo receptum, sicut si esset quidam calor separatus, esset alius a calore non separato ex ipsa sua separatione. Si autem ponatur aliqua res, quae sit esse tantum, ita ut ipsum esse sit subsistens, hoc esse non recipiet additionem differentiae, quia iam non esset esse tantum, sed esse et praeter hoc forma aliqua; et multo minus reciperet additionem materiae, quia iam esset esse non subsistens sed materiale. Unde relinquitur quod talis res, quae sit suum esse, non potest esse nisi una.” 200 Steven Long 1. The first—normative unified teleology—affirms that agency can neither be nor be known apart from the end for the sake of which it exists, and that there is order not only between acts and ends but among ends. Normative unified teleology—the co-measuring or commensuration of ends according to their proximity to the proportionate natural, and ultimate supernatural, end—is a metaphysical, cosmological, and anthropological premise before, and as a condition of being, an ethical premise. First, no efficient cause can exist apart from teleological finality. As St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us in the Summa contra Gentiles (III, c. 2), were operations not teleologically ordered, they would either never begin—because there would be nothing for the sake of which they would be acting—or else, if per impossibile they could begin to act without any end, then their action would never cease, because there would be no end capable of completing, fulfilling, or terminating such an action. Further, no action as such can even be understood without some minimal understanding of the end toward which and for the sake of which it moves. If one asks what snow shoveling is, the answer is “moving snow with a shovel-like implement” or something to that effect. Even quantum physics identifies the differing probabilities for electron position in terms of the differing final positions themselves (within a certain time frame)— something that even the radical Copenhagen school cannot avoid. Efficiency is defined by telos, defined by the end. Agency or efficiency can neither be, nor be known, apart from reference to the end in relation to which it is constituted. As Aristotle reminds us, an ordered series of efficient causes implies an ordered series of final causes or ends, rising to the Final End, which is demonstrably identical with the First Efficient Cause, namely, God. An ordered series of efficient and final causes comprises, not a multiverse but a cosmos: an ordered whole.5 The purely speculative necessity of teleology is ineluctable. Some have supposed that evolutionary theory proves decisively that there is no such unified natural teleology.Yet all that such theory achieves is the affirmation of teleology extending even to the consti5 Of course God could cause some such physical system without ordering it to us: and, were this so, it would exist and we would not know of it. But then, too, it would be linked to us indirectly, by virtue of being linked to the First Cause of all finite being, which is alike our First Cause. If deriving from the same ultimate cause places effects in a proportionate analogical unity, then by definition all possible universes participate one divine order. The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 201 tution of the genetic order.6 The seeming absence of teleology from the vast expanse of inert physical creation is an illusion that can be maintained only by the twofold loss of (1) the perception of hierarchy, which makes clear the ordering of the lowest common denominator of the physical to the biological and spiritual, and finally to God; and, what is closely related to the first, (2) the causal subjection of subordinate to superordinate realities. 2. These judgments point to the second of the three principles I wish to address: namely, the primacy of the speculative with respect to the practical. The realm of practical reason is the realm of reasoning with respect to doing and making. But such reasoning presupposes the prior existence of appetite for something that is served by doing or making. However, appetite—the motion of the will toward some end—itself requires prior knowledge. Without prior intellectual specification, without some degree of knowledge, there is no inclinational motion, the will is not moved. But as prior knowledge precedes the motion of the will, it precedes appetition; and inasmuch as appetition precedes practical reasoning, such knowledge is prior to practical knowledge as such. Because practical reasoning presupposes the prior inclination of the will toward some end, the knowledge required for this inclination to occur stands as a presupposed principle to the entire practical order. As St. Thomas puts the matter in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 2. (Leonine ed.): “Now in regard to the means, the rectitude of the reason depends on its conformity with the desire of a due end: nevertheless the very desire of the due end presupposes on the part of reason a right apprehension of the end.”7Accordingly, the speculative is absolutely prior to the practical, and 6 If one alters the genes that control the eyes of the fly, one gets flies with no eyes, or many eyes, or flies with funky eyes; if one alters the genes that control the wings, one gets flies with many wings, or no wings, or wings connected to the head. But if at the genetic level there were no order of agency to telos or end—if it were truly random—then one might alter the part of the genotype that concerns the wings of the fly, and get, say, Barbara Streisand, or a toilet seat, or Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. In fact, genetic biology vindicates teleology. Granted that random events—understood as events wherein causes interact in a novel way that we cannot initially predict—occur, everything about such events is teleologically intelligible in terms of the composite of operative accidental causes. 7 St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 2. (Leonine ed.): “Now in regard to the means, the rectitude of the reason depends on its conformity with the desire of a due end: nevertheless the very desire of the due end presupposes on the part of reason a right apprehension of the end.”—”In his autem quae sunt ad finem, rectitudo rationis consistit in conformitate ad appetitum finis debiti. Sed tamen 202 Steven Long every practical reasoning includes what one might call a speculum: a purely speculative knowledge constituting the intellective contact with real or possible being lying at the source of the ignition of appetite and designating the character of the end.8 The speculative knowledge of the order of the cosmos is critical in the development of our appreciation of the lower creation. 3. Third and finally, there is a decisive principle for the present consideration, best articulated in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, and given masterful exposition by the late Charles de Konick:9 namely, the principle of the transcendence of the common good. We are familiar with purely technical and instrumental conceptions of the common good—the view that the common good is merely a collection of private goods or is constituted by what is good for the greater number of individuals. Such instrumentalist conceptions have their uses. But they cannot substitute for a realist metaphysical account: the speculative intelligence discovers the common good to be substantive rather than purely instrumental. The common good is an end that is by its very nature more communicable to many, more irradiantly diffusive in et ipse appetitus finis debiti praesupponit rectam apprehensionem de fine, quae est per rationem.” 8 ST I, q. 79, a. 11, resp.: “Now, to a thing apprehended by the intellect, it is accidental whether it be directed to operation or not, and according to this the speculative and practical intellects differ. For it is the speculative intellect which directs what it apprehends, not to operation, but solely to the consideration of truth; while the practical intellect is that which directs what it apprehends to operation.” —“Accidit autem alicui apprehenso per intellectum, quod ordinetur ad opus, vel non ordinetur. Secundum hoc autem differunt intellectus speculativus et practicus. Nam intellectus speculativus est, qui quod apprehendit, non ordinat ad opus, sed ad solam veritatis considerationem: practicus vero intellectus dicitur, qui hoc quod apprehendit, ordinat ad opus.” Ibid., q. 79, a. 11, ad 2: “The object of the practical intellect is good directed to operation, and under the aspect of truth. For the practical intellect knows truth, just as the speculative, but it directs the known truth to operation.”—“ita obiectum intellectus practici est bonum ordinabile ad opus, sub ratione veri. Intellectus enim practicus veritatem cognoscit sicut speculativus; sed veritatem cognitam ordinat ad opus.” ST I–II, q. 9, a. 1: “Now the first formal principle is universal ‘being’ and ‘truth,’ which is the object of the intellect. And therefore by this kind of motion the intellect moves the will, as presenting its object to it.”—“Primum autem principium formale est ens et verum universale, quod est obiectum intellectus. Et ideo isto modo motionis intellectus movet voluntatem, sicut praesentans ei obiectum suum.” 9 Cf. his essays “The Primacy of the Common Good” and “Against the Personalists,” in The Writings of Charles De Koninck, vol. 2, trans. and ed. Ralph McInerny (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press: 2009). The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 203 intelligible good, more universal and rational. Thus, truth, mercy, justice are all by their nature common and not merely individual goods. An individual or private good is such that if one has it, another does not—if I eat my lunch, you do not—unless, perchance, you should happen to eat me. Whereas, truth is not in the least diminished by the number of those who know it, and in fact each person’s attainment of a truth is enriched by its possession by others, inasmuch as one may see more deeply into it than another and so augment its appreciation. Likewise, if I do justice in one case, I am not obliged to do injustice in another, as though justice were a scarce material object whose supply were running out. The judge never rightly says: “We ran out of justice two hours ago: would you rather be lynched or shot?” The common good, while it is good for man—and it is principally that in which man’s good consists—is not man’s individual or private good. It is good for me, but it is not mine. Those who bled the beach crimson at Normandy in World War II, did so on behalf of a good that was good for them—the good of justice—but which was not simply identical with their private good. The common good of society participates the right order of the cosmos toward God in nature and grace—this is why Bl. John Paul II always spoke of the need for the political state to do justice to “the whole truth” of man. The common good of society is constituted by all that defines its actual ordering toward truth, justice, mercy, friendship, the natural contemplative good, and the supernatural love of God. As such, the common good of society is a noble end of striving that does not reduce merely to private good or something reductively instrumental toward private good, and it is an end worthy of service and sacrifice.10 Howsoever much it remains true that the common good is good for the individual, it is not merely an individual or private good. Truth is good for the individual, but the individual does not own it. In the classical analysis, there is an order of such common goods, rising to the indwelling good of order constitutive of the cosmos; and further, rising to the extrinsic common good of the cosmos itself: namely, God. The ultimate end of man—the beatific vision—is 10 ST II–II, q. 58, a. 7, ad 2: “The common good of the realm and the particular good of the individual differ not only in respect of the many and the few, but also under a formal aspect. For the aspect of the common good differs from the aspect of the individual good, even as the aspect of whole differs from that of part.Wherefore the Philosopher says (Polit. I. 1) that they are wrong who maintain that the state and the home and the like differ only as many and few and not specifically.” 204 Steven Long constituted by the most absolutely self-diffusive and communicable reality: the Triune God Himself. But the indwelling common good of the cosmos is participated by the lower creation. I have insisted upon these three points—unified normative teleology, the priority of the speculative, and the transcendence of the common good—for the following reason: Speculative knowledge of the teleological ordering constitutive of the indwelling common good of the cosmos is essential to the question of stewardship. Doubtless the consideration of these principles may appear to divagate from our object. But without these, our discourse cannot proceed on a firm basis. And it would be utopian to expect conversation about the nature of man’s stewardship over the lower creation to be able to proceed lacking wellfounded wisdom regarding the saturation of agency in teleological order, the primacy of the speculative in giving principles to our ethical contemplation, and the transcendence of the common good; or to think it even possible fruitfully to proceed on foundations other than realist metaphysics, or sufficiently to address the question of order in the cosmos in abstraction from the theistic conclusions to which realist causal analysis leads. Now I must attempt to apply these principles correctly to the question at hand. The first step we must take is to consider man’s relation to the lower creation, to the cosmos as a whole, and to God. Man’s Relation to the Lower Creation, to the Cosmos as a Whole, and to God In asking about man’s relation to the lower creation, we have already assessed the reality of a fixed ontological distance separating minerals, plants, and nonrational animals from man. Man’s spiritual nature is the lowest foundational constituent of the imago Dei in man, a purely natural likeness to God owing to the immateriality of intellect and will. Even on the plane of the proximate natural order, intellect and will open man to the universe of being, true, and good. This fixed difference between man and the lower creation does not, however, make of man’s private good a good superior to the common good of the universe, because the entire universe, and not merely its highest part, is ordered to God. Everything in reality is ordered to God, because the actuality of each and every thing is that in it whereby it is most likened to God, and the consummate actuation of each creature in attaining the proportionate natural end to which it is ordered is a specific imitation of God. Thus, even in precision from supernatural beatitude, man is naturally ordained to God in a very specific way, through intellect and will. The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 205 But with respect to natural good—and in precision from the infinitely disproportionate supernatural good—the good of the higher together with the lower is greater than the good of the higher alone. Man forms part of the cosmos, a creature individually important because the soul is a spiritual principle ordered to endure beyond the confines of the physical world, lesser in natural perfection than the multitudinous species of angels, while nobler than nonrational animals, plants, and minerals. As has already been intimated with respect to intellectual objectivity, man’s nobility is in part constituted by the truth that it belongs to human nature to have, not merely an “environment” but a “world”; and this “world” is—owing to the very nature of things—not reducible merely to the lower part of creation. Man is a creature who conceives the immanent ordering of the cosmos—inclusive of the invisible or spiritual aspects of the cosmos—as flowing from, and ordered toward, the First Cause. Man is not merely a “part” of the physical order, although he is a part of this order; but he is a part of the cosmos—part of an ordered whole that comprises the procession of all creatures from God, and their return to God. And the lower creation participates the indwelling common good of right order of the cosmos. Cosmic Order and the Good for Man This brings us specifically to the question of the relation between the order of the cosmos and the good for man. It has already been affirmed that the good for man consists chiefly in the hierarchy of common goods, extending to the indwelling common good of the right order of the universe, and extending further to the extrinsic common good of the universe, namely God. Because man is created in grace, from the moment of his creation man is further ordered in and by grace to the friendship of God and to intrinsically supernatural beatitude. What is the role of the lower creation in all this? Is the lower creation merely an object of use for man? Certainly there is what one might call a “trumping right” of the good of a person over the subordinated good of any particular lower physical being or nature. If it comes to the life and well-being of a child versus the life and well-being of a deer—or even the life and well-being of a lower species—then, since the soul of the child is ordained to outlive all merely terrestrial physical species whatsoever and is possessed of rational dignity, one should have no hesitancy whatsoever in preferring the life of a child. Nonetheless, the good of the order of the cosmos is a common good, as all things have their proper natural good in accordance with it— from the diverse species of angels, to man, to the lower creation. Man is 206 Steven Long called to know, and to honor, this order. But what can it mean to honor this order as found within that lower creation that man is in fact called to use, to subject to human activity, in multiform ways? Surely subjecting the lower creation to the service of reason and of God constitutes part of honoring the lower order of creation, which is dignified in being brought to a higher and more attuned service of God and man. But it is not alone in our activity directing lower nature to the human good that we honor the divinely inscribed order of the cosmos in the lower creation. Before ever we turn to doing and making, there is natural inclination; and before there is natural inclination, there is knowledge. The chief element in our honoring of the lower creation, then, will consist in our contemplation of this order as manifestative of the order of the cosmos as such—as bearing the trace and imprimatur of the divine wisdom—and so as manifesting the First Cause of all things—and finally even the vestigial trace of the Trinity. It is largely from the knowledge of the lower creation that our knowledge of the full reaches of the cosmos, and of the existence of God, derives. We move from what is less intelligible in itself, and more intelligible to us, to what is more intelligible in itself, but less intelligible to us: that is, we move from the multifarious world of nature in all its variety, to the judgment that there is a unitary First Cause, whose perfection lacks any limit of potency, namely, God. Hence Romans 1:20: “For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.” It is not simply that the whole edifice of natural science, and philosophy of nature, and even metaphysics, presuppose first the humble beginning of our contemplative contact with the physical universe in sensation and abstraction. It is that the order defining this lower universe is thus constituted as a primitive and primordial good for man as such, body and soul, who relies upon its physical solidity and whose intelligence is fed by it. Hence, granted also that the application of the positive sciences in productive arts designed to serve the larger good of man is both valid and founded upon a certain measure of speculative conformity with the order of lower nature, that measure of speculative conformity with the order of lower nature necessary to the productive arts does not exhaust the being, true, and good even of lower nature. This is an important judgment. For God is in some way reflected in anything that is, and so there is a sense in which what man makes of nature and offers to God is also theophanic. Given the obvious worth and dignity of the transformative aspect of technology, and of the subjection The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 207 of the lower creation to the service of man, one can imagine someone thinking that the natural purpose of the lower creation is nothing other than its transformation into the perfect quasi-technical cocoon for the germination of human culture. But what is missing from this conception is precisely the extra-utilitarian dimension of the lower creation as manifesting the divine order of the cosmos, and of sensible nature as constituting the birthplace of human intelligence with respect to the wider horizons of being and nature. It might be objected that human transformations of nature exhibit more rather than less worth because they doubly derive from nature—first from subrational nature and then from the rational nature. If we accept this approach to the matter as presenting the entire picture, then even the ineradicable dependence of applied science, technology, and the productive arts upon the prior ordering of nature will be conceived merely as the dependence of the chalk upon the blackboard, because then nature stands to technology as potency to act. In fact, clearly there is a limited sense in which this is true. What then stands to limit this truth and to place it in confrontation with something of a different order? That is to say, what is there, in principle, to constitute a limit to the use of transformative technology with respect to the lower creation? How can the subrational creation avoid the fate of being endlessly remade at the whimsy of man? The answer here is that the divine ordering of the cosmos as such extends into the lower order of creation and is manifest there according to the natures of the things God has made: the lower creation participates the common good of the cosmos. It would be saying too much, to say that what is best or optimal for subrational nature is always a desideratum, because the lower creation is for the sake of the higher creation, and because man’s harm or death is not an acceptable price to pay for some essentially lower good.11 Nonetheless, all things being equal, there is a permanent natural desideratum for respecting and preserving the general order of lower nature, not alone because it serves some human utility of medicine or production or technology, but for the following reasons. First, the lower creation is the evidentiary home of our intellectual life and contemplation, the realm in which our natures and our narratives have been tried and refined. There is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses, and the connatural 11 Further, it is a sinful world, a world in which evil, both physical and more impor- tantly moral, infects the orchestration of the providential symphony. In a world that is affected in this way by evil, although the perfect is not the enemy of the good, it may nonetheless be impossible prudently and with integrity simply to pursue the perfect “as the crow flies” (to use Michael Oakeshott’s phrase). 208 Steven Long mode of our cognition in this life is through abstracting from, and adverting to, sensible phantasms. We are ordered to the knowledge of sensible quiddities, and the variety and diffusiveness of the lower creation condition our intellectual, imaginative, and aesthetic life. Second, in its mystery and variety the lower creation represents an essential and primary constituent of the primordial revelation of God in creation, providing the foundation for our awareness of the essential analogicity of being and nature, and for our ascent to God; third, the lower creation participates the indwelling common good of the order of the cosmos, a common good which includes the ordering of angel and man as much as it does that of animal, plant, and mineral. These interrelated propositions say much the same thing.That the lower creation, even prior to our placing it at the service of human concerns through technology, forms the aboriginal context and the source for our intellectual life, providing us the native images and language of our senses and the poetry of space and time; that the lower creation ineradicably constitutes an essential aspect of the primordial revelation occurring from the moment of creation, pointing to the extrinsic common good Who is God; and that the lower creation participates the indwelling common good of the order of the cosmos—all these insights point in the same direction. It is from the purely speculative contemplation of the lower creation that the understanding of the causal arguments for the existence of God are developed, and these highlight and articulate primordial revelation, framing the lower realm of nature whence our speculations have begun as the effect and gift of God. And the immanent common good of the universe is defined as a good of right order, and so is chiefly a causal affair—and of course our knowledge of the causal order of things begins with our knowledge of causes in the lower creation. Without contactus with sensible being, our ascent to loftier knowledge is impossible, because there is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses, a doctrine of Aristotle and Aquinas that is defensible today just as when first it was uttered. Our knowledge is abstractive, and it presupposes sense knowledge without which we have nothing from which to abstract—the root of the agony of intellectual creatures when they suffer illnesses of the nervous system such as Alzheimer’s that cut the dense contactus of man with sensitive memory or the sensible world and leave man a cognitive orphan. Does this mean that it is an act of impiety to God, and to the cosmos, to permit a single species to go extinct? That man’s practical reason is in material servitude to an over-lush vegetation of lower nature that chains man’s life to the miasmal swamps of pre-human cosmic history? It would mean this, were we to infer from it any absolute or normative require- The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 209 ment always to regard the integrity of every particular lower nature as essential for the human good as such. But it is not merely of some lower nature that we are speaking, but of the whole order of the lower creation as such. The question is, not whether we are bound to undertake heroic exertions to save every threatened species, but whether the whole nexus of such species does not invite from the cultivated human mind a distinctive regard. Yet what can it mean to have a global predilection for a certain realm of unsuppressed and unneutered created natures, while also generally approving the application of science to technology and the productive arts? How does one generally approbate pristine, untamperedwith-nature, while simultaneously approving the general tendency toward technological tampering with nature? Is this not a contradiction in the making? On what principled basis will the seemingly necessary material boundary judgment be made delineating the acceptable transformative application of natural science for the sake of technological betterment, from applications which are not acceptable? The False Alternative of the Boundary Hypothesis The question which has just been raised arguably involves a false hypothesis: namely, the hypothesis that the realm of lower creation in its splendor is differentiated from the realm of human agency and transformation by a clear but mobile boundary, and moreover such a boundary as to imply a constant shrinkage for the scope of undiluted nature as opposed to the growing chrysalis of human technology and technologically transformed nature. But the second always presupposes and depends upon the first— the laws and ontological density of the first are absolutely required for the second. Thus, the boundary in question is not an absolute boundary between two antithetic kingdoms, but rather a boundary of a prudential type, regarding the precise degree to which a constitutive element of technologically untransformed nature—as a native constituent of the spiritual, scientific, and aesthetic good of man—ought be preserved. Granted that something of intrinsic worth for man is bound up with preserving enclaves of nature which preserve in their integrity multifarious living things, and the ecologies that support them, there remains the necessary prudential question of degree, precisely because the lower creation is ordered to the service of the higher. Accordingly, no subhuman nature can simply of itself demand the homage of human sacrifice. I have argued here that the human realm implies a consubstantial ordering to and with the cosmos, which includes the ordering of the lower creation that is so vital to our contemplative, affective, and physical lives. 210 Steven Long It is crucial to see that the same ordering that thus warrants regard for lower nature, also warrants that the hierarchic ordering of the lower to the higher be honored. But does this doom mankind to a Cartesian existence—one part technically driven and transformed, the other primitive but remote, and preserved but yet in its preserved state largely, for millions of people, thus inaccessible? No. Because even within the zone of application of science and technology, the human mind is not wholly encased within techne but encounters nature and reasons for respecting natural limits.12 While in a certain limited respect the natures of things in the lower creation appear before technology as matter yet to be formed, in the wider economy of human life—which is absolutely presupposed to technology— this nature now and always will constitute not merely matter to be formed but rather an already formed preamble to human engagement upon which that engagement cannot but depend. And the presence of an order not of human devising is most powerfully manifest in the lower creation, however much it is true that this order extends even within technological products themselves. Rather than constituting two kingdoms—the kingdom of the Cartesian Cogito reducing the lower creation to the status of manipulable object, and the kingdom of subhuman nature—in fact the drama of human stewardship is played out along a necessary continuum in which prudential regard for natural order is circumstantially inflected in many different ways. Since the order of the cosmos permeates the physical creation, it is literally impossible to escape it—whereas sadly by stark contrast it is possible to fail to appreciate or honor this order in the physical creation. It is perhaps principally with respect to this consideration that we may see that man honors the physical creation most profoundly in the sacred liturgy, because it is in the sacred liturgy that the whole universe is offered in prayer in the Holy Spirit, through Christ, to God the Father. The preservation of enclaves of technologically unaffected wildlife is, by comparison, a lesser appreciation and honoring of the physical world, which is sacramentalized by the Incarnation, through and through. Nonetheless a lower but genuine mode of this sacramentalization is served in preserving enclaves of the lower creation outside human techno12 It is one thing to enhance certain natural beings through human technology, and another to completely transform a species without remainder. To enhance a nature in certain limited ways for particular human purposes—say, through genetic alterations to make grain more survivable vis-à-vis common pests—is not, itself, an act of impiety. But this does not mean that a commonplace regard for the general natures of things vanishes. What is involved is a certain regard for the primitive constitution of things, which by their natures can evoke for man the wider ordering of the cosmos. The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 211 logical space, for by doing so man acknowledges that in creating lower natures, God has created subjects of being and not mere objects for technical reconstruction. Although these subjects of being are ordered to the common good of the universe, and not least ordered through supporting the existence of the rational animal, their primitive signification to the contemplative intelligence is of even greater value to man than is their vast utilitarian aid vis-à-vis the transformative arts. For that primitive signification of non-technized nature places man in contact with a wide, variegated, teleological multiplex, whose character is not of itself the effect of any human choice, and which manifests most concretely and awesomely the theonomic character of nature, the mysterious analogicity of being, and the transcendent excellence of its divine principle. Just as there is an order of human ends that is of ethical significance prior to choice, so there is an intra-cosmic common good whose integral nature is but dimly comprehended, but yet which is not only a source of many potential technological benefits but far more importantly an evidentiary source with respect to the contemplation of being and God. The contemplative life of man is irreparably in debt to this lower order, precisely as participating the common good of the whole cosmos as such, material and immaterial. Further, to the degree that the lower creation is subjected prudently to transformative technology, there are questions of fittingness even regarding the proper and fitting manner for such subjection to occur (for example, at the most obvious: some technologies achieve a necessary end with more environmental destruction than is either necessary or desirable).Yet the prudential legal objective is not to so hamper human technical development that it is stifled underneath a dead mass of particular limitations, but rather to safeguard certain permanent goods by reasonable generic limitations.To preserve areas for wildlife should never be tantamount to subordinating or sacrificing human life to the aim of protecting subrational creatures. Many virtues have been hidden by divine providence in the earth, and man’s discovery of nature is not merely the Baconian enterprise of “putting nature on the rack” to wrest her secrets from her for the benefit of mankind. To the contrary, nature gives her secrets most readily, not to those who put her on the rack, but to those who read her intelligible ordering closely and well, which cannot be done simply by subjecting nature to instrumental reason. Conclusion: On the Role of Prudence I would like to conclude by noting that discerning the implications of all these truths for the workaday world requires prudence (and hence all the other virtues)—because, however valuable is contemplation, and however 212 Steven Long necessary it is to honor God’s script in nature, the lower creation is for the sake of the nobler creation, not only with respect to contemplation, but also with respect to use. Hence when and insofar as the limits of the lower creation become, not only invitations to contemplation, but occasions for harm or death or even for the impeding of life-saving or lifeenhancing agency, just so far does man’s reason insist upon transformative operations within and upon the lower creation. And these discernments, being discernments of prudence, do not and cannot follow mathematical formulae or purely axiomatic protocols. The rational nature does not act under mere rote instruction from the lower creation, but gazes upon it, seeks its principles and causes, and takes instruction and refreshment from it in the course of living out its trajectory, which is an inherently rational one that is as distinct from the course of lower nature as the salt in the ocean is from mere H2O. Indeed, it is because the lower nature shares in the common good of the order indwelling the cosmos as such that from the lower creation the rational animal perceives the normativity of this cosmic ordering, and—following the telos connatural to the rational soul—honors it. But this honor paid to the inherent order of the cosmos as participated by lower nature is not a replacement for the rational nature’s own teleology but rather an essential instruction and aid for it, for we are not mere physical natures, and nature is an essentially analogical principle that rises beyond the lower creation. Thus lower terrestrial nature should be neither opposed to technical development nor disdained as mere matter before technical form, but should be regarded, precisely in its participation of cosmic and divine order, as a good to be preserved. Such preservation will to some degree occur in enclaves apart from technical civilization, where by reason of its beauty, its variety, and its manifestation of an order which is not merely that imposed by techne and which stands in analogical relation to all the other goods of human nature, it is kept pristine. But the virtualities of nature are preserved in a different manner when they are to some degree transformed by human ingenuity in the service of human life and elevated to a greater analogical participation of the good of human nature. Those who are called to make the prudential decisions about the particulars of these decisions will do so better to the degree to which their minds and imaginations enable them to perceive both cosmological and metaphysical order, and formal and teleological hierarchy. In short: those who are wise—and not merely those who enjoy the reasonable physical utilities afforded by the lower creation—are those best equipped to undertake a reasonable stewardship and dominion over the lower creation that gives glory to God and solace to man. And the truth defin- The Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship 213 ing this stewardship is that the same ordering that warrants regard for lower nature, also warrants that the hierarchic ordering of the lower to the higher be honored. That which principally accounts for the dignity of the lower creation—its participation of the indwelling common good of the universe—is also that which determines the hierarchic subordination of the lower creation to the good of man, because lower goods are for the sake of nobler goods. Beyond even its practical contribution to human betterment, however, the importance of the lower creation for our contemplative lives in relation to the order of the universe as such ought not be forgotten. The lower creation is the womb of science, the home of poetry and beauty, and the primal evidentiary foundation for the causal ascent of human reasoning to God. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 215–31 215 A World of Natures and the Presence of God C HARLES M OREROD, O.P. Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland “N ATURE ” IS OFTEN mentioned nowadays in an ecological context, where it does not necessarily have a religious connotation. I think that there is there a certain opportunity for believers to show the contribution of Christian faith. At least this is true for philosophers and theologians who walk in the steps of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, as I will try to suggest, because both of them see the world as an organized “Nature” composed of natures. Which World Does Aristotle See? When we look around us, we do not all necessarily see the same thing. More precisely: the global pictures that we form can be widely various. Paul Feyerabend wonders why Anaximander did not see the sky the same way as he himself saw it: I was puzzled by Anaximander’s idea that the sun and the moon were holes in dark structures containing fire. Did Anaximander see the moon as a hole or was he just speculating? . . . Often when wandering around in the countryside I stared at the silver disk, trying hard to make it appear as a hole, or a glare; I didn’t succeed.1 Am I being relativistic? I hope not, but some things certainly depend on our interpretation. Sense experience is the starting point of philosophy, but it is not philosophy yet. One must then understand what he sees, and this 1 Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 140–41. 216 Charles Morerod, O.P. understanding can become a global view. For instance, Aristotle’s philosophy starts with observation. He looks at the world. What does he see? He sees Nature: That nature exists, it would be absurd to try to prove; for it is obvious that there are many things of this kind, and to prove what is obvious by what is not is the mark of a man who is unable to distinguish what is self-evident from what is not. (This state of mind is clearly possible. A man blind from birth might reason about colours. Presumably therefore such persons must be talking about words without any thought to correspond.)2 The mere fact that Aristotle says that Nature is obvious means that it is not completely obvious. In other words: some can actually look at the world and not see it as “Nature.” In the first place, the terms must be clarified. What does “nature” mean? It is first of all the inner principle thanks to which each being moves according to what it is: Nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not in virtue of a concomitant attribute.3 Once the term is explained, we can think about it and recognize that it expresses what we experience. Everyone who knows what a cat is expects an unknown cat to behave in a certain way, given the circumstances. Natural things move always according to a certain pattern, if nothing prevents them from doing so.4 And if things go wrong, for instance in the case of human actions, this is normally by excess in the sense of nature itself: In the natural appetites few go wrong, and only in one direction, that of excess; for to eat or drink whatever offers itself till one is surfeited is to exceed the natural amount, since natural appetite is the replenishment of one’s deficiency.5 “Nature” means a principle of action that is in the individuals of a species (such as human “nature”), but it also indicates the whole world of 2 Aristotle, Physics II.1, 193a4–9. 3 Aristotle, Physics II.1, 192b21–23. 4 See Aristotle, Physics II.8, 199b16–19: “Those things are natural which, by a continuous movement originated from an internal principle, arrive at some completion: the same completion is not reached from every principle; nor any chance completion, but always the tendency in each is towards the same end, if there is no impediment.” 5 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III.11, 1118b15–18. A World of Natures 217 natural things (“Nature”). Considering the interaction of different specific natures, Aristotle sees the world as organized. For instance, the social character of human nature implies the natural existence of a state.6 The same is true when different species interact. The whole of Nature is a kind of system where every species has a role between other species: Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie. Thus, next after lifeless things in the upward scale comes the plant, and of plants one will differ from another as to its amount of apparent vitality; and, in a word, the whole genus of plants, whilst it is devoid of life as compared with an animal, is endowed with life as compared with other corporeal entities. Indeed, as we just remarked, there is observed in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards the animal. So, in the sea, there are certain objects concerning which one would be at a loss to determine whether they be animal or vegetable.7 Commenting on what he sees—an ordered universe—and taking one further step, Aristotle says that “nature never makes anything without a purpose”8 and that “everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.”9 This is why, for instance, animals must have senses: Animals must be endowed with sensation, since Nature does nothing in vain. For all things that exist by Nature are means to an end, or will be concomitants of means to an end. Every body capable of forward movement would, if unendowed with sensation, perish and fail to reach its end, which is the aim of Nature; for how could it obtain nutriment?10 When Aristotle observes the world around him, what does he see? He sees an ordained Nature, composed of many natures, each one of them a meaningful principle in virtue of which beings move within the whole picture. But he has to defend that view, if only by saying that it is evident. It might be necessary to defend it even more 23 centuries later. Let us repeat the question to ourselves. When we look at the world, what do we 6 See Aristotle, Politics I.2, 1253a2–4: “It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity.” 7 Aristotle, Historia animalium VIII.1, 588b4–13. 8 Aristotle, De anima III.9, 432b21. 9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III.9, 1099b21. 10 Aristotle, De anima III.12, 434a30–b2. 218 Charles Morerod, O.P. see? Many points on a map or some kind of ordained picture? Even an ordained picture can be looked at as just many points: this is what the ant sees while walking on a big portrait of President Lincoln. Different practical attitudes derive from different viewpoints. If the individual fisherman just catches fish wherever he finds them to be plentiful, from his viewpoint this makes sense. But it is possible that he is disturbing the broader picture more than he thinks, as it is becoming increasingly clear in ecological terms. A similar question arises when one tries to find God from the world. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn summarizes this question in Maritain’s terms of a Republic of Natures: The never ending debate, as to whether there is something like a ‘design’ in creation, thus goes round in circles, perhaps because nowadays, whenever people talk about ‘design’ and a ‘designer’, they automatically think of a ‘divine engineer’, a kind of omniscient technician, who—because he must be perfect—can, equally, only produce perfect machines. Here, in my view, lies the most profound cause of many misunderstandings—even on the part of the ‘intelligent design’ school in the U.S.A. God is no clockmaker; he is not a constructor of machines, but a Creator of natures. The world is not a mechanical clock, not some vast machine, nor even a mega-computer, but rather, as Jacques Maritain said, ‘une république des natures’, ‘a republic of natures.’ In order to talk meaningfully about the Creator having a ‘design’, we have to retrieve the concept of ‘Nature’, an understanding of which we have largely lost today, and which has been replaced by a technical and mechanistic understanding of living things. To say that God creates a ‘republic of natures’ means that in his creation there is above all what is called phyein in Greek, growth and becoming, with all its hesitation, its trials, its failures and its breakthroughs, its instances of cooperation and of conflict, its inconceivable prodigality and its unexpected by-products—both successful and unsuccessful. All natures have their own unmistakable form of activity and influence, with which they are endowed by the Creator, and which lets them grow out of themselves and be active.They reach their goal or attain their purpose not by a force applied from outside them, but by one from within them, working outward. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that a ‘nature’ is an ‘inner principle’ on the basis of which everything does those things, and has those effects, which correspond to its nature. He attributes this inner principle to the ars divina, the art of the Creator, who endows the creatures with their self-development and the way they shape themselves.11 11 Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith, ed. Henry Philip Weber, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 98–99. Maritain is quoted from ‘Réflexions sur la nécessité et la contingence,’ in Raison et raisons (Paris: Egloff, 1947), 62. The last sentence refers to Thomas Aquinas, In Physicorum II, lec. 14, no. 8. A World of Natures 219 In other words: one of the best ways to find God from the observation of the world is to see order in the world—and to see that order in terms of “natures” rather than as the order of a watch. Following the explicit suggestion of Cardinal Schönborn, I will try to show how St. Thomas Aquinas built such a Christian view on the basis of Aristotle’s principles. St. Thomas Aquinas: A “Nature” of Natures Parts of a Whole St. Thomas, who is in this matter a good disciple of Aristotle, sees the world as an ordained whole. Every part of a whole recognizes, consciously or not, its membership in something bigger and more important: In natural things, everything which, as such, naturally belongs to another, is principally, and more strongly inclined to that other to which it belongs, than towards itself. . . . We observe that the part naturally exposes itself in order to safeguard the whole; as, for instance, the hand is without deliberation exposed to the blow for the whole body’s safety. And since reason copies nature, we find the same inclination among the social virtues; for it behooves the virtuous citizen to expose himself to the danger of death for the public weal of the state.12 In any whole, therefore, the parts are for the whole; in the universe as such everything is for God, and human beings are able to act consciously towards God: Now if we wish to assign an end to any whole, and to the parts of that whole, we shall find, first, that each and every part exists for the sake of its proper act, as the eye for the act of seeing; secondly, that less honorable parts exist for the more honorable, as the senses for the intellect, the lungs for the heart; and, thirdly, that all parts are for the perfection of the whole, as the matter for the form, since the parts are, as it were, the matter of the whole. Furthermore, the whole man is on account of an extrinsic end, that end being the fruition of God. So, therefore, in the parts of the universe also every creature exists for its own proper act and perfection, and the less noble for the nobler, as those creatures that are less noble than man exist for the sake of man, whilst each and every creature exists for the perfection of the entire universe. Furthermore, the entire universe, with all its parts, is ordained towards God as its end, inasmuch as it imitates, as it were, and shows forth the Divine goodness, to the glory of God. Reasonable creatures, however, have in some special and higher manner God as their end, since they can attain to 12 ST I, q. 60, a. 5. Charles Morerod, O.P. 220 Him by their own operations, by knowing and loving Him. Thus it is plain that the Divine goodness is the end of all corporeal things.13 In the world there are then many interrelated natures, each one of them moving between the others according to its “natural love.” The human nature implies a conscious move towards God. One of the unexpected aspects of such a view is the “natural love” of all things. The Natural Love of All Things Because of their natural order—of their place within the whole universe—all things have what St. Thomas calls a “natural love.” This is the case even of things that do not have any knowledge. For instance, “the connaturalness of a heavy body for the centre is by reason of its weight and may be called ‘natural love.’ ”14 Of course “love” is taken in the broad sense of the move towards something that is good for the moving subject; the “natural love” of stones is not conscious: As for the fact that all things have some desire (appetunt), it must not be understood only of things that have some knowledge about their possession of some good, but also about things that lack knowledge. These things tend towards the good, not in the sense that they would know it, but because they are moved towards the good by someone who knows, i.e. through the order put by the divine intellect, as the arrow tends towards the target because of the order of the bowman.15 Angels and human beings have a conscious natural love. They love God more than themselves.16 The fact that this love is intimately part of their nature is highlighted by the fact that it remains even in Hell: 13 ST I, q. 65, a. 2. 14 ST I–II, q. 26, a. 1. See also I–II, q. 41, a. 3. 15 “Quod autem dicit quod omnia appetunt, non est intelligendum solum de habentibus cognitionem, quae apprehendunt bonum, sed etiam de rebus carentibus cognitione, quae naturali appetitu tendunt in bonum, non quasi cognoscant bonum, sed quia ab aliquo cognoscente moventur ad bonum, scilicet ex ordinatione divini intellectus: ad modum quo sagitta tendit ad signum ex directione sagittantis” (Sententia libri Ethicorum, lib. 1 l. 1 n. 11). 16 See ST I, q. 60, a. 5: “Consequently, since God is the universal good, and under this good both man and angel and all creatures are comprised, because every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God, it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and with a greater love. Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity.” A World of Natures 221 The good of the intellectual nature consists in this, that the intellect contemplates what is true, and the will tends towards what is good. But anything true and good derives from the first and supreme good, which is God. Therefore the human intellect in such an extreme misery must have some knowledge of God and some love of God as principle of natural perfections, and this is natural love.17 The natural love of things is somehow individual, or at least related to each species. But Nature also implies a relation between different natures. The Coordination of Natures in “Nature” Each different nature has a place in relation to other natures. Human beings, who are both spiritual and material, have a unique place, “on the horizon and boundary line between things corporeal and incorporeal.”18 This is an illustration of a striking fact: different natures are actually coordinated. And this coordination does not seem to come from Nature itself, at least in part because it involves many beings that cannot consciously play with the orchestra: The whole order of the universe is due to the first mover, so that what is in the ordained universe explicitates what is in the intellect and in the will of the first mover. And thus it is necessary that the whole organization of the universe be from a first mover. . . . All things that are in the universe are somehow ordained, but all do not have the order, like the animals of the Sea, and the birds, and the plants. And although they are not ordained in the same way, they are not related in such a way that one would not belong to the other; but there is some affinity and order of the one to the other. The plants are for the animals and the animals for men. And that all are ordained to each other is clear from the fact that all together are ordained to one end. . . . From this it is clear that natural things act because of an end, although they do not know their end, because they receive from the first intelligence the inclination to an 17 “Bonum autem intellectualis naturae in hoc consistit quod intellectus respiciat verum, et voluntas tendat in bonum. Omne autem verum et omne bonum derivatur a primo et summo bono, quod Deus est. Unde oportet quod intellectus hominis in illa extrema miseria constituti, aliquam Dei cognitionem habeat, et aliquam Dei dilectionem; secundum scilicet quod est principium naturalium perfectionum, quae est naturalis dilectio” (Compendium theologiae, cap.174). See also ST I–II, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3; De veritate, q. 16, a. 3, ad 5. 18 Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles (ScG ) II, ch. 68. 19 “Totus enim ordo universi est propter primum moventem, ut scilicet explicatur in universo ordinato id quod est in intellectu et voluntate primi moventis. Et sic oportet, quod a primo movente sit tota ordinatio universi. . . . Omnia quae sunt in universo, sunt aliquo modo ordinata, sed non similiter omnia habent ordinem, Charles Morerod, O.P. 222 end.19 Things are coordinated in a teleological way: towards an end. As the nature of a thing is a principle of action in that thing, which moves it towards its proper purpose, the whole of Nature is composed of things that work together thanks to some ends given by their Maker: We see the things in nature acting for an end, and attaining to ends which are both useful and certain. And since they lack intelligence, they are unable to direct themselves, but must be directed and moved by one directing them, and who possesses an intellect. Thus it is that the movement of the things of nature toward a certain end indicates the existence of something higher by which the things of nature are directed to an end and governed. And so, since the whole course of nature advances to an end in an orderly way and is directed, we have to posit something higher which directs and governs them as Lord; and this is God. . . . Thus the Psalm (88:10) says: ‘You rule the power of the sea, and you still the swelling of its waves,’ as though saying: You are the Lord and govern all things. John shows that he knows this about the Word when he says below (1:11), ‘He came unto his own,’ i.e., to the world, since the whole universe is his own.20 The contemporary ecological movement has “discovered” some unexpected interdependence within Nature: take away or add an animal at some place, and a whole chain is disturbed. One realizes the role played scilicet animalia marina, et volatilia, et plantae. Et tamen licet non sint eodem modo ordinata, non ita se habent, quod unum eorum non pertineat ad alterum; sed est aliqua affinitas et ordo unius ad alterum. Plantae enim sunt propter animalia, et animalia sunt propter homines. Et quod omnia sint ordinata adinvicem, patet ex hoc, quod omnia simul ordinantur ad unum finem. . . . Et ex hoc patet, quod res naturales agunt propter finem, licet finem non cognoscant, quia a primo intelligente assequuntur inclinationem in finem” (Aquinas, Sententia Metaphysicae, Bk. 12, lect. 12, nos. 5–8). 20 “Videmus enim ea quae sunt in rebus naturalibus, propter finem agere, et consequi utiles et certos fines; et cum intellectu careant, se ipsa dirigere non possunt, nisi ab aliquo dirigente per intellectum dirigantur et moveantur. Et hinc est quod ipse motus rerum naturalium in finem certum, indicat esse aliquid altius, quo naturales res diriguntur in finem et gubernantur. Et ideo cum totus cursus naturae ordinate in finem procedat et dirigatur, de necessitate oportet nos ponere aliquid altius, quod dirigat ista et sicut dominus gubernet: et hic est Deus. Et haec gubernandi auctoritas in verbo Dei demonstratur, cum dicit dominum; unde in Ps. LXXXVIII, 10 dicitur: tu dominaris potestati maris; motum autem fluctuum eius tu mitigas; quasi dicat: tu es dominus et universa gubernas. Hanc cognitionem manifestat Ioannes se habere de verbo, cum dicit: in propria venit, scilicet in mundum; quia totus mundus est suus proprius” (Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura, Prooemium 1). A World of Natures 223 by some predator when this predator has been exterminated; its extermination leads to the proliferation of smaller animals that eat all the plants. Aquinas had already observed some of that, as appears in his expression “some affinity and order of the one to the other.” One of the most striking aspects of the organization of the universe is that our intelligence can somehow grasp it. If that were not the case, the starting points of our cultural and scientific activities would be missing. When we start thinking, we trust in the possibility of connecting different elements. This is how a baby comes to realize that both milk and water are “liquids,” that two dogs are “dogs,” and that dogs and cats are “animals.” All of this implies that our rational nature is inserted within a broader whole, which is somehow rational. This is at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture in Regensburg, where he applies such a view for instance to contemporary sciences: Modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based.Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought—to philosophy and theology.21 Some scientists have also noticed that. For instance, Joshua Lederberg (Nobel Prize holder for medicine in 1958) explained his activity in religious terms: “What is incontrovertible is that a religious impulse guides our motive in sustaining that scientific inquiry. If not, what else?”22 And the contemporary Spanish agnostic philosopher Amelia Varcácel complains about the religious dimension of reason: “Although religion is irrational, reason is religious. It is anxious to totalize, and we cannot avoid it.”23 But some questions arise.This “affinity” and “order” do not always seem 21 Benedict XVI, Regensburg Lecture, 12 Sept. 2006: see www.vatican.va/holy_ father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_ 20060912_university-regensburg_en.html. 22 Joshua Lederberg, “A Religious Impulse Guides Our Motive in Sustaining Scientific Inquiry,” in Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life and Homo Sapiens, ed. Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1992), 184. 23 “Aunque la religión sea irracional, la razón es religiosa. Tiene, y non podemos evitarlo, ansia de totalizar” (Amelia Varcácel in:Victoria Camps and Amelia Varcácel, Hablemos de Dios [Madrid: Taurus, 2007]). 224 Charles Morerod, O.P. perfect: the physical order helps us understand how a tsunami works. But such an affinity hardly seems good in the case of a devastating tsunami. As the contemporary French atheist André Comte-Sponville says, “The cancerous tumour is also a kind of timer. . . . How does that prove that tumours or cataclysms proceed from an intelligent and benevolent design?”24 And is the order perfect up to the point of a total determinism, where we would lose our freedom? I start with the first of these two questions, that is, evil. Evil and the Order of Nature The order of the world is not always perfect, and evil is the first argument that comes to mind against the existence of God—as Aquinas noticed.25 In the terms of David Hume, This world for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant Deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance.26 One of the first things that a believer should avoid is giving an easy theoretical answer to such a question. But it remains possible to define the terms of the question. What is evil? Although evil is very present in our lives, it is actually present as an absence rather than as a nature. Evil is what should be in a being of a given nature, and happens not to be there: Because evil is the privation of good, and not a mere negation . . . , therefore not every defect of good is an evil, but the defect of the good which is naturally due. For the want of sight is not an evil in a stone, but it is an evil in an animal; since it is against the nature of a stone to see.27 Evil can be understood only in relation to specific natures, which are good. Therefore nothing is totally evil, precisely because evil cannot not be attached to a good nature.28 This is hardly an existential consolation, of course, but it shows that evil is actually not an ultimate question. Evil 24 “Une tumeur cancéreuse est aussi une espèce de minuterie. . . . En quoi cela prouve-t-il que tumeurs ou cataclysmes relèvent d’un dessein intelligent et bienveillant?” (André Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme: Introduction à une spiritualité sans Dieu [Paris: Albin Michel, 2006],100). 25 See Aquinas, ST I, q. 2, a. 3, obj. 1. 26 David Hume, Dialogues and History of Religion, edited with an Introduction and Notes by J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), part V, p. 102. 27 ST I, q. 48, a. 5, ad 1. 28 See ST I, q. 103, a. 7, ad 1: “There is nothing wholly evil in the world, for evil is ever founded on good, as shown above. Therefore something is said to be evil A World of Natures 225 questions the order of the universe, yes, but it also depends on an existing order. Some contemporary apologists have noticed that clearly: Regardless of the evil in the world, we still have to explain three things: the fact that the world exists, the intelligence in the world, and the reality of conscious thought. The greatest evils can’t erase questions of origin, and these origin questions point clearly to an eternally existent, infinitely intelligent being. But once we recognize the inevitability of God’s existence, we’re baffled by the fact that there’s evil in the world he created.29 This is why Aquinas, with Boethius, turns around the question of God and evil: Boethius introduces a philosopher asking the question: ‘If there is a God, how comes evil?’ The argument should be turned the other way: ‘If there is evil, there is a God.’ For there would be no evil, if the order of goodness were taken away, the privation of which is evil; and this order would not be, if God were not.30 In other words, we go back to the initial question: when we see the world, what do we see? An organized Nature composed of many natures. The organization is not perfect, true enough. But it is organized in a way that Nature itself cannot explain. And any question about the deficiencies presupposes the order, without which the question would be meaningless. To refuse the religious answer is less an alternative answer than a refusal to answer, as John Paul II said in 1985: To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements, and such marvellous finality in its life, would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the through its escaping from the order of some particular good. If it wholly escaped from the order of the Divine government, it would wholly cease to exist.” 29 Roy Abraham Varghese, The Wonder of the World:A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God (Fountain Hills, AZ: Tyr Publishing, 2003), 379. See also R. Douglas Geivett, Evil and the Evidence for God: The Challenge of John Hick’s Theodicy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 80: “The ‘older schools of natural theology’ are on more solid footing (in terms of overall strategy) in seeking to justify belief in God independently of the reality of evil and then subsequently addressing the problem of evil in light of the reasonable belief that God exists. If God exists, then there can be no logical problem of evil. It is only a problem for our understanding and for experience when pain is to be endured.” 30 ScG III, ch. 71. 31 John Paul II, General Audience, 10 July 1985. 226 Charles Morerod, O.P. world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without cause. It would be an abdication of human intelligence which would thus refuse to think, to seek a solution for its problems.31 The universe is organized. Even our consciousness of evil as evil witnesses to that organization. If we refuse to accept an organizer because of the disorders, we just leave without answer the question of why the world is organized at all. Nature and Freedom The second problem that can arise from the fact of the order of the universe is about our freedom. The order of the world is beautiful when one considers mountains or wildlife. But does the world’s dependence upon God imply a strict necessity, because of divine immutability? God does not create a world where everything would be necessary. He wants an internal diversity of the universe, and therefore some causes are contingent (not necessary).32 This is especially important for all intelligent creatures—angels and human beings—whose natural abilities include free will. For St. Thomas freedom and nature are not opposed, because freedom is understood within the nature of the acting subject: He acts freely, who acts of his own accord. Now man does of his own accord that which he does from a habit that is suitable to his nature: since a habit inclines one as a second nature. If, however, a habit be in opposition to nature, man would not act according to his nature, but according to some corruption affecting that nature.33 In other words, we can be free human beings only because we are human beings. Human nature is moved according to what it is, that is, a nature endowed with freedom: 32 See ST I, q. 22, a. 4: “I answer that, Divine providence imposes necessity upon some things; not upon all, as some formerly believed. For to providence it belongs to order things towards an end. Now after the divine goodness, which is an extrinsic end to all things, the principal good in things themselves is the perfection of the universe; which would not be, were not all grades of being found in things. Whence it pertains to divine providence to produce every grade of being. And thus it has prepared for some things necessary causes, so that they happen of necessity; for others contingent causes, that they may happen by contingency, according to the nature of their proximate causes.” 33 ST I–II, q. 108, a. 1, ad 2. 34 “Et ideo dicendum est, quod Deus omnia movet, sed diversimode, inquantum scilicet unumquodque movetur ab eo secundum modum naturae suae. Et sic homo movetur a Deo ad volendum . . . per modum liberae voluntatis” (Super Rom., cap. 9 l. 3). A World of Natures 227 God moves everything, but in different ways, because everything is moved by God according to the mode of its nature. Thus the human being is moved by God to will . . . by the mode of free will.34 One of the most important principles for St. Thomas is that God creates natures and respects them. This is how he explains that God, who is purely spiritual, relates to human beings with visible signs. In a sense, He speaks our language, which is not purely spiritual. This appears for instance in these “remedies” that are the sacraments: Remedies of this kind had to be handed on with some visible signs. First, indeed, because just as He does for all other things, so also for man, God provides according to his condition. Now, man’s condition is such that he is brought to grasp the spiritual and intelligible naturally through the senses. Therefore, remedies had to be given to men under sensible signs. Second, because instruments must be proportioned to their first cause. But the first and universal cause of human salvation is the incarnate Word.35 This text shows how God, because he respects the nature of his creatures, relates to human beings in a human way: first in the incarnation, then in the life of the Church. Human beings relate to God, but with the help of the material world. The basis of human knowledge—the principles that are naturally in any knowing man—depends on sensitive knowledge. This is, for example, the case of the natural knowledge of the difference between the whole and the part: It is owing to the very nature of the intellectual soul that man, having once grasped what is a whole and what is a part, should at once perceive that every whole is larger than its part: and in like manner with regard to other such principles.Yet what is a whole, and what is a part— this he cannot know except through the intelligible species which he has received from phantasms [images formed in our mind by abstraction from material objects].36 Human beings are thus spiritual beings who need the material world. This is a special case of the interdependence of things in Nature, because the human creature is between two worlds. The wholly spiritual God respects our material component, and uses it to lift us up towards him. But precisely: can we go towards him? How far can the principle of movement which is our nature go? 35 ScG IV, ch. 56. See also ST III, q. 61, a. 1. 36 ST I–II, q. 51, a. 1. Charles Morerod, O.P. 228 Human Nature and Its Movement towards God Human nature depends on the material world, but has a higher aspiration. The problem is that such a desire is beyond our reach, and, in addition to that, we die. Our intellectual nature seeks knowledge, and a knowledge that lasts. The whole body of human culture witnesses to that. For that reason, death is somehow against nature for us: Everything naturally aspires to existence after its own manner. Now, in things that have knowledge, desire ensues upon knowledge. The senses indeed do not know existence, except under the conditions of ‘here’ and ‘now,’ whereas the intellect apprehends existence absolutely, and for all time; so that everything that has an intellect naturally desires always to exist. But a natural desire cannot be in vain.37 On the other hand, our nature is not independent and cannot subsist by itself: As every created thing has its being from another, and, considered in itself, is nothing, so does it need to be preserved by another in the good which pertains to its nature.38 Not only are we unable to reach what we naturally desire, we are not even able to desire what “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). We must be told about it: Nature inclines us to hope for the good which is proportionate to human nature; but for man to hope for a supernatural good he had to be induced by the authority of the Divine law.39 Therefore God provided a way for us, which is in line with our nature but leads us to a higher level: It is the nature of the human mind to gather its knowledge from sensible things; nor can it of itself arrive at the direct vision of the divine substance, as that substance is in itself raised above all sensible things and all other beings to boot, and beyond all proportion with them. But because the perfect good of man consists in his knowing God in such 37 ST I, q. 75, a. 6. 38 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2. 39 ST II–II, q. 22, a. 1, ad 1. 40 ScG IV, ch. 1. A World of Natures 229 way as he can, there is given to man a way of ascending to the knowledge of God, to the end that so noble a creature should not seem to exist altogether in vain, unable to attain the proper end of his existence.40 Providential actions in the world are in line with creation, even when they lead us to a level infinitely higher than what we could achieve, such as participation in divine life. Here St. Thomas adds the Christian economy to the results of the observation of the world by Aristotle: The actions of natural things are not in vain—as it is proved in the second Book of Physics—but are ordained towards certain ends by the intellect which institutes nature, in such a way that the whole order of nature is somehow the work of an intelligence, as the philosopher says.41 Human nature is not vain, because it can achieve its relation to the highest good, which it naturally desires: God. But doesn’t that achievement destroy nature? Should we apply Exodus 33:20 (No man shall see Me, and live) to our human nature? Not surprisingly, Thomas does not think so. For him, “beatitude does not destroy nature, since it is its perfection.”42 If our desire for beatitude does not destroy our nature in this life—where we so often mistakenly seek beatitude in imperfect goods—the same desire does not destroy our nature when we truly attain beatitude: There is not in the separated soul a will changeable from good to evil, although it is changeable from this object of will to that so long as the order to the same ultimate end is preserved. It is now apparent that such immutability is not in conflict with the power of free will whose act it is to choose, for choice is of the things for the end; choice is not of the ultimate end. Therefore, just as there is now no conflict with free will in the fact that with an immutable will we desire beatitude and fly from misery in general, so there will be no contrariety to free will in the fact that the will is unchangeably fixed upon some definite thing as upon an ultimate end.43 In Heaven, in the vision of God, we are finally fully human. Of course we cannot choose not to desire God, but we cannot choose that in this life either: I have already said that this natural love remains even in Hell. 41 “Rerum enim naturalium actiones non sunt frustra, ut in 2 Physic. probatur, sed ad certos fines ordinatae ab intellectu naturam instituente, ut sic totum opus naturae sit quodammodo opus intelligentiae, ut philosophus dicit.” (Aquinas, Super Sent., Bk. 2, d. 25, q. 1, a. 1 co) 42 ST I, q. 62, a. 7, sc. 43 ScG IV, ch. 95. 230 Charles Morerod, O.P. We have our nature, we are human: this is not optional. Of course in Heaven the possibility of a mistake in the identification of the object that makes us fully happy disappears. But our stable relationship to the Supreme Good does not even mean that our free will becomes inactive, because “it is changeable from this object of will to that.” This should not surprise us if we think that the unchangeable God can make different choices, and that we ask the saints to pray for us: there would no point in asking, were they in a situation in which no choice was possible. Conclusion Our senses provide the starting point of our knowledge. But what we see is not all of that we know. We think about the data of our senses. If we think about the world in which we are, we come to notice that it is ordained. Not only is it ordained as a whole, but it is composed of ordained natures. Natural sciences themselves show that by their very distinction—zoology, botanics, chemistry, and so forth; so also do the human sciences—linguistics, musicology, sociology, and so forth. The world is made of parts that have certain characteristics and that can be expected to “behave” in a certain way, but with a certain autonomy. This is what Aristotle already saw, and expressed in terms of “natures.” St. Thomas Aquinas built upon Aristotle, adding a Christian perspective. The resulting picture is that our world is a whole of interrelated parts. Each nature within Nature has a natural tendency, a “natural love.” This order is not perfect—faith attributes such a disorder to the disturbed relation of human beings with God—but evil itself shows that order exists, even though in a painfully negative way. This order is not designed by God in a deterministic way: God wants different kinds of creatures, including free ones (angels and human beings). Our freedom is due to our nature, and in Heaven both our freedom and our nature remain. In the beatific vision, we do not become less human, but more human. As human nature is a bridge between the material world and the spiritual world, it shows particularly well the relation to God of the ordained material Nature. Therefore the redemption of the human race also shows the relation of God with the world, including the material world in which we live now. Redemption shows at the same time what we are, what we should be, and what we shall be. At the midnight Mass of Christmas 2007, Pope Benedict XVI showed how the world, restored by God, is actually best understood in liturgy: Gregory of Nyssa, in his Christmas homilies . . . applies this passage [“He pitched his tent among us” ( Jn 1:14)] about the tent to the tent A World of Natures 231 of our body, which has become worn out and weak, exposed everywhere to pain and suffering. And he applies it to the whole universe, torn and disfigured by sin. What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation? Anselm of Canterbury, in an almost prophetic way, once described a vision of what we witness today in a polluted world whose future is at risk: “Everything was as if dead, and had lost its dignity, having been made for the service of those who praise God.The elements of the world were oppressed, they had lost their splendour because of the abuse of those who enslaved them for their idols, for whom they had not been created.” Thus, according to Gregory’s vision, the stable in the Christmas message represents the ill-treated world. What Christ rebuilds is no ordinary palace. He came to restore beauty and dignity to creation, to the universe: this is what began at Christmas and makes the angels rejoice. The Earth is restored to good order by virtue of the fact that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light anew, and in the harmony between human will and divine will, in the unification of height and depth, it regains its beauty and dignity. Thus Christmas is a feast of restored creation. It is in this context that the Fathers interpret the song of the angels on that holy night: it is an expression of joy over the fact that the height and the depth, Heaven and Earth, are once more united; that man is again united to God. According to the Fathers, part of the angels’ Christmas song is the fact that now angels and men can sing together and in this way the beauty of the universe is expressed in the beauty of the song of praise. Litur- N&V gical song—still according to the Fathers—possesses its own peculiar dignity through the fact that it is sung together with the celestial choirs. It is the encounter with Jesus Christ that makes us capable of hearing the song of the angels, thus creating the real music that fades away when we lose this singing-with and hearing-with.44 44 Benedict XVI, Homily at Midnight Mass, Christmas 2007: www.vatican.va/holy_ father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20071224 _christmas_en.html. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 233–52 233 Metaphysical Realism as the Foundation of Environmental Stewardship and Economic Development D EBORAH S AVAGE St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity St. Paul, MN “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God . . .” —Romans 8:19 Introduction C URRENT POLICY debates concerning the preservation of the natural environment are complicated by the often unspoken recognition that the stakes include the economic prosperity we have all come to expect as almost a natural right of human persons. Those who warn of an impending ecological disaster argue that the future of the planet relies on our taking drastic measures to respond to the reality of global warming and other alarming theories. This group seems unfazed by the effect those measures might have on our economic life. On the other hand, there are those who seem relatively unconcerned that the more or less unbridled pursuit of material wealth in the West has quite likely compromised the health of our planet and our future as its residents.1 Their argument reflects the notion that economic freedom and the human impulse to create and spread material prosperity are essential aspects of human society and cannot be sacrificed to as yet unproven scientific speculation. 1 See Pope Benedict on this: Zenit, October 23, 2009. The Pope makes a call for “intergenerational justice” and actions of solidarity with the world’s future generations, as they are also entitled to enjoy the beauty of creation. Found at: www.zenit.org/article-27308?l=english 234 Deborah Savage The tension between these two apparently irreconcilable positions was quite apparent at the U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. By all accounts, the conference was plagued from the start by disputes and distrust between the industrialized nations and the socalled “developing” countries, the latter eager to benefit from the penalties the richer nations will have to pay for their “unrestricted exploitation” of the natural resources of the planet. Each side blamed the other for failing to take the necessary actions to tackle climate change, while the poorer nations accused the richer ones of a kind of “environmental colonialism,” that is, an attempt to restrict poor and emerging economies from industrializing at their own pace.2 Perhaps even more revealing was an opinion poll carried out in early December 2009 by the Nielsen Company and the Oxford University Institute of Climate Change. Their annual survey suggested that world concern about climate change has fallen in the past two years; the study showed that the decline in worry about the environment was correlated with the global economic slowdown, in particular in North America.3 It appears we are concerned about the environment—but only if the solutions can guarantee the preservation of our standard of living. It seems evident that this tension is at least one of the forces that have held back any large-scale collective action on what is now a very public concern for the environment. The dilemma is particularly apparent—and potentially tragic—in certain developing countries, which argue, for example, that they have the right to cut down their rain forests in order to insure a brighter economic future for their citizens. The attempt to suggest or even impose policy guidelines on them to care for the environment is seen more as an attempt to rob them of their right to economic development than as any real concern for the planet. At least on the surface of things, there does seem to be a potentially intractable conflict between the needs of the earth and the needs of human persons to pursue their own flourishing—or, at least—for all of humanity to enjoy the material standard of living that characterizes the lives of those who happen to be residents of a developed nation. While surely it would 2 The African delegation walked out of the talks when it appeared as though the developed countries were extending this new “colonialism” by refusing to provide financial aid to the poorer countries to help them adapt to climate change. See news.globaltv.com/. For an excellent analysis of this phenomenon, see Robert H. Nelson, “Environmental Colonialism: Saving Africa from Africans,” The Independent Review 8, no. 1 (2003): 65–85. 3 See blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/global-survey-concern-for-climatechange-cools-off/. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 235 not be sensible to continue to degrade the health of the planet in order to satisfy shorter-term expectations for profit or consumer products, neither is it a reflection of Christian charity to refuse a poverty-stricken father in Brazil a chance at a better life for him and his family. How do we extract ourselves from this potentially fatal impasse? Clearly the situation calls for a realistic assessment of what is at stake and of what can be done. But at the heart of this essay is the question of what sort of “realism” will help us to navigate truly unknown terrain. Within the philosophical framework of the Catholic intellectual tradition, realism is, in the first place, a philosophical and theological stance toward the intelligibility of the created order. In fact, the position affirms the view that the human knower quite literally participates in the divine creation through his capacity to recognize and cognize both the essential nature of created things and the fact of their existence. In the words of philosopher Josef Pieper, the world can be known because it has already been creatively thought by God. Indeed, according to Pieper, it is the doctrine of creation that provides the theological undercurrent to the philosophical realism of St. Thomas Aquinas. My essay will explore this epistemological position as the foundation of both environmental stewardship and economic activity. We shall see that the historical tension between these two important human concerns (whatever the outcome of current scientific studies) cannot be resolved without understanding that their origins are the same; they both issue from man’s place in the order of creation and his capacity to grasp the good inherent in it. We must first establish the foundations of metaphysical realism and locate the human person within the cosmic scheme. Here I will argue that man does not inhabit an environment, but a created order.4 Thus, his responsibility toward creation issues from his place in it as a rational creature, an entity that is a unity of body and soul. Second, I will show that man also has a claim on creation, derived from the fact that he has no alternative but to use the goods of creation in order to pursue his own final end. Third, I will explore the implications of this account for human activity, both our knowing and our movement, our work in the world. I will show that the metaphysical context for human knowing and action—the reality that makes any of it possible at all—is creation itself. I will argue, in conclusion, that the resolution of the dilemma we are investigating here will be found in a proper understanding of human 4 I am indebted for this insight to Dr. Christopher Thompson. See Thompson, “Beholding the Logos: The Church, the Environment, and the Meaning of Man,” Logos 12, no. 3 (2009): 39. Deborah Savage 236 action, that is, human work, as a form of participation in the divine dominion over creation. I will conclude with some discussion of the concrete implications of this argument and some suggested next steps. What Sort of Realism? It has been widely reported that President Barack Obama points to the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr as a singularly important influence in his intellectual development, sparking a renewed public interest in Niebuhr’s approach to the many complex problems we face as a nation.5 In Niebuhr’s brand of realism, the reality in question is not a metaphysical one but the “multiplicity of forces that drive the decisions that people actually make in situations of political choice.”6 Niebuhr’s realism was born out of a quite legitimate concern to confront the “illusions about social realities” displayed by the idealists of his day. He argued that any situation always calls for careful attention to the “factions and forces” bringing pressure to bear on it, that it is necessary to prescind from any obsessive concern about the precise meaning of the good—or at least the ideal—to be achieved and to focus instead on what can be accomplished given the agendas of the various constituencies involved. Now, as interesting and influential as Niebuhr’s work has been—and as noble as his project was—it seems equally undeniable that he recommends sidestepping the question of the moral good in order to focus on the question of what sort of solution will satisfy the conflicting demands of those with a stake in the outcome. For Niebuhr, to be “realistic” is to take all the relevant “realities” into account; Christian realism then becomes a kind of political realism, a form of pragmatism in which one’s moral stances take second place to the wish to achieve at least some measure of the good one seeks to accomplish.7 If we are, in fact, on the brink of destruction, if it is true that the polar ice caps really are melting because of destructive human activity, inadvertent or otherwise, would the realism of Niebuhr help? I must answer no, at least not in the first analysis. For the reason we are in this situation is only secondarily a scientific or political problem. In the first place, it is philosophical and theological; it issues from the well-documented, almost commonplace recognition that the contemporary person suffers from a 5 Journalist and commentator David Brooks was the first to bring this to light. See David Brooks, “Obama, Gospel and Verse,” New York Times, April 26, 2007. 6 Robin Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4. 7 Ibid., 6–8. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 237 virtually intractable myopia regarding the real purposes of human life and man’s final end. As Lynn White stated in his famous, if problematic, 1967 essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” “what people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny—that is, by religion.”8 No responsible person can ignore the evidence that we display an almost insatiable appetite for more and more “stuff,” goods as well as services, that serve merely as substitutes for the real desires of the human heart. Nor can we overlook our refusal to grasp that our obsession with technology and the power it brings has led us to plant the seeds of our own potential destruction. As the Catholic Church states so profoundly in Gaudium et Spes, we really must ask, “What is the meaning and value of all this feverish activity? How should all these things be used?”9 I hope to show that the answers to these penetrating questions will be found by returning to the thought of Aquinas and recovering his metaphysical achievement for an issue of enormous importance for our contemporary culture—and for our children. Metaphysical Realism, the Human Person, and the Order of Creation Metaphysical realism is grounded in a particular view of the relationship between man and the created order. In order to grasp the significance and meaning of this philosophical position for our question, we must begin with a fundamental proposition: that it is an error to think of the human person as inhabiting an environment. Within the context of the Catholic theological tradition, “the human person does not inhabit an environment; the human person inhabits a world, a created cosmos.”10 Unless this is grasped at the outset of our inquiry, our understanding of ourselves and of our relationship to the world we live in will be distorted, our discoveries off the mark. The order of creation provides a sort of spine or background around which all the elements of this investigation orbit and ultimately find a place. Secondly, metaphysical realism affirms the view that the human knower quite literally participates in the divine creation through his capacity to recognize and cognize both the essential nature of created things and the fact of their existence. Thus, it cannot be understood apart from the philosophy of being that provides the context for a realist 8 Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science (1967): 155. 9 Gaudium et Spes, 33, no. 1 10 Thompson, “Beholding the Logos,” 39. Deborah Savage 238 understanding of the reality in which we live: except for God, all else is creature. As Josef Pieper argues, this notion of creation, though mostly implicit in Aquinas and often left unexpressed, determines and characterizes the interior structure of nearly all the basic concepts in St. Thomas’s philosophy of Being.11 It also provides the basis upon which we can claim any true knowledge of reality. Let us pause here to consider the outlines of the doctrine. Aquinas understands that everything in the universe is either Creator or creatura and that all existing being proceeds from God as its efficient, formal, and final cause. First, all creatura exist because they participate in the being of God, whose being is alone necessary and whose perfection is the cause of all perfections; the being of the creatura does not subsist on its own but through participation in the being of God.12 Second, creatura receive not only their existence from God, but also their very nature from God, in both its material and its formal sense. Their determinate nature or form originates in the divine wisdom as its first principle; God is the first exemplar cause of all things.13 Before they are creatura, all things are first in the mind of God. Finally, this exemplar is the likeness of the divine perfection and goodness, toward which all creatura are ordered and toward which they move.14 In short, as Aquinas states: “there must exist in the divine mind a form to the likeness of which the world was made.” 15 Creation itself is a thought, an idea, an exemplar in the mind of God.16 It is this reality that grounds the capacity of human persons to know and to know truly.Thomist epistemology reflects a “magnificent harmony between the intellect and the world, which arises from the fact that the human intellect, by its very nature, knows the world as it is.”17 In terms of human anthropology, this harmony is made possible by the union of the rational soul with the materiality of the body and the capacity of the human intellect to grasp the immaterial form of the object of knowledge, without leaving the concrete particular out of the picture. As Aquinas 11 Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in The Silence of St. Thomas (New York: Pantheon, 1957), 48. 12 Aquinas, ST I, q. 44, a.1. 13 Aquinas, ST I, q. 44, a. 3. “And these ideas, though multiplied by their relations to things, in reality are not apart from the divine essence, according as the likeness to that essence can be share diversely by different things. In this manner therefore God Himself is the first exemplar of all things.” 14 Aquinas, ST I, q. 44, a. 5. 15 Aquinas, ST I, q. 15, a. 1. 16 Aquinas, ST I, q. 44, a. 3. 17 Frederick Wilhelmsen, Man’s Knowledge of Reality (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1956), 43. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 239 demonstrates, to abstract the intelligible species from the phantasm is a function of the power of the active intellect which enables us to “disregard the conditions of individuality, and to take into our consideration the specific nature” that informs the passive intellect.18 Thus, knowledge is not merely of the particular but of the universal, extending beyond this or that instance to all things sharing the same nature. It is because of this that the human intellect can be said to possess the potency to grasp the actual nature of the res, of the thing in itself. This claim can sound surprising to modern ears; the proof is found, not in a more complete account of the dynamism of human knowing, but in a deeper understanding of the object of knowledge itself, those entities that constitute the created order. As mentioned already, in Aquinas’s framework, nothing exists which is not creatura except the Creator. It is this very createdness that determines entirely and all-pervasively the inner structure of the creature, “not merely soul and spirit but also the visible world.”19 And the fact that all creatura possess this inner structure is what makes it possible for man to know them; things are knowable because they have been created, that is, given their nature by an all-knowing Creator God. Though, again according to Josef Pieper, it has been virtually unnoticed in textbook interpretations of Aquinas that this undercurrent permeates Aquinas’s entire philosophy of being. His rendering of the classical ontological doctrine of the West cannot be fully grasped without it. Propositions such as “all that exists is good,” or “all that exists is true,” indeed the significance of the transcendental concepts in general, lose their full meaning without reference to the fact that these statements “do not refer to a neutral being that simply exists but formally to Being as creatura.”20 It is only when the notion of creation is our starting point that we can grasp St. Thomas’s doctrine of truth and the aspect of particular interest to us here, the ontological truth embedded in the things of creation. Now, God’s knowledge is creative, man’s knowledge is non-creative and only qualifies as real knowledge when it conforms to reality. In between them is the structure of all reality as a system in which the archetypes and the copies are both embraced. Here is the concept of measure—the mensura—something on the one hand given and on the 18 Aquinas, ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 4. 19 Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 47. 20 Ibid., 48. These are the notions that can be predicated of being qua being, and they define the entire arc of being from Creator to creature; they include res or “thingness,” unity, identity, truth, goodness, and (according to some) beauty. Deborah Savage 240 one hand received. Man’s mind does not give measure except with regard to artifacts—res artificiales. It is God’s knowing, the reality of the object in the divine wisdom, that gives us the measure of all things knowable.21 There is an ontological precedence at work between these two concepts of the known. First these things are created, brought into being by God. This creative fashioning of things by God is what makes it possible for them to be known by men. The former brings forth the latter and it is God’s light hidden in the nature of things that illuminates reality and makes it intelligible and knowable by man. We can know creatura because we are creatura. [This] signifies that things can be known by us because God has creatively thought them; as creatively thought by God, things have not only their own nature (“for themselves alone”); but as creatively thought by God, things have also a reality “for us.”22 This is the core of the metaphysical realism espoused by Aquinas. In contrast to the realism of Niebuhr, the reality to which it refers is the nature of the created order as actualized, which is, in virtue of its existence, both true and good. Metaphysical realism reveals that the true as an object of knowledge and the good as an object of desire both issue from the same created reality. We will return to this idea in a moment. Now, there are two implications of this doctrine. First, it is quite literally true that all creatures exist in virtue of this participation in God as first cause. Thus each is endowed with a certain ontological status that issues from the fact that they are held in existence by God, they receive their formal quiddity from God, and they are ordered somehow to God. This metaphysical reality reveals that the created order, and the diversity of creatures that it comprises, have a claim on us that cannot be readily ignored or dismissed. Let me state the obvious: though man occupies a unique position within this hierarchy, since he is at the meeting place of the worlds of matter and spirit and is possessed of a rational soul and the powers of intellection (a power that permits him to grasp the nature of the created entity), his status as a creature qua creature is in a sense equivalent to any other creatura. Like all other creatura, he is a creature of God, held in existence by God, receiving his formal quiddity from God, and ordered to God. Further, as Aquinas tells us, since every being is God’s creature, and since all created perfections are in God23—that is, participate in the 21 Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 55. 22 Ibid. 23 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 2. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 241 essence of God which is existence itself—and since being and goodness are convertible,24 every being, qua being, is good. Secondly, man’s unique status within the hierarchy does not free him from seeing the unity, truth, and goodness in all the rest of creation. In fact, on the contrary, his very nature as the only creature endowed with reason, makes him responsible for seeing it. Thus the created order places a very clear demand on him, a demand intimately related to his capacity to know—the demand that he recognize the world around him for what it is: evidence of God’s creative activity in the world that comprises creatura who, just like him, participate in God’s own essence. Though intuitively he may grasp that, unlike himself, other creatura reflect merely a trace of the divine likeness, whereas he reflects its very image,25 he nonetheless has no real alternative in an absolute sense but to adopt an attitude of responsibility toward creation. This is, if you will, a caveat that must be taken into account in any attempt to justify the exigencies of the economic life of any community or nation. In a sense, this first set of propositions is an attempt to translate the concerns of the environmentalists into philosophical terms that might demonstrate that they actually reflect a metaphysical reality affirmed by the Catholic Christian tradition. At this point we can state that any adequate account of the economic exigencies of the situation must provide for this reality. Man’s Right to the Goods of Creation There is a second fundamental proposition, one that issues from man’s very place in the created order. This second proposition can be said to begin in a more phenomenological analysis, that is, it is observable aside from any metaphysical account or any derivation of philosophical categories, or for that matter, scientific theories.Though Aquinas relies on it in his proof that the soul is properly united to the body, an analysis to which I will return in a moment, it is referred to in certain circles as “the human fact” and provides both an empirical basis for the metaphysical truths it reflects and an objective starting place for scientific inquiry as well.26 24 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 1. Aquinas actually states that though goodness and being are really the same, the good is predicated of a thing somewhat differently than being. Being corresponds to what something actually is, and thus it correlates to potentiality. Goodness signifies a perfection which is desirable, and a thing may possess it simply or relatively according to the extent to which it is actualized (has being). 25 Aquinas, ST I, q. 93, a. 6. 26 M. A. Krapiec, O.P., I-Man (New Britain, CT: Mariel Publications, 1983), 29–31. Indeed, it would seem that, for the most part, science itself has tended to overlook 242 Deborah Savage It is a given within the Catholic philosophical tradition that the human person is a rational animal. And, not without justification, much of our deliberation has focused on the rational principle that defines the human soul and the nature of that operation. But there is another aspect of this definition, perhaps a trifle ignored, and that is to ask first—not about man’s rationality or his soul—but to pose a question closer to us, more immediately available to our senses: that is, what sort of animal is he? Let’s take a look. Man is, in fact, the only creature in the animal kingdom that clearly is not suited to his environment. He does not have claws that would permit him easily to kill his prey with his bare hands. He does not have a prominent snout equipped with fangs that would allow him to attack and devour his prey that way. He does not have a highly developed sense of smell that would help him to find food or to sense immediately that the food he has spotted will likely make him sick or could even lead to his death. In order to accommodate his own limited capacity for mastication and the requirements of his digestive system, he needs to cook the meat, grind and bake the wheat, boil the corn. He does not have fur that might protect him from the elements, and thus he has no choice but to construct shelters, make clothing, and plant, harvest, and store food in anticipation of the time when there will be none to be had. He simply must think ahead, plan, anticipate. In short, it is a good thing that man has the capacity for reason, because without it he would not have survived. It is man alone who is able to transcend the whole of nature and the animal world; it is man alone who has survived the difficulties of the struggle with nature. Out of necessity, he has fashioned for himself “an artificial niche in the form of homes, estates, cities and everything which is associated with urban culture.”27 In fact, everything we refer to as culture was and is the achievement of man’s reason. Driven in part by the fact that the human person is the only creature who is capable of genuine love and who contemplates his own death, he operates in a world of meaning, of hope, and of faith. Culture is ultimately the result of man’s search for meaning; it will reflect his conclusions in that regard. But it originates in the empirical fact that he must create his own environment in order to reach his own final end. Now, Aquinas himself refers to this “human fact,” in his argument that the human soul is fittingly united to the human body. How could it be right, says the objector, that that most perfect of souls, the human soul, this pre-scientific human fact and thus has failed to account adequately for the place of the human person in the cosmic scheme. 27 Krapiec, I-Man, 31. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 243 should be united to so imperfect a body? After all, the bodies of other animals are naturally provided with covering instead of clothes, with hoofs instead of shoes, with claws, with teeth, with horns. But the human body is deprived of such protections. This means we must conclude that the soul is not properly united with the human body, does it not? On the contrary, says Aquinas, man’s protection is found through the operation of his reason and the work of his hands, both of which make it possible for him to create for himself instruments of an infinite variety, for any number of purposes. Man’s protection is of his own making. This is possible because the intellectual soul has the power to comprehend universals, a power that extends to the infinite, a power that cannot be limited to fixed notions or means, or to particulars. Man can survive because the proper operation of man qua man is to understand—and it is in virtue of this that he surpasses all other animals.28 It is this power that is to guide his desires and the work of his hands; the body is for the sake of the soul’s movement toward God. So here we have the other half of our dilemma—rendered, we hope, intelligible in philosophical terms. This set of propositions reveals the reasons why man must work and why he must use the goods of creation to insure his own survival. This is foundational to my inquiry, because it must be understood that the ecological crisis (assuming there is one) cannot be resolved by ignoring the fact that human persons have a natural right to the use of the goods of creation. The human person does not exist apart from nature; he belongs to it and it belongs to him in virtue of his place within it as creature. Any adequate account of our responsibility to the created order also must provide for this reality. So, the facts before us are twofold: creation has a claim on us and we have a claim on it. Where does justice lie in this schema? Again, what sort of “realism” will help us to settle the conflict? The Human Person, the Good, and the Meaning of Work In what follows, I will offer a third set of propositions, which I believe provides a basis for a resolution to this tension, at least in philosophical and theological terms. Under consideration in this section of the essay is the third leg of my argument; we must now grasp what it is that he knows when he knows truly and how that permits him to act for his own good in his movement back toward God. Here we will introduce the meaning of the good and its relationship to human work. We will see that the meaning of human work is grounded also in these metaphysical realities 28 Aquinas, ST I, q. 76, a. 1. 244 Deborah Savage and that man’s work is itself a participation in God’s dominion over the created order. Thus, properly understood and carried out, man’s work is ordered toward the redemption of creation in its own return to God. Without man’s use of the goods of creation, the movement of those goods toward their own final end would (in a sense) be truncated—for, unlike man who is made for his own sake, the goods of creation are made for the sake of something else.29 We have seen that the measure of man’s knowledge is determined by its adequation to the exemplar in the mind of God. Things are knowable because they are created, but they are true because they have been creatively thought. And the truth of man’s knowledge is measured by the extent of its identity with the thing as it is in itself, as caused by the mind of God. But, as St. Thomas demonstrates, since every created entity has actuality and is in some way perfect, every being qua being is good.30 Being and the good are convertible, and the good is understood as that which not only “is” but also is in some way desirable.31 Now the good itself is a multivalent notion. Aquinas tells us that from the higher and more universal point of view, the good has three aspects: the good as virtuous, the good as useful, and the good as pleasurable. Everything is good so far as it is desirable and it is the term or end toward which the appetite moves. But this end can present itself in three ways. It can be an end that is absolute in that it is desired for its own sake, as, for example, the Beatific Vision, or the natural desire to live. This is the good in its virtuous aspect. Or, it can be relative to some other end, that is, a means to an end, like food which is taken in order to sustain life.This is the good as useful. Finally, it can be an end in which the appetite comes to rest in the thing desired. This is the good as pleasant.32 But the good is not an object of desire unless the intellect first grasps it as an object of knowledge; appetite follows apprehension.33 As Aquinas demonstrates, it is not the case that a man understands because he is moved by his intellect; he is moved by his intellect because he understands.34 Thus the first protection provided the human person in his natural effort to create a niche for himself, an environment in which he 29 This requires qualification. As we will see in a moment, that “something else” is not only its utility in the material sense.The goods of creation are also goods that can be and should be left alone for the sake of beauty, as an object of contemplation, or to insure the future sustainability of the planet and its inhabitants. 30 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 3. 31 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 1. 32 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 6. 33 Aquinas, ST I, q. 79, a. 1, ad 2. 34 Aquinas, ST I, q. 76, a. 1. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 245 can pursue his own final end, is not precisely his desire for the good; nor is it his capacity to create with his hands; but it is his intellectual capacity to grasp the good contained within the essence and existence of creation. His natural inclination toward the truth, a feature predicated of the mind, is prior to and orders the natural inclination of his will toward the good. Thus the good as known in its virtuous aspect is ontologically and logically prior to its usefulness and its pleasure-ableness. For the object of knowledge and of desire is not merely useful or pleasurable. A thing is not good because it is useful; it is useful because it is good. And it is good because it has being. The goodness of a thing includes its usefulness, but only in a secondary sense, as when it is grasped as a means toward something else. In the first place, and in its virtuous meaning, the goodness of the creatura is identified with the final end toward which the appetite of the creatura moves, and the thing is desired, not as a means toward something else, but for its own sake.35 Now, the “unfailing order” we observe in nature as a whole is proof that it is being governed.36 This order issues from the observable reality that every created entity has its own end toward which it is ordered; its ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of that final end.37 Thus, inherent in the nature of created beings is a “natural necessity” that directs them toward that end, revealing the divine governance of creation and the Divine Providence that oversees all things. Man’s use of the goods of creation cannot contravene this order, but must participate with it.38 Here, finally, is the precise claim that creation has on us—if we are to participate rightly within this order, we must understand that our place is to serve as ministers of God’s dominion over creation by insuring that the goods of creation reach their own proper end. We exercise dominion rightly only to the extent that our governance is a reflection of God’s. This is our privilege and our gift, for “it is a greater perfection for a thing to be good in itself and also the cause of goodness in others.”39 Man’s place in the created order calls him to be the agent that enables other creatura to realize their own final end. When a man works to secure his own 35 Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, a. 6. 36 Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 1. 37 Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 1. 38 Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 1, ad 3. 39 Aquinas, ST I, q. 103, a. 6. I am indebted for this insight to Matthew Cuddeback of Providence College, who pointed to the relevance of the category of Divine Governance during his presentation, “John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas on Man’s Participated Dominion of the Earth,” at the conference “Renewing the Face of the Earth: the Church and the Order of Creation,” St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, October 20–31, 2009. 246 Deborah Savage livelihood, thereby exercising his dominion over the goods of the earth, his action is a reflection of the work of the Creator. But if this activity is to be true to its meaning, it must correspond to God’s design. That is, he must be God’s minister, the proximate cause of the goods of creation attaining to their own final end. And here we come to the relationship of this analysis to the deeper meaning of human work, the means by which man may pursue his own flourishing. As Blessed John Paul II tells us in his encyclical on human work, Laborem Exercens, “Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.”40 The Holy Father points out that God’s instruction to Adam and Eve at Genesis 1:26, to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it,” that is, to work, is prior to the Fall, when they still existed in a state of original innocence. Work can be understood, therefore, not as punishment for sin but as “a fundamental dimension of human existence,” an essential characteristic of human nature. Human work itself is a reflection of man’s place in the created order; it is one of the ways that man sets about realizing his final end. Indeed, John Paul II argues that it is through his work that man becomes who he is meant to be, and work is thus a sacred act.41 But this work has this meaning only when it is ordered toward man’s final end and the end of all creation; only then can he be said to reflect God’s command to have dominion over all the goods of the earth. The significance of this proposition is stated well in Gaudium et Spes 34: Created in God’s image, man was commissioned to subdue the earth and all it contains, to rule the world in justice and holiness, and, recognizing God as the creator of all things, to refer himself and the totality of things to God so that with everything subject to God, the divine name would be glorified in all the earth. 40 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 4. 41 Ibid. 6. It is very interesting to note that many of these ideas were articulated beautifully by those involved in the Catholic Land Movement, an early twentieth-century effort to respond to the excesses of the Industrial Revolution; it is the origin of the intellectual and economic school of thought known as “Distributism.” The movement began in 1929 in Scotland and spread to the rest of Great Britain. See Flee to the Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2003) (originally published in 1934), especially George Maxwell’s “The Reconstruction of the Crafts,” 119–29. See also the essay by Matthew Whelan in this present volume (pages 253–77), “Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ: The Catholic Agrarianism of Vincent McNabb, O.P.” Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 247 When a man works to obtain something, to use the goods of creation, his action ensues from the movement of his will. But there is a movement prior to that, the movement of the intellect. Thus the notion of property, an economic category, originates in a metaphysical one: the cognitive grasp of the potency inherent in a natural resource, something which further depends upon the divinely conferred capacity of the human person to cognize the good and to act to realize that potential in accord with his nature. The grasp of this potency is accompanied by a prior appreciation of the final end proper to the object in question.This capacity is not only to see the usefulness of creation, that is, its utility; it includes and requires a concomitant grasp of the unity, truth, goodness, and yes, beauty, of creation and our responsibility as stewards of it. The creation of property begins, not with the movement of the appetite, that is, a simple and thoughtless “I want that.” Nor does it begin, as John Locke famously argued, with labor, that is, with the work of our hands. There is a human act prior to both of these movements when the human person grasps the intelligibility of a created good, its virtue, within which its usefulness and its pleasurability are nested. The resolution of the tension between environmental stewardship and the economic life of the community can be expressed in metaphysical terms as the relationship between the intelligibility of the created order and the capacity of the human person to see, not merely the utility of creatura, but the full truth and the goodness of diversity of beings that constitute the created order. Human persons have a natural right to make use of the goods of creation. But we do not have the right to use them up, for they are not ours in any absolute sense to begin with. They quite literally belong to God—and so do we. The thrust of all creation is toward its own final end, and man fully occupies his place in the created order only when he recognizes both his right and his responsibility toward it as he makes use of the goods of creation in order to realize his own final end. And this recognition cannot be assured without reflecting the image of God, not only in working, but in resting. Life comprises not only action but also rest and contemplation. Indeed, work and leisure are said to be the two fundamental rhythms of human life.42 In this regard, we cannot overlook the third and final aspect of the good, the good as pleasant, for it is here that we will find the antidote to the intellectual blindness of modern man, that which would 42 Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press: 1998), 6–7. See also Michael Naughton, “Leisure as the Basis of Work,” in Values, Work, Education:The Meanings of Work, ed. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild (New York: Rodopi Press, 1995), 53. Deborah Savage 248 renew his vision of reality and his relationship to it. The good as pleasant is that toward which the appetite moves in order to find rest. The goods of creation have their own final end which we must cognize; they have their uses, which we can exercise in order to insure human flourishing. But they are also a source of comfort, of beauty, and of pleasure, in which we may rest. The creation is also a gift to us to behold, and, in fact, it is in this aspect that man apprehends the full measure of its reality and its goodness. It is only man who lives in a cosmos, it is only man who can apprehend and appreciate its meaning. It is when he fails to grasp the good in this aspect that he falls into the trap laid for him by the serpent in the garden: he forgets to pause before its mystery. It becomes merely an object whose significance is only found in its utility. In his profound reflection on the meaning of Sabbath, Dies Domini, John Paul II points out that the decree to honor the Sabbath, “Remember the Sabbath day in order to keep it holy,” found at Exodus 20:8, has a very distinct meaning: before decreeing that something be done, the commandment urges that something be remembered. Pope John Paul sees this as a call to awaken remembrance of the grand and fundamental work of God which is creation, a remembrance which must inspire the entire religious life of man and then fill the day on which man is called to rest. Rest therefore acquires a sacred value: the faithful are called to rest not only as God rested, but to rest in the Lord, bringing the entire creation to him, in praise and thanksgiving, intimate as a child and friendly as a spouse.43 Pope John Paul reminds us that to keep the Sabbath “holy” is to remember that God is not the God of one day alone, but the God of time and space itself, of all the days of humanity. The story of creation, when considered in its entirety, reveals that “every reality, without exception, must be referred back to God.”44 Up until this point, I have tried articulate a reasoned account of the claims at work in man’s relationship to creation. But here I offer the humble observation that unless modern man learns to pause before its mystery, to remember himself and the contingency of his own existence, no purely intellectual description or political resolution will help us to “renew the face of the earth.” After all, at Genesis 2:15, Adam is put in the garden to “till it and keep it,” not to strip it of its fertile beauty. We still have a natural right to till the garden, but only if we also “keep” it. 43 John Paul II, Dies Domini, 16. Again, I am indebted to Matthew Cuddeback for this reference. 44 Ibid., 14. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 249 Once again, the full import of this stance can be better understood by returning to the thought of Aquinas, who argues that the intelligibility of the created order cannot be fully exhausted by a finite mind. That things are knowable does not necessarily translate into their being completely and absolutely known by man. Things are creatura and, as such, have their source in the “boundless radiance of Divine Knowledge.”45 All of creation points toward the infinite; the human mind, though capable of seeing into the nature of things, can never wholly plumb their depths. We must come to accept that, if we are to work as God “works,” our efforts will have to begin with an act of remembrance, the recognition that we do not comprehend fully our own origins or that of other creatura in the Creator. We cannot reduce creation to what we can either know or use, but must—first and always—“behold” its goodness in resting before it in the act of worship. Economic development or other forms of activity in the economic sphere, like any human endeavor, must be grounded in an acknowledgment of our place within the created order. Perhaps we could learn to bring to our work the “contemplative gaze” that the Holy Father says characterizes the Divine rest on the seventh day: an attitude that allows one to rest in the beauty of what has already been achieved, rather than always seeking new accomplishments.46 Now we know that the highest form of leisure is worship, and the pinnacle of our worship is our active participation in Holy Mass, at the Eucharist. We think of our celebration there as something separate from our working lives—but is it? Perhaps it is no accident that when the priest prepares the gifts to be offered in the consecration, he prays: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life. During the Middle Ages—when the whole town was Catholic and everyone attended Sunday Mass—the bread and wine that was used at the consecration was, quite literally, the result of the labor of those participating. This was before the days when someone was in the business of manufacturing those little hosts, before the practice of purchasing wine from a merchant. The townspeople brought their bread and wine to a little window at the back of the church as their contribution to the celebration. It was these simple gifts that became the Body and Blood of Christ at the Consecration. 45 Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 63. 46 John Paul II, Dies Domini, 11. 250 Deborah Savage It is a bit harder to see now, since the fruits of our labor usually come in the form of currency. But, in a sense, what is offered at Mass still is our work—in the form of bread and wine. It is our work that is transformed into the body and blood of Christ. It is our work that becomes the sacrifice. This work is not just the money we make, or the objects we produce, or even the people we serve—it is ourselves, our becoming, our own joining of ourselves to Christ on the Cross through the work that we do. John Paul II tells us that work, rightly understood, calls for an inner effort on the part of the human spirit, guided by faith, hope, and charity, and it can itself enter into the salvation process “on a par with the other ordinary yet particularly important components of its texture.”47 Work is not merely an economic reality, what we do to pay the bills and put our children through college. It is the way in which we participate in the ongoing creation and redemption of the world. It is one of the means by which we become that most excellent person that God had in mind when we were created. It is one of the ways we reach our final end. And, in the sacrifice on the altar, it is our work, our participation in the governance of the world, that is joined with the sacrifice of Christ. We must be sure to make it worthy of such a sacred offering. Economic development is necessary for human flourishing and a legitimate human pursuit. But it cannot be a truly human endeavor unless its aim is not to destroy creation, but to preserve it—as any good steward of another’s property would seek to do. Conclusion and Concrete Steps Obviously, most of the public at large will not find this analysis terribly persuasive. I have not provided a political platform or talking points for elected officials. But there is one group who might be interested—and that is the environmentalists among us—even those we consider, for lack of a better term, more left-leaning. As Christopher Thompson has argued elsewhere: “[O]ne can understand the increasing emergence of environmental awareness as the unthematic revolt of conscience among those descendants of the Enlightenment who intuit that something is deeply flawed in our approaches to the natural order.”48 The environmentalists are searching for categories in which to make their arguments. They do not know it, but the categories they need, form and finality, are just waiting to be rediscovered. 47 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 24. 48 Christopher Thompson, “Perennial Wisdom: Notes Toward a Green Thomism,” presented at the conference on “Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Order of Creation,” St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, October 30–31, 2009, and published in the present volume, pages 67–80. Metaphysics and Environmental Stewardship 251 Many environmentalists would not be not satisfied with Niebuhr’s brand of realism. After all, what compromise can there be if we accept for the moment the possibility that the ice-caps really are melting and that it is our insatiable demand for consumer goods or reliance on fossil fuels that is causing it? What compromise can there be if entire species of animals and plants are being wiped out by the impact of human activity on their ecosystems? The environmentalists have discovered the reality of a natural teleology and its implications for the human responsibility toward sustaining life on the planet. Political pragmatism is not going to satisfy them. In a profound reflection on John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio in 1999, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger points out that there is a movement of self-transcendence that is either active or latent in every culture, in every human person. He is addressing the question of how Christianity can speak to people in the context of pluralism and multiculturalism now, in an age of political correctness, when the notion of the particularity of one’s own culture or tradition has become a kind of untouchable, unquestioned, almost legal right.What he describes is a historical pattern found in the Old Testament and the New Testament whereby both the preservation of Israel and the spread of Christianity required an act of self-transcendence on the part of the community, a movement away from the particularity of an historical ethnic structure. His comments lead me to point out that a similar opportunity and a similar demand exist in our current situation. The time may be right to meet the culture whenever we can at the point at which it is already in the process of self-transcendence, at the point at which it is already in movement away from an evil and toward a good. Perhaps we need to imitate St. Paul, whose acknowledgment of the Athenian’s search for an unknown God in his speech at the Areopagus led to such dramatic results among the Gentiles. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that this concern for the earth is really a dormant or latent wish to understand the place of human persons in the created order.49 The task in the twenty-first century for those who would seek the truth and proclaim it is to find a way to enter into the culture at the point at which it has begun to open itself to universal truth and move out of the prison of mere particularity. The environmental movement is such a movement. It represents an important opportunity for evangelization. If we can invite those who are concerned about creation to consider what the Catholic intellectual tradition has to say about it, they may be led to a deeper reflection on the meaning of their own creatureliness as well. 49 See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Culture and Truth: Some Reflections on the Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio,” Patrician Magazine (Winter, 1999), 8–11. 252 Deborah Savage Leaving aside for the moment the issue of its imminence, our ecological crisis will not be resolved by final scientific proof or carefully crafted policy statements or U.N. action. For in its foundations, it is a question of the origins and ultimate meaning of creation itself, which is prior to and beyond the domain of both science and politics, whether or not their practitioners acknowledge it.50 Such questions, if you will, are “above their pay-grade.” It is the responsibility of Christian theologians and philosophers to respond to this problem, to help all of us to understand anew something that Aquinas demonstrated centuries ago: that the natural order possesses an intelligibility and intrinsic goodness that issues from the fact that it is created by God. In my view, the current angst about the environment and man’s place within it reflects the culture’s ill-articulated need to understand, once again, the meaning of our own natural desire to live.51 N&V 50 Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, Faith, Reason and the Natural Sciences:The Challenge of the Natural Sciences in the Work of Theologians (Aurora, CO: The Davies Group, Publishers, 2009), 25. 51 See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Culture and Truth.” See also Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, a. 6. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 253–77 253 Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ: The Catholic Agrarianism of Vincent McNabb, O.P.* M ATTHEW P HILIPP W HELAN Duke University Durham, NC Grant that whatever good things I have, I may share generously with those who have not and that whatever good things I do not have, I may request humbly from those who do . . . Plant deep in me, Lord, all the virtues, that I might be devout in divine matters, discerning in human affairs, and burdensome to no one in fulfilling my own bodily needs. —St. Thomas Aquinas, from A Prayer to Acquire the Virtues1 [Land] produces every kind of real wealth, from the stone that built Salisbury Minster to the wool that makes the world’s best homespuns and the wheat and grapes that may become the Sacrifice of a World Redeemed. —Vincent McNabb, O.P, The Church and the Land 2 S T. T HOMAS AQUINAS ’ S prayer that God “plant deep in [him] . . . all the virtues” invokes the metaphor of agriculture, asking for God’s care in nurturing him into a fruitful life. But his petitions to God for the generosity to share and the humility to request good things, along with the desire to meet need without burdening others, does not just invoke * The author would like to thank Natalie Carnes, Brian Goldstone, Stanley Hauerwas, Joseph Wolyniak, and Norman Wirzba for reading and for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 1 Thomas Aquinas, The Aquinas Prayer Book: The Prayers and Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2000), 53. 2 Vincent McNabb, The Church and the Land (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2002 [1925]), 152. 254 Matthew Whelan the metaphor of agriculture but implies the practice of agriculture itself—the gift of land and its fruits, the work of human hands—just as it envisions an economy within which the circulation of created goods to meet need is paramount. More than six centuries later, Vincent McNabb, O.P., found these strands within the Thomistic inheritance particularly important for his contemporaries to hear. Addressing a world in the grip of an industrialism that he thought enslaved God’s children, McNabb proposed a way to be devout in divine matters, discerning in human affairs, and burdensome to no one in fulfilling bodily need precisely by attending to the important relationship between God’s planting the virtues in us and our planting in the soil—the mutual implication, as he saw it, between culture and agriculture, economy and land. This essay focuses on McNabb’s theological critique of what he called “the Factory System of Industrialization”3 and the alternative understanding of economy he sought to revitalize. Despite the relative neglect of McNabb’s thought, it is worth examining for many reasons, perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this forum4 because he believed “responsible stewardship” of God’s creation to be inseparable from economy, and economy, in turn, to be embedded within a wider created order, of which land was the epitome. He therefore regarded industrialism as destructive, not only of people, but of places. “The craze for the big farm,” he wrote, “ends by impoverishing the farmer and the farm”5— not to mention those implicated in this process of impoverishment. McNabb, therefore, followed Pope Leo XIII in attempting to hold together Thomas’s thought on both theology and economy, rejecting the assumption that the modern world made either obsolete. For McNabb, as for Pope Leo XIII, modern developments made recovery of Thomas’s thinking on both theology and economy crucial. * * * 3 Ibid., 36. 4 A shorter version of this essay was originally presented at the conference “Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Order of Creation” at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, from 29 to 31 October 2009. The purpose of the conference was to “bring the wisdom of the Catholic intellectual tradition, especially that of St. Thomas Aquinas, to the articulation of an adequate vision of responsible stewardship.” 5 Vincent McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942), 77. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 255 Vincent McNabb was Irish by birth and a Dominican of the English province by vocation.6 He was born Joseph McNabb on 8 July 1868, in Portaferry, County Down, Ireland, near Belfast, the tenth of eleven children of Ann Shields and Captain James McNabb. When he was eleven, his father’s work moved the family to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. In 1885, he entered the novitiate of the English Dominicans at Woodchester in Gloucestershire, England, and took the name Vincent. He was ordained a priest in 1891. After a three-year supplemental course of studies for the degree of lector in Sacred Theology at the Dominican Studentate, Louvain, Belgium, he returned in 1894 to England, where he served variously as a professor (at Woodchester and Hawkesyard in Staffordshire), a prior (at Woodchester, Holy Cross in Leicester, and Hawkesyard), and a parish priest (at St. Dominic’s in London).7 He died at St. Dominic’s on 17 June 1943. While a young prior at Hawkesyard, he involved himself in agricultural work, devoting many hours each day to it. His chief biographer, Ferdinand Valentine, contends that this work profoundly influenced him, infusing new life and meaning into the asceticism he had embraced from an early age and the Thomism into which he had been trained as a Dominican.8 Even in his life in London, McNabb was determined to embody the economics of the homestead. His habit was made on a domestic loom from the wool of sheep reared on neighboring land, and his boots by a local craftsman. He wrote with a quill rather than a fountain pen. He refused mechanized forms of transportation like buses and trains, preferring to walk to and from his engagements, often ten to fifteen miles or more. Valentine explains McNabb’s rationale: “If the machine were responsible for the dislocation of modern life and the disintegration of the home, he would do without it.”9 6 For information about Vincent McNabb’s life I draw principally upon Ferdinand Valentine, Father Vincent McNabb, O.P.: The Portrait of a Great Dominican (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1955). See also Aidan Nichols, Dominican Gallery: Portrait of a Culture (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewig, 1997). 7 He was a Professor of Philosophy at Woodchester (1894–97), Professor of Sacred Theology at the Studentate of the English Province at Hawkesyard Priory (1897–1900), Prior of Woodchester (1900–1906), parish priest at St. Dominic’s in London (1907–8), Prior of Holy Cross in Leicester (1908–14), Prior of Hawkesyard (1914–17) and then Professor of Dogmatic Theology (1917–20), and finally a subprior and librarian at St. Dominic’s Priory for the remainder of his life (1920–43). 8 Angela Cunningham traces his interest even earlier, to the time of his studies at Louvain and his impression with the intensive farming practices of the smallholders he met while living there. Angela Cunningham, “Prophecy and the Poor,” New Blackfriars 64, no. 752 (1983): 57. 9 Valentine, Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., 157. Matthew Whelan 256 McNabb is perhaps best known for association with Distributism and its main proponents, G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Eric Gill. He has been called “the most unabashedly radical,”10 the most “extreme,”11 among the group. Following Pope Leo XIII’s statement in Rerum novarum (1891) that “the law therefore should favor ownership and its policy should be to induce as many as possible to become owners,” Distributists argued for the proliferation of ownership of property.12 “The basic solution,” McNabb contended, echoing Distributist principles, “lies along the lines of decentralization, diversification, small ownership, and cooperation and a large increase of subsistence homesteading.”13 Distributists therefore opposed both capitalism, in which productive property tends to become concentrated in the hands of few, and socialism, in which productive property is not held by individuals or families but by state or some other collective form. While deeply sympathetic to Distributism, McNabb, however, did not fully embrace the label, preferring to speak of himself as a priest and a theologian of the Church. His teaching sought to be faithful, first and foremost, to Scripture, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Pope Leo XIII. If, in the process, he found common ground with Distributism, so much the better.14 McNabb was also known for being a pivotal figure in the Catholic Land Movement (CLM), which sought to establish Catholic homesteads in the countryside—a movement that obviously resonated with Distributism.15 Formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1929, the CLM sought to foster a Catholic agrarianism as an alternative to industrialism.16 At the heart of McNabb’s thought and that of the CLM was an exhortation to a new 10 William Fahey, “Introduction,” in The Church and the Land (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2002 [1925]), 12. 11 Cunningham, “Prophecy and the Poor,” 53. 12 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum §46. 13 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 148. 14 Bede Bailey, “Father Vincent McNabb, Dominican,” The Chesterton Review XXII, no. 1 & 2 (1996): 54. 15 On McNabb’s participation in the CLM, see Valentine, Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., 142–49. Hugh Walters, “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999: VI–Pro Foco Non Foro: The Thomist Inheritance and the Household Economy of Father Vincent McNabb,” New Blackfriars 80, no. 939 (1999). On the CLM more generally, see Flee to the Fields:The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2003 [1934]). 16 CLM was characterized by a kind of monasticism, evidenced by these words McNabb wrote to his CLM brothers and sisters in ‘A Call to Contemplatives,’ one of the movement’s charter documents: “Be a monastery then—a MONK—a thing apart, aloof from the world; indeed, be a world apart, a self-sufficient, selfsupporting kingdom.” McNabb, The Church and the Land, 31. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 257 exodus, not from the flesh pots of Egypt, but from the flesh pots of London, Birmingham, and Manchester. McNabb read the English slums of his own day in relationship to Israel’s bondage in Egypt, the mass production of the factory in relation to the Pharaonic building projects, and the attempt to control the reproductive habits of the poor through birth control and eugenics legislation in relation to Pharaoh’s attempt to control the reproduction of the children of Israel.17 The remedy, he thought, was nothing short of “revolution.” 18 The revolution, however, involved leaving Egypt, not assassinating Pharaoh.19 Like Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the CLM’s “first and principal motive” was the worship of God. “They will leave the ugliness of the town,” he wrote, “not for the beauty of the land, but for the beauty of God’s face; they will fly from the disease of the town, not for the health of the body, but for the health of the soul; they will cut the tangled complexity of town life, not for the simple life with nature, but for the quiet life with God.”20 This is an important feature of McNabb’s thought that is often overlooked: while his critique implicated England as a whole, his solution appealed to theological sources and called for a distinctive Catholic witness.21 Moreover, he regarded exodus christologically: [A]s a greater than Moses has, by His death on the Cross, led them out of a greater bondage than that of Egypt, the God whom they worship and would follow is He whose name was written on the Cross as J ESUS OF N AZARETH . Now Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made Flesh, did not come into our midst, to show flesh and blood an example but to be its redeemer . . . The modern world needs redemption; and redemption means a return to Nazareth.22 McNabb thought that only the sequela Christi and holding fast to the redemption Christ offered was strong enough to go out to the countryside, to live long upon it, and to resist the lure of the city. Christ not only gave us his “leadership” and “example,” which made “a plain way still plainer,” but, even more importantly, he gave us the redemption that made our “weak human will stronger.”23 17 Ibid., 76. 18 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 73. 19 Ibid., 73. 20 Vincent McNabb, The Catholic Land Movement: Its Motives (Catholic Truth Soci- ety, 1932). See also McNabb, The Church and the Land, 32–33, 73–79. 21 Cunningham, “Prophecy and the Poor,” 62. 22 McNabb, The Catholic Land Movement: Its Motives. 23 Ibid. Matthew Whelan 258 Although McNabb urged an exodus from city to countryside, the purpose of the exodus was not to abandon cities to themselves. He simply thought that what was most necessary for social renewal in cities and the degrading and even enslaving conditions within them was the instantiation of a different kind of economy, a visible alternative to industrialism. As he put it, “No advance in social thought or social action is possible if we are seeking to prove to ourselves as a theory what we should be trying to realize as a fact.”24 Urban conditions were of such a nature that leaving them and instantiating an alternative to them was the only way to serve the city. This sentiment is perhaps most beautifully expressed in a collection of verbatim notes from a retreat he led: We mustn’t go out into the world as if the world were our enemy and we have to conquer it. It is like the poor wounded man on the road to Jericho; it is hungry, and we want to give it something to eat; thirsty, and we want to give it something to drink; homeless, and we want to open the door and give it a lodging and a home. It is not an enemy we want to overcome and subdue. We have some glorious thing, some Light, we want those outside to share; like the sunshine. We want it to be theirs as much as ours. And I think the first argument, and probably the most effective, is our life. But it is no use our speaking of our life if our life doesn’t speak for itself.25 What was at stake in exodus, therefore, was not so much separation as witness, the attempt to display to others the integration of what modern urban life was disintegrating. As Angela Cunningham has argued, the wellspring of McNabb’s critique of industrialism was his theology of the family. 26 The Holy Family of Nazareth was for him the model of true Christian social order. He considered industrialism to be antithetical not just to the good of the family but to the very existence of the family as such, especially poor families. Because wages and housing conditions were insufficient to support families, McNabb thought couples were increasingly pressured to practice artificial birth control. Moreover, McNabb and other Distributists regarded artificial birth control as part of a larger threat from eugenics legislation that sought to regulate the breeding of the “unfit.” Birth control and eugenics legislation undermined the integrity of the family, which McNabb regarded as “the economic unit of the commonwealth.”27 24 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 33, 30. 25 Vincent McNabb, God’s Way of Mercy (London: Burns, Oates, & Washbourne, 1937), 113. 26 Cunningham, “Prophecy and the Poor.” 27 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 38–41. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 259 McNabb thought the family was the basis of economy, not only because work should take place in or near the home and involve the production of the goods needed by the home—economy in the classical sense of the term as household management (oikonomia/ri’ omolía)—but also because the home alone produced the goods constitutive to a flourishing commonwealth: good people. A flourishing family life was therefore “the acid test of any system calling itself civilization,”28 and the answer to conditions that imperiled the possibility of a flourishing family life was not to conform the family to those conditions but to conform those conditions to the flourishing of the family.29 As McNabb himself put it, “Any attempt at social legislation which is not based on the integrity of the family is not going to be a good thing, and once you realize that, you have the key, the clue, to the moving spirit of the Land Movement.”30 McNabb therefore critiqued what he called “the Factory System of Industrialization”31 for its failure to distinguish true economy from what Aristotle called the art of making money (chrematistics/vqglasirsijǵ). This failure amounted to a conflation of economy with avarice, which not only fundamentally misconstrued economy, but produced people who, if they sought to serve God at all, sought to serve God along with Mammon.32 Industrialism “displaced” and “misplaced” economy’s “center of gravity”33 from countryside and land to city and factory. What was particularly pernicious to McNabb about these tendencies was the way they sought to disembed economy not only from the claims of families for what they need but from the role of land and the wider created order in meeting that need. Industrialism, in the words of Rerum novarum, surrendered workers, “isolated and helpless, to the hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of naked competition.”34 But, for McNabb, such surrendering was possible only because work had become synonymous with earning wages. Industrialism attempted to extract workers from the bonds of family, community, and land, much in the same way that it extracted crops from soil, timber from forests, oil from wells, and coal from veins. McNabb, therefore, did not understand economy in the modern sense of an interlocking system of markets that adjusts supply and demand 28 Ibid., 141–42, 61–63. 29 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 88–91, 114–17. 30 Ibid., 104. 31 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 36. 32 Ibid., 32. See also Vincent McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2009 [1933]), 40–42. 33 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 32. 34 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891), §3. All magisterial documents cited are from the Vatican website, www.vatican.va. Matthew Whelan 260 through price mechanisms, or something along similar lines. He did not understand economics as a social science dedicated to the description and analysis of a separate sphere called “the economy.” Instead, McNabb envisioned economy in terms of household management and so understood it to be inseparable from the temporal and eternal flourishing of human beings. Economy therefore necessarily fell within the purview of the Church and her role as teacher: “The Church is not primarily interested in politics or economics, because neither politics nor economics are primary. Yet the Church is necessarily, and greatly interested in politics and economics because both politics and economics are moral.”35 As we will see, McNabb regarded the gift of creation as a common gift, given to serve the needs of all, and he thought economy should defer to this purpose. Only in so deferring does economy find its proper place in relation to the mysterious economy of God’s salvation. * * * McNabb’s critique of industrialism presumes a Thomistic understanding of human creaturehood. It will be useful, therefore, to comment briefly on Thomas’s analysis of what it means to be a creature—first, in relation to God, and, second, in relation to the rest of the created order. Thomas’s understanding of the human creature is part of his larger discussion of God as the creator who alone creates and who does so not out of necessity but out of a plentitude of love that is diffusive, seeking nothing other than to share itself. All creation depends upon God for its very being. In Thomas’s words, “Creation in the creature is only a certain relation to the Creator, as to the principle of its being.”36 In his study on Thomas’s economic teachings, Christopher Franks refers to this as our “ontological poverty before God,” our “created lowliness that empties us of all pretense to self-possession.”37 Because of this ontological dependence, we cannot rightfully claim ultimate autonomy, for creatures do not possess their own being, much less hold themselves in being, but only have being in relation to the one who gives it, the one who is, to invoke St. Augustine, closer to us than we are to ourselves. Not only are we ontologically dependent upon God as creatures, but, as embodied creatures, we depend upon the rest of the created order to sustain us. Our bodies root us in a created order and occasion dependencies that 35 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, xv. 36 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), I, q. 45, a. 3. Became Poor: The Poverty of Christ and Aquinas’s Economic Teachings (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), 3. 37 Christopher A. Franks, He Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 261 are constitutive to human life. Thomas tells us that the soul is the form of the body.38 But this distinction between soul and body is not a separation. The nature of the soul requires it to be united to the body; it needs the body in order to accomplish those activities correlative to it: knowing, willing, and loving.39 The body is, as Thomas writes, “a certain fullness of the soul ( plenitude animae).”40 Because we are embodied, we need food, drink, clothing, shelter, and other such goods to sustain our bodies.Therefore, just as we can claim no autonomy before God, so also something analogous holds in our relation to the rest of creation. To be embodied is to be part of an order upon which we depend and to which we relate in bodily need. Wendell Berry suggests something similar when he observes that “no matter how urban our life, our bodies live by farming; we come from the earth and return to it, and so we live in agriculture as we live in flesh.”41 Of course, in company with Thomas, we must not lose sight of the fact that our ultimate flourishing as human creatures is not preservation of the body but union with God in beatitude.42 God is our highest good, our summum bonum. Because God is our highest good, we seek the goods of the body not for their own sake but for the sake of something else.43 The goods of the body are not our end but support and sustenance on our journey toward our end. But that does not mean that they are unimportant for us as wayfarers. Indeed, they are partially constitutive of our flourishing in this life.44 This is why Thomas argues against the Stoics, who held that the only human good is virtue, and that bodily goods are not goods at all. Because we are creatures in which soul and body are united, whatever preserves the life of the body, though not our final good, is still a good. For this reason, we should feel sorrow whenever those goods are lacking.45 Our ontological dependence upon God, as well as our dependence as embodied creatures upon the wider created order, is crucial for understanding McNabb. As Franks writes, those of us habituated into prevailing 38 Aquinas, ST I, q. 76, a. 1. 39 ST I, q. 84, a. 4. 40 Cited in Gilles Emery, Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2007), 219; emphasis mine. Cf.Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1996), I.8. 41 Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986), 97. 42 Aquinas, ST I–II, q.3, a. 8. 43 Ibid., I–II, a. 114, a. 10; II–II, q. 23, a. 7. 44 Ibid., I–II, q. 4, a. 5. 45 Ibid., I–II, q. 59, a. 3. Matthew Whelan 262 economic forms tend to imagine ourselves not as dependent but independent, as “proprietors”: “primordial owners” of ourselves and of “the goods we buy and the security they often represent.”46 On this construal, the possession we have over ourselves mirrors the possession we have over our property. Both are marked by a kind of closure. But, as we will see, McNabb points out that such an understanding of the ownership of ourselves and our property not only fails to give God the worship due in justice, but also fails to give others their due in justice as well, because it obscures the way God gives land and the wider created order upon which we depend as common. It is to this that we now turn. * * * McNabb follows Thomas in holding that God creates land and the rest of the created order upon which humans depend as common, to meet the bodily needs of all. Thomas encapsulates this teaching as it was developed in patristic sources when he writes, “Now according to the order established by Divine Providence, [material goods] are ordained for the purpose of succoring needs by their means. Wherefore the division and appropriation of things which are based on human law do not preclude the fact that needs have to be remedied by means of these very things.”47 Land and its fruits are gifts given by God, not only for the benefit of ourselves but for the benefit of all. The amassing of wealth for exclusive use violates God’s purpose for the created order. It rejects the claim of need to which all wealth is subject, and it therefore denies the moral community of which the amasser is a member. McNabb attempts to think through the implications of God’s gift of land and its fruits to meet the needs of all. According to McNabb, even the fecundity of land itself bears a trace of the purpose for which it was created: “Daily fellowship with the land which God has made to give its gifts to all mankind, schools him in the divine art of giving. He gives seeds to the arable soil and the soil gives back the seed tenfold, a 46 Franks, He Became Poor, 3. 47 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 66, a. 7. See also William J. McDonald, “The Social Value of Property According to St. Thomas Aquinas: A Study in Social Philosophy” (Ph.D dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1939). George H. Speltz, “The Importance of Rural Life According to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas: A Study in Economic Philosophy” (Ph.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1945), 4. Among the principal texts regarding the common gift of creation are Clement of Alexandria, Paidagogus, 2.13; Basil the Great, Homilia in illud Lucae, ‘Destruam,’ 7; Ambrose of Milan, Commentarium in Epistolam II ad Corinthios 9.9. These texts, as well as many others, can be found in Charles Avila, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching (New York: Orbis Books, 1983). Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 263 hundredfold, when autumn comes.”48 Reflecting on land can teach us something about God and the way God gives, as well as about the wider created order, in which, as William of Auxerre writes, “each creature is compelled to give itself; the sun is compelled to give itself to illuminate; similarly the earth is compelled to give whatever it can, and similarly the water.”49 In the soil’s multiplication of seed we can discern a trace of the God who multiplies loaves and fish. Because God gives land and its fruits to meet need as perfectly as possible, all should have access to them. These words, already quoted above from Rerum novarum, function like a refrain throughout McNabb’s writings: “The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” McNabb closely follows Pope Leo XIII in arguing that God’s common gift of land and individual ownership are not mutually exclusive, because ownership is not absolute but social; it is intrinsically ordered to the needs of all.50 According to McNabb, the right of property of which Pope Leo XIII speaks does not mean, therefore, “that some men shall have all property, but that all men shall have some property.”51 Or, as McNabb writes elsewhere, “The right to property does not mean that a man shall have a right to as much as he wishes, but that he shall have a right to as much as he needs.”52 The proper measure of our ownership of land or created goods is our needs, and the proper measure of our needs is not “Babylon, or Thebes, or Paris, or New York, or London” but “Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capharnaum, Calvary.”53 We will return to this measure—the measure of Christ—below. Because God creates land and the wider created order for all, it follows that whenever some people have goods in excess of their needs, the goods cannot properly be said to belong to them but are most properly said to belong to those who need them. As Thomas writes, “Whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor. Ambrose says . . . : ‘It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom 48 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 201–2. 49 Quoted in Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, “The Theological Economics of Medieval Usury Theory,” in Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 106. 50 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §§6–10. 51 Vincent McNabb, Francis Thompson and Other Essays (London: Aquin Press, 1935), 59. 52 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 7. 53 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 34. Matthew Whelan 264 and freedom.’ ”54 For this reason McNabb, again drawing on the words of Pope Leo XIII, writes that property is most endangered not when “a challenge is given ‘to the small number of very rich men who have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than of slavery itself ’; but when no attempt is made to give back to these teeming masses the things that are theirs.”55 There is an openness to the claim of others’ needs upon land and property that is simply the realization within economy of the grammar of creation itself. Our use of land and property to meet the needs, not only of ourselves, but of others, is not to take what belongs to us in order to give it to others, but to give others what is their due. It is to use property properly; it is to see property’s social import—its openness to the claim of others’ needs—as intrinsic to what it is. Attention to the theological horizon of God’s creation of land and its purpose in meeting needs is the basis of McNabb’s insistence that land, as the source of all wealth, makes economy possible. It is that within which economy is embedded and from which it receives its shape. As he continually reminds his readers, “The land and the land alone gives us the simplicities of Food, Clothing, Housing, Fuel.” 56 Or, as he writes elsewhere, “None of the necessaries of life really come by factory production, but by the land.”57 McNabb thinks those of his own time are particularly susceptible to the illusion that wealth comes not from land but from factories, and so he does not tire of reminding his readers that “no factory has the power to produce the necessities of life; at least, they can manipulate and modify material supplied to them.”58 McNabb’s argument presupposes a distinction between what he calls “real wealth” and “token wealth,” or between what he elsewhere calls “first things” and “secondary” or “tertiary things.”59 This is McNabb’s restatement of the distinction found in Aristotle and Thomas between natural wealth and artificial wealth. Thomas defines natural wealth as consisting in created goods like food, drink, clothing, materials for dwelling, and so on. He calls this wealth natural because its purpose is to meet bodily needs directly. For Thomas, such wealth serves as a support 54 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 66, a. 7. 55 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 115. For a good discussion of McNabb’s view of property, see Walters, “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999.” 56 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 36. 57 Ibid., 65. 58 Ibid., 64. 59 See ibid., 35–37. McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 10–16. McNabb, Old Princi- ples and the New Order, 47–57. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 265 for our bodies as we pursue our true last end, God. Artificial wealth, in contrast, Thomas defines as “invented by art, for the convenience of exchange, and as a measure of things [sellable].”60 He calls it artificial because, although its purpose is also to meet need, it does so indirectly rather than directly. Thomas’s main example of such wealth is money, which he contends is sought for the sake of the natural wealth by which we attend to the needs of our bodies directly. This distinction between real wealth and token wealth intimately relates to another distinction—also found in Thomas and in Aristotle— between use-value and exchange-value. Aristotle concisely explains it in the Politics in the following way: Of everything which we possess there are two uses: both belong to the thing as such, but not in the same manner, for one is the proper, and the other the improper use of it. For example, a shoe is used for wear, and is used for exchange; both are uses of the shoe. He who gives a shoe in exchange for money . . . does indeed use the shoe as a shoe, but this is not its proper use, for a shoe is not made to be an object of barter. The same may be said of all possessions, for the art of exchange extends to all of them.61 In this passage, Aristotle observes that human beings make certain goods to serve specific needs and purposes. Just as shoes are made to wear, so food is grown to be eaten, water collected to drink, clothing made to put on, dwellings built for people to inhabit, and so on. These needs or purposes are what Aristotle calls the use-values of goods. The use-value is exhaustive of the use of a good, but simply that goods serve human needs, and purposes derive from properties that fit them to particular uses. The logic of exchange, in contrast, seeks a measure for what is incommensurate. Money often serves as this measure. But systems of bartering also involve such measures, for instance, when a certain quantity of one kind of good is deemed to be worth a certain quantity of another kind of good. Aristotle calls exchange an “improper use” of goods, which is not to say that exchange should not take place, but simply to say that it is subordinate to the needs and purposes the goods are meant to serve. Exchangevalue is a convention established, not in order to make wealth easier to accumulate, but to facilitate the needs or purposes these goods serve in their use.Thomas and McNabb follow Aristotle in understanding usury— 60 Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 2, a. 1. 61 Aristotle, Politics, Bk. I, ch. 9 (1257a); translation from The Complete Works of Aris- totle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1994. Matthew Whelan 266 making money by lending money—as unjust. It is unjust due to what they all understand money to be. Lending money is not like lending land but more like lending bread. Whereas the use of land does not consist in its consumption, the use of bread, just like the use of money, does. Therefore, to charge money for lending money is tantamount to, as Thomas writes, “selling the same thing twice” or “selling what does not exist.”62 * * * The Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition within which McNabb works privileges a certain dependence upon the sufficiency of the locale to meet the needs of inhabitants. McNabb fully endorses Thomas’s position in De regno that “a city whose neighbourhood gives the necessities of life in plenty possesses a sufficiency more fully than another city which depends on its trade with others.”63 The kind of sufficiency in view here is not a denial of ontological dependence on God or bodily dependence on land to meet human needs. Nor is the point the exclusion of trade altogether.64 What is at stake is something more like what McNabb calls the “economic center of gravity”: the telos of economy, the role of trade within it, and the kinds of dependencies economy should engender. Dependence on the sufficiency of the locale also relates to this tradition’s ambivalence with regard to trade. Thomas thinks a certain “debasement” characterizes trade because of its potential misuse of created goods, for trade, in itself, “does not imply a virtuous or necessary end.”65 Trade might facilitate the proper use created goods, for instance, the “upkeep” of households, “assistance” to the needy, or similar efforts to provide for the “necessaries of life.”66 But trade might also pursue not the “necessities of life” but “profit,” and this latter kind of trade, according to Thomas, simply “satisfies the greed for gain.”67 McNabb follows Thomas’s judgment that trade, when ordered exclusively to profit can be profoundly destructive because it “knows no limit and tends to infinity.”68 McNabb quotes 62 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 78, a. 1. See also O’Donovan, “The Theological Econom- ics of Medieval Usury Theory,” 97–120. 63 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 54. 64 Ibid., 55. 65 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 77, a. 4. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. McNabb thinks that a system that prizes token wealth is a system that excites an “unsatisfied indefinite desire” for more and more token wealth, the uncertain future value of which will only increase our “almost irresistible desire not to measure [our] wants by [our] needs.” In a system that prizes real wealth, on the other hand, there are certain limits placed upon our desire. As McNabb puts it, “In a system mainly of things, the average person may be trusted to limit Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 267 Thomas on the consequences of such trade: “The result is that everything in the city will become venal; good faith will be destroyed and the way opened to all kinds of trickery; each one will work only for his own profit, despising the public good; the cultivation of virtue will fail since honour, virtue’s reward, will be bestowed upon the rich.”69 It is therefore important to prevent polity from being “totally exposed to trade (totaliter negotiationi exposita)”—such total exposure degrades not only the bonds constitutive of social flourishing, but, as we will see, land and the wider creation as well.70 * * * As we have already begun to examine, McNabb thinks that industrialism and the assumptions that undergird it display a disordered understanding of economy. This is especially clear when he addresses the arguments of economists who contend that a wage system cannot be based on living wage, which McNabb regards as an attempt to construe economics as a science not subject to the Church’s moral and theological teaching. In response, he follows Rerum novarum in arguing that the measure of the wage is the worker rather than the work, and so the standard of commutative justice between a wage-giver and a wage-getter is a living wage. Moreover, if the worker has a family, a living wage is a wage sufficient to support the family.71 McNabb therefore observes, quite sardonically, that if the wage system cannot be based on a standard of living, as the economists argue, it must be based on a “standard of dying.”72 Instead of a living wage, employers offer a “killing wage.”73 According to McNabb, the argument that a wage system cannot be based on living wages simply reveals a misapprehension of economy. It reveals problems intrinsic to the wage system itself, along with the urgent need for an alternative to it. McNabb envisions this alternative in the words from Rerum novarum that we quoted above about law and policy wants by needs. But in a system mainly of tokens, the average person cannot be trusted to limit wants by needs” (Nazareth or Social Chaos, 15–16). 69 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 55. I am drawing on the translation, Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship: To the King of Cyprus, ed. I. Th. Eschmann, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949). The Latin text can be accessed at: www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. 70 Alasdair MacIntyre argues along similar lines in Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, The Paul Carus Lecture Series (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1999), 145. 71 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 69–78. 72 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 87. 73 Ibid., 87. Matthew Whelan 268 favoring ownership among as many as possible. This he calls an ownership system, as opposed to a wage system. An ownership system, he contends, does not mean the exclusion of wages but the exclusion of their dominance within the system, just as it does not mean the exclusion of industry but the exclusion of its dominance over and against agriculture.74 What passes for economics fails to be truly economic because it misconstrues what wealth is, where it comes from, and what it is for. An important feature of McNabb’s critique of the wage system is the way he constantly attends to language and the changes that occur when, as he puts it, “a nation changes the words it uses.”75 His discussion of these matters illumines what he regards as pernicious abstractions associated with industrialism. For instance, he writes that if thirty years earlier England had been beset by what it now calls “unemployment,” it would have discussed the matter not as a problem of “unemployment” but as a problem of “work” or a problem of the insufficiency of goods.76 At issue here are the manifold assumptions latent in the notion of “unemployment” that are not present in the word “work.” “The word ‘work,’ ” he writes, “implies a relation merely to a thing,” while “the word ‘unemployment’ implies this work-relation to a thing, but adds a new relation to a person or employer.”77 These linguistic shifts, McNabb thinks, shape the way we see a problem, and, consequently, the way we respond to it. In these shifts we see the way words themselves assume “the necessity of the very disease which the poor are trying to cure.”78 Instead of seeing the problem as an insufficiency of goods whose alleviation resides in the fostering of widespread land ownership and the production of real wealth through work, to speak of “unemployment” construes employment and wages as the only remedy and the employer as the only benefactor.79 But, for McNabb, it is precisely this assumption—an assumption that resides in the words themselves—that those who “hunger and thirst after that virtue of justice which gives everyone his due” should challenge.80 74 Ibid., 86–90. McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 69–78. 75 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 59. See also Cf. McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 17–20. 76 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 60. 77 Ibid., 60. 78 Quoted in Cunningham, “Prophecy and the Poor,” 58. 79 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 60. 80 Ibid., 60. As Ludwig Wittgenstein puts it in Philosophical Investigations, a “picture” can hold us “captive”: “And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. and trans. G. E. M Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), §115, emphasis in original. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 269 The unemployed are not really unemployed; they are employed, just not employed on land in the production of what they need to live. Instead of producing real wealth on land, they scavenge the cities for employment and wages in order to purchase what they need.81 While there is an abundance of people but a scarcity of employment in the cities, there is an abundance of land but a scarcity of people to farm it in the countryside. McNabb therefore tirelessly insists to his contemporaries that the problem of the inhuman living and working conditions in the slums and factories—“the state of things under which the poor rot”82 —cannot be understood apart from the vast tracts of untilled land in the English countryside and the unsettling England had experienced over the course of the previous centuries.83 As he puts it, “The epidemic of unemployment, now so recurrent in this country, is as certainly connected with the land as hay is connected with grass. . . . The question of unemployment is the question of land.”84 81 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 89. See also 150–52. 82 Ibid., 50. 83 Not only is what is happening in the slums of England related to what is happen- ing in the countryside of England, but I would suggest that these developments are, in turn, crucially related to developments beyond England and what her colonial ambitions entailed for the uses of people and land elsewhere. Though written by a Frenchman, Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s observation in 1773 seems apposite: “I do not know if coffee and sugar are essential to the happiness of Europe, but I know well that these two products have accounted for the unhappiness of two great regions of the world: America has been depopulated so as to have land on which to plant them; Africa has been depopulated so as to have the people to cultivate them.” Cited as the epigraph to Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power:The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking, 1985). Doing justice to this topic would take me well beyond the scope of this essay and its purpose in presenting McNabb’s thought. Though McNabb, at least to my knowledge, does not explicitly discuss the slave-plantation agriculture of some of England’s colonial holdings, the implications of his critique would seem to embrace both metropole and colony. With regard to such agriculture, in addition to Mintz’s study, see also James Duncan, In the Shadows of the Tropics: Climate, Race and Biopower in NineteenthCentury Ceylon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); James Horn, “Tobacco Colonies: The Shaping of English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” in The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Nicholas Canny and Alaine Low, The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); also in the same volume, Hilary McD. Beckles, “The ‘Hub of Empire’: The Caribbean and Britain in the Seventeenth Century”; Jacob M. Price, “The Imperial Economy, 1700–1776,” in The Eighteenth Century, ed. P. J. Marshall and Alaine Low, The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and in that same volume, Richard B. Sheridan, “The Formation of Caribbean Plantation Society, 1689–1748.” 84 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 104. See also 149–51. 270 Matthew Whelan * * * We have already examined McNabb’s concern that industrialism imperils family and polity. But he also thinks industrialism damages land and the wider created order as well.85 While McNabb tirelessly urges his urban contemporaries to flee to the fields, he is extremely critical of the way the farmers who have remained in the fields have increasingly begun to farm through the application of industrial methods—what McNabb calls “business methods,” “efficiency methods,” “the science of making [fields] yield their heaviest crop.”86 In applying such methods, farmers attempt to make land into an “agricultural factory.”87 When McNabb writes, for instance, of the reaping machines “wounding” land,88 he evokes John Clare (1793–1864), the Northamptonshire peasant poet, whose poems, in confronting enclosure, speak of “the rage of blundering plough”89 and the tools of gains “greedy hand/And more then greedy mind.”90 This kind of agriculture wounds land because it uses land as if it were a machine or a factory in its efforts to organize agriculture on the model of industry, mass producing commodities to be sold on the market. But this is a category mistake, because, as we have seen, land is simply not the same kind of thing as a machine or factory, even if it is used as such. As McNabb writes, “The cause of the disease [is that] the land has not been treated as land; land has been industrialized. Land, which is the indestructible primary of economic wealth, has been treated as if it was an economic secondary or tertiary, like a shop or a factory.”91 The application of industrial methods to land fails to acknowledge land’s giftedness and so obscures the relation between land 85 “The main generalization” about the present state of things, he writes, “is that we are living on Capital.” Industrialism is a kind of “drunkenness,” consuming in excess of what the body can tolerate. “In a hundred spheres of necessary human toil,” he writes, “we are consuming not merely more than we produce, but even more than we and our ancestors produced.” Industrialism uses soil, forests, oil, and coal as if they were “inexhaustible capital,” and in doing so, exhausts them. While defenders of industrialism point to its “cheapening” of many commodities, McNabb asks about the true cost of these commodities, whether their cheapening is merely a ruse—a “prodigal prosperity” bought “by a subtle living on Capital”—whether its “successes” are simply “a successful theft from tomorrow.” McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 21–24. 86 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 123. See also McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 111–41. 87 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 158. 88 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 129. 89 “The Mores,” in John Clare, John Clare: Major Works, ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 90 “Lament of Swordy Well,” in ibid. 91 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 157. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 271 and altar, the relation between, in the words of the other epigraph to this essay, land’s production of “every kind of real wealth” and the “wheat and grapes that may become the Sacrifice of a World Redeemed.”92 Such agriculture displays a fundamental misconstrual of what land is, what it is for, and how these should guide its farming and its use. The industrialization of agriculture is therefore not a minor problem but “the worst of all economic diseases.”93 The ellision of the distinction between “wealth-making” and “mere wealth-getting,” and, along with it, the organization of agriculture for mass production on the model of industry, is the basis of industrialized agriculture.94 Such agriculture, McNabb thinks, simply underwrites the unsettling of the English countryside and the creation of landless wage laborers flooding the cities. It entails an organization not for the needs of the home but for the market and so decouples the locale of production from the locale of consumption.95 Because of this decoupling and the associated specialization of production, McNabb argues, such agriculture tends toward monoculture, and with it, drudgery and loneliness.96 Instead of farming families directly engaged in the production of what they need to live, those who organize agriculture industrially rely upon the mediation of money and markets. They produce, not what they need to live, but in order to make the money that they then use to purchase what they need to live, which leads to what McNabb regards as patent absurdities, like potato farmers destroying a bumper crop when the market cannot purchase it,97 or cotton farmers rioting in demand for food for themselves and their families.98 What makes this mode of agricultural organization such a problem is its misconstrual of economy, the way it severs the bond between land as the source of wealth and its direct relation to the need it was intended to serve. McNabb observes that we become “so fascinated by the machinery,” that 92 There is a close relationship between the way Eric Gill thought about “making fitting furniture for a civilization directed heavenwards” and the way McNabb thought about agriculture. Gill’s words are cited in Walters, “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999,” 231. 93 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 150. 94 Ibid., 77. 95 Ibid., 157–59. 96 As McNabb writes, “The great lesson of the . . . machineless harvest-field was a social lesson.” It is crucial to see that McNabb’s conception of sociality includes not only the presence of people but the presence of hens, ducks, dogs, rabbits, larks, hares, and so on. McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 127–29. 97 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 160. 98 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos. 272 Matthew Whelan we lose sight of “the beginning and ends of things.”99 God’s gift of land for the purposes of “wealth-making” rather than “mere wealth-getting,” therefore, has profound implications for farming and for other uses of land.99 If the purpose of land is to minister to need, then it is most fitting that farming families use land primarily in order to produce what they need to live and then give away or sell what they have in surfeit. As we will recall from our discussion above, this is to use property properly. Severing this bond only encourages the misconstrual of agriculture as a practice of wealthgetting rather than wealth-making, which, according to McNabb, is something akin to the subversion of economy itself, the attempt to re-shape land and the wider created order in accordance with a logic that is extrinsic and antithetical to it. * * * In his study on Thomas’s economic teachings, Christopher Franks attends to a significant feature of Thomas’s agreements with Aristotle that I have been emphasizing throughout this essay: Thomas follows Aristotle in locating economy within a wider created order that precedes it and shapes it. This feature of Aristotelian economy is as crucial for understanding McNabb as it is dissonant with widespread assumptions that governed much economic thinking in McNabb’s day, as well as in our own. As Franks puts it: “Aristotle and Aquinas both reject economic practices that threaten to promote an unconditioned claim to security from nature’s goods . . . Aquinas defends a lowliness and receptivity that echoes Aristotle’s concern to foster a deferent acknowledgement of dependence.”100 Despite these convergences, we have also seen some of the ways Thomas and McNabb diverge from Aristotle, particularly with regard to what I have called the ontological dependence of creation on God—or what Franks calls our “ontological poverty,” our “created lowliness.” As Franks reads Thomas, Christ’s cross displays “the true character of the humility and receptive trust our created lowliness demands . . . there is a kind of correspondence between our created lowliness and the lowliness of the cross.”101 As Franks goes on to argue, Thomas’s economic teachings, like his whole account of Christian life, find their perfection in Christ. Christian life, according to Thomas, “is always summoned deeper, so that its center of gravity is its goal, the charity revealed on the cross.”102 As we have seen, McNabb follows Thomas in locating the 99 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 157. 100 Franks, He Became Poor, 4, 35–66. 101 Ibid., 7. 102 Ibid., 23. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 273 center of gravity and goal of economic life—indeed, of all life—in Christ. Or, to use a favorite metaphor of McNabb’s, Christian life is like the craft of the builder. Just as the builder needs the level, the plummet, and the square in order “to true the work of his hand ten thousand times in the working,” Christian life must be continually “trued” by the measure of Christ. “Nazareth,” he writes, “is the place where all the Sovereign Measures are verified and kept.”103 Jesus is from Nazareth, and so McNabb regards the particularity of Nazareth and its surrounding geography as significant.This land uniquely bears witness to the mystery of redemption, because it is the land in which Jesus Christ lived, died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. “Every stone” of Nazareth, McNabb tells us, “was hallowed by thirty years of God’s redemptive love.”104 As Robert Louis Wilken writes with regard to early Church reflection upon this land, but with words that are equally applicable to McNabb, “Christ’s sojourn on earth, it seems, had sanctified not only the specific places where he lived and died, but the very soil of the land itself.”105 Christ’s life hallows not only the land of Nazareth but its economy as well. McNabb sees Nazareth as a place constituted by true economy: families “gathered together in aid and defence of life,” “the self-sufficing group of land-workers and hand-workers.”106 According to McNabb, it is therefore fitting that God would choose Nazareth for the Son’s earthly abode, and McNabb continually underscores the role of Nazareth’s economy within God’s. God realized that in “a Nazareth alone could be the beginning of redemption,” and that in “Nazareth alone” is given “the divine pattern to souls who covet to do the Redeemer’s work in the Redeemer’s way, amidst a strayed, lost people.”107 According to McNabb, constitutive of Christ’s work and way is voluntary poverty—a poverty that culminates in the caritas of the cross.108 McNabb regards Christ’s poverty, not as an end in itself, but as an instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel, a “fundamental condition of all 103 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 101–2. 104 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 4–5. 105 Robert Louis Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 125. 106 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 5. As Cunningham writes, “Nazareth stood for the small scale—a small, peasant community, living according to the primary things of life, both divine and human.” Cunningham, “Prophecy and the Poor,” 57. 107 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 5. 108 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 146. McNabb reiterates Thomas’s arguments from ST III, q. 40, a. 3 about the fittingness that Christ lived a life of poverty. See also McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 5. 274 Matthew Whelan ultimate remedy and redemption.”109 As McNabb writes, “In His Crib, and still more on His Cross, Jesus gave us the example not so much of a poor man contented with his poverty, as of a rich man discontented with his riches.”110 Moreover, Christ’s poverty contains this crucial implication: “Consume as little as you need and produce as much as you can.”111 Or, as McNabb explicates it elsewhere, “If our hands provide more than is necessary for ourselves, we must give to those who need it. These are not my ideas—they are the ideas of Christ.”112 McNabb insists that the way of Christ’s poverty is the way of all Christians. “Both those who do and those who do not make vows of poverty,” he writes, “are bound to the poverty of work and thrift which means they must measure their wants by the needs of their state in life.”113 All Christians must be engaged in the craft of limiting wants by needs, conforming work and life to the pattern of the stable and of the cross. The rule of the follower of Christ is: “What is superfluous to your poor estate distribute.”114 Christians are therefore called to be the antithesis of those who “consume, and control in order to consume, as much as they can whilst producing as little as they need.”115 Doing with as little as possible to lavish upon others as much as possible is “God’s simple apparatus for the enrichment of the world.”116 It enriches because it orients us toward the telos of economy, locating us in relation to the economy of God’s salvation in Christ. As we have seen, McNabb follows Thomas and Pope Leo XIII in arguing that what we have in surfeit is due by natural law to our neighbors in need. But, as we have also seen, it does not follow from this that the claim of the natural law shines with luminous clarity to his contemporaries. The light of Christ therefore helps illumine the requirements of justice. We learn to measure what we possess by what we need such that our surfeit overflows onto others in justice. And we learn to measure what we need by the measure of Christ, devoting ourselves and our goods to the one 109 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 16. 110 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 147. 111 Ibid., 147. See also McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 56. McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 7–11. Along these lines,Valentine (Father Vincent McNabb, O.P. ) quotes from the Rule of St. Augustine and its importance for McNabb: “It is better to need little than to have much,” 171. 112 Quoted in Walters, “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999,” 228. 113 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 164. See also 162–68. 114 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 34. McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, 9, 18. 115 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 147. 116 Ibid., 148. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 275 who became poor so that we might follow his poverty-path to the attainment of true riches (2 Cor 8:9)—a path that calls for the dispossession not only of our possessions but our lives (Mt 10:39, 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24; Jn 12:25). Here we see that the exodus McNabb urged is not solely or even primarily an exodus from the slums but above all an exodus from the enclosure of self and property.While Christ’s participation in the Nazareth economy affirms it, it does not leave it unaltered. Christ’s light illumines justice only as it points beyond it toward a life of cross-bearing. The overflowing of our surfeit is therefore a kind of training in charity: we learn to give to others what is theirs, so we can learn to offer them what is our own in the laying down of our lives ( Jn 15:13). * * * When presented with the news that he had cancer and that his death was imminent, McNabb said, “I don’t see why I should make a tragedy of this; it’s what I have been preparing for all my life.”117 It is a comment that bears witness to a life devoted to the path of Christ, a life that attempted to relate itself and all things to the mysterious economy of God. Since McNabb’s death in 1943, the economic forms he opposed have only grown stronger, and the possibility of an alternative, not only dimmer, but, for many, scarcely imaginable. Jonathan Tran expresses this well: “[A]sk any reputable economist for coherent alternatives to global capitalism and you will be met with a quizzical look. The pressing issues in relation to globalization within contemporary economics are entirely directed toward trends within globalization; imaging an alternative now seems passé if not irresponsible.”118 But even before his death, McNabb sensed defeat. “I seem to realize when perhaps it is too late that Industrialism has won,” he wrote.119 He dedicated one of his final books, Old Principles and the New Order, to “the men and women of the English Catholic Land Movement who, bravely and alone, left England’s cities for England’s soil and whose seeming failures like winter sowings may yet be blessed by God unto autumn reapings.”120 While McNabb’s words admit a sense of failure, they offer that failure to God in the hope that it might, with God’s blessing, still yet yield fruit. In our own time, the Church’s magisterium has responded to the socalled “environmental crisis” as symptomatic of a more profound moral 117 Quoted in Matthew Hoehn, Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches (Newark, NJ: St. Mary Abbey, 1948), 479. 118 Jonathan Tran, Foucault and Theology (New York:T&T Clark International, 2011), 48. 119 Valentine, Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., 214. 120 McNabb, Old Principles and the New Order, v. 276 Matthew Whelan crisis—a crisis that has roots in humanity’s life with God but ramifications beyond human existence, to the entire creation.121 The pontificates of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, in particular, have emphasized the significance of agriculture within this moral-ecological crisis. We see this emphasis, for instance, in their yearly addresses since 1981 to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on the occasion of World Food Day, which resonate with many of the issues with which we have grappled in this essay: God’s purpose for the common gift of the created order in meeting the needs of all; the unique importance of God’s gift of land and its fruits; the neglect within prevailing models of development of the role of agriculture in meeting need; the critique of economic structures and even agricultural practice itself as too often oriented solely to profit; the need for lifestyles characterized by temperance; and so on. In his inaugural address, Pope John Paul II quotes from his encyclical Laborem exercens regarding the need for “radical and urgent changes” in order to restore “to agriculture— and to rural people—their just value as the basis for a healthy economy.”122 And in his 2006 address, Pope Benedict XVI echoed these sentiments: “The rural family needs to regain its rightful place at the heart of the social order.”123 Perhaps this is some of the fruit for which McNabb hoped? In retrospect, defeat seemed secured for McNabb’s single-minded insistence that the only way to redeem the urbanism that had so stamped the world by the time he wrote was to flee it—his “Luddite agrarianism,”124 his visions of “agrarian utopia.”125 The mistake was, in Joseph Kelly’s words, the notion that “God and salvation needed to be sought in a comprehensive rejection of, and exodus from, the wage slavery of urbanism.”126 Kelly details that, as a consequence of McNabb’s intransi121 See, for instance, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004), §§461–65. See also Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, Ten Commandments for the Environment: Pope Benedict Speaks out for Creation and Justice (Naples, FL: Ave Maria Press, 2009). 122 Pope John Paul II, Mensaje Del Santo Padre Juan Pablo Con Motivo De La Primera Jornada Mundial De La Alimentación (14 Octubre 1981). Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (1981), §21. 123 Pope Benedict XVI, Message of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Director of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) for the Celebration of World Food Day (16 October 2006). 124 Walters, “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999,” 232. 125 Joseph Kelly, “Vincent McNabb, Agrarian Utopia and the Theology of Work: An Exploration of the Theology of the Catholic Land Association in Relation to the Social Encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Laborem Exercens,” New Blackfriars 91, no. 1003 (2009): 286–303. 126 Ibid., 301. Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ 277 gence on this point, McNabb and the CLM over time grew isolated from a Church committed to living and working within an increasingly urban world rather than moving whole families, or even single men for that matter, to the countryside.127 The exodus McNabb urged, however problematic its assumption that Catholic life could flourish exclusively within the countryside, was a response to real damage inflicted on people and land. As we have seen, the heart of McNabb’s critique of industrialism was not urbanism per se but rather its displacement and misplacement of economy’s center of gravity—its misconstrual of economy’s telos. The problem was not that money could and did serve as a means and a measure of some things, but that it was becoming the means and the measure of all things. The problem was not that wage relations existed, but that they had become synonymous with economy itself. The problem was not the existence of markets, but total reliance upon markets ordered to profit alone rather than to the claim of need and the uses of land entailed by that claim. Marked by a sense of the contingency of the industrialism he opposed, McNabb’s exodus was an effort to heed Pope Leo XII’s call that “some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class”128 with the same urgency with which the call was made. In our evaluation of McNabb, McNabb himself would have us remember that “[i]t has never been part of the Church’s redemptive work to denounce the wrongs of any popular movement without denouncing the other injustices which germinate these wrongs.”129 N&V 127 Ibid., 294–95. 128 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §3. 129 McNabb, The Church and the Land, 81. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2012): 279–306 279 Book Reviews Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology by Michael J. Gorman (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), xi + 194 pp. T HEOSIS in Paul is the main subject of Michael Gorman’s recent intriguing study of Pauline soteriology. The author, a Methodist who is professor of Sacred Scripture and dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore, further develops here the insights of his earlier works on Paul, especially Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. The title of the present work captures the various elements needed for an understanding of theosis, which he defines as “transformative participation in the kenotic, cruciform character of God through Spirit-enabled conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected/glorified Christ” (7, 125, 162). In chapter one, Gorman establishes a foundation for his understanding of theosis in Paul by considering Philippians 2:6–11: Christ’s self-emptying reveals both what God is like and what Christian life should be, through its participation in God’s life (theosis). Gorman then links theosis to Paul’s understanding of justification (chapter two) and holiness (chapter three). Applying these ideas in chapter four, Gorman considers nonviolence as an essential mark of a Christian’s kenotic, cruciform existence. A conclusion synthesizes the main points of each chapter, summing up Gorman’s understanding of theosis in Paul. Gorman’s work is valuable at many levels, as it contains both “careful exegesis” of selected passages and “bold, broad brush strokes” that paint the “big picture” (47–48). Regarding Pauline studies, it offers detailed insights into certain individual pericopes (such as Phil 2:6–11) but also sketches general lines for moving forward in the ongoing debates (for example, about the nature of justification) between traditional views on Paul and the “New Perspective.” At the ecumenical level, the work also makes an important contribution, as Gorman himself suggests: “The 280 Book Reviews intersection of participation with justification, and both with theosis, is promising for the efforts at the reunion of Protestants and Catholics, and of Protestants and Catholics with the Orthodox” (8, n. 22). Also meritorious is the effort made to connect exegesis to theology and to practical Christian living. Moreover, the work is written in lucid prose; it is scholarly and yet accessible to a wide audience. One general drawback of the book is that the bibliography is almost exclusively English-language, apart from a few older German works considered in English translation (by Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Käsemann) and one non-biblical (and highly polemical!) Spanish work (35). Since there is no interaction with current biblical scholarship in other languages, the dialogue in the book takes place among a somewhat limited set of conversation partners, thus ironically limiting its “ecumenical” appeal. After a short introduction, chapter one focuses on Philippians 2:6–11. Like many exegetes, Gorman understands Philippians 2:6–8 as referring to a two-step downward movement: the incarnation of the pre-existent Christ and the acceptance of suffering by the incarnate Christ (17).Thus, Christ both in his divinity and in his humanity is kenotic; he thereby establishes the model for Christian living. Along these lines, Gorman provides an interesting discussion of a narrative pattern in Paul’s letters (not [x] but [y] and [z]) (11, 16–17, 20–26, 157–58) found not only in Philippians 2:6–11 but also in autobiographical passages (1 Thes 2:6–8; 1 Cor 9:1–23). Moreover, arguing that the initial phrase of Philippians 2:6 is both concessive (“though he was in the form of God”) and causative (“because he was in the form of God”), Gorman contends that the text also reveals the kenotic or cruciform character of God (10, 32–33). These considerations, among others, lead Gorman to refer to Philippians 2:6–11 as Paul’s “master story” (12–13, 38–39). Actually, it might be more accurate to say that this pericope contains many elements of Paul’s master story, while admitting that certain elements of that story are absent or merely implicit (for example, Christ as Son [Rom 1:3–4]; Christ’s fulfillment of Israel’s story, such as the blessing given to Abraham [Gal 3:14]; the saving significance of Christ’s kenosis and exaltation [Rom 4:25]; Christ’s parousia [1 Cor 15:23]). Having presented theosis in chapter one as participation of human beings in the life of God, which is exemplified by kenotic and cruciform existence, Gorman in chapter two gets to “the soul of the book” (2), considering “how one enters into this life of God” (39). He thus deals with justification, studying Galatians 2:15–21, Romans 6:1–7:6, and other passages to explain that “justification is itself theosis” (2, 164). In other words, “[j]ustification is the establishment or restoration of right covenan- Book Reviews 281 tal relations—fidelity to God and love for neighbor—by means of God’s grace in Christ’s death and our Spirit-enabled co-crucifixion with him” (85). He summarizes this definition with the acronym JCC (justification by co-crucifixion [63]). It “therefore means co-resurrection with Christ to new life within the people of God and the certain hope of acquittal/vindication, and thus resurrection to eternal life, on the day of judgment” (85–86). Gorman explains that justification’s “judicial image must be understood within a wider covenantal, relational, participatory, and transformative framework” (55), and that it is experienced in community, not as “a private act of reconciliation” (55). These thoughts could be further developed by emphasizing Paul’s familial (filial and fraternal) language (see 91, 107, 117) of becoming children of God (cf. Rom 8:14–17; Gal 4:4–7) in the Son ( filii in Filio), and thus brothers and sisters of one another (see, for example, Romano Penna, “La casa/famiglia sullo sfondo della Lettera ai Romani,” Estudios Bíblicos 65 [2007]: 159–75). Gorman’s “thick” (103) understanding of justification is certainly of great value in furthering ecumenical relations. It may be surprising to some that Gorman does not here deal at length with Abraham’s justification by faith (Rom 4 and Gal 3); this is probably a strategic move to frame the question in another way and thus highlight aspects of justification that tend to be neglected. Gorman does deal with Abraham and Romans 4 in chapter four, where he notes that Paul chose the paradigm of justification by faith (Gn 15:6) rather than that of justification by zealous work (Phinehas in Ps 106:31) (147–48). It would be helpful to go further by explaining the rationale for Paul’s choice, namely, that by using the rabbinic technique of gezerah shawah to combine Genesis 15:6 with Psalm 32:2, Paul in Romans 4:1–12 establishes justification by faith as the general rule (see Pasquale Basta, Abramo in Romani 4: L’analogia dell’agire divino nella ricerca esegetica di Paolo). In chapter three, Gorman focuses on holiness, which he describes as an “actualization” of justification (2, 111, 125, 165). He thus draws attention to a somewhat neglected area of Christian living: the call to holiness. Gorman discusses Paul’s use of terms like “holy” and “holiness,” his description of the activity of the “Holy” Spirit, and other teaching related to holiness in the proto-Pauline letters. He also briefly explores how holiness should be lived today in community, in sexual relations, and in political life. Several of Gorman’s key points in this chapter interestingly echo writings of Pope John Paul II. For example, Gorman explains that the call to holiness understood as theosis means that Christian life is not so much “[i]mitatio Christi” but rather “conformatio Christi” (23; cf. 37, 71, 154, 166). In John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, we find the following phrase, 282 Book Reviews complete with a reference to Paul’s “master story”: “Following Christ is not an outward imitation. . . . Being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to him who became a servant even to giving himself on the Cross (cf. Phil 2:5–8)” (§21). Again, Gorman says that “[h]oliness (hagiasmos), for Paul, is both gift and task” (108). In the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, John Paul II writes that the “gift of holiness . . . in turn becomes a task” (§30). Gorman also explores the means for growth in holiness, asking the question: “How does this transformation into Godlikeness— this theosis—take place?” (93; cf. the discussion of Christlikeness on 113). Gorman’s response differs from traditional treatments of theosis, which emphasize the sacraments (especially the Eucharist) as means of theosis. Gorman does indeed highlight baptism (72–79, 90, 93, 113), but only briefly refers to the Lord’s Supper (89, 113). Moreover, while the “contemplative” dimension of growth in holiness gets only a passing mention (93, 170), Gorman often discusses its active dimension (for example, in political life)—so perhaps more attention could be given to “prayer” (a word not found in the book), since “training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer” ( John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, §32). He also indicates that the tradition of holiness as theosis is largely an Eastern Christian heritage that the West has not developed (125, 170–71), but he must certainly be aware that holy Western theologians like Augustine and Aquinas also spoke of divinization or deification. These comments notwithstanding, this is an excellent chapter for helping Christians rediscover the call to holiness. In chapter four, Gorman applies the material of the previous chapters to the problem of violence. He explains that the post-transformation Paul indeed turned away from the zealous violence of the pre-transformation Saul. He also clarifies that the event of the cross is not some kind of violence of the Father toward the Son. Very helpful are Gorman’s comments against “sacred violence” (159–60), including his note that such violence involves not only international affairs but also “religiously based arguments for unrestricted abortion” (159, n. 111). His condemnation of sacred violence and emphasis on the scriptural message of peace find a recent echo in Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini; the Pope there says that “it is more necessary than ever to rediscover the word of God as a source of reconciliation and peace,” and he affirms “once more that religion can never justify intolerance or war. We cannot kill in God’s name!” (§102). When it comes to the broader issue of non-violence in general, however, Gorman’s treatment needs some further development. His treatment of divine “wrath” in Paul is rather limited (155–58), dealing briefly with only a few Pauline texts (e.g., Rom 5:9; 12:19). He posits Book Reviews 283 that the manifestation of God’s wrath takes place only at the eschaton (157–58), and hence he does not deal with passages that indicate that God’s wrath is already being manifested in the present time (e.g., Rom 1:18). Indeed, if justification (cf. Rom 1:17) or theosis is an already present reality which also has a future, eschatological dimension (as Gorman says, 85–86, 166–67), then it is difficult to see why the same is not also true for divine wrath. Moreover, since he mentions Romans 13:1–7 only in passing (112), he does not consider that, according to Paul, the divine wrath may be manifested at the present time through human agents (Rom 13:4–5). The chapter also does not consider the question of how one’s response might depend on one’s position in society (for example, private individual or public servant) or in the church (cf.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II–II, q. 40). Without these distinctions, it is difficult to understand a statement like “we may need to be prepared to absorb violence, but not to inflict it” (160), especially in light of events such as the massacre of Iraqi Christians in church, stopped only by military action. Regarding this issue, see Germain Grisez, Living a Christian Life, 905: “Sometimes people can rightly defend themselves and/or others with deadly force, accepting as a side effect the death thus caused, but not seeking it as an end or choosing it as a means.” Finally, a methodological challenge posed by this chapter regards the difficulty of constructing a complete moral theory based on Paul’s largely occasional letters. These observations are an indication of the fruitfulness of Gorman’s book for stimulating further work and reflection. By emphasizing a single, integrated model of Pauline soteriology—cruciform theosis— Gorman has drawn our attention to a matter that not only has ongoing academic interest, but one that has crucial practical implications for the life of every Christian. N&V Pablo Gadenz Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary on the Three Holy Mantras of the Śriṽais· n· ava Hindus by Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (Leuven: Peeters/Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008 ), 203 pp. I N THIS carefully and densely written study Francis Clooney undertakes two distinct but related projects: a detailed commentary of the three holy mantras within the theological tradition of Śri ṽais· n· ava Hinduism, and an exploration of what it might mean for Christians to engage with and comment on sacred texts from other religious traditions. Clooney states 284 Book Reviews his purpose as offering a Christian commentary on the three holy mantras of the Śri ṽais· n· ava Hindu tradition, exploring how they have been understood within that tradition (following the Śri ṽais· n· ava commentator, Vedañta Deśika, 1269–1370), and asking what they can mean for readers today, particularly Christian readers (5). Before embarking on the commentary itself, Clooney makes the case for the value of close commentary on sacred texts, and the necessity of submission and self-effacement before the text, especially if it originates from a religious tradition other than the commentator’s (8–9).What he “asks” for here is not entirely clear. On the one hand he claims that commentary is an intellectual activity that becomes a “spiritual activity” (10), and consistently throughout the study he acknowledges the limits of how a Christian can fully grasp another theological tradition. But on the other he claims (as an illustration) that a Christian commentary on the Gospel of John would have little to distinguish it from any commentary on John except for “pious and pastoral comments after the scholarly exegesis” (12). He seems to want it both ways, that is, that the results of genuine commentary have little to do with religious commitment, and that we must respect and acknowledge the limits of what commentators from one religious tradition can gain from texts in another.This is not fully coherent, and it is the latter perspective that is more persuasive and that in fact informs Clooney’s own approach to the Hindu mantras throughout the commentary, illustrated by his “Christian hope that meaningful and efficacious learning across religious boundaries is possible in the 21st century” (26). The three mantras that Clooney will explore are remarkably brief and easily cited: the Tiru Mantra: “Aum, obeisance to Nar̃aỹan· a”; the Carama Śloka: “Having completely given up all dharmas, to Me alone come for refuge. From all sins I will make you free. Do not grieve”; and the Dvaya Mantra: “I approach for refuge the feet of Nar̃aỹan· a with Śri .̃ Obeisance to Nar̃aỹan· a with Śri ˜” (15). The outline of the book follows the three mantras (one chapter dedicated to each), with the Carama Śloka divided into two chapters to serve what Clooney believes is the divine-human interaction in play (27). Beginning and ending each chapter, and scattered throughout, are brief “reflections” that consider the results of the commentary thus far for the Christian reader.They function as occasional editorials that challenge the Christian reader to consider what impact the spiritual fruits of the commentary might have for Christian believer. Clooney is a careful and competent commentator. He offers an impressive example of what any commentary should be like, as well as how a Christian can respectfully enter into sustained dialogue with the sacred texts of another tradition. He is judicious in his commentarial Book Reviews 285 judgments and careful in the way he applies the findings to a Christian reader. The result is that, by the book’s conclusion, the previously uninitiated reader has gained a significant understanding and appreciation for the Śri ṽais· n· avan tradition of Hinduism. For this achievement alone Clooney’s commentary can be highly recommended. Clooney insists that his aims in this volume are modest. While he admits to being favorably disposed towards the texts he is commenting on, he maintains that his commentary is intended to be “pre-systematic and pre-dogmatic” and that he does not intend “to promote covertly or build the case for any definite theology of religions, or of the Christian and Śri ṽais· n· ava religions” (175). Still, theological and even dogmatic commitments cannot be avoided in the kinds of recommendations and suggestions that Clooney puts forward. The first, and more modest, theological claim Clooney makes is that an appreciative reading of the Hindu mantras by a Christian can prompt and provoke a Christian reader to appreciate and assimilate the Christian textual and theological tradition more fully. In other words, after reflecting on the truths present in the Hindu mantras, the Christian reader can return to the text of the New Testament and to Christian belief with new insight and conviction. The mantras then become “a mirror in which we see ourselves” (63). This perspective is present is many of Clooney’s “reflections” and is sharply contoured in the comparison Clooney makes between the respective mantras and certain “parallel” or “similar” texts in the New Testament. For example, he places the Tiru Mantra in juxtaposition with the phrase “Abba, Father,” and suggests that a dialectical reading can help the understanding of both traditions, leading the Christian reader to a greater appropriation of this central New Testament text (69–72). Grounded in the considerable “theological and spiritual common ground” (157) between the two traditions, this comparative and appreciative reading of parallel texts has much to commend it. By seeing how a Hindu prays, and by recognizing the qualities and attributes of God that the Śri ṽais· n· ava tradition acknowledges, the Christian can return to his/her own tradition with renewed understanding and appreciation for engaging Christian prayer. A second and more radical step that Clooney explores is whether a Christian can actually pray the mantras in some fashion. Here he is careful and normally suggestive, but it is clear by the end that he wants to see this as a possible and potential result of interreligious commentary.Yet, it is difficult to see that Christian praying of the Hindu mantras can be justified from a Christian perspective (which Clooney adopts throughout). Clooney consistently makes the distinction between the “universal 286 Book Reviews meanings” that are embedded in the Hindu mantras and the “specific” divine persons that are identified (e.g. Nar̃aỹan· a and his consort, Śri ˜). It is the former that allows the Christian reader to recognize similarities between Hindu and Christian beliefs and gain significant insights; it is the latter that would seem to preclude praying the mantras as Christians. Clooney himself acknowledges that “Śri ṽais· n· ava are no more pleased with ‘God in general’ than most Christians are” (104). But one cannot pray to God in general; one cannot pray to shared divine attributes; one can only pray to a specific God. Regarding the Dvaya Mantra, Clooney says that “faith is required” to engage the spiritual power of the Mantra, and that “of course we must determine what degree of faith in the Mantra is possible for the Christian” (117). But faith must of necessity be directed to a specific God, not a universal meaning. How can one who is a Christian by confession put faith in a Mantra directed specifically to another God? To “engage in the full surrender intended by the Mantra as a Śri ṽais· n· ava confession of faith” is not just a “daunting level of involvement” (141), as if it were a matter of daring and courage; the problem lies at the level of truth and of the specificity of the God to whom one makes surrender. In the same way, for a Christian it is not “considerably more demanding to say that Nar̃aỹan· a is the divine person upon whom all depends” (179); it is simply inconceivable, and would seem to preclude praying a prayer directed to Nar̃aỹan· a. Clooney claims that he is not proposing a fully-fledged theology of religions, and this is true enough. But he clearly does want to advance, especially in the closing pages, significant elements of a theology of religions that is, for example, open to praying (in some sense) the prayers of another religious tradition, and that is ready to concede that whether the two traditions “are equal in inspiration, revelation, the presence of God” are “questions that can be left open, until more interreligious commentarial work has been done” (184). But given the specificity in each tradition regarding the personal identity of who God is, it is difficult to see how Christians can “utter the Mantras with a certain reverence and understanding, even if incompletely and with reservations” (191). And given that Christian conviction holds Christ is personally and specifically “the way, the truth, and the life” to whom they have access in the Holy Spirit, it is difficult to see why Christians would wish to pray with the mantras at all. N&V Daniel A. Keating Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI Book Reviews 287 Jewish-Christian Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom: Engagements with the Theology of David Novak by Matthew Levering (London: Continuum, 2010 ), xiv + 204 pp. T HIS IS a welcome book. As the title indicates, it is an engagement with the theology of David Novak, Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. That Novak is a religious Jew whose work in Jewish law, theology, and ethics leads the field, and that Levering is a deeply committed Catholic theologian also at the forefront of his field, makes this book all the more interesting and engaging. In effect the book becomes something of a test case—and, I will suggest, a model—for Jewish-Christian dialogue. Particularly noteworthy is Levering’s ability to use and integrate Novak’s ( Jewish) work for his own (Christian) purposes without being patronizing. As Novak himself mentions in his foreword to the book, Levering’s contribution is a “sincerely patient effort to learn something important from my work for his own theological purposes rather than trying to either judge my work by his own religious certitude or simply compare it with his own theology” (ix). The book is structured around five main topics: Supersessionism and Messianic Judaism (chapter 1); Providence and Theonomy (chapter 2);The Image of God (chapter 3); Natural Law and Noahide Law (chapter 4); Election and the Life of Wisdom (chapter 5). Each chapter provides a careful, in-depth account of Novak’s thinking, and Levering often engages Novak’s work in dialogue either with Thomas Aquinas or with Christian theology more generally. Levering’s detailed descriptions of Novak’s work are presented in an engaging manner. At times readers are given a clearer view of Novak’s ideas than they might gain through reading Novak’s work itself. This is a significant accomplishment, yet the more one reads the clearer it becomes that no one will want to read Levering in lieu of Novak. We have, therefore, something of a primer to Novak’s work. To give the reader a taste of the book’s content, in this short review I will focus on the first chapter of the book before commenting more briefly on the others. This first chapter, which sets the stage for those that follow and is particularly important for Jewish-Christian dialogue, will undoubtedly interest readers, if only because of its controversial nature: “Supersessionism and Messianic Judaism.” The very word “supersessionism”—the idea that Christianity in some way “supersedes” Judaism— raises a host of serious historical and theological issues. Add the topic of Messianic Judaism (or Jewish Christianity), and the reader will sense the thinness of the theological ice on every page. For many scholars it is tempting to sidestep or ignore the latter issue in particular because it 288 Book Reviews raises so many difficulties. However, as Levering makes clear, engaging the question of modern-day Messianic Judaism is (quoting Markus Bockmuehl) “crucial for any further substantive progress in contemporary Jewish-Christian understanding” (13). Levering begins the chapter by detailing Novak’s position that supersessionism is inherent to Christianity and therefore cannot be entirely excised. Levering does so by revisiting Novak’s fundamental question: if Christianity does not understand itself as in some ways improving upon or going beyond Judaism, that is, in some sense superseding it, why should Christians not become Jews? (16). Therefore, the main issue is not that supersessionism exists but how it presents itself. As Levering shows, for Novak the question is to what extent Christian supersessionism denigrates and condemns Judaism. We have in Novak’s work therefore a plea for a “mild supersessionism,” that is, one that respects past and present-day Judaism as a living religion in relationship to YHWH, the Lord God, even while Christians will perceive that religion as deficient. To be sure, Novak makes clear that for Jews who are true to their identity and self-understanding, Christian faith will be perceived as excessive. Thus, as Levering outlines, in Novak’s view Christianity might be accepted as “a valid gentile relationship with the Lord God,” but for Jews it is still “in many ways a grave distortion of the Torah” (15). Therefore, the two groups will always be “ ‘strangers’ at the deepest theological level” (16) whose “communal identities are mutually exclusive here and now” (141, n. 21). The reader will notice that for Novak Christianity is a valid way for gentiles to be in a relationship with Israel’s God. This in turn broaches the difficult question of Messianic Judaism, that is, Jews who are Christians. With this topic Levering now shifts the discussion of the chapter and makes Novak’s position clear: “combining Torah observance according to the practice of Judaism, with faith in Christ Jesus and the practice of the Christian sacraments” is not possible (23). Key here is the development of Christian doctrine; the combination might have been possible in the first century, but since the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, a Jew cannot, in good faith, believe in a divine Jesus as the messiah. To do so would be a sin. As Novak states, such persons are still Jews, “but they are no longer practicing a religion Jews regard as part of Judaism” (25). They have become apostates, excluded from communion with normative Judaism. Having outlined the position of Novak, Levering moves to discuss the problem from a Christian perspective, and it is here (as in subsequent chapters) that Levering shines in his ability to synthesize Novak’s scholarship and to appropriate it when possible for his own theology. Levering begins by asking whether Torah-observant Jews who identify Jesus as Book Reviews 289 messiah should be understood as Christians. Important here is how Torah observance relates to Rabbinic Judaism, for it is clear that for Jews observing the Torah is not simply a matter of consulting the books of Moses. To simplify Levering’s position: he concludes that for a Jew to accept Jesus as the messiah (and worship him as the second Person of the Trinity, partaking in the sacraments), and yet to practice Judaism according to Rabbinic Judaism is not possible, since Rabbinic Judaism has ruled that worship of Jesus as God incarnate is not permitted. In effect, if Christianity accepts such Messianic Judaism as a legitimate form of Christianity, it is effectively saying “that Christians not only understand Israel’s Messiah better—mild supersessionism—but also that Christians . . . understand Rabbinic Judaism” better as well (26). This is but a taste of the book, and equally important are the remaining chapters. The second, “Providence and Theonomy,” not only engages Novak’s thinking on “theonomous morality” but also examines Maimonides’ treatment of providence. Both are explored in dialogue with John Paul II and his important idea that “understanding what it means to be human requires recovering a God-centered account of human life, marked by trust in providence” (51). Levering suggests that all three thinkers “support and enrich each other” (47). The third chapter, “The Image of God,” shows how Novak’s insights can enhance Aquinas’s reading of the imago Dei. Chapter four, “Natural Law and Noahide Law,” exposes a key difference between Novak and Aquinas; for Novak, natural law is found in the pre-Sinai state, something Israel fulfilled as a prerequisite to receiving the fuller Torah; for Aquinas, “it seems more promising to look for natural law precepts within the Torah . . .” (97). The final chapter, “Election and the Life of Wisdom,” surveys the positions of Harold Bloom and Leon Kass before summarizing Novak’s work, essentially forming something of a synopsis of Novak’s book The Election of Israel:The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Here Levering discusses Novak’s idea that God’s election of Israel is bound up with a hope for the larger world: in the final redemption “a universal reconciliation . . . takes place in and through the particularity . . . of ‘God’s redemption of Israel’” (128). Overall, the book is clear, well laid out, and engaging. Perhaps some minor criticisms would be the occasional need for a clearer and slightly more linear presentation (for example, in chapter 3) and the tendency, in a few places, toward verbosity. The editorial decision to use endnotes rather than footnotes earns more serious criticism. Levering’s notes are full of important material and the attentive reader will forever be turning to the back of the book to locate an important detail. These notes make up about a third of the book’s main content. 290 Book Reviews It has often been said that true dialogue can take place only if both parties are willing to end up somewhere other than where they first began. If this is true, I cannot help but feel that Levering models true dialogue in the book, in that he is one who is clearly learning from his dialogue partner. As I noted above, Novak discusses this in his foreword, and he also rightly points out that Levering does this in a manner that is not disputational, comparative, or syncretistic (ix). Levering’s interest in learning is never at the cost of his own tradition, and he has no interest in diluting either his own or Novak’s faith claims, finding the lowest common denominator, or minimizing the things on which Jews and Christians differ. At the conclusion of the book, Levering highlights Novak’s profound idea that Jewish-Christian dialogue might in fact be one way of bringing hope to the larger world. Key here is that both groups start from the point of view that they will indeed meet in the “all-mysterious end” (131) and that their dialogue can point to the fact that hope for the world’s survival is ultimately bound up in a hope for its final redemption. For both authors this idea is more than mere pious sentiment or wishful thinking, and it is clear that this book is truly a living example of this hope. The dialogue here is rich, respectful, and true to each tradition. The theology is fruitful and engaging. It is a fine example of Jewish-Christian dialogue and the reader will learn much, not only about the topics covered, but also about how two human beings, though separated by their identities as Jew and Christian, can learn from and enrich the other. On that score, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. N&V Joel N. Lohr Trinity Western University Langley, BC, Canada The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008 ), xi + 299 pp. H OW BEST to respond to “the new atheism” is not obvious. The blest people who haven’t heard of it can ignore it, and those who have heard of it only in passing can profitably do the same. For those who have caught the bug, however, or who care about others who have caught it, ignoring the problem isn’t enough. For these I can think of three solutions: (1) begin a long and deep education in the philosophia perennis and in Catholic theology; (2) find some intelligent, wise, and very well-read person to help you see the limits of the new atheistic critiques; (3) find a book that explains enough about authentic philosophy and intellectual Book Reviews 291 history to refute the new atheism’s core claims.The last solution, for most people, will be the most practical. And for these the book of choice must be Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. The book is not perfect, but it is still superb. The gist of the latest rash of atheist books is that modern materialistic science has made belief in God intellectually untenable. Since all smart people are now atheists, it is said, fatuous superstitions like faith and traditional morality are revealed as no better than a belief in elves and fairies. This leads, in Feser’s words, to “the condescending assumption that belief in God could only be the product of wishful thinking, stupidity, ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty.” To refute this assumption Feser provides a condensed and abridged education in pre-modern philosophy and in the foundations of “scientific” secularist materialism. Feser’s overall point is that, contrary to what the new atheists say, “belief in the existence of God and the falsity of materialism” rests, at least in the traditional Western religious understanding, “firmly and squarely on reason, not ‘faith’.” Feser works out his refutation in six chapters. Except for the first, introductory chapter, each of these runs more than forty pages, plus some long endnotes. The introduction, “Bad Religion,” outlines the work of the new atheists and points us to the intellectual tradition they ignore, the philosophia perennis. Here Feser names Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as targets, but his argument applies to others as well. Observing that most great Western scientists have also been monotheists, he argues that the new atheists have failed to face the philosophical issues involved in an adequately reasoned dispute about God. Examining these issues forces us to see facile materialism for what it is:“when one seriously comes to understand the classical philosophical tradition represented by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas . . . one learns just how contingent and open to question are the various modern, and typically ‘naturalistic,’ philosophical assumptions that most contemporary thinkers (and certainly most secularists) simply take for granted without rational argument.” Presenting that classical tradition and those rational arguments, or many of them, is the work of the rest of Feser’s book. Chapter 2, “Greeks Bearing Gifts,” teaches the reader about the core ideas of realism, nominalism, conceptualism, the four causes, hylomorphism, and act and potency. These are presented in a narrative running from Thales through Aristotle, with cogent, accessible arguments all along to keep any educated reader on top of these basic claims and insights. Chapter 3, “Getting Medieval,” takes us to the question of God’s existence as treated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the five ways (though all five are not treated in detail). Feser’s goal here is to show theism’s basis in 292 Book Reviews reason itself. The fourth chapter, “Scholastic Aptitude,” continues into a broadly classical account of the soul, natural law, evil, and the possibility of religious faith. In Chapter 5, “Descent of the Modernists,” Feser first presents something akin to A. E. Burtt’s Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, explaining how modern priorities in experimental science and morals led to an abandonment of the older tradition. He then describes how and why the “universal acid” of modern philosophy ate away at confidence in reason, at the awareness of induction’s limitations, and at reasonable accounts of personal identity, free will, natural rights, and natural law. On the whole, chapters two through five are superb, an excellent condensed introduction to what the classically minded recognize as some of philosophy’s most crucial lessons. Here Feser is clear, cogent, a fluent writer, and an excellent teacher. When it comes to discussing the Christian faith, however, Feser is less helpful. From the very beginning of The Last Superstition there is ambiguity in his seemingly interchangeable references to faith, belief, and the view that God exists. When faith is briefly discussed as a supernatural gift on page 165, the reader is told that “[f]rom the point of view of Christian theology, at least, whatever reasons might lead us to belief in God and in what He has revealed, divine grace, acting in the interests of our salvation, is its ultimate cause.” In this context it would have been profitable to distinguish (1) between what can be known by unaided reason and what can be known by faith, and (2) between what can be known by faith or reason and what can be known only by faith. It is true that grace can bring us to the rational conclusion that God exists, but it is worth stressing that this conclusion can also be reached by unaided reason. To believe both “in God and in what He has revealed” is indeed the work of grace, but Feser’s treatment of these matters is hurried and unduly focused on faith as the reasoned acceptance of religious authority. According to Feser, “reason tells you to have faith in what Christ teaches, because He is divine. And that is at bottom what faith is from the point of view of traditional Christian theology” (p. 157).This kind of faith is a fine thing, but it does need to be compared with and distinguished from the supernatural virtue. Feser’s quick remarks on grace and faith would have been better omitted, and the book left entirely philosophical. The final chapter of The Last Superstition, “Aristotle’s Revenge,” treats materialism’s incoherence and the scientific community’s own discontent with its anti-metaphysical heritage. Modern empirical science, it turns out, cannot do without appeals to causality, teleology, and undetermined human thought. Here Feser’s knowledge of Hume shines particularly, and helps lead the reader to see how the new atheists’ materialism is neither Book Reviews 293 new, nor profound, nor representative of the latest physical science. Feser meets his goal of refuting the new atheism in its own terms, convincingly and with panache. There is no book, to my knowledge, that comes anywhere close to accomplishing everything that Edward Feser does in this timely work. Feser’s palpable anger toward the new atheists will not be every reader’s cup of tea, nor will all his popular and political references be as effective when The Last Superstition is read a decade or two from now. For the ordinarily educated adult of the present, however, this text stands alone: there is no better place to begin understanding what is fundamentally wrong and misleading in the new atheism. Cautions are in order for Catholic readers, who might come away with an inadequate view of grace and supernatural faith, or who might be upset by one or two lapses into coarse language, but otherwise The Last Superstition is pure gold.This marvelous refutation of the new atheism is appropriate for undergraduate and adult education, could be very useful for seminary-level courses on atheism or the philosophy of God, and merits a place in public libraries and in higher-education collections of philosophy, theology, apologetics, and intellectual history. N&V Bernard Mulcahy, O.P. Providence College Providence, RI “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body by Eduardo J. Echeverria (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publishers, 2011), xxvii + 339 pp. I N THE very last homily of Blessed John Paul II’s sublime treatise on the theology of the body, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, he states that he is responding to an appeal of the 1980 Synod of Bishops on the Family “to work out more completely the biblical and personalistic aspects of the doctrine contained in Humanae Vitae, namely the inseparability of the unitive and procreative dimensions of conjugal intercourse.” It is important to keep this in mind in considering Eduardo J. Echeverria’s fine book “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body, in which he seeks philosophical and theological principles in the pope’s magnum opus for counteracting erroneous views on homosexuality. While John Paul II’s main orientation is to present a compelling vision of the Church’s teaching on marriage, procreation, and sexuality, Echeverria’s primary focus is to draw on this vision to illuminate the grave distortion of homosexuality, which, itself, flows from the separation of what is intrinsically inseparable. 294 Book Reviews Echeverria goes about his task (1) by showing the defects of biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers who call on their disciplines to justify homosexuality, and (2) by demonstrating the validity of John Paul II’s methodology and the correctness of his anthropology, which provides the principles for invalidating this departure from Magisterial teaching. He omits—and it may have been too much to ask—showing how Man and Woman affirms in a radical way the personhood of the homosexually oriented person, and the chaste communion based on that personhood. My review will treat all three of these aspects, the primary emphasis being laid on (1) and (2), since it is here that Echeverria has provided an indispensable analysis of both incorrect and correct methodology and anthropology. From the time of the 1977 publication of the Catholic Theology Society of America’s Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought, we have become familiar with attempts to read into biblical texts, justification for deviations from received Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality.These attempts have become more sophisticated in the ensuing decades, in parallel with the increasing acceptance in secular society of the “normalcy” of homosexuality and homosexual “marriage.” An equally sophisticated response to such biblical hermeneutics was called for. By giving full value to the arguments of the leading revisionists, the first of whom is Luke Timothy Johnson, and carefully engaging them, Echeverria succeeds in demolishing their arguments step by step. He summarizes at the outset his indictment. Johnson’s revisionism, ascribing to experience an alternative authority to Scripture, inevitably leads to “a doctrinal dismissal of the orthodox doctrine of objective revelation; it confuses objective revelation with the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, that enables us to grasp the full meaning of that revelation, and it denies the existence of fundamental revealed moral truths” (2, 3). In claiming authority for contemporary cultural experience, Johnson cites the familiar case of slavery; Echeverria refutes his argument by stating that there is no mandate for slavery in the Bible and no penalty for releasing slaves. Slave traders are to be put to death and refuge is to be given to runaway slaves (Dt 23:16–17). For the Israelites, freedom from their slavery in Egypt as a fundamental biblical message influenced Deuteronomy’s discouragement of slavery. By contrast there is a scriptural mandate for confining intercourse to heterosexual couples. In other words, over time there is a softening on slavery but a hardening on homosexual acts. As to personal experience, in an attempt to validate “the theological implications of millions of stories of believers,” namely gays, as a source of authority, Johnson points to the analogy of admitting the Gentiles into the Church. Again Echeverria responds there is a warrant Book Reviews 295 for this in the Old Testament but none for homosexual acts (12). To the yet more extensive claim that the way the New Testament came into being over time supports a doctrine of continuing revelation from experience, Echeverria points out that Johnson assumes the post-apostolic community to be the same as the apostolic, denying that objective revelation, expressing the words and deeds of God, closed with the death of the last apostle. In this methodical way, Echeverria takes apart the arguments of the dissenters. At the base of Johnson’s revisionism is the effort to replace the canonicity of Scripture, the sacred Tradition, and the role of the Magisterium in interpreting Scripture with the authority of private interpretation and experience. Echeverria gives a comprehensive account, based on Dei Verbum, of the relation of biblical revelation and authority and the proper role of Tradition, which encompasses “the way of life, and faith of the whole Church—the institutions, liturgy, sacraments, councils, creeds, catechisms, and practices as well as the supreme rule of faith, which is the Holy Scripture” (43). The Magisterium in interpreting Scripture “must be a servant and not the master of the word of God” (45), and its grace is one of assistance or discernment, not inspiration. Above all, it acknowledges what is in Scripture and it does not create (48). He goes on to elaborate the difference between objective revelation and its subjective illumination in the person; he gives priority to the objective, the normative authority of Scripture, and the nature of Scripture’s inerrancy. Chapter Two, “Catholic Biblical Hermeneutics and Ethics,” provides a masterly review, again based on Dei Verbum, of the Church’s teaching on Catholic hermeneutical principles. Echeverria cites three principles with particular relation to sexuality: (1) the teaching of Scripture as a whole on the meaning of the body-person, the moral life, sex and marriage; (2) Christ as the overarching interpretive key for unlocking the meaning of the Law; and (3) the unity of historical and theological exegesis. Echeverria identifies “core values,” one of which is the limitation of sexual intercourse to male and female. In the next chapter he moves to a more in-depth analysis of the link between experience and revelation, since Johnson makes personal experience the ultimate arbiter, claiming that it is offensive to God’s creation to say a gay person is disordered. (More will be said about this assertion in the latter part of this review). Here Echeverria (a convert to Catholicism) draws on his earlier background in the Dutch Reformed Church. He quotes Calvinist Herman Bavinck, “revelation precedes, and is experienced in, faith,” as meaning that the content of revelation can never be subordinated to experience (124). Of course, as Aidan Nichols says, “we can and must vindicate the Church’s dogma 296 Book Reviews in our own experience.” But that is very different from privileging experience over Scripture and Tradition, as, for example, Echeverria asserts that Margaret Farley and others do. Homosexual acts are acts of the body. In the chapter entitled “The Phenomenology of the Body,” Echeverria begins to construct from Karol Wojtyl/a/John Paul II’s philosophical and theological anthropology cogent arguments to dismiss any justification for homosexual acts at the objective level of the body, at the same time, giving due place to “lived experience” in an adequate anthropology. A perceptive student of Karol Wojtyl/a’s The Acting Person and philosophical essays will recognize the fine summary Echeverria makes here of the future pope’s use of phenomenology as a method, grounded in a metaphysics of being, to illuminate the experience of the acting subject. Echeverria is concerned to show here how “the reality of a human being . . . is not constituted by consciousness but instead constitutes it” (170–71). That reality is a concrete unity of body and soul. Consciousness, which accompanies action, enables the person to experience himself as the author of his acts, when he integrates what happens in him at the somato-vegetative level with what he chooses to do. Because of the unity of body and soul, the body is personal and can become the author of truly human acts, which fulfill him. As he outlines the familiar triadic structure of John Paul II’s theological anthropology in Man and Woman He Made Them—original solitude, original unity, and original nakedness—calling it the “deep substratum of a theology of the body” (198), Echeverria wants to emphasize that union can be expressed only in the body.The subject of the act in marital sexual intercourse, two in one flesh, is the male and female as a bodily unity.This “is absolutely fundamental for refuting the claim, that ethical criteria alone, rather than the bodies in a same-sex relationship, are the morally decisive factor” (196). Furthermore, through the generative act there is a sublation of the body to a higher level in a procreative partnership with the Creator. Key to Echeverria’s reading of John Paul II’s theology of the body is the recognition that the marital bond is grounded in both creation and the Church’s sacramental theology (218–19). In other words, the affirmation of homosexual acts denies the created structure of the universe and the cosmic dimensions of the redemption of the body. “In particular, the antithesis between the Gospel and anti-Gospel is felt in the spousal meaning of the body” (226). Here, too, he is drawing on the resources of Dutch Reformed Christianity, especially Herman Dooyeweerd, for whom the doctrine of creation and the healing power of salvation in Jesus Christ are central (xviii). A homosexual orientation, even if partially innate (which has not been proven by science), would be Book Reviews 297 a manifestation of the concupiscence arising from original sin and would thus be open to the healing power of redemptive grace. This perspective is further strengthened by Man’s moving toward a new fulfillment in the eschaton, where human bodilyness will be constituted differently and there will be a new submission of the body to the spirit (238). Finally in Chapter Six, Echeverria presents the Church’s magisterial teaching on homosexuality, bringing out the distinction between homosexual acts and a homosexual orientation. The latter is not sinful, although, like infertility, it is objectively disordered. However, infertility in a couple differs from homosexuality in that a real bodily union ordered to procreation takes place, whereas same-sex acts are incapable of being reproductive and without the couple becoming one organism, expressing the total self gift of the “language of the body” such acts cannot effect the interpersonal unity essential to marriage. Echeverria would like to see greater clarity in the response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to revisionist arguments here. The final chapter, “Caritas in Veritate” has somewhat the appearance of an add-on and is the least satisfactory. The useful points it makes in outlining the Church’s pastoral approach to the homosexual are: applying the law of gradualness but not the gradualness of the law in accepting the person where he is; the power of grace; chastity as an infused moral virtue; and the call to holiness through the forgiveness of sins.What Echeverria misses is the anthropology that John Paul II lays out in the theology of the body right “at the beginning” with his concept of original solitude. John Paul II makes the pivotal statement that Man, being constituted as a body, is even deeper than being male or female, although he is always either one or the other (Man and Woman 8:1). Being a body belongs to him first and foremost as a person, made in the image of God. This is the state that Pope Benedict XVI calls filiality, which must precede the spousal relation. John Paul II goes on to say that “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” means first a relation of brother and sister, so that a communion of persons is the deepest level of the man-woman relation, and conjugal union is one expression of it in historical time (Man and Woman 18:5). This is the true meaning of St. Paul’s assertion, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.” Woman is called a “double solitude,” a person before she is a spouse (Man and Woman 9:2). The homosexual commits the error of defining himself by his sexual orientation first. Chastity, which John Paul II calls a requirement of love, restores the integrity of the person and the communion of persons and applies as much in marriage as in the celibate state, a fundamental message of Humanae Vitae. 298 Book Reviews With this caveat, the book is a tour de force in its comprehensiveness, clarity, and contribution to the ongoing debate about homosexuality and so-called homosexual “marriage.” In searching for a response to the revisionist arguments of biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers on homosexuality, Echeverria has, at the same time, provided an invaluable service in illuminating John Paul II’s own biblical, theological, and philosophical anthropology in the service of life and love. N&V Mary Shivanandan John Paul II Institute Washington, DC Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology edited by Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago/Mundelein: Hillenbrand Books, 2009 ), vi + 143 pp. T HIS SMALL volume aims at giving students, scholars, and pastors a brief, accessible introduction to the content and scope of the sacramental theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. The book comprises nine chapters including a short introduction. It begins with an essay by the late Avery Cardinal Dulles on the Angelic Doctor’s theology of worship; it ends with an essay by Sr. Thomas Becker, O.P., on the role of solemnitas in the liturgy according to St. Thomas. Seven middle chapters, each written by a different scholar, give the reader an overview of the seven sacraments in the thought of St. Thomas. The introduction states that each chapter is meant to explore how each sacrament “causes in us a particular configuration to Christ through the Holy Spirit”; the hope is that the reader will come to see how St. Thomas can still help believers today understand the indispensable role the sacraments play in the life of faith. Obviously, the chapters cannot be exhaustive about every facet of the sacraments, but they do intend to open up “avenues for further reflection.” In general, the book succeeds in this goal, as many of the chapters take up aspects of Aquinas’s sacramental theology that are often underappreciated in other introductory books on the theology of the sacraments. In the first essay, Dulles provides a survey of St. Thomas’s theology of worship organized under the headings of religion, the sacred, and the ecclesial.This organization allows his essay to function as something of an introduction to many of the topics treated in the other essays. With his customary comprehensive and succinct style, Dulles begins by treating the basic elements of the virtue of religion: what human creatures owe in gratitude to God, adoration, veneration, devotion, and prayer. He makes the reader aware of how St. Thomas’s theology of worship also includes Book Reviews 299 a consideration of the vices contrary to right worship: misdirected reverence, irreverence, superstition, and idolatry. These vices are not unknown today, and St. Thomas helps us to understand how corruptive they can be of right worship. Dulles shows that St. Thomas’s theology of worship is fully systematic, having precise definitions and distinctions. He guides the reader to see that although the Angelic Doctor’s understanding of worship is primarily objective, emphasizing the reality and initiative of God, it cannot be understood correctly without seeing how it includes the subjective element in man involving his sentiments and emotions. In order for the sacraments to be fruitful, the faith and devotion of the recipients is necessary. Dulles observes that St. Thomas recognized three cultic realizations of the sacred: sacrifice, sacrament, and consecration. Sacrifice is the most fundamental and is the source of sacrament and consecration. After discussing the interior and exterior dimension of sacrifice and the sacrifices of the Old Law, Dulles discusses the true sacrifice of Christ. In his Passion and work on the cross, Christ superabundantly satisfied for the sins of all humanity and obtained graces that went far beyond what humanity lost through sin. What is so important in Dulles’s presentation is that he points out how, in St. Thomas’s sacramental theology, the sacraments utterly depend on the work of the love of Christ on the cross and his satisfaction for sin. This is particularly important today when so many postmodern sacramental theologies reduce Christ’s sacrifice to a show or pantomime of God’s love for the world. The efficacy of the sacraments is ex action Christi in the full sense of those words for St. Thomas. Dulles argues that careful study of St. Thomas can be an important corrective to some unhealthy recent trends that give an exaggerated emphasis on the local community and self-expression. He remarks that St. Thomas’s theology of worship is still for us today “a valuable resource for situating worship within a theocentric, Christological and ecclesial framework” (13). Michael Dauphinais’s essay “Christ and the Metaphysics of Baptism” demonstrates that St. Thomas’s metaphysical presentation of baptism does not neglect the “experiential” in Christian life, as some postmodern sacramental theologies have alleged. On the contrary, the metaphysical analysis of St. Thomas, properly understood in view of the interior components of justification and character, provides an intrinsic relation between baptism and Christian life. The Christian life requires and depends upon the spiritual nature of the baptized together with the corresponding powers and activities. Aquinas shows how baptism permeates the entire life of the Christian. This attention to the metaphysical 300 Book Reviews does not entail individualism.The spiritual nature of the new creature has its cause only in the Passion of Christ. To be united to Him who is Head of the Body is to be united with his members. For St. Thomas the baptized individual exists only as a member of the Body of Christ. If one wants to speak of baptism and the experiential meaning of salvation, Dauphinais illustrates that St. Thomas is an important resource for showing the indispensability of metaphysical analysis. Metaphysical distinctions are crucial for understanding how both God and a human minister can work together and how divine and human actions are not opposed to each other. Matthew Levering’s essay—besides being a fine introduction to St. Thomas’s theology of Orders—shows how the Angelic Doctor helps us to understand this reality. Levering helps readers gain a sense of the rigorously metaphysical understanding of participation and instrumental causality that is central for Aquinas’s sacramental theology. He points out that the Supplementum to the Summa theologiae begins with three objections against hierarchical authority on the grounds that such an authority is incompatible with the freedom and dignity of Christian life. Why not a hierarchy based exclusively on wisdom and love rather than a hierarchy of office? To help the reader grasp the issue, Levering puts the question in contemporary terms: should Mother Theresa have to receive the sacraments from a priest who is far less meritorious? Aquinas explains that Holy Orders in the Church, in contrast to the varying ranks of the angels in heaven, is not the expression of a higher grace or of one’s merit. The sacraments, including Holy Orders, are not anthropological rites that communicate human merits. Rather, the sacrament of Holy Orders enables human beings to participate in the mysteries of the divine life, the holiness of God in Christ Jesus. In the Eucharist the instrumental purpose of Holy Orders is most clear. Priests consecrate the Eucharist not by their own power or even by the power of the Church but in persona Christi. The priest is able to effectively pronounce the words “This is my Body” through a distinctive, instrumental, spiritual power received from Christ. This is the character of Holy Orders that gives an ordained man a more active share in Christ’s priesthood. What it enables is the sacramental action whereby the priest can give Christ’s gift of the divine life to the Church. Here, of course, Levering touches on a point that not only is central to the thought of St. Thomas but is something that passed into the doctrine of the Church. Levering makes the reader aware that failing to attend to metaphysics and to instrumental causality often leads to understandings of worship that are at odds with Catholic doctrine and practice—as we see in some postmodern sacramental theologies which present the spiritual power of Book Reviews 301 worship as subsisting primarily in the community of faith represented by a bishop or priest. Such a misunderstanding makes it hard to see what spiritual power and authority, if any, Christ passed down to the apostles and their successors. Robert Miner shows that St. Thomas’s theology of Confirmation can deepen our understanding of how this sacrament is a gift of spiritual maturity and strength. At a time when the public profession of faith in Christ is made more difficult in the face of cultures increasingly hostile to public expressions of faith, the Angelic Doctor’s theology of the sacrament of the fullness of grace can instruct us in an important way. Why do we find it so difficult at times to confess Christ publicly? St. Thomas points out that because of the passions of fear and shame within us, we fear the consequences of boldly confessing Christ or we are ashamed to confess Him. Aquinas teaches that the grace of Confirmation bestows a spiritual strength by eradicating the very passions that keep us from freely confessing faith in Christ with all of its implications. St. Thomas’s explanation of the sacrament of confirmation can also help us today in another way. Students of sacramental theology are faced with the claim of some postmodern sacramental theologies which downplay or outright deny Christ’s institution of the sacraments. St. Thomas helps us to see that a sacrament can be truly instituted by Christ even if we cannot detect a passage in Scripture where there is a clear explicit act of institution. He draws a distinction between two kinds of institution: “by exhibiting” it and “and by promising and sending it forth” at a later time. We can see this latter form of institution when Christ says in John 16:7: “But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Paraclete will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Christ promises to send the fullness of grace, and Confirmation is the sacrament of the fullness of grace. We would be limiting the power of Christ if we thought that He instituted the sacrament only by the power of direct exhibition that we see, for example, in the institution of the Eucharist. This insight of St. Thomas establishes the possibility of Christ instituting not only the sacrament of Confirmation but other sacraments as well, which do not seem to have been instituted by the power of direct exhibition during the earthly life of Christ. Bruce Marshall approaches the theology of the Eucharist from St. Thomas’s statement that the Eucharist contains “the whole mystery of our salvation.” This claim turns on a conception of the Eucharist as both a sacrament and a sacrifice. Marshall explores the reasons St.Thomas gives for understanding the Eucharist as a sacrifice. He shows that for St. Thomas the concept of “representation” is essential. Aquinas reasons that 302 Book Reviews because the Eucharist contains the body and blood of Christ offered for us, and because the power of the Passion of Christ is communicated to us through the Eucharist, then the sacramental representation of the sacrifice of Christ is a true sacrifice. The sacrifice of the Mass is one and the same with Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary, albeit in a different mode. Marshall believes that St. Thomas can help us avoid false problems in Eucharistic theology by calling our attention to the fact that not only does our action in the Eucharist depend causally on Christ’s action but our action is instrumentally included in his action as well. Therefore we are freed from thinking, as some persons did in the controversies of the Reformation, that we must somehow balance our action with that of Christ so that we do not somehow end up affirming that the Eucharist “improves” the sacrifice of Christ. Marshall argues that careful study of St. Thomas’s theology of the Eucharist can help us identify a difficult problem: how the priestly act of Christ in the Eucharist can be one with Christ’s priestly act on the cross. Marshall believes that this “mysterious coincidence” of past and present remains a difficult problem but that St. Thomas goes a long way toward instructing us about it. Romanus Cessario’s chapter on penance and reconciliation is different from the other chapters in two ways. First, it is a previously published essay, and second, it draws upon the theology of St. Thomas in the light of a document from the magisterium of Pope John Paul II, Penance and Reconciliation. Following this document, which teaches that the sacrament of penance is a “principle locus” where the baptized, through the working of the Holy Spirit, meet the reconciliation effected by the salvific death of Christ, Cessario stresses the joining together of the penitent’s sorrow for sin and sacramental efficacy by way of unity with the redemptive suffering of Christ. He observes that St. Thomas’s view of the sacramentality of penance “remains the most difficult feature of his entire sacramental theology” (70). St. Thomas understood the sacramentum et res as the sorrow of the penitent based on faith in the saving power of the mysteries of Christ. Therefore the penitent’s renewed love for God, joined with the priest’s action of absolution, brings the penitent to a renewed relationship with God. Cessario recalls that the tradition understands contrition of heart, confession of the lips, and satisfaction of works as the three principle elements that compose the sacrament of penance. Satisfaction, in Penance and Reconciliation, and in the thought of St. Thomas for that matter, is the crown of the sacrament of penance. Satisfaction, or penance, completes the necessary elements of the sacrament and directs the penitent, now a forgiven sinner, to a renewed life of love and virtue. The Book Reviews 303 newly reconciled person is now ready to participate in everything that Christ achieved by his satisfaction. Cessario maintains that this explains why St.Thomas contended that penance restores not only justice but also friendship with God. John F. Boyle traces the development of the theology of Extreme Unction, the anointing of the sick, in the thought of Aquinas. Boyle observes that St.Thomas has little to say about Extreme Unction in comparison with the other sacraments. What emerges from Boyle’s penetrating essay is that what St. Thomas did have to say is very profound and precise. St. Thomas agreed with his contemporary scholastics that extreme unction has to do with healing. He wanted to distinguish this sacrament from baptism and reconciliation; all three of these sacraments heal from sin. However, the key to St. Thomas’s analysis is the analogical frame he used to analyze anointing of the sick. In the commentary on the Sentences the analogical frame for the sacraments is the movement of life (entrance, progression, departure). This allowed St. Thomas to distinguish Extreme Unction as the sacrament of departure and healing. The sacrament is special medicine for departing this life. It is spiritual medicine, signified by bodily anointing, because it is ordered to overcoming the weakness of mind that remains after sin has been forgiven and that leaves a person without the vigor for the life of grace and glory. In the Summa contra Gentiles the analogical frame for analyzing the sacrament changes from the movement of life to the spiritual life conforming to the corporeal life. Just as in the corporeal life there is not only growth and sustenance but illness for which we need medicine, so too in the spiritual life. However, in the Summa contra Gentiles, penance is also a medicine. St. Thomas made a neat distinction: penance is a spiritual medicine and extreme unction is both a spiritual and a corporeal medicine. Extreme unction is ordered to overcoming the weakness of the body that comes about because of sin, though it does not always lead to the healing of the body. It is also ordered, however, to the other remains of sin, such as the inclination to evil and the difficulty in pursuing the good. Anointing of the sick completes the healing that begins in penance. Where there is danger of death, there is an immediate need for the completion of the healing effects of penance and a need to be freed from the temporal punishments due to sin. A progressive clarification of the primary analogs of the reality of corporeal health in the thought of St. Thomas leads to a more profound understanding of the sacrament of extreme unction, which then further helps to distinguish it from the sacrament of penance. Boyle points out that although St. Thomas did not write about extreme unction in the Summa theologiae, he did write there about the 304 Book Reviews seven sacraments in general in way that affects his theology of extreme unction. He reconsiders the relationship between the medicines of penance and extreme unction and introduces a new distinction between them: health and robustness of health. St.Thomas applies the whole range of bodily health above and beyond not being sick to the spiritual life. So, penance is ordered to spiritual health because it is medicine for the illness of sin and therefore restores spiritual health. Extreme unction is ordered to the robustness of spiritual life and is medicine against the remnants of sin that weaken spiritual health and impede a vigorous spiritual life. In the chapter on marriage, Joseph Koterski notes the challenges involved in speaking about St. Thomas’s theology of marriage because of the state of texts. We do not possess a statement of the Angelic Doctor’s understanding of marriage in the Summa theologiae as we do for some of the other sacraments.We must rely on the materials from the commentary on the Sentences and the relevant chapters in the Summa contra Gentiles that were assembled by the disciples of St. Thomas for the Supplementum. Koterski takes up all of the available texts and limits himself to examining the duality of St.Thomas’s approach to marriage through natural law and through sacramentality. The result is a presentation that identifies the core contributions of St. Thomas to understanding marriage both as a natural institution and as a sacrament. Koterski argues that it is necessary to keep in mind two points concerning the historical context of Aquinas’s theology of marriage. The first is the important development made during medieval scholasticism that sacraments are not just signs of sacred things but are signs that bring about the grace they signify. The second is the retrieval of Aristotle’s natural philosophy, and St. Thomas’s “ground-breaking work” in the realm of natural law. The Dominican saint was confident that human reason could discern the ends that God implanted in human nature. Human creatures can participate in providential reasoning about how to reach the ends for which they are created, and they can discern what actions are in accordance with attaining ends and what actions are not. Koterski observes that St.Thomas’s theory of natural law, not surprisingly, played a role in his understanding of marriage. As a natural institution, marriage is designed by God so as to aid human beings in achieving the social end of the propagation of the species and to facilitate the process of the maturation of individual human persons. St. Thomas sees the natural institution of marriage as perfecting the person individually, socially, bodily, and spiritually. Some theologians before Aquinas doubted that sacramental marriage could be counted as a cause of the grace it signified. If marriage was a sign of the union between Christ and the Church, it was hard to see marriage as causing what it signified. Obviously, marriage is not the cause of the unity Book Reviews 305 between Christ and the Church. Others wondered how marriage, as the other sacraments are, could be rooted in Christ’s passion. St. Thomas responded to these difficulties from a Christological perspective by arguing that “although marriage is not conformed to Christ’s Passion as regards pain, it is as regards charity, whereby he suffered for the Church, who was to be united to him as his spouse.”To the problem of how marriage can cause the grace it signifies, St. Thomas acknowledges that marriage is a sign of the union between Christ and the Church, but it obviously does not bring this reality about. Rather, the grace that is brought about by what marriage signifies is the grace of the indissoluble bond of husband and wife. St. Thomas says, “Since then the union of husband and wife gives a sign of Christ and the Church, that which makes the sign must correspond to that whose sign it is. Now the union of Christ and the Church is a union of one to one to be held forever. . . . Necessarily then, matrimony as sacrament of the Church is a union of one man and one woman to be held indivisibly, and this is included in the faithfulness by which man and woman are bound together.” Koterski explains that, for St.Thomas, Christ elevated marriage in the new covenant “as a way to represent the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church and to bring to spouses the graces of participation in this union” (112). Koterski also observes, rightly, that St. Thomas is able to integrate the understanding of marriage as a remedy for concupiscence by bringing it forward into the sacramentality of marriage. The remedium for concupiscence becomes incorporated “by the way in which it represents the Christ-Church union” (112). Koterski also notices how St. Thomas distinguishes between the phenomenon of shame and of that of guilt in a way that is not dissimilar to Pope John Paul II’s consideration of the subject. The last essay, “The Role of Solemnitas in the Liturgy According to Saint Thomas Aquinas,” by Sister Thomas Aquinas Becker, O.P., examines an aspect of St.Thomas’s theology of worship that is underappreciated and not always well represented in some sacramental theologies that purport to present medieval sacramental theology. Becker points out that St. Thomas’s insistence on the need for “a certain solemnity in order to arouse devotion,” necessary for a fruitful celebration of the sacraments, is based on his understanding of human nature. In his theology of worship Aquinas presents a certain framework for cultivating the dispositions appropriate for sacramental worship through the external means of solemnity. Becker makes a compelling case that the return of an authentic solemnity can be the remedy of certain desacralizing tendencies and the ensuing emptiness that sometimes afflict modern liturgies. Students beginning the study of sacramental theology today face a host of postmodern sacramental theologies that neglect the metaphysical 306 Book Reviews or reject it altogether. In not a few of these recent sacramental theologies, the thought of St. Thomas is not well represented, especially metaphysically. One of the big strengths of this book is that the essays give the reader a good sense of the rigor of the metaphysical dimension in the sacramental theology of St. Thomas and by implication the necessity of such rigor for sacramental theology today. N&V Lawrence J. Welch Kenrick Seminary St. Louis, MO