Nova et Vetera Winter 2012 • Volume 10, Number 2 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 Spring 2012 Vol. 10, No. 2 C OMMENTARY Seminary Formation and Interior Silence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMES K EATING 307 A RTICLES The Foundations of the Church’s Doctrine Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life: A memorandum composed by a group of moral theologians from Kraków. . . . . K AROL C ARDINAL WOJTYL A , ET AL . The Kraków Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JANET E. S MITH The Redemption and Divinization of Human Sexuality through the Sacrament of Marriage: A Thomistic Approach . . . . . . PAUL G ONDREAU St. Thomas on the Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P ETER K WASNIEWSKI Live Action and Planned Parenthood: A New Test Case for Lying. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T HOMAS P ETRI , O.P., AND M ICHAEL A. WAHL John Paul II’s Theology of the Body on Trial: Responding to the Accusation of the Biological Reduction of Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M ICHELE M. S CHUMACHER Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M ARY S HIVANANDAN Craniotomy: A Response to Martin Rhonheimer . . . . J EROME Z EILER , O.P. / S YMPOSIUM Toward a Post-Secular, Post-Conciliar Thomistic Philosophy: Wisdom in the Face of Modernity and the Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology . . . . . . . . . . T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DAVID B. BURRELL , C.S.C. Natural Theology and the Christian Contribution to Metaphysics: On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity ......................................................N ICHOLAS J. H EALY, J R . Discovering the Given: On Reason and God . . . . . . . . . . . . D. C. S CHINDLER Engaging the Thomistic Tradition and Contemporary Culture Simultaneously: A Response to Burrell, Healy, and Schindler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. 321 361 383 415 437 463 485 507 521 531 539 563 605 B OOK R EVIEWS Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Romanus Cessario, O.P., edited by Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J OHN F. B OYLE 625 The Temple in the Gospel of Mark: A Study in Its Narrative Role by Timothy C. Gray. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N ATHAN E UBANK 632 The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria by Hans Van Loon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DANIEL K EATING 635 God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation by Nonna Verna Harrison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RYAN S. P ETERSON 638 Light & Glory:The Transfiguration of Christ in Early Franciscan and Dominican Theology by Aaron Canty. . . . . . . . . C HARLES S AMMONS, O.F.M. C AP. 642 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. 2 (2012): 307–19 307 Seminary Formation and Interior Silence J AMES K EATING Institute for Priestly Formation, Creighton University Omaha, NE Above all, the main task of those responsible for the running of a seminary is the formation of the students in interior silence. . . . A seminary must realize that it is preparing future spiritual directors. —Congregation for Catholic Education, “Spiritual Formation in Seminaries” S INCE the themes of pastoral charity, intellectual acumen, and affective maturity are central in other ecclesial documents on priestly formation, it might appear that the Congregation for Catholic Education is engaging in hyperbole when it states that the “main task” of seminary formation is to educate seminarians in interior silence. The surprising nature of this declaration by the Congregation actually elicits the proper response in us: a pause . . . , and a thought, “Are they serious?” How can the formation of a man in interior silence be so central to priestly formation? To answer this question, we will first look at the nature of interior silence, then reflect upon how a man learns to be silent, and conclude with some practical points for seminary formators to ponder. “Spiritual Formation in Seminaries” (1980) The Congregational letter from 1980, “Spiritual Formation in Seminaries,” makes it very clear that priests are to be formed in interior silence. The letter argues that it is crucial that interior silence be instilled within seminarians because as priests they will need to be teachers of prayer. Seminarians need to “experience God in deep and fervent ways so they can become competent spiritual directors.”1 The letter goes so far as to say that 1 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Spiritual Formation in Seminaries” ( Jan. 6, 1980), I, no. 5. James Keating 308 “the future of the church at the present moment depends most of all on the spiritual formation of future priests.”2 In light of the growth of relativism and secularism, and as the years have passed since 1980, we can say that this charge to emphasize spiritual formation is even more urgent. Many seminarians enter seminary with little or no discipline regarding the interior life. Their days are filled with responses to technological stimuli, and they have become gadabouts, for whom earlier education provided no real tutoring in the virtues of deliberation and discernment. And we can be relatively certain that there was little or no formation in suffering the silence needed to receive these two virtue-gifts. On the level of personal maturation, then, there is an urgency to inculcate silence even as the men suffer withdrawal, so to speak, from the habitual use of technology. As the letter notes, “The seminarian will have to free [himself] from everything which . . . could constitute an obstacle to the development in him of the love of Christ. . . . Seminaries must cultivate within the men a sense of genuine interior silence.”3 Of late, Pope Benedict XVI has taken up this prophetic theme of the Congregation as well: Whoever wants to be a friend of Jesus and become his authentic disciple—be it seminarian, priest, religious or lay person—must cultivate an intimate friendship with him in meditation and prayer. The deepening of Christian truths and the study of theology . . . presupposes an education to silence and contemplation, because one must become capable of listening to God speaking in the heart. Thought must always be purified to be able to enter the dimension where God pronounces his creative and redemptive Word; his Word “comes out of silence,” to use the beautiful expression of St Ignatius of Antioch (Letter to the Magnesians, VIII, 2). Only if it is born from the silence of contemplation can our words have some value and usefulness, and not resemble the inflated discourses of the world that seek the consensus of public opinion.4 The Congregational letter notes further that there should be periods of external silence in the seminary because such silence “serves the purposes” of interior silence. As referred to above, the culture of technology, which present-day seminarians live in as their native land, does not allow them to explore the gifts of external silence. Formators will therefore find resistance to external silence, and hence appropriation of 2 Ibid., I, no. 7. 3 Ibid., II, no. 1. 4 Benedict XVI, “Address at the Beginning of the Academic Year of the Pontifical Roman Universities” (Rome: 23 October 2006). All papal addresses cited in this essay can be found on the Vatican website. Seminary Formation and Interior Silence 309 interior silence as a recognized value will be slow and arduous. Again Benedict XVI is timely on this issue: But silence and contemplation have a purpose: they serve, in the distractions of daily life, to preserve permanent union with God. This is their purpose: that union with God may always be present in our souls and may transform our entire being. Silence and contemplation . . . help us find this profound, continuous union with God in the distractions of every day. . . . How can we open the world, and first of all ourselves, to the Word without entering into the silence of God from which his Word proceeds? For the purification of our words, hence, also for the purification of the words of the world, we need that silence which becomes contemplation, which introduces us into God’s silence and brings us to the point where the Word, the redeeming Word, is born.5 External silence preserves the purpose of interior silence. And what is its purpose? It is to live in communion with God. Interior silence is a disposition that cultivates a state of diminished interference between a man’s heart and the Trinity. Interior silence prepares a man to receive and remain in communion with God. In marriage, silence is the necessary prerequisite to a kiss. One cannot kiss or be kissed by a talking spouse! By giving silence a key position in priestly formation, the Church is instructing the seminarian in the ways of remaining in communion with the Trinity. Silence ordered toward communion with God is the essential way for him to live in happiness as a priest. Silence creates the condition for the possibility of a divine kiss. “The spirituality of St. Bernard’s conception of the mystic kiss of Christ . . . signifies nothing else than to receive the inpouring of the Holy Spirit. . . . This gift conveys both the light of knowledge and the unction of piety.”6 Beloved Pope John Paul II, who was very devoted to St Joseph, left us a wonderful meditation dedicated to him in the Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos. . . . Among the many aspects on which this Document sheds light, the silence of St Joseph is given a special emphasis. His silence is steeped in contemplation of the mystery of God in an attitude of total availability to the divine desires. In other words, St Joseph’s silence does not express an inner emptiness but, on the contrary, the fullness of the faith he bears in his heart and which guides his every thought and action.7 5 Benedict XVI, “Homily at Eucharistic Concelebration with the Members of the International Theological Commission” (Rome: 6 October 2006). 6 Dom Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism (New York: Dover, 2003), 98. 7 Benedict XVI, “Angelus,” St. Peter’s Square, 4th Sunday of Advent (Rome: 18 December 2005). James Keating 310 It is Mary, too, who ministers the vitality of silence to the seminarian. Mary who shows him Jesus her Son, . . . introduces him and . . . enables him to see and touch Jesus, and to take him into his arms. Mary teaches the seminarian to contemplate Jesus with the eyes of the heart and to make Jesus his very life. Each moment of seminary life can be an opportunity for loving experience of the presence of Our Lady, who introduces everyone to an encounter with Christ in the silence of meditation, prayer, fraternity . . . and the Eucharist.8 Joseph lives in an “attitude of total availability” as the fruit of his silence. Mary is characterized as being in a state of contemplation so as to introduce the seminarian into a silent encounter with Christ. Silence, then, cradles the dawning of truth about oneself and God. Most significantly, silence transports truth to that place within us that ignites and sustains conversion. Silence is the essential medium for union with the Trinity, which provokes a change of heart. As noted above, silence is not emptiness but a fullness of anticipated union, a union fostered by the activity of listening and desire. Silence is filled with rapt listening and eager desire. Silence reaches its crescendo in the act of self-gift, a quiet handing over of oneself in love. Silence is not the absence of words but the fullness of presence, a presence ordered toward gift.9 What we gaze at in silence when we pray, beholding the mystery of Christ, is paradoxically an action, His act of free self-donation.10 In silence the priest beholds an action, and in turn, his action of beholding Christ’s mystery gives birth to a deeper freedom, a freedom to invite Christ to gift himself to others through his ministry. One invites Christ to live His mysteries over again in himself, but first the priest must receive God, suffer His coming in silent communion. If a priest does this, Christ’s ministry will rightfully be his. Your . . . times of silent contemplation, and your participation in the Church’s liturgy, bring you closer to God and also prepare you to serve others. The saints . . . show us that the life of faith and hope is also a life of charity. Contemplating Jesus on the Cross we see love in its most radical form. We can begin to imagine the path of love along which we must move (cf. Deus Caritas Est 12). The opportunities to make this journey are abundant. Look about you with Christ’s eyes, listen with his 8 Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Seminarians” (Cologne, Saint Pantaleon: 19 August 2005). 9 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide through Balthasar’s Logic (Wash- ington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 79–80. 10 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Engagement with God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 4. Seminary Formation and Interior Silence 311 ears, feel and think with his heart and mind. Are you ready to give all as he did for truth and justice?11 There is, however, profound resistance to entrusting the origin of pastoral ministry to the silent communion one has with the truth about oneself and the One whom one meets in that truth. My portion is the Lord, says my soul; therefore will I hope in him. Good is the Lord to the one who waits for him, to the soul that seeks him; It is good to hope in silence for the saving help of the Lord. (Lam 3:22–26) The seminarian, of course, must learn silence. Sustained interiority is the most fruitful habitat from which acts of love spring. Further, silence is the path that truth takes to become firmly embedded in one’s consciousness, conscience, and affect. Without silence, no truth would come to define a man, and so he would never change. In silence there is a new way of knowing truth—receiving it, not taking it. Silence trusts the providence of God. “This is my body, . . . given for you” (1 Cor 11:24). All will be well, because all is being given. Only suffering the coming of Christ in silent ongoing availability to his love will soften any resistance to this truth: pastoral ministry originates in intimacy with the Paschal Mystery and is sustained therein as well. The Congregation for Catholic Education was clear in its recommendation in 1980 that seminaries give to seminarians an “experience of interior silence . . . [and that they] acquire a genuine sense of [such silence].” The Congregation also noted that the men must acquire this interior silence in such a personal way that they can “communicate it to others.”12 What does interior silence teach us, and how is it taught? Learning Silence Before silence is consciously sought as a way of interior living, it is usually first encountered as a suffering. Even though many are seeking silence as a relief from a culture dominated by words and noise, few are seeking silence as a healing for their addiction to the same. Relief is temporary and topical; healing presses into a person’s wounds, wounds caused by the regular choice to medicate spiritual and emotional pain through noise. 11 Benedict XVI, Meeting with Young People and Seminarians: Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Saint Joseph Seminary (Yonkers, NY: 19 April 2008). 12 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Spiritual Formation in the Seminaries,” II, no. 1 (Christ the Word of God). James Keating 312 To better understand what it means to experience silence, we can look at what was learned in a 2010 experiment at a Benedictine abbey in England, when several lay people spent many days in silent retreat.13 They first encountered silence as pain. The silence itself was painful. This same silence also helpfully revealed to the consciousness of the participants those centers of affective pain that they had been trying to relieve simply through their noisy daily routines.Withdrawing from their daily habit of sound and activity, they experienced the ensuing silence as pain. Dom Jamison, the abbot who was monitoring the visiting lay persons, noted that the participants “lived in an epidemic of busy-ness.” The noise of the “real world” is so intense that when the participants returned from the monastery to life as usual, they could only note that silence had affected them but not changed them. Silence was deemed to be akin to a diet that one cheats on: one wants to be silent but chooses instead noise and busy-ness. The short experience of silence had little power to fight the epidemic. Participants noticed a desire to enter silence again as part of their daily routines, but this proved very difficult, since sound was “in them.”14 In the early stages of the monastic experiment, the participants experienced silence as boring, oppressive, relentless, and hard work. They reported that it was vexing to no longer listen to music, text, or engage in conversation. Most telling was the disturbance felt within silence that left each person with, as one said, “only my own thoughts.”To be in possession of one’s own thoughts alone, with no external stimuli, was “scary.” They experienced thoughts as “pouring into their own minds” as if their own ideas were alien intruders never encountered before.To dull the pain of having to commune with the self, there were efforts to rebel against silence: secret communication among the participants, cheating on silence as they walked together on the monastery grounds, and furtive texting to friends and family. 13 Abbot Christopher Jamison, The Big Silence, video series, 2010, www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b00vjcp5. 14 Regarding the word being “in one,” see Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (On the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church, 2010), at notes 232–33: “The word, in fact, can only be spoken and heard in silence, outward and inward. Ours is not an age which fosters recollection; at times one has the impression that people are afraid of detaching themselves, even for a moment, from the mass media. For this reason, it is necessary nowadays that the People of God be educated in the value of silence. Rediscovering the centrality of God’s word in the life of the Church also means rediscovering a sense of recollection and inner repose. The great patristic tradition teaches us that the mysteries of Christ all involve silence. Only in silence can the word of God find a home in us, as it did in Mary, woman of the word and, inseparably, woman of silence.” Seminary Formation and Interior Silence 313 It appears that when one moves toward silence—moving at first through external silence, but with the end of developing internal silence—one suffers the anxiety of false isolation. For many years these participants had enveloped themselves in the noise of technology and social gatherings as a way to ease their discomfort with themselves and their own thoughts or questions. As a result of such enveloping, they neglected to cultivate a sense of self as related to truth and God. Since this communion was undeveloped, the participants identified silence with loneliness, isolation, and even rejection.To relieve these discomforts, they left the monastery panting after activity, socializing, and/or technological networking—they sought noise. Possible Implications for Seminary Formation In pondering this British experiment and the effects it had upon the participants, I would first invite seminary formators to introduce men to the reality of God’s indwelling—the truth that conditions any appropriation of interior silence as a habit of being. Without such a foundation, silence will seem foreboding, filled with isolation, and it will therefore be avoided. If interior silence is the “main task” of seminary formation, how then might formators approach this task in service to the men who enter it? How shall formators avoid merely giving relief to the noise-infected soul? How shall they, instead, attempt to facilitate a complete healing? And what tools can be shared with the seminarians, what kind of environment needs to be created? Silence in the Seminary External Silence The demarcation of certain times within the seminary horarium for mandatory silence is essential if a man is to receive interior silence as a way of being. Then, a seminarian’s experience of external silence should become the content for conversation within spiritual direction, human formation, and even the classroom. We know from our weakened human nature and the varia within human personalities that simply providing scheduled time for external silence will not lead a man to progress in communion with God. The content of such silence has to be engaged as a substantial facet of a seminarian’s spiritual growth; otherwise, its potential may be squandered by those who “cheat” external silence using various clandestine escape routes (e.g., headphones, texting, etc). Requiring the men to discuss their experience of external silence in both the internal and external fora provides needed guidance in self-knowledge, as well as an opening God can use to draw seminarians to Himself. Guided 314 James Keating external silence further prepares a seminarian for the natural silence he will encounter in the rectory on occasion, and in the silence that is present within many pastoral situations, such as the silence enshrouding unexpected suffering in a parishioner’s life. Will the young priest be tempted to fill these necessary silences with noise, nervous chatter, or even vocal prayer, or will he courageously withstand these external silences, allowing God to arrive within them? To receive external silence as a gift—not to be afraid of it or rush through it—is a crucial lesson for being effective in pastoral ministry. If external silence is never encountered in formation, it will befall the man as a burden to be eradicated in parish life, and thus he will miss the “time of his visitation” (Lk 19:44). Lectio divina as the School of Interior Silence With time for external silence secured, seminary formators can more easily introduce a way for interior silence to take root, the way of lectio divina. “There is no prayer more able to create the inner silence that men seek, the silence which is true, the silence which comes from God, than the divine office.”15 Here the Congregation is pointing toward the most ready means of instilling interior silence in a man, the prayerful reading of Scripture. This habit of receiving intimacy with God through the Scriptures will surely promote a state of diminished interference between a man’s heart and the Trinity. Christ himself spent forty days in silence, perhaps even repeating the Psalms in his own heart. When he emerged, his mission began in earnest. Those aspiring to the ministerial priesthood are called to a profound personal relationship with God’s word, particularly in lectio divina, so that this relationship will in turn nurture their vocation: it is in the light and strength of God’s word that one’s specific vocation can be discerned and appreciated, loved and followed, and one’s proper mission carried out, by nourishing the heart with thoughts of God.16 In allowing the Word of God to affect the heart, mind, and will, the seminarian is gifted with rest (Mt 11:35), with an inhabited silence wherein he and the Trinity converse on all manner of things in a fashion that is living, immediate, and with consequence to behavior. By attending to the Word, the seminarian diminishes the disturbance of his interior beholding of truth, disturbance that wandering and stray thoughts can cause. He rests with God so that he can be still from within and not tossed to and fro by 15 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Spiritual Formation in Seminaries,” II, no. 1 (Christ the Word of God, prayer of the Church). 16 Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, at note 274. Seminary Formation and Interior Silence 315 emotion. Instead, his affect is nourished by the truth of revelation. This truth stabilizes his interiority and gifts him with rest, a rest that is an intimate relationship with the Trinity17 and from which arises the pastoral mission of the cleric. As a stable character trait, such interior silence is gradual and developed, of course. But one either begins such a journey in formation or continues to consume the junk food of the culture of distraction, thus delaying progress in contemplative pastoring. And to delay the contemplation of the Mysteries of Christ is to delay the pastoral effectiveness that any man might possess.This is so because seminary “pastoral study and action direct one to an inner source. . . . This is the ever-deeper communion with the pastoral charity of Jesus . . . which . . . should constitute the . . . driving force of the priestly ministry.”18 To stay in communion with the charity of Christ demands the way of interior silence, the way that wills receptivity to truth, as truth radiates the beauty of Christ. Silence is the thoroughfare of communion. And since it is Christ who prays in the priest, the priest ought to emulate Jesus’ own interiority, the interiority of “Christ [who] only speaks of that which He beholds.”19 To behold the beauty of God in the Word does not render a priest speechless but urges him to speak, to speak what is the fruit of his own silent communion with God as God communes with the Church.20 The priest is a spiritual leader;21 that is his primary field of expertise. If he does not govern from his interior intimacy with Christ, what will become of his parish? 17 Ps 131:2: “I have stilled my soul, hushed it like a weaned child. Like a weaned child on its mother’s lap, so is my soul within me.” 18 John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis (On the Formation of Priests in the Circum- stances of the Present Day, 1992), no. 57. 19 Bl. Dom Marmion, Christ, the Life of the Soul, 2nd ed. (St. Louis: Herder, 1925), 315. 20 Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, at note 294: “In this regard, however, one must avoid the risk of an individualistic approach, and remember that God’s word is given to us precisely to build communion, to unite us in the Truth along our path to God.While it is a word addressed to each of us personally, it is also a word which builds community, which builds the Church. Consequently, the sacred text must always be approached in the communion of the Church.” See also Adrian Walker, “Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal,” in David L. Schindler, ed., Love Alone Is Credible, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 33–34. 21 “The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God. The priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction, or politics. He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life” (Benedict XVI, Warsaw Cathedral, 25 May 2006). 316 James Keating Do not become utterly absorbed in activism. There would be so much to do that one could be working on it constantly. . . . Not becoming totally absorbed in activism means . . . remaining with God. . . . One should not feel obliged to work ceaselessly; this is important for everyone . . . even more so for a Pope. He has to leave many things to others so as to maintain his inner view of the whole, his interior recollection, from which the view of what is essential can proceed.22 Silence will become an interior and permanent trait of a man if he is led to let Christ teach him “how to speak of that which He beholds.” Of course Christ beheld only the Father, but men are diffused in their willful affections and so need to be immersed in the purity of the Word of God, the word that bathes a man in truth.This kind of bathing will remove years of noise from the soul, replacing such artificial consolation with real consolation: “I only do the will of the One who sent Me” ( Jn 5:30). One can do the will of God only if one learns how to listen, and listening requires interior silence. Benedict XVI underscores this in a meditation on the goal of seminaries: [Seminary is] a time for discernment, a time for learning, a time for vocation . . . and then, naturally, a time for being with him, a time for praying, for listening to him. Listening, truly learning to listen to him—in the word of sacred Scripture, in the faith of the Church, in the liturgy of the Church [is to be cultivated in seminary]. . . . In exegesis we learn much about the past: what happened, what sources there are, what communities there were, and so on.This is also important. But more important still is that from the past we should learn about the present, we should learn that he is speaking these words now, and that they all carry their present within them, and that over and above the historical circumstances in which they arose, they contain a fullness which speaks to all times. . . . But for this, a constant inner journey with the word of God is needed. Personally being with Christ, with the living God, is one thing: another is that we can only ever believe within the “we”. I sometimes say that St. Paul wrote: “Faith comes from hearing”—not from reading. It needs reading as well, but it comes from hearing, that is to say from the living word, addressed to me by the other, whom I can hear, addressed to me by the Church throughout the ages, from her contemporary word, spoken to me the priests, bishops and my fellow believers.23 22 Benedict XVI, Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 71–72. 23 Benedict XVI, Freiburg, Germany, 26 September 2011, meeting with a group of seminarians at Borromeo Seminary Chapel. “The Spirit alone searches the depths of God (cf. I Cor 2:10); thus, only in listening to the Spirit can one search the depths of the riches, wisdom and knowledge of God (cf. Rom 11:33).” Seminary Formation and Interior Silence 317 The pope here is advocating a “curriculum” of learning to listen, and this listening takes place within the context of the Church and all of its teachings as well as within the heart and all of its intimacies. To live in and out of the Word of God is an existence that gives birth to silence within the heart. A silent heart is a heart that has welcomed truth and now rests quietly while the truth of ecclesial doctrine nourishes the conscience, the love-soaked mind. For the seminarian, this interior silence that enshrouds and protects communion with God may well be one of the greatest gifts he can give to the culture of noise and distraction that now defines Western civilization. It will be a gift that costs a man something: his citizenship in “this age,” an age that the seminarian had conformed himself to as a boy but from which he now must release himself so as to become a man of communion in service to the new evangelization. The Form of Interior Silence: Discernment and Contemplation As noted above, I would first invite seminary formators to introduce men to the reality of God’s indwelling—the truth that conditions any appropriation of interior silence as a habit of being. External silence and the reading of Scripture alone will not secure interior silence, for experience tells us that deep within the human soul is a cacophony of voices: some from God, some from the self, some from past authority figures, and even some from demons. Along with external silence and lectio, one must be schooled in how to discern, how to distinguish the voices within, and once distinguished, how to relate to them so that nothing can disturb the heart resting in the Trinity. The contemporary master on tutoring the Church in the ways of discernment is Fr. Timothy Gallagher, O.M.V. He notes this about his teacher, St. Ignatius of Loyola: “Ignatius does not ask that we become aware of, understand, and act in regard to all the movements of our hearts, but rather with respect to those which may impact our adherence to the will of God, as strengthening or weakening this adherence.”24 In discernment we follow those affective movements that deepen our faith, hope, and love, and we resist those movements that undermine those virtues. In addition to being tutored in how to recognize and then receive the authentic voice of God, the seminarian must be instructed in how to contemplate the face of God, the beauty of God. It is crucial that a man not simply be left in silence. Instead, he is to be instructed in how to look upon God in His revelation, Jesus. He is to be tutored in how to behold the Lamb of God and so to receive ever more deeply the consolation of 24 Timothy Gallagher, The Discernment of Spirits (New York: Crossroad, 2005), 25. 318 James Keating divine love. He beholds the holy face of Christ by way of lectio divina and the sacramental life. In this way he is assisted by spiritual direction to acknowledge the movement of God within; to relate all of his thoughts, feelings, and desires to the Sacred Heart; and in turn to receive divine love, which prompts him to respond to this love by deeper prayer, service, or moral action.25 A conspiracy among the realities of external silence, lectio divina, discernment, and contemplation instills interior silence in the seminarian. Such a way of living is a prerequisite to becoming what Benedict XVI recognized as the only expectation people have of their priests: that they become experts in the spiritual life.26 Conclusion Scottish author John Buchan prophetically described our current culture a quarter century ago: In such a (nightmare) world everyone would have leisure. But everyone would be restless, for there would be no spiritual disciplines in life. . . . It would be a feverish, bustling world, self-satisfied and yet malcontent, and under the mask of a riotous life there would be death at the heart. In the perpetual hurry of life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul. . . . In such a bagman’s paradise, where life would be rationalized and padded with every material comfort, there would be little satisfaction for the immortal part of man.27 This culture possesses within its character certain aspects that carry death. It is to this culture that the future priest brings his unexpected and countercultural gift of interior silence. The Congregation for Catholic Education was more prophetic and less hyperbolic than one might be tempted 25 See John Horn, S.J., Heart Speaks to Heart (Omaha, NE: IPF Publications, 2009), for more on this method of prayer. 26 “The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God. The priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction or politics. He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life. With this end in view, when a young priest takes his first steps, he needs to be able to refer to an experienced teacher who will help him not to lose his way among the many ideas put forward by the culture of the moment. In the face of the temptations of relativism or the permissive society, there is absolutely no need for the priest to know all the latest, changing currents of thought; what the faithful expect from him is that he be a witness to the eternal wisdom contained in the revealed word. Solicitude for the quality of personal prayer and for good theological formation bears fruit in life” (Benedict XVI, Meeting with Priests, Warsaw, May 2006). 27 John Buchan, The Pilgrim’s Way (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1984). Seminary Formation and Interior Silence 319 to think when it noted that the main task of those responsible for governing seminaries is the formation of the students in interior silence. From out of such solitude with the Word of God, a priest will be able to minister to a world that seems more interested in seeking temporary relief of its pain in distractions than it does in receiving God’s healing. The Church offers a way of life that incorporates affective and physical pain into the mysterious healing heart of Christ Himself. This way of life is offered to the Church through the ministrations of priests who have been mature and courageous enough to suffer the entrance of silence into their hearts, a silence that cradles divine intimacy, not isolation. To form men who enter into communion with Christ through silence is part of the littleheralded dignity of the work accomplished by seminary personnel. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 321–59 321 The Foundations of the Church’s Doctrine Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life: A memorandum composed by a group of moral theologians from Kraków* K AROL C ARDINAL WOJTYL/ A , ET AL . I. The Natural Law as Foundation for the Condemnation of Contraception by the Magisterium of the Church A. Current Views 1. Three Preliminary Questions T HE M AGISTERIUM is opposed to contraception, on the basis of natural morality. The reports of the papal commission mention the declarations of the Magisterium while proposing for discussion a set of more general problems related to these declarations. The questions to be discussed are as follows: 1. Does the Church have the right to make authoritative pronouncements on matters of morality and natural law? [Note to the English version: The document has been translated from the French by Thérèse Scarpelli Cory, with the collaboration of Janet E. Smith; the latter’s commentary on the document is the essay that immediately follows this translation.] * In 1966, at the initiative of Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Kraków, a group of Krakovian moral theologians—Rev. Stanislas Smolenski, Rev. Thadeus Slipko, S.J., and Rev. Jules Turowicz, professors of theology in the Great Seminary of Kraków; Rev. Georges Bajda, professor at the Seminary of Tarnów, and Rev. Charles Meissner, O.S.B., physician—took up the task of examining the problem of the theological grounds for the Christian ethical norms of conjugal life. Cardinal Wojtyl/a himself directed the research, taking active part in the discussions and suggesting numerous ideas. Research continued until February 1968. The present redaction, prepared for publication by Adam Kubiś, presents their definitive conclusions. 322 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. 2. Is her teaching on this subject infallible or not? 3. Can this teaching change? The response to these questions provides a doctrinal context that allows us to explain the precise place of natural law in the Church’s teaching. 2. Moral Theologians Who Defend Contraception In the report released to the public, the supporters of contraception do not articulate a clear answer to the first of these questions. On the other hand, it is evident from the statement submitted by their opponents that at least some of those who endorse contraception challenge the Church’s right to define the norms of natural law. In fact, they argue that the Church is competent solely in the realm of revealed law; alternatively, they limit the Church’s authority to “the relation of men to God and each other,”1 taken in the broadest possible way. This amounts to denying the Church the right to propose detailed norms in the domain of natural law. The supporters of contraception respond to the second question in the negative. In defense of their position, they point out that although the Church and the popes have unanimously taught throughout the centuries that the use of marriage is only licit for the sake of procreation, or that it is at least permissible as a remedy for concupiscence, the Church and theologians distance themselves from these positions today.2 The same historical fact also provides them with a justification for giving a positive answer to the third question. Regarding the moral judgment concerning contraception, the supporters of the liceity of contraception say that the present-day notions 1 Status, II.B.I (p. 174). The documents presented to Pope Paul VI by the members of the Pontifical Commission regarding the problems of population, family, and birthrate are the following: (1) Documentum syntheticum de moralitate regulationis nativitatum; (2) Status quaestionis; (3) Schema documenti de responsabili paternitate. They are here cited according to the Latin text published in Contrôle des naissance et théologie. Le dossier de Rome, trans. Jean-Marie Paupert, with notes (Paris, 1967). The pagination refers to this edition. [Editor’s note: These reports were published in The Birth Control Debate, ed. Robert G. Hoyt (Kansas City, MO: National Catholic Reporter, 1968).The “Status Questionis” was a statement of the minority, those who supported the Church’s teaching; the “Documentum syntheticum” was the reply to the “Status Questionis” by members of the majority, who argued the Church should change its teaching on contraception; the “Schema” was a portion of the final report of the Commission, a report that argued the Church should change its teaching. Many of these documents are now available online at www.twotlj.org/BCCommission.html.] 2 Documentum, I.5 (p. 158). Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 323 of nature and of the natural law have changed in meaning. The teaching of the Church recognizes this fact and therefore changes.3 3. Moral Theologians Who Uphold the Traditional Position In their statement, the opponents of contraception examine all these arguments and critique them. Providing substantial documentation, they argue that the Church’s doctrine on contraception has never varied throughout its entire history, and that it remains negative.4 The texts to which they appeal in support of their position, especially the declarations of the Magisterium, emphasize the fact that in the realm of conjugal and familial life, as in the realm of contraceptives and their use, the Church relies primarily on natural law, from which she also draws her ethical norms. With respect to the problem of the Church’s right to interpret natural law and establish specific norms that are binding in conscience, the opponents of contraception do not analyze this right in detail, apparently considering the matter to be clear enough already. Instead they simply appeal to the declarations on this point by Pius XII, John XIII, and the Second Vatican Council,5 in which this right was clearly affirmed.6 The opponents of contraception vigorously defend the Church’s infallibility in moral matters, particularly regarding the present question. They repeatedly emphasize that, on this point, a change in the future teaching of the Magisterium would amount to a self-repudiation, with disastrous consequences for the Church.7 The same authors also address the question of evolution in the Church’s teaching, though solely with respect to conjugal morality.While recognizing that the doctrine in this area has been increasingly enriched, they note that this is not the case with respect to contraception: on this subject, the teaching is of surprising immutability and continuity, despite differences of vocabulary and varying explanations of the doctrine.8 Finally, the opponents of contraception note certain naturalistic or evolutionary overtones in the way in which the proponents of contraception understand natural law and human nature. Against this naturalism, they emphasize that the immutability of human nature provides an objective foundation [to natural law].9 3 Ibid., I.3 (p. 157). 4 Status, I.B (pp. 163–66). 5 Ibid., I.F.2 (p. 170). 6 Ibid., II.B.1 (p. 174) and II.B.4.a and c (pp. 174–76). 7 Ibid., III (pp. 176–78). 8 Ibid., I.B.3 (p. 165). 9 Ibid., II.B.2 and 3 (p. 174). 324 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. 4. Some Conclusions This brief exposition, to the degree that it is accurate, shows that the moral theologians who oppose contraception have provided a rather indepth treatment of the question of natural law as the foundation for the Church’s condemnation of contraception in her official teaching. Our present essay does not, therefore, introduce the notion of natural law as a new element in the argument against contraception, as though moral theologians had been previously unaware of it. We simply wish to reexamine the matter in greater depth and to suggest some additional considerations that we believe could lend more weight to the argument. From section I.E.3 of their statement,10 it seems that for those moral theologians who uphold the traditional position, the whole problem of the competence and infallibility of the Church’s Magisterium in matters of natural law is a topic for academic debate that only serves as a distraction from the main controversy. In our opinion, this view is entirely inaccurate. If one abstracts from the points of dispute, the issue may well appear to be clear and decided. But taking into consideration the mindset of the opposite side, this issue proves to be of considerable weight in the conflict between these two opposing parties and consequently must be properly explicated. Its significance is most evident in the fact that the proponents of the traditional view were in fact obliged to appeal to these foundational notions and to point out once more the corresponding principles. Moreover, it seems that the Church’s right to teach infallibly in matters of natural law (including conjugal morality) ought to be granted the same role in arguments for the rejection of contraception that it retains in arguments for the objective hierarchy of norms: namely, the role of a fundamental premise. This premise indicates a direction for our present inquiry, namely to lend the support of solid theological reasoning to the solution of this problem. In their statement, the proponents of the traditional position seem to relegate this viewpoint to the background; in any case, they treat it only as a side issue, mentioned only in polemics against the proponents of contraception. Our work here is aimed at providing a more comprehensive line of argumentation for the traditional position. The Church’s teaching concerning natural law inasmuch as it is the foundation of the condemnation of contraception—a theme currently dispersed across various parts of the report—will here be assembled into a coherent, logical, and clearly presented whole. In this way, natural law will be clearly revealed as not only a philosophical but also a theological category, since, in addition to 10 Ibid. (p. 169). Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 325 its philosophical and even prephilosophical content, it includes formally theological elements, namely, the authority of the Magisterium. We believe that in this way we will bring to light an accurate understanding of natural law and of human nature, on which this law rests. For, in fact, the proponents of contraception understand these notions in a way that significantly departs from their authentic and traditional meaning in philosophy and theology. B. Principles Governing the Development of a Theological Thesis on the Question of Contraception The condemnation of contraception in Church teaching constitutes the application, in this particular case, of certain more general principles. Since these principles are an integral part of the Church’s doctrine, they must be addressed here. 1. The Church has the right and the duty to pronounce on the subject of morality and natural law, to define corresponding norms, to interpret them, and to apply them to the conditions of human life. Indeed, the observation of the precepts of natural law, which constitutes an integral part of the moral law, is one of the elements of “the life of faith,” by which man strives towards his ultimate end. Scripture, the unchanging doctrinal tradition, and the practice of the Church in the last century, beginning with Pius IX, provide particularly abundant proof of this point.11 11 Pius IX, Qui pluribus, in Pii IX Pontificis Acta (Rome, 1854), pars prima, I, 4–24; Quanto conficiamur moerore, in Pii IX Pontificis Maximi Acta (Rome, 1865), pars prima, III, 609–21. Leo XIII, Arcanum divinae sapientiae, in Leonis XIII Pontificis Maximi Acta (Rome, 1882), II, 10-40; Diuturnum illud, ASS 14 (1881/82): 3–14; Immortale Dei, ASS 18 (1885/86): 161–80; Libertas praestantissimum, ASS 20 (1887/88): 593–613; Pastoralis officii, ASS 24 (1891/92): 203–7; Quod apostolici muneris, ASS 11 (1877/78): 369–76; Rerum novarum, ASS 23 (1890/91): 641–70. Pius X, Singulari quadam, AAS 4 (1912): 657–62. Pius XI, Casti connubii, AAS 22 (1930): 539–92; Divini illius Magistria, AAS 22 (1930): 49–86; Divini Redemptoris, AAS 29 (1937): 65–106; Mit brennender Sorge, AAS 29 (1937): 145–67; Quadragesimo anno, AAS 23 (1931) 177–228. Pius XII, Allocution to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, 3 October 1941, AAS 33 (1941): 421–26; Allocution to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives, 29 October 1951, AAS 43 (1951): 835–54; Allocution to the Fourth International Congress of Catholic Doctors, 29 September 1949, AAS, 41 (1949): 557–61; Allocution aux Seventh Hematological Congress, 12 September 1958, AAS 50 (1958): 732–40; Allocution to the Second World Congress on Fertility and Human Sterility, 19 May 1956, AAS 48 (1956): 467–74. John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, AAS 53 (1961): 401–64; Pacem in terris, AAS 55 (1963): 257–304. Paul VI, Populorum progressio, AAS 59 (1967): 257–99. Cf. Favara Fidelis, De iure naturali in doctrina Pii Papae XII (Rome, 1966). 326 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. 2. The Church’s doctrine on natural law, outlined in these documents, sees in the natural law an objective moral order, inscribed in the rational nature of man. Consequently, this order is independent of positive law, decreed by the State. It is stable and immutable; it is binding for all human beings, since all share the same human nature and are called to attain ethical ends. It contains not only the most general notions and ethical principles, but also a whole set of detailed moral norms. In its fullest meaning, natural law therefore constitutes the moral law, which must be carefully distinguished from “law of nature” in the sense used by the natural sciences today. 3. With a few exceptions, the Church’s doctrine concerning natural law and its particular norms has not taken the form of solemn pronouncements by the extraordinary Magisterium. Rather, it is found in the ordinary Magisterium of the Church, and in its teaching— primarily in the teaching of the Sovereign Pontiffs, as well as in the teaching of the bishops in union with the See of Rome. This doctrine, then, has an authoritative character and is consequently owed obedience and respect. 4. Similarly, the ordinary Magisterium of the Church is infallible also with respect to natural morality. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the doctrinal statements of an individual pope do not constitute the ordinary Magisterium. These are merely acts distinct from the ordinary Magisterium, to which the faithful owe obedience in view of the supreme authority of the teaching Church, even though some acts, lacking infallibility in and of themselves, may include errors and may be only provisional. All this applies likewise to the principles of morality. The ordinary Magisterium, however, is infallible only when it is continued over an extended period of time, stretching through an entire line of Sovereign Pontiffs, and when it concerns a sufficiently grounded doctrinal tradition regarding a specific point of doctrine— in the present case, a principle of morality. 5. The evolution of the ordinary Magisterium, in the realm of morality and natural law, consists in developing certain moral norms and becoming more profoundly conscious of, or extending its doctrine to, related elements of morality. A change in the teaching of the ordinary Magisterium can occur only with respect to objects that are changeable (for example, in the case of charging interest on a loan), and not with respect to objects that are fixed by their very natures, conditioned by the fundamental relations of human nature. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 327 6. Concluding remarks. It is in light of the principles outlined above that one must examine the theological aspects of the moral judgment regarding contraception. In the first place we must consider the official declarations of the Church. These are: Pius XI’s encyclical Casti connubii,12 Pius XII’s allocution to midwives,13 and a whole series of other related documents, including John XXIII’s encyclical Mater et Magistra14 and the declarations of numerous bishops.15 The following conclusions may be drawn from these documents: 1. First, the Church, in her official teaching, condemns contraception as being morally evil and impermissible. 2. Second, the teaching on this subject is consistent from Pius XI to Paul VI, the latter having neither revoked nor questioned it. 3. Third, the condemnation of contraception, from the point of view of morality, is considered by the Church as a norm of natural law, and therefore an objective norm flowing from nature, immutable and obligatory for all, and not only for Catholics. Should this teaching of the Church on contraception thus be taken as the expression of the ordinary Magisterium in the sense outlined above? It seems that, up until now, this has not been the case, especially if one considers the fact that Paul VI has named a special commission to study the problem again. Nevertheless, one cannot deny that the constant doctrine of the Church in this area, confirmed by well-known declarations of Paul VI on this subject, is close to reaching the point of full development and maturity when it will be able to be recognized as part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. A future doctrinal declaration on the part of Paul VI, promulgated to the whole Church and bearing an obligatory character, would be of incomparable importance in this respect. But independently of this fact, the Church’s present teaching on contraception already constitutes a doctrinal norm, binding on the moral theologian in research and all the more on pastors in the confessional and in ministry. From a theological point of view, this teaching is objectively certain on account of the authority of the teaching Church, despite the opposition of certain moral theologians, and notwithstanding certain practices in various Catholic (and especially non-Catholic) environments. 12 See note 11 above. 13 See note 11. 14 See note 11. 15 See Status, I.B.2 (p. 165). 328 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. On the other hand, the reasoning that underlies the doctrine, taking into consideration the axiological aspects of contraception, is an entirely different problem. From this point of view, a set of factors, some philosophical, ought to be mentioned: we will examine them below. We merely note here that from the point of view of Christian philosophy, all theories must be rejected that conceal the seeds of relativism and of situation ethics, because they undermine the objective and immutable foundations of morality and ultimately lead to subjectivism and anarchy in the understanding of principles and in behavior. In place of an authentic morality, then, we would have the destruction of the moral sense in human action and of the moral dignity of man. II. Justification of the Church’s Condemnation of Contraception 1. The Human Person, His Dignity, and His Flourishing a. The human person, his value, and the laws of his development provide the foundation for the principles of morality. In order to discuss the person, it is first necessary to have a clear notion of what a person is. But the notion of the person as understood by psychology—i.e., the purely subjective notion, in which the person is conceived as subject or even as a substratum of experience—provides an insufficient foundation for an objective moral norm, and leads to the danger of situation ethics. It is necessary, therefore, to begin with the ontological concept of the person, understood as substantial subject of conscious and free actions. In order to answer the question ‘what is man?’ the Constitution Gaudium et Spes16 refers to the book of Genesis (1:26), where it is said that man is created in the image of God. This is why the ontological definition of the person must take into consideration his relation to God and to the world. Man is not an absolute nor a supreme value, but he is a creature of God. Thus, his relation to God includes not only a creaturely dependence on God, but also the human faculty of consciously recognizing this dependence and of collaborating responsibly with God. This structure of the person also includes his relation to the world. Man belongs to the world, but he is distinguished from other creatures by the ability to follow with full consciousness the truth and goodness 16 Gaudium et Spes 12. See AAS 58 (1966): 1025–1115. English citations are taken from Vatican Council II:The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1984). Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 329 that he knows—the ability to have a moral life.17 Man can read in the world the order of nature and its finality with respect to himself and his good. Set amidst this order of things, man can recognize the normative force based on this order.18 Moreover, the world is ordered to the man, because he is, in the words of Gaudium et Spes, “set by [God] over all earthly creatures that he might rule them, and make use of them, while glorifying God.”19 With his intelligence and in full responsibility, he must collaborate in the creative and salvific plan of God. This consists, among other things, in recognizing and guarding the limits of his dominion over the world, limits that are fixed by the very nature of the faculties that he has received from the hands of his Creator. b. The power of transmitting life is a gift of God, and it forms part of the totality of the human person. It is precisely in terms of this nature, taken as a whole, that man must reckon with this power and its specific structure. Therein his intellect discovers a biological law, which, although biological, is related to the human person as a unity of body and soul. This law cannot be conceived as deriving solely from nature understood in the broadest sense. It follows that it is one thing to act on the surrounding environment to transform it (including the animal world), and another thing to intervene in the biological laws of the human person.20 The use of contraceptives constitutes an active intervention into the structure of the sexual act, and therefore of the action of the person; in 17 Gaudium et Spes 14. 18 Cf. Status, I.B.2 (pp. 165–66) 19 Gaudium et Spes 12. 20 It seems that some theologians commit the fundamental error of viewing the human body as belonging to ‘nature’—by which they mean the realm of subhuman beings that humans can manipulate as they please, as though the body were an entity inferior to and dependent on the person. But soul and body together form the unity of the person. To treat the body is to treat oneself, to direct oneself. The human body participates in the dignity and rights of the person. In our opinion, the Documentum, in certain passages—I.1 (p. 156); 1.4 (p. 157); II.1 (pp. 158–59); II.2 (p. 159)—exemplifies a lack of comprehension of the relation between the human body and the person, even though the same document says, “Processus biologicus . . . personalitatem hominis” (II.3 [p. 153]) [Editor’s note: The passage in question reads: “The biological process in man is not some separated part (animality) but is integrated into the total personality of man” (Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 70)]; a text from which the authors fail to draw the necessary conclusions. The same lack of comprehension of this relation is also evident in Schema, I.II 2 (p. 182); I.III (pp. 183 and 184). Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. 330 this way, it is a violation of the person as a being gifted by sexuality, and of his biological laws.This is therefore not a case of employing a means that is in itself indifferent (such as a weapon, for instance) and that can be used well or badly, depending on the intention of the acting subject. c. Moreover, the structure of the person includes his relations to others: namely, relations between persons and relations between the individual and society.21 In all these relations there is a binding obligation to respect the rights and dignity of the person.22 When discussing the dignity of the human person, we must distinguish carefully the empirical or psychological use of the term “dignity” from its philosophical meaning and even more from that meaning based on Revelation. The philosophical sense, which takes into consideration the specific properties of the person—reason and freedom—alone can have a normative character. In other words, only this dignity, taken in the philosophical sense, can serve as the foundation and justification for the demands and obligations of which the person is the object. This is especially relevant when one benefits at the expense of one or more persons. A person should never be treated as an object used for one’s own ends; rather, we are obliged to manifest to others a benevolent love that protects the person’s true good (including moral good) and the fulfillment of his vocation. The dignity of the person also includes certain obligations towards oneself, particularly the obligations to act rationally, freely, and responsibly. “Man’s dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint.”23 d. The person is called to develop and perfect himself. This development consists, among other things, in perfecting one’s acts, which ought to become ever more conformed to reason and free. All one’s tendencies must be progressively and wisely integrated into the responsible fulfillment of one’s vocation. This is why a person’s flourishing and perfection does not consist in totally satisfying his or her instincts, but consists in ruling them with full awareness and integrating them into the totality of his or her moral life. In this way, the Christian, aided by grace, restores and strengthens the harmony of his interior being, disturbed by sin.24 The progressive recovering of this 21 Gaudium et Spes 12. 22 Cf. note 31. 23 Gaudium et Spes 17. 24 Cf. Gaudium et Spes 13. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 331 balance makes it possible to effectively overcome selfish tendencies and to grow strong in true love. 2. Conjugal Love and the Good of the Family The virtues of justice and love govern relations among persons, and, what is more, the New Covenant places emphasis on love. It is the new commandment; it is a participation in divine life, in the love with which the Persons of the Trinity love each other.25 But if love rules all interpersonal relations, it clearly must also be normative in the life of the couple, which enjoys such unity and communion. Similarly, it is just as clear that only love as virtue, love as charity, can be the moral norm. The human person’s love is an incarnate love. It is manifested in goodwill, thoughtfulness, dialogue, and the common sharing of goals, as well as in mutual affection and likewise in the sexual act, as long as the latter is accomplished in a way that corresponds to the true dignity of the human person26 and to the objective criteria defined by his nature and natural activities. These criteria safeguard the full meaning of the spouses’ mutual gift of self and of the transmission of life, accomplished in the manner worthy of man; but this requires the cultivation of the virtue of chastity.27 For this reason, conjugal love can be manifested not only in the fertile act but also just as much in a normally completed but naturally infertile act. It can also be manifested in abstinence from the conjugal act, when prudence counsels to abstain from procreation. On the other hand, conjugal love cannot be manifested by an act that is voluntarily deprived of fertility, because active intervention in the sexual act or in the organic functions of the human person contrary to their purpose, solely for the sake of pleasure or sensual love, is equivalent to using one’s partner for one’s own ends. Such use is opposed to the dignity of the person28 and to conjugal chastity (in that one seeks sexual satisfaction in a way contrary to reason); and it is certainly not in the image of the fruitful union of Christ and the Church, nor in the image of the fully disinterested union of the divine Persons in the heart of the Trinity. Rather, it involves egoism and self-seeking on the part of one of the spouses—or sometimes of both, which is nonetheless always egoistic. The elements essential to all virtues—self-mastery, self-gift, and disinterestedness—are 25 The Lord Jesus implies “that there is a certain parallel between the union exist- ing among the divine persons and the union of the sons of God in truth and love”; Gaudium et Spes 24. 26 Gaudium et Spes 49. 27 Ibid. 51. See note 41. 28 See above, II.1.2. 332 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. eliminated for the sake of pleasurable experience, satisfaction of the senses, or emotion.29 Such acts not only do not constitute true love, but, when repeated, necessarily lead to the destruction of love, for they are contrary to it. Moreover, such acts do not contribute to creating in the home an atmosphere of love, the indispensable climate for the spiritual and fully human formation of children. Parents who cannot master themselves, who cannot sacrifice their egoism to the good of their spouse, will likewise lack generosity, patience, serenity, and calm assurance in their relations with their children. They will love their children to the degree to which their children bring them joy, i.e., selfishly and not for their own sakes; they will cajole them and teach them self-indulgence and self-love. Instead of the peace given by self-mastery, unrest will reign in the family, because the state of tension created by a truncated sexual act surrounded by precautions, an act that is not an unreserved gift of self, must in the long term be communicated to the children. It seems that the increasing prevalence of anxiety and even certain neuroses results in large part from contraceptive practices. The good of the family therefore requires true love, namely, the love that is able to master itself for the good of the loved one. And this is nothing other than to love God in the person of one’s spouse. 3. The Equality of Man and Woman in Marriage a. Universally accepted principles • Man and woman are equal in their nature (metaphysically), in their dignity as persons, and in their final vocation.30 29 “A love like that . . . is actually developed and increased by the exercise of it. This is a far cry from mere erotic attraction, which is pursued in selfishness and soon fades away in wretchedness”; Gaudium et Spes 49. “Married people should realize that in their behavior they may not simply follow their own fancy . . . . Whenever Christian spouses in a spirit of sacrifice and trust in divine providence carry out their duties of procreation with generous human and Christian responsibility, they glorify the Creator and perfect themselves in Christ”; Gaudium et Spes 50. 30 “All men are endowed with a rational soul and are created in God’s image; they have the same nature and origin and, being redeemed by Christ, they enjoy the same divine calling and destiny; there is here a basic equality between all men and it must be given ever greater recognition”; Gaudium et Spes 29. “Any human society, if it is to be well-ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this principle, namely, that every human being is a person, that is, his nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because he is a person he has rights and obligations flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. And as these rights and obligations are universal and inviolable, so they cannot in any way be surrendered”; John XXIII, Pacem in Terris 9 (English translation cited from Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, ed. David J. O’Brien and Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 333 • They are likewise equal as to the right of contracting marriage, in the choice of a spouse, and in the activity proper to spouses in everything concerning the essence of marriage. • Nevertheless, their parity as human persons, in their life as spouses, is marked by the difference of the sexes. b. Man and woman both have an equal right to the full flourishing of their own (individual and unique) vocations, in which their different sexes must be taken into consideration.The fact of being one sex or the other does not in itself determine the vocation of the person, since this vocation essentially transcends sexuality as such; it only determines the manner in which this vocation is accomplished. The person is sexual, but sexuality, in itself, does not define the person. The vocation of a person is accomplished not through sexuality but through an encounter between persons of different sex (referring here to the vocation to marriage). This is why relationships between persons are never fulfilled solely at the sexual level; rather, in beings endowed with reason, the sexual relationship can be forged only at the level of the person. c. Sex differentiates man and woman, but this differentiation is not merely in service of the personal and exclusive good of the individual. Moreover, this differentiation does not justify burdening one of the two spouses with a greater responsibility. Marriage consists in community and not only in reciprocity, and it is only with respect to the common, objective end that transcends them both that one can define the roles belonging to the man and the woman as spouses and determine the proper reciprocal relationship in the actions of the spouses. The matrimonial right is not the “sum of individual rights” and does not consist exclusively in the “reciprocal gift.” The “reciprocity” of marriage is truly accomplished only when it is based objectively and essentially on what is genuinely communal and transindividual, and not only on the purely subjective “intention.” True community between the two exists solely in its relation “ad Tertium” (a communal, interior, transcendent relation). d. Man and woman, equal in human dignity, differ nevertheless in their sex, a property that inheres in the human body and therefore in the Thomas A. Shannon [New York: Orbis Books, 1992], 132). The equality of human persons in their human dignity is, according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, the source of the unity of marriage: “The unity of marriage, distinctly recognized by our Lord, is made clear in the equal personal dignity which must be accorded to man and wife in mutual and unreserved affection”; Gaudium et Spes 49. 334 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. human person. Sex constitutes a biological fact that correlates to, and remains in the service of, the power of transmitting life. But the biological participation in the sexual act and in the labors of parenting is not the same for the man and for the woman. The sexual act is accomplished within the body of the woman, who, unlike the man, can be violated. Moreover, pregnancy and childbirth are uniquely a burden for the woman. The education of the child, especially in the first years of life, also falls primarily to her. Moreover, under normal conditions the man is always fertile; in contrast, the woman is only periodically fertile, for very short, though relatively frequent, stretches of time. Furthermore, it is the man who generally takes the initiative for seeking sexual encounter. All these biological inequalities between the man and the woman, in the sexual act and in the labors of parenting, and in the obligations of the woman resulting from sexual activities (incomparably heavier than those of the man)—all this imposes on the man a correspondingly greater responsibility. When the man eschews his responsibilities, the woman’s equality in human dignity is no longer being respected. Her elementary human rights will not be protected.31 e. Contraception makes no contribution to the woman’s personal rights. Since it is a process that makes it possible to satisfy the “needs of the sexual instinct” without taking on any responsibility for the consequences of sexual activity, it primarily benefits the man. This is why, once accepted, contraception leads to sanctioning his erotico-hedonist behavior. In this situation, inevitably, the man benefits at the expense of the woman. He ceases to regard the woman in the context of transmitting life. She becomes for him simply the occasion for enjoying pleasure. If one adds to this the fact that it is inscribed in the very structure 31 “It also follows that in human society to one man’s right there corresponds a duty in all other persons: the duty, namely, of acknowledging and respecting the right in question. For every fundamental human right draws its indestructible moral force from the natural law, which in granting it imposes a corresponding obligation. Those, therefore, who claim their own rights, yet altogether forget or neglect to carry out their respective duties, are people who build witih one hand and destroy with the other”; John XXIII, Pacem in Terris 30 (Catholic Social Thought, 135); “A civic society is to be considered well-ordered, beneficial and in keeping with human dignity if it is grounded on truth. As the Apostle Paul exhorts us: ‘Away with falsehood then; let everyone speak out the truth to his neighbor; membership of the body binds us to one another’ [Eph 4:25].This will be accomplished when each one duly recognizes both his rights and his obligations toward others”; ibid., no. 35 (p. 136). Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 335 of man to take initiative in the sexual realm and that the danger of being violated is a threat primarily to the woman, then one must admit that the moral condition of the woman appears grim indeed. Therefore, when contraception is used, the woman faces not only inequality, but also sexual slavery.32 4. The Consequences of Original Sin The claims of those who defend a practically limitless freedom in the regulation of births seem to be anchored in a belief in the innate goodness of man and the absolute integrity of his nature. Unfortunately, this optimism does not find any confirmation in Holy Scripture, or in the doctrinal tradition and practice of the Church, or, finally, in the history and daily experience of humanity. In our view, man is not only far from this ideal, but he presents in certain respects such a tragic face that even those observers who reject the doctrine of original sin tend to recognize an inexplicable deterioration in human nature, which is responsible for his current disharmony and inclination to evil. The whole human person bears the mark of this interior disorder, but it is most strikingly evident in the realm of sexual instinct, which is without doubt one of the strongest human instincts. The Old and New Testaments concur in pointing out an innate human inclination to sin, together with the concrete reality of his sins.33 But if the Old Testament remains perplexed by this, awaiting divine assistance and unsure of how the story will end, the New Testament, in contrast, shows us the powerful sources of strength flowing from Christ and his salvific work, which are capable of destroying sin in us, since they are infinitely more powerful than sin. This does not mean, however, that the Redemption has radically changed human nature for the better, or that it has totally extinguished therein the embers of sin. These embers continue to smolder, and we must always reckon with their destructive power. It is necessary to remain on guard, especially where concupiscence and sin ally with the “sarx” [flesh], the enemy of spirit.Vigilance thus is one of the essential elements in the conversion of man to God. 32 “If the positions of the contracting parties are too unequal, the consent of the parties does not suffice to guarantee the justice of their contract, and the rule of free agreement remains subservient to the demands of the natural law”; Paul VI, Populorum Progressio 59 (English text cited from Catholic Social Thought, 254). 33 Cf. Sir 25:24; Sg 2:23–24; Jer 1:14–15; 1 Jn 2:16; Rom 1:24–32 and 7:18–24; Gal 5:16–26. 336 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. III. Responsible Parenthood 1. The couple fulfills their duty of transmitting life and raising children in the context of the concrete conditions of their state of life. In desiring to carry out this duty effectively and in accordance with the divine plan, the spouses must weigh all circumstances and consider all the requirements imposed by these circumstances, with prudence and conscious of their responsibility.34 This is why the number of children called into existence cannot be left to chance. On the contrary, because of all the human values which are involved here, the number of children must be decided by the spouses in full consciousness.They therefore undertake this work as persons, and the decision itself must be an act of human responsibility. All of this has been recognized by the bishops in the Second Vatican Council35 and by Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum 34 The conception and birth of the child has a considerable impact on the organic functions of the mother. One must therefore consider her health. The education of the child requires many years of work on the part of the parents. Moreover, the child has the right to health and life: from the moment of his conception, he is the subject of the rights belonging to the person. Once born, he has the right to be raised in conditions that are appropriate to his dignity as human person. Moreover, other circumstances must be taken into consideration. The child must be a member of society, which is composed of other persons who also have rights. In short, the transmission of life is an act of great significance, not only for those who are intimately affected by this event, but also for society; it therefore necessarily demands a strong sense of responsibility. The obligation to bear and raise children is certainly incumbent on the parents—an obligation that used to be called the duty of “preserving the human race” or more simply of assuring its continuation. But “the general principles can now be stated that the fulfillment of a positive duty may be withheld should grave reasons, independent of the good will of those obliged to it, show that such fulfillment is untimely, or make it evident that it cannot equitably be demanded by that which requires the fulfillment—in this case, the human race.” Pius XII, “Allocution to Midwives,” in The Human Body: Papal Teachings, ed. Monks of Solesmes (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1979), 164. 35 “Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. This involves the fulfillment of their role with a sense of human and Christian responsibility and the formation of correct judgments through docile respect for God and common reflection and effort; it also involves a consideration of their own good and the good of their children already born or yet to come, an ability to read the signs of the times and of their own situation on the material and spiritual level, and, finally, an estimation of the good of the family, of society, and of the Church. It is the married couple themselves who must in the last analysis arrive at these judgments before God. . . . Whenever Christian spouses in a spirit of sacrifice and trust in divine providence carry out their duties of procreation Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 337 Progressio.36 Consequently, the spouses’ consideration of the number of children that they undertake to bear and raise necessitates a decision regarding the responsible regulation of births and involves the following factors: • an attitude of faith and trust in God;37 • a serene magnanimity and a willingness to undergo renunciation and sacrifice;38 with generous human and Christian responsibility, they glorify the Creator and perfect themselves in Christ”; Gaudium et Spes 50. “Because in virtue of man’s inalienable right to marriage and the procreation of children, the decision regarding the number of children depends on the judgment of the parents and is in no way to be left to the decrees of public authority. Now, since the parents’ judgment presupposes a properly formed conscience, it is of great importance that all should have an opportunity to cultivate a genuinely human sense of responsibility which will take account of the circumstances of time and situation and will respect the divine law”; ibid., no. 87. 36 “Finally, it is for the parents to decide, with full knowledge of the matter, on the number of their children, taking into account their responsibilities toward God, themselves, the children they have already brought into the world, and the community to which they belong. In all this they must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God’s law authentically interpreted, and sustained by confidence in him”; Paul VI, Populorum Progressio 37 (Catholic Social Thought, 249). 37 In contracting marriage, Christian spouses receive from God a specific duty to fulfill in his creative and salvific plan. Conjugal life is a vocation. The first question that every Christian must ask in order to be able to respond to other problems of his life to the best of his ability is, “How does God view the fulfillment of my duties in the concrete situation of my life?” As Christians, we believe in the love that God has for us. This is the reason for our unshakeable confidence in divine assistance in the fulfillment of the duties dictated by conscience. Moreover, parents must be conscious of the fact that “human life and its transmission are realities whose meaning is not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and full meaning can only be understood in reference to man’s eternal destiny”; Gaudium et Spes 51. 38 The education of children is certainly the source of many joys, but nevertheless the fulfillment of this duty often involves much labor, disappointment, and suffering. The same applies to the other obligations that life brings. But it is precisely the attitude towards suffering and the labors of life, more than anything else, that constitutes the essential difference between those who believe in the Son of God, Jesus Christ the man, who by his passion and cross has redeemed the world and called all to salvation. As Christians we must be conscious that the Son of God lives, is present, and acts in his Body the Church—the People of God of the New Covenant. The sufferings of this People and of each of its members participate in the work of salvation. Christ himself says: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23); and 338 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. • a consciousness of their community, the fruit of conjugal life: this decision regarding the regulation of births ought to be reached within a dialogue of love between husband and wife;39 • justified motives;40 • the behavior of the spouses in undertaking the regulation of births must be in accord with the divine law expressed by the Magisterium of the Church.41 “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27). Moreover, we are conscious that Christ accompanies us in our daily labors: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:28–30). Cf. ch. V of the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium, AAS 56 (1964): 125–28. It would be good for parents, in deciding how many children they wish to have, to meditate on the following exchange between Christ and his apostles in this scene from the Gospel: “And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me’ ” (Mt 9:36–37). The Magisterium of the Church respects the magnanimity of parents: “Therefore, since the primary office of matrimony is to be at the service of life, Our special regard and Our paternal gratitude go to those generous husbands and wives who, for the love of God and trusting in Him, courageously raise a numerous family”; Pius XII, Allocution to the National Congress of the Italian Family Front and the Associations of Large Families (English translation cited from Papal Teachings: Matrimony, trans. Byrnes, no. 616, p. 416). “Among the married couples who thus fulfill their God-given mission, special mention should be made of those who after prudent reflection and common decision courageously undertake the proper upbringing of a large number of children”; Gaudium et Spes 50. 39 The parity of the man and the woman in their dignity as persons, the character of the matrimonial contract, which imposes on them a similar obligation to respect mutually the person of the other spouse, and the demands of reciprocal respect, as well as common duties entailing common responsibilities—all this results in that the spouses must, “with common accord and common effort” make a well-considered judgment regarding the regulation of births. Parents bear a common responsibility towards the child: in the same way, the regulation of births must be the fruit of a common discernment of the duties that both bear together. 40 Pius XII was the first to discuss the moral requirements in this area. He enumerated “medical, eugenic, economic, and social indicators” as motives for a morally justified regulation of births. See the citations from the Allocution to Midwives. See notes 35 and 36. 41 “Married people should realize that in their behavior they may not simply follow their own fancy but must be ruled by conscience—and conscience ought to be conformed to the law of God in the light of the teaching authority of the Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 339 The last two factors require a deeper analysis. 2. The documents of the Second Vatican Council and of Paul VI outline a deeper and more detailed teaching on the motives for responsible parenthood than that of Pius XII. The spouses must consider: • the vocation to which God calls them in his creative and salvific plan; • their own good and their own responsibility towards themselves (here one must add the care for their health, namely, the motives that Pius XII designated as the “medical indicator” for the regulation of births); • the good of the children already born or yet to be born, and responsibilities towards them (to this group of motives belong Pius XII’s “eugenic indicators”); • the good of the community to which the spouses belong: family, temporal society, and Church; • the temporal circumstances; • material as well as spiritual conditions (here one would include the “economic and social indicators” mentioned by Pius XII).42 Church, which is the authentic interpreter of divine law. For the divine law throws light on the meaning of married love, protects it and leads it to truly human fulfillment”; Gaudium et Spes 50. “Man’s sexuality and the faculty of reproduction wondrously surpass the endowments of lower forms of life; therefore the acts proper to married life are to be ordered according to authentic human dignity and must be honored with the greatest reverence. When it is a question of harmonizing married love with the responsible transmission of life, it is not enough to take only the good intention and the evaluation of motives into account; the objective criteria must be used, criteria drawn from the nature of the human person and human action, criteria which respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love; all this is possible only in the virtue of married chastity is seriously practiced. In questions of birth regulation the sons of the Church, faithful to these principles, are forbidden to use methods disapproved of by the teaching authority of the Church in its interpretation of the divine law”; ibid., no. 51. 42 These motives must be evaluated with the utmost probity.The spouses must have a “well-formed conscience.” For instance, it is often said that the fewer children one has, the better they can be raised. Experience teaches us that this generalized and unqualified statement is without basis in actual fact. It is difficult to educate an only child normally. Often someone who has been raised without the company of brothers and sisters remains unhappy throughout his life, experiences difficulties in developing his personality, and is less able to adapt to others (cf. C. Combalusier, L’enfant seul [Paris, 1954]). Moreover, the child has the right 340 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. Present-day catechesis recognizes the importance of appealing to the responsibility that Christians have for their life and journey towards God. The various motives listed above, which must prevail in a decision so important to the lives of the spouses, can not only motivate them to abstain from procreation but even encourage them to procreate consciously and voluntarily. 3. The intention with which we act clearly bears moral weight. But in order for an act to be morally good, further conditions must also be met. “We concede that God wants always and first of all a right intention; but this is not enough. He also wants the act to be good.”43 The act of a person must itself correspond to the divine plan, which is inscribed in the concretely existing structure of the human being, as well as in the action that is properly human.The Second Vatican Council merely restates the Church’s unchanging teaching on this point. It is therefore necessary to formulate the fundamental moral requirements governing the means that the spouses employ in regulating births, so that their actions may conform to the dignity of the human person. In order to preserve rectitude, these means must take into account the inherent meaning of human sexual life. This is the goal of divine law in this realm. a. The first of these postulates follows from the equality between man and woman because they both are human persons: in short, there must be equality and proportionality between the contributo receive formation in a normal situation, such as one finds in a family environment that includes other children. To deprive the child of these surroundings is a decision that could affect him for life, and consequently it can be motivated only by truly serious considerations. The same applies to the judgment concerning the concrete situation of the spouses. It is evidently often the case that the income of the spouses is modest, and that their living arrangements are not what they should be. Still, it is not unusual for egoism to exaggerate these difficulties; what is identified as an economic difficulty is in this case often simply a hidden desire for an easier life. All this creates serious educational problems. Material well-being, the goal for which the parents strive throughout most of their lives, is accepted by children as normal and owed to them. Consequently, they do not take care of their belongings, do not value the parents’ labor or respect their work, and finally have only disdain and distrust for the less fortunate. It is this desire for an easier life that is the cause of the contemporary shift towards bourgeois life. 43 Pius XII, Allocution to the Congress of the World Union of Young Catholic Women, 18 April 1952 (translated into English from Discorsi e radiomessagi di Sua Santità Pio XII [Tipografia Poligotta Vaticana], vol. 12, pp. 69–78). Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 341 tion of the man and the woman in the work of regulating births.44 This principle must be kept in mind when examining the morality of women’s use of oral contraceptives (ovulation inhibitors) or intrauterine devices (IUDs). To cause biological changes in the woman that make fertility impossible, which at the same time frees the man of his responsibility in the sexual act, is to do violence to the person of the woman and to transgress against justice.45 b. The place which sexuality occupies in the structure of the person and in his actions provides the foundation for other postulates. In the life of the human person, sexuality fulfills several functions: • the biological function of procreation • a trans-individual, interpersonal, and social function • a sign-function, an element in the communication between people in the formation of social bonds From a biological point of view, sex is essentially linked with procreation. We have already emphasized that the body participates in the dignity of the person: together with the soul, it forms one single human being.46 This is why sex, a property of the body, is a property of the person; likewise, sexual activity, an essentially bodily event, participates in human activity. Indeed, man is a social being.47 The reproductive system is the only organic system that requires the cooperation of two persons in its normal operation. The sexual act involves the human body, but through the body it reaches the person, who, by this bodily bonding-gesture (which is essentially a function of the vis generativa [the generative power]) enters into a special personal bond with another person. The sexual instinct therefore is the essential factor that gives rise to the basic interpersonal and social bonds—those of marriage 44 See above, section II. 45 Cf. note 32. 46 Doubtless all theologians are aware of this, but not all draw therefrom the conse- quences that logically follow from it. See Schema, I.II.2 (p. 182) and Documentum, II.3 (p. 159) and IV.2 b (p. 161). 47 “Man by his very nature stands completely in need of life in society. . . . Life in society is not something accessory to man himself: through his dealings with others, through mutual service, and through fraternal dialogue, man develops all his talents and becomes able to rise to his destiny. Among the social ties necessary for man’s development some correspond more immediately to his innermost nature—the family, for instance, and the political community; others flow rather from his free choice”; Gaudium et Spes 25. 342 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. and family. This is why the sexual instinct, impelling one to physical union with an individual of the opposite sex, is a kind of instrumental dynamism serving the person’s social needs. The trans-individual function of sexuality is not limited to the formation of interpersonal bonds. Sexual life, intimately linked to the power of procreation, is therefore an essential factor in the existence of society.48 The mature desire for a child properly belongs to interpersonal sexual love.49 The documents of the Second Vatican Council articulate precisely what is required for the parental attitude of the spouses and do not merely affirm that marriage as an institution is ordained to procreation.50 As for sexuality as a sign, it offers the possibility of communicating with one’s fellows. It is therefore not only a need proper to the human being as a “social being” but also a condition sine qua non of the existence of society. Indeed, the sexual life of man 48 For a more detailed philosophical-moral analysis of the problem, see Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), 216–23. See also H. Schelsky, Les formes sociales des relations sexuelles, in H. Giese et al., Seksuologia (Warsaw: Państwowy Zakl/ad Wydawnictw Lekarskich, 1959), translated from the German: Die Sexualität des Menschen (Stuttgart: Enke, 1955). 49 In its teaching, the Council never separates the ends of marriage as institution from the love of the persons who engage in it. In fact, there is not and cannot be any opposition between these two realities. See Gaudium et Spes 50: “Marriage and married love are by nature ordered to the procreation and education of children. Indeed children are the supreme gift of marriage and greatly contribute to the good of the parents themselves. . . . Without intending to underestimate the other ends of marriage, it must be said that true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Saviour, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day. Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters.” And ibid., no. 48: “By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.” 50 Among other texts already cited above, one reads in the Constitution Lumen Gentium, no. 11: “Christian married couples help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in the rearing of their children. Hence by reason of their state in life and of their position they have their own gifts in the People of God (cf. 1 Cor 7:7). From the marriage of Christians there comes the family in which new citizens of human society are born and, by the grace of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, those are made children of God so that the People of God may be perpetuated throughout the centuries.” English citations taken from Vatican Council II, ed. Flannery. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 343 belongs to the order of signs by which one subject expresses something to another, manifesting the realm of the spirit that cannot be directly grasped. Sexuality attracts individuals to each other. This is why its manifestations are a very appropriate means of expressing that which unites human beings, namely, a recognition that the other possesses a value by which one is drawn towards common union for the sake of the ends proper to human persons. It is in this that love consists. The sexual life, in its expressions, is therefore a very appropriate way of showing one’s love.51 And since this bodysoul conjunct constitutes, in this life, the undivided unity of the person, the love that is expressed through sex, that is, through the genital organs, is clearly defined in its genus by the sexuality of the body. As a consequence of the unity of the person, who is simultaneously body and spirit, the sexuality of the body and therefore the sexuality of the person creates special requirements for the personal love that is marked by sex. Every sexual act between spouses ought therefore to be “a reciprocal self-gift,”52 a bodily expression of their mutual love. 51 “Thus the man and woman, who ‘are no longer two but one’ (Mt 19:6), help and serve each other by their marriage partnership; they become conscious of their unity and experience it more deeply from day to day. The intimate union of marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons”; Gaudium et Spes 48. “Married love is an eminently human love because it is an affection between two persons rooted in the will and it embraces the good of the whole person; it can enrich the sentiments of the spirit and their physical expression with a unique dignity and ennoble them as the special elements and signs of the friendship proper to marriage. . . . Married love is uniquely expressed and perfected by the exercise of the acts proper to marriage. Hence the acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude”; ibid., no. 49. “But marriage is not merely for the procreation of children: its nature as an indissoluble compact between two people and the good of the children demand that the mutual love of the partners be properly shown, that it should grow and mature”; ibid., no. 50. Besides the text cited above, which concerned “the truly human performance of acts,” the Council elsewhere uses the following expression: “the acts proper to married life are to be ordered according to authentic human dignity and must be honored with the greatest reverence”; ibid., no. 51.This whole passage is cited in note 41. See also the very important passage cited in note 53. 52 Ibid., no. 48. Cf. also in no. 49 the following text: “A love like that, bringing together the human and the divine, leads the partners to a free and mutual giving of self, experienced in tenderness and action, and permeates their whole lives; besides, this love is actually developed and increased by the exercise of it.” 344 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. Because this love “by its very nature . . . is ordered to the procreation and education of offspring,”53 it should also express their parental attitude. The multiple functions of the human sexual act are safeguarded only in the act that retains its proper relation to procreation—in other words, when its sexual structure (as an act of the vis generativa [generative power] is willingly preserved. Because procreation can and must be directed by man, and because this act has other functions besides the purely biological, it follows that man can engage in acts that do not result in fertilization,54 as long as the purpose and 53 Ibid., no. 48. See also in no. 51 the following text: “When it is a question of harmo- nizing married love with the responsible transmission of life . . . the objective criteria must be used . . . criteria which respect the total meaning of mutual selfgiving and human procreation in the context of true love.” 54 “But marriage is not merely for the procreation of children . . .”; ibid., no. 50. This has been, in fact, always the Church’s conviction. The exercise of the conjugal right by sterile or elderly spouses has never been considered illicit. The memorandum Schema documenti de responsabili paternitate [The Scheme of the Document Concerning Responsible Parenthood: The Report of the Majority of the Special Commission on Birth Regulation—to which this document is a response] includes the following passage: “Moralitas ergo actuum sexualium inter coniuges imprimis et specifice significationem sumit ab ordinatione eorum actuum in vita coniugali fecunda . . . et non pendet proinde a fecunditate directa uniuscuisque actus particularis”; I, II, 2 (pp. 182–83). [“Therefore the morality of sexual acts among married people takes its meaning first of all and specifically from the ordering of their actions in a fruitful married life. . . . It does not then depend on the direct fecundity of each and every particular act” (Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 87).] The same thought is expressed by the authors of the Documentum syntheticum: “Actus coniugales quae ex intentione infoecundi sunt (seu infoecundi redduntur) ordinantur ad expressionem unionis amoris: ille amor autem suum culmen attingit in ipsa foecunditate cum responsabilitate accepta et propterea alii actus unionis quodammodo incompleti sunt et eorum plenam moralitatem cum ordinatione ad actum foecundum recipiunt . . . Actus coniugales infecundi cum actu foecundo unam totalitatem constituunt et unicam specificationem moralem accipiunt”; III (p. 160). [“Conjugal acts which by intention are infertile (or which are rendered infertile) are ordered to the expression of the union of love; that love, however, reaches its culmination in fertility responsibly accepted. For that reason, other acts of union in a certain sense are incomplete and they receive their full moral quality with ordination toward the fertile act. . . . Infertile conjugal acts constitute a totality with fertile acts and have a single moral specification” (Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 72).] It is difficult to agree with this opinion, which argues that sexual relations of sterile couples or of those who for grave reasons are dispensed from the obligation of procreating, should be considered to be deprived of their positive moral value. This would amount to rigorism and would not conform to the teaching of the Church. On the other hand, a participation of the infertile acts in the fertile acts, or even the moral unity of both, requires some sort of grounding. But this grounding is Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 345 meaning of their biological structure remain intact. This requirement results from the fact that the sexual act of the person is one act, though polyvalent and structured. It is a biological act of the person: all the personal values are signified in it precisely through its biological orientation. Active intervention in the structure of the act results in its truncation, which does violence to its value as sign [means of communication]. It is marked by a disintegration of instinct and love. In such circumstances, the sexual act is impelled by auto-eroticism, and does not fully constitute the revelation of a love encompassing the entirety of affections and instincts. A complete sexual act that is nevertheless preceded by an intervention into the woman’s organic functions in order to prevent fertilization (the “Pill,” IUDs)—independently of the violence done to the rights of the person—expresses the same disorder as intervention into the act itself. This analysis of the role of sexual life in the structure of the person and his actions makes it possible to formulate the postulates of morality governing the responsible regulation of fertility, as follows: • Sexual life must always signify and express, in full truth, the spouses’ mutual gift of self and a love that is attentive to the good of the person; • Every sexual act must express the “parental” character of conjugal love and of married life; • The sexual integrity of conjugal relations must be preserved. In light of these principles, all contraceptive procedures displaying anti-parental behavior must be excluded from sexual activity. Contracepted relations cannot constitute the expression of the parental attitude, since they are not an unrestricted gift of self, a total communion with the other, regardless of whether this fact is veiled by various illusions. These requirements demand from us a great ascetic effort, selfmastery, and full consciousness of our actions.55 found only in the biological relation of the sexual act to procreation and therefore in the structure of the act, which is essentially procreative (actus potentiae generativae [acts of generative power]) and sexual. 55 The moral requirements clearly also show the importance of a proper formation for young people. 346 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. c. Other postulates dictated by morality, to which methods of regulating births must conform, flow from each person’s call to seek maturity and growth towards perfection.56 Personal development consists, among other things, in perfecting one’s actions, which ought to become ever more rational and free. The obstacle [to this goal] will be the tendency to disorder that results from original sin. This tendency is similarly manifested in the realm of sexuality, and personal development and perfection is no less necessary here than in other areas of life.57 Contemporary discussions of marital morality do not adequately recognize a point of which every pastor is aware, namely, that the mere fact of entering into marriage does not cure the spouses of their tendency to moral disorder.58 The teaching of the Council manifests a considerable effort to highlight the positive aspect of marriage and its dignity.Yet it also offers a very lucid assessment of corrupted human nature: “Outstanding courage is required for the constant fulfillment of the duties of this Christian calling: spouses, therefore, will need grace for leading a holy life: they will eagerly practice a love that is firm, generous, and prompt to sacrifice and will ask for it in their prayers.”59 56 “In the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfill himself, for every life is a vocation. At birth, everyone is granted, in germ, a set of aptitudes and qualities for him to bring to fruition. Their coming to maturity, which will be the result of education received from the environment and personal efforts, will allow each man to direct himself toward the destiny intended for him by his Creator. Endowed with intelligence and freedom, he is responsible for his fulfillment as he is for his salvation. He is aided, or sometimes impeded, by those who educate him and those with whom he lives, but each one remains, whatever be these influences affecting him, the principal agent of his own success or failure. By the unaided effort of his own intelligence and his will, each man can grow in humanity, can enhance his personal worthy, can become more a person”; Paul VI, Populorum Progressio 15 (Catholic Social Thought, 243). 57 Cf. Gaudium et Spes 8 and 13. 58 Cf. Documentum, II (p. 159); III (p. 160) and especially the following phrase: “Copula etiam cum interventu est oblativa . . .” IV.4.d (p. 162) [“Intercourse even with intervention is self-offering” (Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 77)]. Although certain theologians appeal to the “progress of sexology” (Documentum, I.4 [p. 157]; Schema, I.III [p. 183]), they do not seem to notice the existence of a psycho-sexual infantilism that is often found especially in men (cf. A. C. Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male [Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1948]). One must reckon with the case of auto-erotic fixation that appears precisely, among other things, in a contraceptive choice (see among others: M. Oraison, Vie chrétienne et problèmes de la sexualité [Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1952], and M. de Wilmars, Psychopathologie de l’anticonception [Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1955]). 59 Gaudium et Spes 49. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 347 The Conciliar constitution Lumen Gentium repeatedly emphasizes the revealed doctrine of the universal call to perfection and imitation of God.60 We cannot fail to note the tendency to sexual disorder, together with the fact that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life” (Matt. 7:14).61 Opinions that blame the difficult moral situation of today’s couples (and is this really a uniquely contemporary problem?) on the unsuitability of the Church’s moral teachings [to the contemporary situation] are quite simply naïve. On the one hand, they manifest a completely unjustified optimism according to which every desire for the sexual act is solely a yearning of love.62 On the other hand, these same opinions are grounded in a theological pessimism according to which man, the subject of disordered tendencies, is practically incapable of ordering his own actions. Finally, these opinions exhibit moral legalism, which manifests itself in the barely concealed belief that reason is unable to discern what is morally ordered or disordered in marriage,63 and 60 The words of Christ: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48), so often repeated by the apostle Paul, e.g. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Eph 5:1), are broadly developed in ch. V of the Constitution Lumen Gentium 40: “It is therefore quite clear that all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love”; ibid., no. 41: “The forms and tasks of life are many but holiness is one—that sanctity which is cultivated by all who act under God’s Spirit and, obeying the Father’s voice and adoring God the Father in spirit and in truth, follow Christ, poor, humble and cross-bearing, that they may deserve to be partakers of his glory”; ibid., no. 42: “Therefore all the faithful are invited and obliged to holiness and the perfection of their own state of life. Accordingly let all of them see that they direct their affections rightly, lest they be hindered in their pursuit of perfect love by the use of worldly things and by an adherence to riches which is contrary to the spirit of evangelical poverty, following the apostle’s advice: Let those who use this world not fix their abode in it, for the form of this world is passing away (cf. 1 Cor 7:31).” 61 See Mt 19:8–9; Mk 10:5; Rom 1:24, 26–27 and 7:14–25; 1 Cor 5:1, 6:9, and 6:13–20, as well as many others. 62 This is why one encounters the simplistic affirmation that spouses who use contraceptives only do it to solidify their love. See note 58 and Documentum, I.3 (p. 157) and II.4 (p. 159). The memoranda Schema and Documentum include statements that imply that their authors are taking into account the sexual disorder within marriage. But they attribute it solely to an interior attitude, and not to the exterior manifestations of sexual life in marriage. See Schema, I.II.2 (p. 183) and Documentum, III (p. 160). 63 Cf. Documentum, I.1 (p. 156); I.2 (p. 157); II.1 (p. 158); Status, I.D (p. 167). This memorandum, however, also includes a very detailed critique of the thesis that 348 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. that thus the requirements of the natural law are neither knowable nor definable. Consequently, in order for man to stop sinning, it suffices to change the “law,” namely, the principles proclaimed by the Church. In this domain of sexual life, there is tension between man’s sensations in the sexual act and the interpersonal and social values of this act. Sexual activity becomes morally disordered every time that these interpersonal values are subordinated to the sensory dimension of carnal intercourse. Rational sexual behavior therefore requires, by the very nature of things, abstinence from the act whenever love demands it. This willed abstinence from the sexual act can even express a greater love than the act itself.64 To strive towards perfection in the conjugal life thus requires on the one hand, being able to express love in abstaining from the conjugal act, and on the other, subordinating one’s own pleasure in the sexual act to the interpersonal and social values of the act. It should also be noted that there is an essential difference between rational behavior that is conscious of its consequences and the precautions prudently taken to avoid the results of undisciplined behavior. Striving for perfection necessitates that one’s upholds the relativity of reason’s principles in relation to the present subject (the whole second part). The Schema frequently invokes the natural law, which the authors seem to consider to be evident: “Ceterum vero, ipsa naturalis lex, atque ratio fide christiana illuminata, dictant ut coniuges in eligendis mediis non pro arbitrio, sed secundum criteria obiectiva procedant.” [“Moreover, the natural law and reason illuminated by Christian faith dictate that a couple proceed in choosing means not arbitrarily but according to objective criteria” (Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 93).] The first of these criteria, according to the authors, is “ut actio correspondeat naturae personae eiusdemque actuum, ita ut integer sensus mutuae donationis ac humanae procreationis in contextu veri amoris observertur.” [“The action must correspond to the nature of the person and of his acts so that the whole meaning of the mutual giving and of human procreation is kept in a context of true love” (Hoyt, 94).] Unfortunately, the authors say nothing of the conditions that the sexual act must fulfil in order to comply with this fundamental requirement (Schema, I.IV.2 [p. 185]). We also find the statement: “Non ergo arbitrarie, sed,—lege naturae et Dei sic iubente,—coniuges omnibus criteriis simul consideratis iudicium obiective fundatum sibi formant” (ibid., p. 186). [“Therefore not arbitrarily, but as the law of nature and of God commands, let couples form a judgment which is objectively founded, with all the criteria considered” (Hoyt, 94).] 64 The authors of the Schema, I.II.1 (p. 182), note this fact; the authors of the Status, II.B.5 (p. 176, towards the end) express the same thought with more circumspection. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 349 activity become ever more rational, for it is here that the integration of the person becomes apparent. This is why instinctive impulses must be integrated into behavior that is governed by reason. This is the path to the true maturation of the person. On the other hand, this should not be taken to include calculated foresight into the undesirable results of thoughtless and disintegrated action. On the basis of these observations, we can now formulate the two last moral postulates to which the regulation of births must conform: • It must be the expression of growth in Christian perfection, towards the full maturing of the person; • The sensory dimension of sexual life must always be subordinated to the interpersonal values of this life: each must also be able to express his or her love by abstinence from the sexual act. In light of these principles, no contraceptive method can be reconciled with the human vocation to full maturation through ever more perfect actions. These methods most often result from entirely subjective difficulties experienced by man in the realm of sexual instinct. IV. Responsible Parenthood: The Sketch of a Solution The condemnation of contraception as a method of regulating births in no way leaves today’s couples without resources for resolving this problem efficaciously and morally. Leaving aside total continence, which more than one couple, loving each other deeply, has undertaken due to circumstances, and of which every human being must be capable (for it is absolutely required of celibates and guarantees marital fidelity when one of the spouses is absent), there is also another path opened by contemporary science. In fact, it is possible to regulate births by abstaining from fertile conjugal acts. 1. Medical Summary Under normal conditions, the male human being constantly produces sperm in large quantities. In contrast, the woman is fertile only at intervals. In principle, the ovaries release eggs one at a time, at relatively fixed points in time.65 Moreover, the woman is fertile only when an egg has 65 In 1827 K. E. Baer published the results of his research on female gametes in mammals and man (Epistola de ovi mammalium et hominis genesi [Leipzig: Leopoldi Vossii, 1827]) and from that moment, reproductive science entered new paths. Soon the relation between the woman’s visible sexual cycle and the preparation in her 350 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. been released into her reproductive tract. In these conditions, it is possible to regulate births efficaciously by abstaining from sexual relations, as long as one has sufficiently certain knowledge of the functional state of the woman’s reproductive system. Observations recorded for more than sixty years by numerous doctors have made it possible to understand the functional changes in the woman’s reproductive system that accompany the various phases of the menstrual cycle. Among all the methods that have precisely, methodically, and systematically examined the functional state of the woman’s reproductive system, the method of body temperature taken at rest is the simplest. It is, moreover, accessible enough that anyone can practice it, and verified by meticulous studies undertaken by several reproductive system of a gamete for release was recognized. Shortly thereafter theories began to surface concerning the woman’s periodic fertility. In 1853, the Holy See was questioned for the first time regarding the morality of engaging in matrimonial relations while aware of their infertility, given the woman’s physiological infertility. For some years, medical opinions on the woman’s periodic infertility were contradictory, due to imperfections in methods of research. In 1924, Kyusaku Ogino published in Japan the results of his studies of the fertility of the woman, relying on a considerable number of observations. His work was published in German (“Ovulationstermin und Konzeptionstermin,” Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie 54 [1930]: 464) in the same journal, and almost simultaneously with that of Herman Knaus (“Eine neue Methode zur Bestimmung des ovulationstermines,” ibid., 53 [1929]: 193), who had arrived at the same results independent of Ogino. The results of their research can be summarized as followed: gametes are released into the female reproductive tract in cyclical cycles in the defined phase of the sexual cycle. The woman can be fertilized only when the ovum has been released from the ovary. This is why, taking into consideration the limited vitality of the ovum and variations in the length of sexual cycles, one can statistically pinpoint a woman’s fertile period and therefore her infertile period. The research effected by Ogino and by Knaus gave rise to two different methods of calculating the woman’s periods of fertility and infertility (called “calender methods”). We note in passing that it is unfortunate that the names of these two scientists are paired, as though there were only one method. The above methods rely on statistical observations, which makes them fairly easy to use in practice. In Europe, H. Stieve attempted to cast doubt on Knaus’s thesis by arguing that there is a paracyclical ovulation (Der Einfluss des Nervensytems auf Bau und Tätigkeit der weiblichen Geschlechtsorganen [Stuttgart: Thieme, 1952], 85–111). This would mean that, contrary to the claims of Ogino and Knaus, the woman can become pregnant at any moment because a number of stimuli can cause the release from the ovary of a second ovum within the same sexual cycle. Medical opinion too hastily agreed with Stieve’s conclusions, with the consequence that Ogino’s and Knaus’s conclusions were treated with hesitation. Finally H. Rauscher showed in 1963 that Stieve’s theses were incorrect (“Ovulation [Morphology],” Archiv für Gynäkologie (1965): 202, 121–31. See also W. Fijal/kowski, “Zagadnienie paracyklicznej owulacji w świelte obserwazji wl/asnych [The problem Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 351 researchers.66 The temperature curve makes it possible to determine precisely the periods of the woman’s physiological fertility and infertility. The interpretation of this curve is quite simple, and any interested person of paracyclical ovulation in light of proper observations],” Ginekologia Polska 38[1967]: 501, summarized in English). Medical science today agrees that: • the release of the ovum or ova occurs in the woman at a specific stage in the sexual cycle; • in the rare event that there is more than one ovum, they are all released at the same time; • one phase of preparation in the reproductive system precedes the release, and after this, the system remains prepared for the implantation of the ovum when fertilized; • after releasing the ovum, the reproductive system undergoes a transformation that inhibits the expulsion of the next ovum; • because the ovum, once released, lives only for a short time after ovulation, a phase of physiological infertility begins for the woman; • the release of the ova and the changes connected to the sexual cycle depend on hormonal changes that provoke different symptoms, making it possible to verify the functional state of a woman’s reproductive system; • the term of ovulation can fluctuate (these physiological variations never surpass five days), which depends on several factors and can be noted by observing accompanying symptoms. Subsequent ovulation of two or more ova in the course of one and the same cycle does not occur. From these observations, we can conclude that, from the medical point of view, abstinence from sexual relations during the fertile part of the cycle (i.e., during the phase of ovulation, taking into consideration the period of the ovum’s vitality and that of the sperm in the female body) is a sure method of regulating births. 66 T. H. van der Welde, Über den Zusammenhang zwischen Ovarialfunktion, Wellenbewegung und Menstrualblutung (Harlem: De Erven F. Bohn, 1904); “Basal Body Temperature in Disorders of Ovarial Function and Pregnancy,” Surgery, Gynaecology and Obstetrics 75 (1924): 768; 1904. R. Palmer, “Basal Body Temperature of the Woman,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (1950): 551, 155ff. M. Chartier,“Fécondité et continence périodique,” Cahiers Laennec 14/4 (1954): 2–34; “Interprétation de la courbe thermique pour le diagnostic de l’ovulation et des périodes dites fécondes du cycle menstruel,” Journal des sciences de Lille 83 (1965): 515–32. J. G. H. Holt, Het getij. Het verband tussen vruchtbaarheit en temperatuur bij de vrouw (Bilthoven: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1956). K. G. Döring, Die Bestimmung der fruchtbaren und unfruchtbaren Tage der Frau mit Hilfe der Körpertemperatur (Stuttgart: Thieme, 1957); Empfängnisverhütung, ein Leitfaden für Ärtze und Studenten (Stuttgart: Thieme, 1966), with a substantial bibliography; “Über die Zuverlässigkeit der Temperaturmethode zur Empfängnisverhütung,” Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift 92 (1967): 23, 1055–61. S. Geller, La courbe thérmique, guide de la femme (Paris, 1960); La courbe thermique, guide du practicien en endocrinologie féminine (Paris: Masson et Cie, 1961). J. Marshall, The Infertile Period (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1965). G. van der Stappen, Précis de la méthode des temperatures (Paris: Editions ouvrières, 1961). C. Rendeau, “La régulation des naissances dans le cadre familial et chrétien,” 352 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. who receives proper instruction can use it.67 Difficulties of interpretation are rare.68 The application of the method almost never disappoints: the failure rate varies from 0.8 to 1.3 of unplanned pregnancies per one hundred users of the method.69 A serious and well-informed expert observes, “The exact observation of the thermal method yields no negative results due to the method itself. No fertilization has been noted from the third day of the hyperthermal phase, among women who were following the rules. The few pregnancies that occurred despite the practice of the method were almost all due to errors made by those involved.”70 Conclusion. We have at our disposal today a method of regulating births that is “absolutely unobjectionable and voluntarily practiced.”71 It is sufficiently certain, simple, and low-cost so that every family of good will, with adequate instruction, can use it. It consists in abstaining from conjugal relations during the fertile period of the woman’s menstrual cycle. This phase can be recognized by using an empirical method. In order to make it available to everyone, however, appropriate individual instruction is required—publicity alone is not enough.72 It is therefore crucial to train instructors in this method, both men and women, who can give assistance to those who need it. 2. Some Remarks Relating to the Moral Analysis of the Problem a. Some people believe that methods involving periodic continence are merely another way of practicing contraception. The difference, they say, consists solely in a use of different secondary factors, namely, time NRTh 87 (1965): 606–31. C. G. Hartmann, Science and the Safe Period (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1962). J. Rötzer, Kinderzahl und Liebesehe (Vienna: Herder, 1966). A.Vincent and B.Vincent, “Valeur de l’abstention periodique comme méthode de regulation des naissances,” Journal des sciences de Lille 83 (1965): 643–92. C. S. Keefer, Human Ovulation (London: J & A Churchill, 1965). At a conference of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in April 1967, periodic continence was presented as the first among the birth-planning methods (Rhythm Method—The Use of Basal Body Temperature). Cf. “International Planned Parenthood News” 157 (March 1967). 67 Instruction should not be given by a doctor. Pastoral experience in Poland shows that those best suited are women instructors who have been properly trained, i.e., young mothers who have personal experience of this practice in their married life. 68 See Chartier, Fécondite, 24. 69 See Döring, “Über die Zuverlässigkeit,” table II. 70 Ibid. [This and the following quote are translated from the French translation given in the original text of the memorandum.] 71 Ibid. 72 This is the experience of parish counseling in the dioceses of Poland. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 353 (for those who employ periodic continence) and place (for those who employ contraceptives), for the sake of the same goal—rendering a sexual encounter sterile. According to these authors, the method of periodic continence consists in choosing infertile days for sexual relations, which they consider to be equivalent to an active sterilization of this relation (or of the woman).73 1. This opinion could perhaps be justified if the spouses were faced with the alternative of engaging in sexual relations either solely on infertile days, or solely on fertile days. One could therefore speak of choosing the period of infertility for sexual relations. But this is not the case.74 Consequently, the regulation of births by means of periodic continence essentially consists in abstaining from sexual relations during the fertile phase, while engaging in these relations at other times according to the norms of conjugal life. It is thus a matter of giving up an action whose results would be undesirable. By using contraceptives, the subject demonstrates unwillingness to give up this action; this is why he intervenes actively to obstruct the inherent consequences of the act. It seems to us that this is an essential difference. 2. Because sexual relations on infertile days are normal and willed as such, they maintain the respect due to the hierarchy of values and the full meaning of sexual life. Thus they can fittingly express the “parental” character of conjugal life and of the love uniting the spouses. This is entirely the opposite of the conscious sterilization of the relation, which, actively deprived of its proper role, cannot be the sexual expression of the love uniting two persons.75 For example, consider the case of oral contraceptives. A practice such as periodic continence, that takes into consideration the sexuality of the woman and consequently her dignity as person, is entirely opposed to the inhibitive intervention into her sexual biological functions, which amounts to an intrusion into the private domain of the person. It is necessary to recall that the body is not distinct from the person, nor “subject” to it; rather, with the soul, it constitutes one single unique person, and it participates in the rights and dignity of the person.76 73 L. Janssens, Mariage et fécondité (Paris, 1967). 74 Pius XII, “The right deriving from the marriage contract is a permanent, unin- terrupted and not intermittent, of each of the partners, in respect of the other.” “Allocution to Midwives,” in The Human Body: Papal Teachings, 163. 75 See above, III.3.b. 76 See above, II.1; III.3.b. Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. 354 b. In examining the moral aspect of the problem, we must point out the essential difference between that which is permissible to will (that which may be willed, “volitum”) and that for which one is free to strive (“voluntarium”).77 All agree that in certain cases, the choice not to transmit life does not necessitate total abstinence from the sexual act, since in man, that act is not solely limited to the function of procreation.78 But it is wrong to conclude therefrom that it is morally justifiable to actively deprive sexual relations of their procreative function, and that one can knowingly engage in such behavior. In light of what has just been said, we see no possibility of rationally or theologically justifying such a conclusion. c. Abstinence from sexual relations during the fertile time, together with the safeguarding of the sexual character of relations outside this phase, can be a manifestation of respect for the hierarchy of values. But although it can manifest such respect, it does not do so necessarily, for the practice of periodic continence for the sake of not transmitting life without sufficient rational motives (for example, an aversion to children, pleasure alone, aesthetic considerations, etc.) bears witness to a disorder within one’s psycho-sexual behavior. But this possibility in no way changes the fact that periodic continence, practiced for reasonable motives, is the only morally good way of regulating births. d. Nearly every couple undergoes periods of continence in their sexual life. A number of factors are involved.79 For instance, there are some days on which spouses are constrained by the very nature of things to renounce sexual encounter (for example, in the case of illness, or in the weeks before and after childbirth). To take some additional—and very important—factor into consideration is normal and ordinary.80 77 See P. Böckle, “Pour un débat Chrétien sur la regulation des naissances,” Concilum 5 (1965): 111. 78 See above, III.3.b. 79 Sexologists have even sought to define frequency of sexual intercourse as the test of abnormal sexual life. See S. Liebhart and B. Treçbicka-Kwiatkowska, Zagadnienia zy̆cia seksualnego kobiety (The problems of the sexual life of the woman) (Warsaw: Państ. Zakl/ad Wydawnictw Lekarskich, 1964), 34–55; and R. von Urban, Sex Perfection (London: Rider and Co., 1964), 96–97. 80 It is in [such consideration] that the “humanization of the intellect” consists. Man does not and should not “spontaneously” satisfy any of his instinctive needs. That would not be a human way of acting. It is relevant to note here that the Old Testament prohibited sexual relations during menstruation and the following week (Lv 15:19–24, 28; 13:19; 20:18; Ez 18:5–6) as well as after childbirth (Lv 12:1–5). Similarly, soldiers in time of war Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 355 e. Intentional abstinence from the sexual act is clearly the common project of both spouses.81 Here there is no danger of one spouse subordinating the other to his/her own sexual pleasure. On the contrary, abstinence can be the appropriate expression of the respect due to the person as sexual being. To the objection that in this case the male is placed at a disadvantage because it is harder for him to master his instinct and because his desire for sexual relations is generally stronger than the woman’s, it must be replied that, precisely on account of his constant power to fertilize, the male must recognize that he bears a correspondingly greater responsibility.82 In the realm of sexual life, there is no biological parity between the male and the woman. The just proportion of their common contribution to the regulation of births can only be found, therefore, when the male is able to integrate the dynamism of his instinct into the totality of his reason-dominated life, and to express his love by the sexual act in a reflective manner. Otherwise, the woman would be excessively burdened by sexual life and its consequences, or would simply become—at least to a certain extent—an object which her husband uses to satisfy his lust. Moreover, the difficulties experienced by the male in the realm of sexual instinct most often derive (setting aside pathological cases) from a lack of effort to master himself. It has been objected more than once that the woman experiences a stronger desire for sexual encounter in the fertile phases. Studies on this subject, however, have shown that this is not the case.83 f. Human sexual life is to a certain degree, by its very nature, the sign of love.84 One might therefore ask whether abstinence from sexual relations does not weaken this love. The response to this question is that not only the consciously willed sexual act, but also abstention from the sexual act, can be a sign were forbidden to approach a woman, even if they had the occasion to spend some time at home (1 Sm 21:6; 2 Sm 11:11). Although these prohibitions were of a ritual order, they nevertheless show that abstaining is possible within marriage and that it does not destroy the essence of conjugal love. St. Paul even foresees the possibility of abstaining from conjugal relations within marriage (1 Cor 7:5–6). The example of the Holy Family also implies that sexual continence in itself does not weaken the bond of marriage. 81 See above, II.3.a. 82 See above, II.3. 83 See S. Liebhart and B. Treçbicka-Kwiatkowska, Zagadnienia zy̆cia . . . , 34–35, and the bibliography cited; R. von Urban, Sex Perfection, 193–94. 84 See Gaudium et Spes 49, and above, II.3.b. Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. 356 of love.85 This naturally occurs during the course of an engagement, when the engaged couple must abstain from sexual relations: this is, for them, a sign of mutual love. The necessity [for abstinence] likewise arises occasionally for married couples, and when it is practiced out of respect for higher values, it can manifest an even greater love than the sexual act on its own.86 Abstaining from the sexual act can help spouses live the sexual act more deeply, precisely inasmuch as it is an act of love, and continence is often counseled for sterile couples, inasmuch as it is a way of deepening mutual love.87 g. Recourse to contraceptive practices is often the result of an inability to overcome impulses.88 Lacking the strength to oppose them, the individual also wishes to avoid the possible consequences of this disordered behavior. This results in a situation of conflict. Literature on this subject also refers to the psycho-pathological character of contraception.89 In those who practice contraception, the fear of children, a significant source for neuroses, is well known. Serious medical and pastoral observations show that when spouses adopt periodic continence as a method of regulating births after having practiced contraception during a more or less extended period of time, they experience a deepening of their mutual bond and the disappearance of neuroses and the fear of children—indeed, they often begin to desire a child, even if their state in life prevents them from having one. But all these symptoms are unknown to couples who voluntarily sterilize their sexual relations. Without a doubt, there are no couples who would not like to have normal sexual relations. Thus every intervention into sexual relations by means of a contraceptive element entails a frustration that weighs on the psyche of the spouses. h. From what has been said earlier,90 it clearly follows that the regulation of births by means of periodic continence fully conforms to the Christian vocation to strive for perfection. i. It seems that there is a link between inadequate theological appreciation of celibacy and the defense of contraception. It must be clearly 85 See above, II.2 and III.3.c. 86 Analogous to silence, which in some cases can be more eloquent than speech. 87 See above, III.3.c. 88 See above, II.2, II.3, and III.3. 89 Among others, M. de Wilmars, Psychopathologie de l’anticonception. 90 See above, III.3.c. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 357 recognized that the regulation of births by means of periodic continence presupposes: 1. First, that such continence is not only possible, but a condition of psycho-sexual maturity; 2. Second, that abstinence from the sexual act can be a sign of truly mature love. Those who do not understand the meaning of periodic continence in the life of the couple will not be able to understand the meaning of celibacy, in which these two presuppositions are fully expressed.91 V. Pastoral Problems 1. Education New obligations facing today’s families require that the faithful be adequately prepared for conjugal life. This is why education must be informed by a respect for the other, respect for the body, and respect for the realities of sex. It is necessary to speak straightforwardly to young people about family life, its bonds and its laws; about conjugal life, its values and qualities, its joys, duties, and difficulties. It is necessary to make clear to them that men and women have equal rights as well as psychological and biological differences that make enormous demands for mutual responsibility. It is necessary to emphasize the special value of a life that takes its origin from the body of the parents, but whose human personality is called into existence by the creative act of God alone. The formation appropriate to family life is at the same time a formation for the choice of celibacy, for those who have a calling to that state. The choice of either vocation requires equal maturity in men and women. Education cannot neglect this aspect of the Christian call to perfection. All the problems that young people encounter on their road and that may cause them distress must be discussed and resolved in a fraternal dialogue full of understanding. 91 One gets the impression that the intensive propaganda in favor of contraception conceals other motives than that of research into theological and moral truth and the good of humanity. In our own country, we are aware of the efforts made in this respect by the institutions responsible for the secularization of life and for atheism. In capitalist countries, one must doubtless take into consideration the interest of capital, which gains a considerable source of revenue from the manufacture of contraceptives, particularly chemical ones. This manufacture is clearly profitable, if every couple has to use these products throughout the entirety of their fertile years, i.e., for at least twenty years. 358 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, et al. In addition to catechesis properly speaking, it is advisable to organize classes for young people to discuss the problems of family and marriage and to provide a psycho-sexual formation. The problem of regulating births must also be treated. A responsible approach to this problem requires long preparation for young men and women. Classes for marriage preparation, introduced by numerous pastors, are extremely important, and should include the participation of doctors, psychologists, teachers, married couples, and parents. Finally, we must always remember that pastors have an obligation to provide immediate marriage preparation for engaged couples. A suitable catechesis, directly preceding the marriage itself, is likewise necessary. 2. Pastoral Matters It is essential to the present problem that all those who have the care of souls throughout the world be unanimous in explaining the principles of morality as taught by the Church, and in applying the directives of the Magisterium in the same way.The ministers of the Church must not only inform the faithful about the principles of morality but also make available to them all the means of facilitating moral behavior in life. Neglect in this area is, unfortunately, considerable. Our contemporaries are greatly confused about the principles of morality governing the regulation of births; the source of this confusion is, among other things, a lack of energy and determination in efforts to help people to benefit from scientific discoveries that make it possible to regulate births in conformity with divine law.This is why, wherever the need is manifested, pastors should provide services through the parish by means of which lay professionals from various disciplines can counsel couples and families, not only concerning all the problems relating to responsible parenthood, but also in other areas related to family life (education, conflict management, etc.).The faithful must be guaranteed free, professional, and responsible counseling that is faithful to Christian doctrine. Without this endeavor, it is useless to speak of forming consciences. The pastor who neglects to organize this aid for the good of his flock will be gravely culpable and co-responsible for the moral disorder that destroys the domestic and religious life of contemporary families. 3. The Laity In providing formation for marriage and assistance to Christian couples, the laity has a primary and irreplaceable role in introducing a regulation of births worthy of the human person. No one can provide better assistance to spouses experiencing difficulties than other informed Christian couples who are faithful to the directives of the Church. Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life 359 A special role belongs to doctors, nurses, and midwives. People have the right to expect from them appropriate assistance in everything concerning the regulation of births, in conformity to the demands of morality. Responsible parenthood is a grave duty and, and at the same time, a weighty issue for today’s couples. Abandoned to their own devices, married couples will have no way out of their difficulties.Without competent help, they risk turning away from God and becoming imprisoned in inextricable and desperate moral conflicts. Doctors, nurses, and midwives ought therefore to follow attentively the progress of medicine in this area and to draw their knowledge from dependable sources. Already in 1951, Pius XII exhorted them to do so.92 The Council directs a similar appeal to all those who are competent in this area. “People should be discreetly informed of scientific advances in research into methods of birth regulation, whenever the value of these methods has been thoroughly proved and their conformity with the moral order established.”93 N&V 92 Pius XII, “You are rightly expected to be well informed, from the medical point of view, of this well-known theory and of the progress which can still be foreseen in this matter; and moreover, your advice and help are expected to be based, not on simple, popular publications, but on scientific facts and the authoritative judgment of conscientious specialists in medicine and biology.” In “Allocution to Midwives,” in The Human Body: Papal Teachings, 162. 93 Or: “Some men nowadays are gravely disturbed by this problem [of population]; it is to be hoped that there will be Catholic experts in these matters, particularly in universities, who will diligently study the problems and pursue their researches further”; Gaudium et Spes 87. “Experts in other sciences, particularly biology, medicine, social science and psychology, can be of service to the welfare of marriage and the family and the peace of mind of people, if by pooling their findings they try to clarify thoroughly the different conditions favoring the proper regulation of births”; ibid., no. 52. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 361–81 361 The Kraków Document J ANET E. S MITH Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI / A, Archbishop of Kraków, was a member of the KAROL WOJTYL Special Commission that advised Pope Paul VI on birth regulation.1 Denied permission to leave Poland by the Communist government of Poland, he was not able to attend the meetings in Rome, but he did receive copies of the reports issued by the commission.2 In 1966 he convened a group of priests—four moral theologians and one physician—to write a critique of those reports.3 The critique was published as “Les Fondements de la doctrine de l’église concernant les principes de la 1 The story of the Special Commission has been told several times. See, for exam- ple, Robert Blair Kaiser, The Encyclical That Never Was: The Story of the Pontifical Commission of Population, Family, and Birth, 1964–66 (London: Sheed and Ward, 1987); Robert Crowley, Turning Point (New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1955); see Mark Graham’s chapter, “Intellectual Conversion: The Pontifical Commission on Population, Family and Birth,” in his book Josef Fuchs on Natural Law (Washington, DC; Georgetown University Press, 2002), 83–95. I analyzed the reports in “The Beginnings of the Debate,” in Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 1–35. Of interest as well is the chapter “John Ford and Josef Fuchs,” by Eric Marcelo O. Genilo, S.J., in his book John Cuthbert Ford, S.J. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), 139–56. 2 George Weigel, Witness to Hope (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999), 210. Weigel reports that in private conversations with Pope John Paul II, he learned that the Communist government had denied him a passport to go to Rome to attend the final meeting of the commission (see footnote 71 to chap. 6, p. 883). 3 These documents have never been officially released by the Vatican. Someone with access to the documents released them to the Tablet in London and the National Catholic Reporter in the United States. They have since been published in several places. I will be using the texts as published in The Birth Control Debate, ed. Robert G. Hoyt (Kansas City, MO: National Catholic Reporter, 1968). They have also 362 Janet E. Smith vie conjugale” (“The Foundations of the Doctrine of the Church Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life)” (hereafter, shortened to “the Kraków Document” or “the KD”).4 A footnote to the document tells us that Karol Wojtyl/a himself directed the research of the group, took an active part in the discussion, and contributed numerous ideas. The document includes many of the concepts characteristic of Karol Wojtyla’s thinking (especially those developed in Love and Responsibility),5 but it is not written in his style; indeed, the document informs us that it was prepared by Father Adam Kubiś. This document is of some interest because it is another chapter in the history of John Paul II’s dedication to defending the Church’s teaching on contraception and because it is reasonable to suppose that the Kraków Document was highly influential on Pope Paul VI in his writing of Humanae Vitae (hereafter, usually HV ). It tells us something about the thinking of both pontiffs and illustrates some developments in how the Church presents its teaching on contraception. The KD is a well-organized consideration of the question of contraception. It acknowledges that a better philosophical defense of the Church’s teaching can be made and it expresses its intent to provide that (I.A.4). The KD, like Wojtyl/a’s considerations of the issue, fully embraces a natural law justification of the Church’s teaching on contraception but also provides a deeper theological justification both for natural law and for the teaching on contraception. Most importantly, it incorporates personalist concepts and language into its considerations. Let me note here that it would be false to claim that the KD eschews traditional natural law arguments in favor of personalist arguments. Rather, it presents its discussion of the dignity of the human person, of the nature of conjugal love, and of responsible/conscious parenthood as part of a natural law argument against contraception, not a new kind or category of argument. Still, the use of personalist concepts and language is prominent and brings into sharp focus how the dignity of the person is violated by contraception. In his biography of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel provides some fascinating background material on the KD.6 The Polish theologians been placed online at www.twotlj.org/BCCommission.html by Germain Grisez, who worked closely as an aide to Fr. John Ford, S.J., a member of the commission. 4 “Les Fondements de la doctrine de l’église concernant les principes de la vie conjugale,” Analecta Cracoviensia (1969): 194–230 (Un mémoire rédigé par un groupe de theologiens-marilistes de Cracovia). Hereafter, usually “the KD.” Thérèse Scarpelli Cory’s English translation of this document immediately precedes the present essay, at Nova et Vetera 10, no. 2 (2012): 321–59. 5 Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,1981; originally published in Polish, 1960), 228. 6 Weigel, Witness to Hope, 206–10. The Kraków Document 363 convoked by Karol Wojtyl/a had seen two drafts of possible encyclicals, one they described as reflecting a “stupid conservatism” and another that departed from traditional morality.7 Weigel maintains that HV “did not adopt in full the rich personalist context suggested by the Kraków commission.” Rather, HV “put a sharp focus on sexual acts” and thus became vulnerable to the charges of “legalism, ‘biologism,’ and pastoral insensitivity, and left the Church vulnerable to the accusation that it had still not freed itself of the shadow of Manichaeism and its deprecation of sexuality.”8 In the final analysis, Weigel judges the KD to be superior in several respects to HV: “Had the Kraków commission’s memorandum shaped the argumentation of HV more decisively, a more intelligent and sensitive debate might have ensued.”9 It is certainly true that many concepts present in the KD are either absent from or less present in HV: among these are the stress on human dignity as the foundation of natural law; the role of original sin in our response to the Church’s teaching on contraception; male/female differences in respect to sexuality; contraception as especially violative of women; the view that contraception is incompatible with man being made in the image of the Trinity and also with Ephesians 5; the argument that contraception fosters selfishness and hedonism; and the view that sexual intercourse is a sign or a means of communication. The KD also makes regular use of “rights” language, terminology virtually absent from HV. (For my part, I am rather pleased that HV eschewed “rights” language.)10 In part, some of the differences between the two documents (nearly identical in length) may be explained by the fact that the Kraków Document, because it was not intended for a popular audience, had the 7 Ibid., 208. Germain Grisez has written a report of Fr. John Ford’s involvement in the special commission (available online at www.twotlj.org/Ford.html). He makes reference there to the “Schema Quoddam Declarationis Pontificiae circa Anticonceptionem” which might have been the document to which Badecki referred (available at: www.twotlj.org/F-G-Schema.pdf). It does not, however, seem to me to merit the description of “stupid conservatism.” 8 Weigel, Witness to Hope. I agree almost entirely with Weigel’s assessment of the differences between the two documents, although I don’t think there is merit in the charge that HV has shades of Manichaeism or that it in any way deprecates sexuality. 9 Ibid., 210. 10 See my “The Moral Vision of the Catechism,” in Evangelizing for the Third Millennium: The Maynooth Conference on the New Catechism, May 1996, ed. Maurice Hogan, S.S.C., and Thomas J. Norris (Dublin: Veritatis Publications, 1997), 96–114. 364 Janet E. Smith luxury of being more philosophical in its argumentation. Humanae Vitae, on the other hand, clearly strove to be more pastoral.11 While I agree that HV might have been stronger had it incorporated more elements from the KD,12 I hope to show that some of the ways that HV utilizes personalist concepts have not yet been fully acknowledged. Elsewhere I have explained many of the differences between a more narrowly circumscribed natural law approach to moral issues and one supplemented by personalism.13 The portion of natural law that has dominated in the past has been focused on the nature of acts, with a heavy emphasis on their purpose. Natural law condemnations of contraception generally focus on the fact that contraception violates the procreative purpose of the sexual act. Personalism draws out of natural law theory a focus on the dignity of the agent as one who has an obligation to act in accord with the truth; it frequently speaks of the need of the agent to be conscious of the truth about his acts and how his choices form his character. Personalist arguments against contraception include the fact that contraception violates the procreative purpose of the sexual act, but they focus on the fact that in violating the procreative purpose the spouses fail to engage in an act of total self-giving, which is an additional purpose of the sexual act. Certainly HV reflects the personalist approach in its novel presentation of contraception as violating the inseparable procreative and unitive “meanings” of the sexual act. Indeed, the use of the word “meaning” rather than “purpose” indicates a personalist cast to the argument. But the strongest presence of a personalist element to the argument against contraception in HV can be found in its 11 Word counts serve to indicate to some extent the thrust of each of the docu- ments: KD uses “right” about 40 times, whereas HV uses it only once: KD uses forms of “nature” nearly 80 times, whereas HV uses it nearly 50 times; KD uses “dignity” 27 times, whereas HV uses it 5 times; KD speaks 6 times of making a gift of one’s sexuality, whereas HV, quoting GS 51, speaks once of mutual selfgift; KD uses forms of “conscious” 17 times, matched by 15 times in HV. 12 Weigel reports that Father Bardecki thought 60 percent of HV reflected the discussion of the KD. Weigel contests that figure (Witness to Hope, 209). I suspect it may be close to right, though the reverse is not true; that is, HV does not use 60 per cent of the KD. 13 Janet E. Smith, “Natural Law and Personalism in Veritatis Splendor,” in John Paul II and Moral Theology: Readings in Moral Theology: No 10, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998), 67–84. Rpt. of chapter 13 in Veritatis Splendor: American Responses, ed. Michael E. Allsopp and John J. O’Keefe (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 194–207. See also my “The Universality of Natural Law and the Irreducibility of Personalism,” forthcoming in the proceedings of the National Catholic Bioethics Center 2011 Conference on Bioethics. The Kraków Document 365 extended discussion of “conscious parenthood,” which suggests a determined adoption of the concepts of Karol Wojtyl/a.14 In addition, its uniquely marvelous use of the concept “munus,” that is, the concept that spouses have a “mission” from God to create families, places the Church’s teaching in a very personalist context and one that embeds it securely in the thought of Vatican II.15 Here, as I analyze the themes of the KD as a possible source of concepts for HV, I will discuss briefly these personalist elements of HV, especially in reference to its relation to the KD. I will also occasionally analyze the KD as a response to the documents of the Special Commission and note the influence of Love and Responsibility on the KD and HV. Structure The structure of HV follows that of the KD rather closely, an order dictated by the demands of the subject and by concerns raised by the Special Commission. Both HV and the KD begin with a question of competence of the Church in respect to natural law; they then take up in the same order the questions of the dignity of the human person, the meaning of conjugal love, the topic of responsible or conscious parenthood, the justification for the Church’s teaching, the legitimacy of using natural means to space children; they turn finally to some pastoral concerns. Within this structure, however, the two documents vary both in how the topics are covered and in the subordinate topics covered. As mentioned, the KD covers many topics left untouched by HV; it is conversely true that HV introduces a few concepts not covered in the KD. Perhaps something of the mind of Paul VI can be discerned by noting which topics he declined to take up in HV, which he adopted, and also which topics he added. Infallibility The KD begins by addressing in a fairly full way the questions of the Church’s right to pronounce on a matter of morality based on natural law; of whether or not the teaching is infallible; and of whether or not the teaching can change—all major concerns in the documents from the Special Commission. The KD, while arguing that the Church’s teaching on contraception is “immutable and obligatory for all,” and constitutes a “doctrinal norm binding on the moral theologian” and that “[f ]rom a theological point of view, this teaching is objectively certain on account 14 Smith, “Conscious Parenthood,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 927–50. 15 Smith, “The Munus of Transmitting Human Life: A New Approach to Humanae Vitae,” The Thomist 54, no. 3 ( July 1990): 385–427. 366 Janet E. Smith of the authority of the teaching Church” (I.B), also takes the existence of the Special Commission as indication that the teaching has not been proclaimed infallibly. It notes: “A future doctrinal declaration on the part of Paul VI, promulgated to the whole Church and bearing an obligatory character, would be of incomparable importance in this respect” (I.B.6). For pastoral reasons, HV begins with a discussion of the conditions of the modern world that makes consideration of the topic of contraception particularly timely and difficult (in my view, this portion of HV is well done). Next, sections 4 to 6 of HV address the competence of the Church to teach on a matter known through natural law. HV does not directly address the question of infallibility (considered a very important and necessary consideration by the KD) or possibility of change, although later in the document it makes it clear that it considers this teaching an immutable teaching of the natural law (HV 18), and a matter of divine law rather than human law (HV 20). Paul VI clearly did not want to take up directly the question of infallibility or the possibility of change. In fact, HV never uses either word. Proportionalism HV does not repeat the warning of the KD against “relativism and situation ethics” (I.B.6). But HV does indirectly address the moral theory of proportionalism that was used to justify contraception. Proportionalists argued that it was permissible to render particular acts of sexual intercourse infertile if the whole of one’s marriage was ordained to fertility. The report from the Special Commission known as the Documentum explicitly makes this argument: “Infertile conjugal acts constitute a totality with fertile acts and have a single moral specification.”16 HV twice references the “principle of totality,” once to raise it (HV 3) and another time to assert that the proper understanding of the principle as articulated by Pius XII would not permit the use of contraception (HV 17). The Human Person, His Dignity, and His Development The documents of the Special Commission, the KD, and HV all use a key passage from Gaudium et Spes 51: When there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure do not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature 16 Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 72. The Kraków Document 367 of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual selfgiving and human procreation in the context of true love.17 The documents of the Special Commission, the KD, and HV all strive to delineate the “objective standards based on the nature of the human person and his acts” called for by this passage from Gaudium et Spes (hereafter GS ). It is not unlikely that Wojtyl/a, a member of the committee that drafted GS, was the author of this passage.18 Moreover, given Karol Wojtyl/a’s commitment to the dignity of the human person as a starting point for ethical analysis, it is no surprise that the section of the KD entitled “Justification of the Church’s Condemnation of Contraception” begins with the claim “The human person, his value, and the laws of his development provide the foundation for the principles of morality”19 (I.1.a). There then follows a fairly lengthy statement about the nature of the human person that takes up some characteristic Wojtyl/ean themes, such as man as a “subject and substratum of experience” (I.1.a) and man as a “substantial subject of conscious and free actions” (I.1.a). The KD stresses four truths about the human person: (1) that man is a creature of God made in the image of God whose dignity resides in consciously and freely living in accord with truth. Man has the ability to recognize the limits put on his dominion over all things and to realize that the power to transmit life is a gift from God (II.1.a). This claim is especially important in countering the claim of the pro-contraceptive documents of the Special Commission that maintained that man was given dominion over nature and can shape it as he wills;20 (2) that the ability to transmit life is a great gift and that in contracepting man violates an intrinsically valuable part of his nature (II.1.a and b); (3) that contraception will enable man to treat others as objects (II.1.c) and (4) that for man to develop in perfection, he must master his instincts (II.1.d). These themes are also present in HV but not in the same prominent, philosophical and systematic way. HV, in its section “Doctrinal Principles,” begins with the discussion “Total Vision of the Human Person” (a 17 The translation here is that found on the Vatican website: www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html 18 Weigel, Witness to Hope, 166–69. Weigel tells us that Wojtyl/a wrote The Acting Person to provide a philosophical defense of the concepts in Gaudium et Spes, 158 and 172–73. 19 When providing citations for passages from the KD, I will refer to the section numbers found in the original text and replicated in the translation offered in this journal. 20 See Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 68, 69, 70, and 87. Janet E. Smith 368 phrase it may have taken from the KD, which refers to the “totality of the human person” [p. 6]) as it establishes the nature of marriage. By not beginning with a discussion of natural law, or with a reference to the “laws of nature,” and by focusing on the person, Humanae Vitae, in my view, precludes any objection that its argument is fundamentally physicalistic. Nonetheless, it does not give the systematic descriptive analysis of the person found in the Kraków Document. In building his case against contraception, Paul VI did not base his argument so much on the dignity of the person as on the nature of marriage (secc. 8 and 11). Whereas the KD references human dignity twenty-seven times, HV does so only five times. Perhaps Paul VI is not to be blamed for avoiding the more technical philosophical terminology found in the KD, but it is curious and regrettable, I think, that the section of HV that deals with the human person does not place the same emphasis on man’s dignity and his obligation to live in accord with the truth. The different ways in which the KD and HV make use of anthropology as a basis for the arguments constitutes perhaps the biggest different between the documents. Yet, as mentioned and as we shall see below, in its treatment of “conscious parenthood,” HV inserts a pronounced personalist strain into its argument and, in fact, quite clearly draws upon the discussion in the KD on this issue—which, in turn, draws a great deal upon Love and Responsibility. Conjugal Love and the Good of the Family The concept of conjugal love, especially conjugal love as mutual “selfgift,” a concept tightly connected with “mutual perfection” or “mutual sanctification,”21 features in all the documents we are discussing.22 Both the reports of the Special Commission and the KD claim that the Church has developed its understanding of the concept over the centuries and has come to a deeper realization of its profound importance.The pro-contraceptive reports of the Special Commission spoke of a possible conflict between the demands of conjugal love and the procreative good.23 Both the KD and HV, on the other hand, find that contraception violates not only the procreative meaning of the sexual act but also the values of conjugal love. Let me note, again, that in both documents the nature of conjugal love (and responsible/conscious parenthood) is part of the natural law that contraception violates. 21 See Gaudium et Spes, 48 and 52; Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 82, 83; HV 9, 25, 30. 22 See Gaudium et Spes, 48, 49, 51; Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 83; HV 9. 23 See Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 74 and 86. The Kraków Document 369 The Kraków Document draws upon many of the concepts developed in Love and Responsibility to explain how contraception violates conjugal love.We find the KD, as did Love and Responsibility, characterizing contraception as “use” of another person in this passage: . . . conjugal love cannot be manifested by an act that is voluntarily deprived of fertility, because active intervention in the sexual act or in the organic functions of the human person contrary to their purpose, solely for the sake of pleasure or sensual love, is equivalent to using one’s partner for one’s own ends. Such use is opposed to the dignity of the person . . . (II.2) Rather than using each other, spouses should make a gift of themselves to each other. Gaudium et Spes makes that point strongly; in its brief discussion of marriage it speaks several times of the importance of mutual self-gift. For instance, it says: “A love like that, bringing together the human and the divine, leads the partners to a free and mutual giving of self, experienced in tenderness and action, and permeates their whole lives; besides, this love is actually developed and increased by the exercise of it” (49; cf. 48). The KD follows GS in emphasizing marriage and the sexual act as means of giving one’s self; it uses forms of the word “gift” nine times. Significantly, its discussion of self-gift takes place not in the section Conjugal Love, but in the section Conscious Parenthood. In doing so, it advances on GS in linking self-gift with what it calls the “parental character” or “attitude”: • Sexual life must always signify and express, in full truth, the spouses’ mutual gift of self and a love that is attentive to the good of the person. • Every sexual act must express the “parental ” character of conjugal love and of married life . . . (III.2.b) (My emphases.) It uses these terms in condemning contraception: “Contracepted relations cannot constitute the expression of the parental attitude, since they are not an unrestricted gift of self, a total communion with the other, regardless of whether this fact is veiled by various illusions” (III.2.b) (my emphases). HV 8 also echoes GS on “self-gift: “Therefore, through mutual self-giving, which is unique and exclusive to them, spouses seek a communion of persons. Through this communion, the spouses perfect each other so that they might share with God the task of procreating and educating new living beings” but does little else with the concept (my emphases). While both the KD and HV focus a great deal on conjugal love, we can perhaps see some differences between them by comparing two 370 Janet E. Smith passages. The KD claims that “conjugal love can be manifested not only in the fertile act but also just as much in a normally completed but naturally infertile act. It can also be manifested in abstinence from the conjugal act, when prudence counsels to abstain from procreation. On the other hand, conjugal love cannot be manifested by an act that is voluntarily deprived of fertility. . . ” (I.2). Compare this statement to a statement in HV which seems meant to serve the same purpose: “The marital acts by which spouses intimately and chastely unite, and by which human life is transmitted, are, as the recent council reiterated, ‘good and worthy of human dignity.’ Marital acts do not cease being legitimate if the spouses are aware that they are infertile for reasons not voluntarily caused by them; these acts remain ordained [destinatio] to expressing and strengthening the union of the spouses.”24 Whereas the KD speaks of conjugal acts performed during the infertile phases as manifesting love, HV speaks of those acts being “legitimate” and “expressing and strengthening union.” Again, the KD draws more upon the language of personalism than does HV. The KD introduces a theological note by making reference to the love of persons participating in the divine life of the Trinity (II.2). It argues that contraceptive sex cannot image the love of Christ for his Church or the members of the Trinity for each other. This is a profound argument that has been underutilized in defenses of the Church’s condemnation of contraception. HV makes no reference to the Trinity, but does speak of human parenthood having its origin in Divine Fatherhood (HV 8). The section of HV 9 entitled Conjugal Love outlines four characteristics of conjugal love: that section of the document has proven to be very effective in educating people about the meaning of marriage and the incompatibility of marriage and does not have a precise parallel in the KD. This section, along with the sections on “Conscious Parenthood” (I0), “Respect for the Nature and the Finality of the Marital Act” (11), and “Two Inseparable Aspects: Union and Procreation” (12) provide the objective criteria for judging the morality of ways of regulating birth. Here again, we can see that HV stresses the nature of marriage and family as the foundation, whereas the KD stresses the person as the foundation of its moral analysis. 24 Throughout I will be using my translation of HV: Humanae Vitae: A Challenge to Love (New Hope, KY: New Hope Publications; revised from a translation published in Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later ).The most important revision was the more accurate translation of “conscia paternitas” not as “responsible parenthood” but “conscious parenthood.” The Kraków Document 371 The Equality of Man and Woman in Marriage A discussion on the equality of men and women in marriage follows the section on conjugal love in the KD (II.3). It speaks, for instance, of their equal right to the full development of their vocations and speaks of their vocations as “transcending” their sexuality. Again, the influence of Love and Responsibility on this section is clear; the sexes are seen to have different sexual responses, responses that they need to put in service of a common good; the good of their union and the good of raising children together.25 Some of the terms distinctive of Love and Responsibility are prominent, such as the term “reciprocity.”26 Here, the KD speaks of the greater burden that child bearing is for women (II.3.d) and repeatedly states that contraception is a particular offense against women and that men have a special responsibility to control their lust so that they do not exploit women (III.3.a and IV 2.a.2). It even speaks of contraception leading not only to inequality for women, but even to slavery (II.3.e). HV does not speak of sexual differences; it makes no mention of ontological differences, differences in sexual responses, or differences in responsibilities. It speaks of the damage that contraception does to women (17) but certainly not in the extended way that the KD does. The Consequences of Original Sin HV speaks of the need to master one’s passions (10); of the harm done when the passions are not controlled (17) and the good that follows from self-mastery (21); but oddly it never uses the words “original sin,” “concupiscence,” “sin,” “lust,” “hedonism,” or any of their equivalents. The KD, on the other hand, acknowledges man’s propensity to sin (II.1.d; III.3.c) and provides a considerable catechesis on the doctrine of original sin and on man as being at a “tragic point” in his inclination to do evil (II.4). It notes that this inclination is strongest in the domain of the sexual instinct (II.4). It chastises those who support contraception, as having an unduly optimistic view of human nature (II.4). Throughout, the KD speaks of selfishness, egoism, and the pursuit of sensual pleasure being behind the use of contraception and flowing from contraception (II.2). Again, those words are never used in HV. One wonders if Paul VI thought such terms would present too negative a view of man. A passage in the KD about the ability of the self-mastery of the parents to contribute to the peace of the household and to the maturation of the spouses and children (II.2) was clearly influential on passage section 21 of HV. 25 See for instance, Love and Responsibility, 28–29 and 224ff. 26 See Love and Responsibility, 84ff., and the Kraków Document, II.3.b. Janet E. Smith 372 Responsible/Conscious Parenthood One of the documents to which the KD responds is the Schema Documenti de Responsabili Paternitate (Outline for a Document on Responsible Parenthood).27 The Schema seems to have been the chief element of the final report of the Special Commission. As the title indicates, the document focuses on “responsible parenthood” to make its case that the Church should find contraception to be morally permissible. In itself that is somewhat surprising; one might have expected the focus to be on “conjugal love” as the factor that might justify contraception. At this point I don’t know whether to attribute the focus on responsible/conscious parenthood in the KD and in HV to its importance in Love and Responsibility or to its predominance in the Schema. As mentioned, all three documents—the Schema, the KD, and HV— very much make GS the foundational document for their analysis of responsible/conscious parenthood and its implications for the morality of contraception, but to different purposes. The Schema argues that there is room for advocacy of contraception within the concept of responsible parenthood as articulated by GS; the KD and HV use the principle of conscious parenthood to argue against contraception. The first line of the Schema claims that the concept of responsible parenthood is somewhat underdeveloped in GS.28 Indeed, responsible parenthood is not a term that appears in GS, though it does use forms of the word “responsibly” three times (GS, 50 twice and 51) in reference to fulfilling the duties of parenthood, and in 51 it speaks of a need “to harmonize conjugal love with responsible transmission of life.” The Schema finds implicit reference to responsible parenthood in GS in its reference to “prudent and generous regulation of conception.”29 The Schema uses the concept of responsible parenthood in shaping its arguments for the moral permissibility of contraception in two ways: (1) it maintains that the responsibilities that couples may have to themselves and to children they already have and to the world at large may require them to limit their family size.30 (2) It also maintains that God has given man dominion over nature and it is man’s responsibility to shape nature to his needs: 27 The arguments given in the Documentum Syntheticum are very similar; it suffices for our purposes to analyze those given in the Schema. 28 Hoyt, The Birth Control Debate, 79. 29 Ibid., 90. 30 Ibid., 85 The Kraków Document 373 It is proper to man, created to the image of God, to use what is given in physical nature in a way that he may develop it to its full significance with a view to the good of the whole person.31 In the end, it is the relationship of man to nature and God to nature that is the chief point of dispute between the Schema and the KD and HV. In short, the Schema insists that man can shape nature to his purposes, whereas the KD and HV (cf. 11 and 12) claim that there are limits to man’s dominion over nature and that the laws of sexuality are one of those limits. The following passage from the KD draws upon GS to respond to the argument of the Schema: 32 Man can read in the world the order of nature and its finality with respect to himself and his good. Set amidst this order of things, man can recognize the normative force based on this order. Moreover, the world is ordered to the man, because he is, in the words of Gaudium et Spes, “set by [God] over all earthly creatures that he might rule them, and make use of them, while glorifying God.”33 With his intelligence and in full responsibility, he must collaborate in the creative and salvific plan of God. This consists, among other things, in recognizing and guarding the limits of his dominion over the world, limits that are fixed by the very nature of the faculties that he has received from the hands of his Creator. (II.1) The KD is emphatic and explicit that the nature that is spoken of here is not simply biological processes but is a human nature that has been given the gift of being able to transmit human life: “The power of transmitting life is a Divine gift, and it forms part of the totality of the human person. It is precisely in terms of this nature, taken as a whole, that man must reckon with this power and its specific structure” (II.1.b). HV makes a very strong statement on God’s dominion over nature and the necessity that man respect that dominion (HV 13). Dominant themes of the KD are the understanding of the power of transmitting human life as a divine gift and also the understanding that that gift that informs the meaning of the sexual act. These themes meld into the understanding of responsible/conscious parenthood. A passage early on expresses concepts key to the KD and to HV: It is necessary, therefore, to begin with the ontological concept of the person, understood as substantial subject of conscious and free actions. In order to answer the question ‘what is man?’ the Constitution Gaudium et 31 Ibid., 87. 32 Cf. Status, I.B.2 (pp. 165–66) 33 Gaudium et Spes, 12. 374 Janet E. Smith Spes [12] refers to the book of Genesis (1:26), where it is said that man is created in the image of God. This is why the ontological definition of the person must take into consideration his relation to God and to the world. Man is not an absolute nor a supreme value, but he is a creature of God. Thus, his relation to God includes not only a creaturely dependence on God, but also the human faculty of consciously recognizing this dependence and of collaborating responsibly with God. This structure of the person also includes his relation to the world. Man belongs to the world, but he is distinguished from other creatures by the ability to follow with full consciousness the truth and goodness that he knows—the ability to have a moral life. (KD I.1.a, my emphasis) The KD links man’s consciousness, his creatureliness, and his moral life. Several terms here echo the important concept of “conscious parenthood” that Karol Wojtyl/a developed in Love and Responsibility, a concept that embraces the usual understanding of “responsible parenthood” but is significantly broader and deeper.34 As we have seen, the phrase “responsible parenthood” in the Schema refers to the concept that spouses should choose to have the number of children that would benefit themselves, the children themselves, and the culture at large. The phrase is also used with the meaning that spouses need to limit their family size. That meaning appears in the KD (especially at the very beginning of the section on responsible parenthood) and in HV. The KD is more insistent about the need for spouses to plan their family size than is any Church document. In the KD, the first paragraph of the section “Responsible Parenthood” states: The couple fulfills their duty of transmitting life and raising children in the context of the concrete conditions of their state of life. In desiring to carry out this duty effectively and in accordance with the Divine plan, the spouses must weigh all circumstances and consider all the requirements imposed by these circumstances, with prudence and conscious of their responsibility. This is why the number of children called into existence cannot be left to chance. On the contrary, because of all the human values which are involved here, the number of children must be decided by the spouses in full consciousness. They therefore undertake this work as persons, and the decision itself must be an act of human responsibility. (III.1) The KD then provides a substantial list of considerations that spouses must use to guide them in determining family size (III.2). HV also notes that spouses may need to limit their family size because of “physical, 34 Smith, “Conscious Parenthood,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 927–50. The Kraków Document 375 economic, psychological and social conditions” (HV 10), and it states: “The mission [munus] of conscious parenthood requires that spouses recognize their duties [officia] towards God, towards themselves, towards the family, and towards human society, as they maintain a correct set of priorities” (HV 11). In their use of the concept of responsible or conscious parenthood to argue against the use of contraception, the KD and HV follow the meaning of “conscious parenthood” developed by Karol Wojtyl/a in Love and Responsibility. It is an attitude that involves conscious awareness of the meaning and purpose of sexuality. The person who is aware of the meaning and purpose of sexuality knows that sexual intercourse by its very nature leads to new life, a life that has infinite value; a life that God willed into existence; a life that deserves parents committed to each other. The responsible person is conscious that he or she could become a mother or father with the person with whom he or she has sex and that this is an immense responsibility that requires persons of virtue.To choose a person to be the future parent of one’s children is an act of enormous affirmation. All of these meanings and purposes are what someone knows who possesses the attitude of “conscious parenthood.” Although the KD does not use the precise words “conscia paternitas,” it uses forms of the word “conscious” repeatedly through its extensive section on responsible parenthood. It also speaks three times of the “parental attitude” (III.3.b) and speaks of contraception as incompatible with the parental attitude: In light of these principles, all contraceptive procedures displaying antiparental behavior must be excluded from sexual activity. Contracepted relations cannot constitute the expression of the parental attitude, since they are not an unrestricted gift of self, a total communion with the other, regardless of whether this fact is veiled by various illusions. These requirements demand from us a great ascetic effort, selfmastery, and full consciousness of our actions. (III.3.b) The above passage strongly reflects the theme of conscious parenthood from Love and Responsibility: sexual ethics requires the consciousness that one might become a parent with another person and that one needs to be prepared for that eventuality. In the section on responsible parenthood, the KD makes a great advance on many of the traditional arguments against contraception. It very much adopts the personalist stance of Karol Wojtyl/a, which links the procreative and unitive meanings. First we need to note that it is more proper to speak of human “reproduction” as “procreation.” Procreation 376 Janet E. Smith involves bringing into existence a new person with another person. The parent of the new person needs to be treated as a person, needs to be loved and cared for, as does the new person conceived. Since parenting is a lifetime task, being willing to be a parent with another is an expression of a willingness to be a lifetime partner of another; it is clearly an act of profound affirmation. It is truly an expression of intention of complete self-giving, of profound union.Those who exercise conscious parenthood have made a personal appropriation of the suitability of these truths to conjugal love; they have made these truths their own. (This appropriation of truth as one’s own comes to be known as “participated theonomy” in Veritatis Splendor 24.) As stated, HV also makes the theme of conscious parenthood (it repeatedly uses those words) central to its argument, and indeed John Paul II thought it was a key concept of the document.35 In fact, the very first sentence of HV conveys some concepts key to the concept of conscious parenthood: God has entrusted spouses with the extremely important mission [ gravissimum munus] of transmitting human life. In fulfilling this mission spouses freely and consciously [consciam] render a service [opera] to God, the Creator . . . Those who respect the procreative meaning of the sexual act are not just respecting the laws of nature; they are performing their munus and “rendering a service to God,” the author of nature. HV 8 explicitly recognizes that it is challenging the use of the concept “conscious parenthood” to justify contraception: Many who attempt to defend artificial ways of limiting the number of children give as their reason the demands of marital love or their duty to conscious parenthood [paternitatis sui officii consciae]. [Therefore] it is necessary to provide a precise definition and explanation of these two important elements of married life. The title of section 10 of HV (often translated as “responsible parenthood”) is devoted to “conscia paternitas” or conscious parenthood. The opening paragraph of that section begins: 35 Karol Cardinal Wojtyl/a, “ The Truth of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae,” L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 16 January 1969, 6; online: www.ewtn.com/ library/Theology/WOJTLAHV.HTM The Kraków Document 377 Marital love requires that spouses be fully aware of their mission [munus] of conscious parenthood [paternitatem consciam]. Today’s society justly calls for conscious parenthood; thus it is important that it be rightly understood. Consequently, we must consider the various legitimate and interconnected dimensions of parenthood. As in the KD, the dimensions of conscious parenthood are not limited to the correct number of children for a couple to have (although that is certainly a core element of conscious parenthood). As in the KD, in HV conscious parenthood includes understanding the biological processes connected with sex; it involves understanding the passions involved with sexuality and the importance of controlling them; it involves being cognizant of the objective order established by God in his plan for marriage and of the social and personal circumstances in which one finds one’s self. Another concept appears in KD and HV that reflects an additional element of the notion of conscious parenthood: the notion that in having children parents are performing a service for God; they are collaborators or even co-creators with God. This concept is conveyed in several ways, but particularly through the use of the word “munus” throughout HV. I have written about this concept at length elsewhere.36 It is a word that is used frequently in the documents of Vatican II to identify what particular task, role, or service some designated group or individual is meant to perform or provide (the pope and Mary have their own munus, as do bishops, priests, the laity, etc.). It is an elevated term that refers to some important task that God has entrusted to someone. Again, the first lines of HV read: “God has entrusted spouses with the extremely important mission [ gravissimum munus] of transmitting human life. In fulfilling this mission spouses freely and consciously [consciam] render a service [opera] to God, the Creator.” Conscious parenthood, itself, is repeatedly spoken of as a munus. In HV even biological processes are said to have “munera”: “If we consider biological processes first, conscious parenthood [paternitas conscia] means that one knows and honors the responsibilities [munerum] involved in these processes. Human reason has discovered that there are biological laws in the power of procreating life that pertain to the human person” (HV 17). This peculiar use of the word munus, suggests that biological processes are not just biological processes but part of the munus that God has given to man. This is a concept unique to HV; that is, it does not appear in the KD. It is, however, a concept that John Paul II used to good 36 Smith, “Conscious Parenthood,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 927–50. 378 Janet E. Smith purpose in Familiaris Consortio (see especially part 3), whose subtitle is De Familiae Christianae Muneribus In Mundo Huius Temporis or “Concerning the tasks/gifts/roles of the family in the modern world.” Sexuality as a Sign Sexuality as a sign is not a subsection of the KD but perhaps it should have been. Here is where we find some especially ground-breaking concepts.37 Consider this remarkable passage: Indeed, the sexual life of man belongs to the order of signs by which one subject expresses something to another, manifesting the realm of the spirit that cannot be directly grasped. Sexuality attracts individuals to each other. This is why its manifestations are a very appropriate means of expressing that which unites human beings, namely, a recognition that the other possesses a value by which one is drawn towards common union for the sake of the ends proper to human persons. It is in this that love consists. The sexual life, in its expressions, is therefore a very appropriate way of showing one’s love. (III.3.b; see also IV.2.f ) This talk of signs is a precursor to Wojtyl/a’s later concept of “language of the body” in his Theology of the Body. Here the “order of signs” refers to the unique ability of the body to express deep meaning to another, especially through the act of sexual intercourse. It has the ability to express love because of the “biological orientation” of the sexual act, which is able to signify all the personal values. The KD maintains that the sexual lives of spouses must always signify and express the whole truth of the mutual gift of self, as noted earlier, and their “parental character” (III.b.3). Another passage is anticipatory of the claim of Familiaris Consortio (11) that contraceptive sex is a lie: “Active intervention in the structure of the act results in its truncation, which does violence to its value as sign. It is marked by a disintegration of instinct and love. In such circumstances, the sexual act is impelled by auto-eroticism, and does not fully constitute the revelation of a love encompassing the entirety of affections and instincts.”38 Since language is a distinctively human action, speaking of a physical act as being able to express meaning coincides with the truth that man is a unity of body and soul. The KD uses the word “meaning” in an attention-getting way; it states: 37 Weigel especially appreciates this segment of the document (Witness to Hope, 208). 38 This translation is from the Vatican website: www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_ paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiarisconsortio_en.html The Kraków Document 379 Because procreation can and must be directed by man, and because this act has other functions besides the purely biological, it follows that man can engage in acts that do not result in fertilization, as long as the purpose and meaning of their biological structure remain intact. (III.3.b) To speak of functions, purpose, and meaning in the same breath puts biological actions on the plane of the human faculty of speech; they are no longer simply biological or physical. This section of the KD on sexuality as a sign is the most innovative. There may be an echo of this discussion in HV in its claim that the sexual act has inseparable “meanings”—the procreative and unitive meanings. It is not until the theology of the body and his use of the phrase “language of the body” that John Paul II takes full advantage of this uniting of physical actions with human speech. Responsible Parenthood: The Sketch of a Solution The KD returns to the question of responsible parenthood in order to justify and promote what are now known as methods of natural family planning (NFP). Portions of it are quite obviously written by a physician who knows the details of the methods and who provides a fairly thorough explanation of the basics of NFP and claims that it is “certain, simple, and low cost” (IV.1). It advocates the “temperature” method as being best, though today all methods have their strong advocates, from the mucus only methods, to those who think a combination of signs is best, to those who think the old method of counting of days still has some merit and usefulness. In the section Responsible Parenthood, the KD takes on the vexing task of explaining how methods of birth regulation differ from contraception, and it does so at some length. Several times earlier in the document it declared that spouses are permitted to have sexual intercourse during the infertile period and that abstinence can be a means of expressing love, in fact, in the paragraphs just preceding the section Responsible Parenthood, it states: Rational sexual behavior therefore requires, by the very nature of things, abstinence from the act whenever love demands it. This willed abstinence from the sexual act can even express a greater love than the act itself. (III.3.c) In the section Responsible Parenthood, the KD states the essential difference between periodic continence and contraception in this way: Janet E. Smith 380 [Periodic continence] is thus a matter of giving up an action whose results would be undesirable. By using contraceptives, the subject demonstrates unwillingness to give up this action; this is why he intervenes actively to obstruct the inherent consequences of the act. It seems to us that this is an essential difference. And it goes on to say: Because sexual relations on infertile days are normal and willed as such, they maintain the respect due to the hierarchy of values and the full meaning of sexual life. Thus they can fittingly express the “parental” character of conjugal life and of the love uniting the spouses. This is entirely the opposite of the conscious sterilization of the relation, which, actively deprived of its proper role, cannot be the sexual expression of the love uniting two persons. (IV.2.a.2) We note some of the personalist themes we have already identified in the KD: mention of a “hierarchy of values” and the full “meaning” of sexual life; of “expressing” a “parental attitude”; and how this is different from “conscious” sterilization. The KD also notes that periodic continence respects the dignity of the woman (IV.2.a.2). It makes another important claim in asserting that those who are not capable of the continence required by periodic continence do not have psycho-sexual maturity. And briefly the KD takes up the question of the connection between abstinence as a sign of love within marriage and abstinence as a sign of love in the celibate life. This becomes a major theme in the John Paul II’s theology of the body.39 The KD pays significant attention to the question of the legitimacy of periodic continence. HV addresses the question of the differences between periodic continence and contraception in one of its lengthier sections (HV 16). In my view it would have been better had HV spent even more time on this matter and utilized more of the material from the KD, particularly instructing that abstinence can be a sign of love. Both the KD and HV end with a section on pastoral matters and address pastors, laity, and healthcare professionals; HV makes an additional appeal to bishops. HV notes that the “munus” of each group requires them to assist couples in this matter of sexual morality (HV 25–30). Both documents require that those who defend the Church’s teaching and promote natural family planning should have recourse to the professional, scientific studies (KD IV; HV 25). 39 John Paul II, Male and Female He Created Them (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006). The Kraków Document 381 The Kraków Document is not just of historical interest, though it does have considerable historical interest. Karol Wojtyl/a, before he became Holy Father, employed all his considerable powers to defend the Church’s teaching on contraception. After he became Holy Father, he dedicated many of the resources of his pontificate to defending and further explaining Humanae Vitae.40 A close reading of the Kraków Document demonstrates that it likely had a strong influence on the content of Humanae Vitae. Moreover, the KD in its own right it is an effective defense of the Church’s teaching on contraception, one imbued deeply with personalist values. It provides an explanation of the connection between natural law arguments and personalist arguments and makes a contribution in its explanation of sexual intercourse as a sign, or means of communication, and for those reasons as well it deserves study. N&V 40 For a review of his defense of the Church’s teaching on contraception before and during his pontificate, see my “Conscious Parenthood” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 927–50. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 383–413 383 The Redemption and Divinization of Human Sexuality through the Sacrament of Marriage: A Thomistic Approach PAUL G ONDREAU Providence College Providence, RI W E CAN easily picture the scene. An engaged couple approaches a parish priest and asks to be married in the Church. If asked why they would like this, they would probably be hard pressed to say much beyond the simple fact (a mere sociological one) that one or both are Catholic and that they would like a “church wedding.” Chances are quite good they are cohabitating and contracepting and that neither attends Mass regularly, if at all.Yet chances are also quite good that the marriage preparation program they are about to undergo will do little to address their objectively grave moral situation, or, conversely, to explain how the objective good, the true flourishing, of their relationship can only be attained by living chastely. Chances are even better that said program will do little to present clearly the theological meaning and purpose of the sacrament of marriage, if only because the presenters of the program do not know this theology themselves. And so the couple proceeds to the altar with little understanding of the truly “great mystery” (  ), to quote St. Paul’s reference to marriage in Ephesians 5:32, that marks the sacrament in which they are about to partake. A most unfortunate omission, since the opportunity to explain this “great mystery,” particularly along the lines of how their human love as man and woman shall be likened unto the divine and of how they shall be offered the guarantee of a happy, successful marriage—no mean news in a world where the institution of marriage is under aggressive assault—will have been missed. 384 Paul Gondreau Yet, that is the theological reality of this sacrament. In the interests, therefore, of explicating this reality, this essay shall offer a modest reflection on the theology of the sacrament of marriage. To this end, I shall heed the repeated recommendation of the Church’s Magisterium to follow St. Thomas as teacher, as he helps us “best to shed light on the mysteries of salvation,” to quote Vatican Council II’s Decree on Priestly Formation, Optatum Totius, §16.1 Complementing my previous essays in this same journal, then, on the procreative-unitive meaning of human sexuality and on the natural law ordering of our sexuality to (heterosexual) marriage, I would like to present, here, a Thomistic-inspired appraisal of the divinization (or redemption) of our sexuality that occurs in the sacrament of marriage.2 Specifically, I shall offer a brief overview of Aquinas’s general sacramental theology, wherein we see how the fruits of Christ’s redemption, accomplished in his assumed (sexed) nature, are extended and applied across time. This overview will be followed by 1 Repeating this injunction, the 1983 Code of Canon Law stipulates that students of theology should “learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation, especially with St. Thomas as teacher” (canon 252, §3). Chrysostom Baer (“Translator’s Introduction,” in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2006], xi–xiv, at xi–xii), with the requisite documentation, shows how “[t]here is no doctor of the Church upon whom the accolades of papal approbation have been heaped more than St. Thomas Aquinas.” Such “papal approbation” would include Pope Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus (Nov. 18, 1893), Pope Pius X’s Motu Proprio Doctoris Angelici ( June 29, 1914 [AAS 6 (1914)]), Pope Benedict XV’s Letter to Fr. Hugon (May 5, 1916 [AAS 8 (1916), 174]), Pope Pius XI’s Studiorum Ducem ( June 29, 1923 [AAS 15 (1923), 314]), Pope Pius XII’s Address to Seminarians ( June 24, 1939 [AAS 31 (1939), 247]), and Pope Paul VI’s Address in the Gregorian University (March 12, 1964 [AAS 56 (1964), 365]). Additionally, it is worth noting that since the days of penning The Acting Person in the late 1960s (which was an edited form of his 1953 dissertation), Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) persistently attempted to integrate and synthesize St. Thomas’s thought with his own; see in particular his appeal to Aquinas as the model of joining faith and reason in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio, §43. For a comprehensive overview of the role of Thomas’s thought in Catholic tradition, cf. Jude P. Dougherty, “Thomism,” in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, vol. 4 (New York: Academic Press, 1998), 365–72. Cf. as well Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), xvi–xviii; and Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1998). 2 See my “The ‘Inseparable Connection’ between Procreation and Unitive Love (Humanae Vitae, §12) and Thomistic Hylemorphic Anthropology,” Nova et Vetera, Eng 6 (2008): 731–64; and “The Natural Law Ordering of Human Sexuality to (Heterosexual) Marriage: Towards a Thomistic Philosophy of the Body,” Nova et Vetera 8 (2010): 553–92. Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 385 consideration of the sacrament of marriage in light of this general theology, bearing in mind its concrete implications. (As most know, the mature Aquinas, having abandoned the project of the Summa theologiae in the midst of his treatment of the sacraments, namely, before getting to matrimony, penned no actual treatise on this sacrament.)3 Oriented toward the Person of Christ Those familiar with St. Thomas’s thought will recognize that the move from the metaphysical-natural law meaning of our sexuality to its Christocentric theological meaning follows the overall structured design (ordo disciplinae) of the Summa itself. For, it is in order to locate his moral teaching within a larger picture of saving doctrine that Aquinas orients, both conceptually and architectonically, his entire treatment of human morality (inclusive of the natural law and thus of our sexual comportment) ultimately to Christ, namely, by his completing the Summa’s moral section, the secunda pars, with this work’s Christological section, the tertia pars. One can say more: the Person of Christ is already present in the moral section of the Summa, the secunda pars, and sits at its very heart. Whenever this previous moral section employs its key terms like grace, New Law, beatitude, gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, gifts of prophecy and miracles, infused moral virtue, theological virtue, or evangelical state of life, it implies and anticipates, or begs for, the Person of Christ and his saving work.4 3 As Angela McKay (“Aquinas on the End of Marriage,” in Human Fertility: Where Faith and Science Meet, ed. Richard J. Fehring and Theresa Notare [Milwaukee,WI: Marquette University Press, 2008], 53–70, at 60) points out, Aquinas’s most developed treatments of marriage come in his Commentary on the Sentences (his first written work, and hereafter cited as In Sent.) and in his slightly later Summa contra Gentiles (hereafter cited at ScG). While McKay has in mind Thomas’s philosophical (natural law) teaching on marriage, her point holds for his treatment of the sacrament of marriage as well: for the earlier work, this treatment comes in In IV Sent., dd. 26–42 (subsequently reinserted in Summa theologiae [hereafter cited as ST ] Suppl., qq. 41–68); for the later work, this treatment is reduced to one chapter only, namely, ScG IV, ch. 78 (though the study of marriage as a natural institution is covered in ScG III, chs. 122–26). We should also note that Aquinas’s remarks on the creation of the first man and woman in ST I, q. 92, aa. 2–3, make significant appeals to the sacramental nature of marriage. 4 I have argued elsewhere for the implied presence of Christ in the secunda pars, and thus of the coherence between this part of the Summa and its tertia pars, against those who think Aquinas completes his comprehensive work of theology in the secunda pars, thereby relegating the tertia pars to the role of unnecessary appendage to the Summa; cf. my “Christ’s Place in the Overall Design of the Summa: Response to Sarah Coakley,” Providence: Studies in Western Civilization 8, 1 (2003): 70–76. Here I follow Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Person and His 386 Paul Gondreau In this respect, Aquinas shows how his theology is so thoroughly scriptural, and more particularly Pauline. For, the Christian moral life, on St. Paul’s account, has at its center of gravity not a moral theory as such, nor a set of ideas, but a person—the Person of Jesus Christ, that is, God’s incarnate Son—and our relationship with him. This Person is the “new source” of moral action that St. Paul first recognized when pondering the difference between his moral teaching and both Jewish moral teaching, which places the emphasis on justice through obedience to God’s law, and Greek moral teaching, which claims to possess natural wisdom.5 The Person of Jesus Christ changes the compass of the moral life since, in redeeming our nature, he raises this nature, our humanity, to the level of the divine. Dynamic Actions of the Person of Christ If the whole of our lives, including our sexuality, is to share in the economy of salvation, then our lives must be put squarely in relation to the Person of Christ. We obtain salvation only by attaching ourselves, inclusive of our (sexed) bodies, to the Person of Christ. This the sacraments accomplish. And for the joining of our sexuality to the Person of Christ, we have one sacrament in particular, the sacrament of marriage. To be sure, Catholic doctrine, following St. Thomas, professes that we best understand the sacraments, marriage included, if we see them as nothing other than dynamic actions of the Person of Christ himself. Aquinas was hardly alone, though, in recognizing the essential and inseparable connection between the sacraments and the Person of Christ. Work, vol. 1, trans. R. Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 150–56; and M.-V. Leroy, review of Albert Patfoort’s Thomas d’Aquin, les clés d’une théologie (Paris: FAC, 1983), Revue thomiste 84 (1984), 298–303; cf. as well Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology, xiii. Perhaps the best known proponent of what one might call the “appendage” theory of the place of the tertia pars in the Summa is Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1964), 314; here Chenu makes the contentious claim that the Summa “presents a fully developed theology before Christ appears on the scene. Redemptive Incarnation appears to have been added post factum to the whole.” As regards the key terms of the secunda pars, which imply and beg for Christ,Thomas offers treatises for all of them in this moral part of the Summa: for the Beatitudes and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, I–II, qq. 68–70; for infused (moral) virtue, I–II, q. 63; for grace and the New Law, I–II, qq. 106–14; for the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, II–II, qq. 1–45; for the gifts of prophecy and miracles, II–II, qq. 171–78; for the evangelical states of life, II–II, qq. 179–89. 5 The moralist Servais Pinckaers stresses this very point in Morality: The Catholic View, trans. Michael Sherwin (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 16. Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 387 Already in the middle of the fifth century, Pope St. Leo the Great had famously proclaimed: “What was visible in Christ has passed over into the sacraments of the Church.”6 This teaching, in fact, echoes the common patristic notion whereby the sacraments, and in particular baptism and the Eucharist, are seen to flow from the side of Christ when it was opened by the soldier’s lance while he hung upon the Cross (cf. Jn 19:34).7 Later in the High Middle Ages we see this same recognition of the Christological dimension of the sacraments exhibited in the magnificent bas-relief sculpture of Christ on the central portal of the famous Romanesque church in Vézelay, France: “There [on the portal],” explains the French Thomist scholar Jean-Pierre Torrell, “the sacraments are depicted as rays that come forth from Christ, meeting the world of men at his feet, his hands meeting us through time and space.”8 In short, the sacraments of the Church extend the humanity of Christ in time. They mark the historical continuation of the Incarnation, the prolongation of God’s embodied presence among us. Still, though it be the common teaching of the Church to see the sacraments first and last as dynamic actions of the Person of Christ, few theologians have amplified this teaching more than St. Thomas Aquinas. At the immediate outset of the treatise on the sacraments in the Summa (III, q. 60), a treatise that follows upon this work’s comprehensive treatment of the mystery of Christ (III, qq. 1–59), he makes this doctrine unequivocal: “the sacraments of the Church derive their efficacy from the Incarnate Word himself.” Qualifying this same teaching, he writes a bit later: “the sacraments of the Church derive their power from Christ’s Passion.”9 The sacraments of the Church represent the historical extension not simply of the Incarnation, then, but more precisely of Christ’s Passion, death, and resurrection. To quote another succinct line of Aquinas’s, wherein he has in mind the need for persons living after the fact to share existentially in the fruits of Christ’s death and resurrection: “Christ’s Passion is, so to speak, applied to man through the sacraments.”10 The sacraments derive their efficacy from Christ’s death and resurrection, from his divinity joined to his suffering humanity. 6 Leo the Great, Sermon 74, 2 (PL 54, 398), cited in Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 45. 7 Thomas appeals to this patristic teaching in ST III, q. 64, a. 2 ad 3. 8 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception, trans. Benedict M. Guevin (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 59. 9 ST III, q. 62, a. 5. 10 ST III, q. 61, a. 1 ad 3. Similarly in q. 64, a. 3, he asserts: “the merit and power of Christ’s Passion operates in the sacraments.” 388 Paul Gondreau If the sacraments in general give us a share in Christ’s redemption, then, the sacrament of matrimony in particular gives our marriages, or more generally our sexuality, a share in this redemption. The fruits of Christ’s death and resurrection are applied to husband and wife through the sacrament of marriage. The sacrament of matrimony allows man and woman to join themselves, in their very spousal union, not simply to the Person of Christ, but specifically to the Person of Christ on the Cross. “Instrumental” Actions of Christ Where Aquinas’s general sacramental theology especially distinguishes itself is in the way he turns to the Aristotelian notion of efficient causality, and more specifically the notions of principal causality and instrumental causality as types of efficient causes, in order to flesh out this teaching and thereby make it intelligible and appealing to human reason.11 (This provides us, Jean-Pierre Torrell promptly observes, with an example of how “the Master of Aquino . . . boldly transpose[s] a principle he gets from Aristotle to put it at the service of a reality that the Greek could never have imagined.”)12 Further, this philosophical notion of efficient causality allows St. Thomas to avoid the tendency, seen especially at the time of the Reformation, to reduce the work of our salvation to an “either/or” proposition, namely, either to God’s producing justifying grace (the grace that saves) in us or to the sacraments doing this. (“The Spirit Saves, Not the Waters of Baptism,” is how the title of a Protestant tract that I recently saw puts it.) If the latter, then one must affirm that something earthly and material produces something divine and spiritual, which on the face of it would affirm the patently absurd and idolatrous. Armed with the principal/instrumental efficient cause distinction, Aquinas succeeds in affirming that both God and the sacraments produce justifying grace in us, but in different respects: God by way of principal efficient cause (the One who is proportioned to the effect or to the production of justifying grace as such, the cause which operates by the power of its own form) and the sacraments by way of instrumental efficient cause (God’s chosen channels or mediums through which he produces sanctifying grace, and which thus play a necessary role in the production of said 11 The key texts are found in ST III, q. 62, aa. 1 and 4. For more on the philo- sophical solidity of this teaching, see Steven Long, “The Efficacy of God’s Sacramental Presence,” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 869–76. 12 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 140 (with my own slight modification of Royal’s translation). Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 389 grace). Since the principal cause and the instrumental cause operate at two different levels, each causes the action completely, not partly and partly. As St. Thomas explains in a key passage from the Summa contra Gentiles: When the same effect is attributed to a natural cause and to the divine power, it is not as though the effect were produced partly by God and partly by the natural agent: but the whole effect is produced by both, though in different ways, as the same effect is attributed wholly to the instrument, and wholly also to the principal agent.13 Without contradiction, then, we can and must affirm that justifying grace is produced both one hundred percent by God and one hundred percent by the sacraments, just as Michelangelo’s David is produced both one hundred percent by Michelangelo, as principal cause, and one hundred percent by his chisel, as instrumental cause. Indeed, as Torrell points out, it is the constant teaching of Aquinas that an instrumental cause always leaves its mark, it truly modifies the action of the principal efficient cause (as the type of chisel used by Michelangelo would have played a role in the quality and style of his carving).14 Wishing to highlight the inseparable link uniting the sacraments with the Person of Christ, Aquinas drives the notion of instrumental causality further. He observes that an instrument can be either conjoined (like the hand of the painter) or separated (like the paint brush). In the sacraments, God in the Person of the Son acts as the principal efficient cause of our justification, but through his assumed humanity (“Christ’s divinity working through his humanity,” is how St. Thomas suggestively puts it) as through a conjoined instrumental cause and through the sacraments as separated instrumental causes.15 Working not independently of Christ’s Passion, the sacraments work by way of extension of or participation in Christ’s Passion. Holding in mind, then, this grand organic “chain” of efficient (principal and instrumental) causes, Thomas explains for us how the sacraments operate as dynamic actions of the Person of Christ. Christ on the Cross is 13 ScG III, ch. 70 (translation: Saint Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles, 5 vols. [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955–57], 237). For the same idea as it pertains to the Bible’s being authored both by God and by human beings, see Charles Morerod, The Church and the Human Quest for Truth (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2008), 33–37. 14 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, 128–31, esp. 130. For texts in Aquinas (provided by Torrell), cf. ST III, q. 62, a. 1 ad 2, but also I, q. 45, a. 5; and especially ScG IV, ch. 41. 15 ST III, q. 62, a. 5; see as well q. 64, a. 3. Paul Gondreau 390 the one who is active in the sacraments through his humanity as through a conjoined instrumental cause and through the words and material signs of the sacraments as through separated instrumental causes. As instruments in the hands of our Savior, the material earthly realities of water, oil, bread, wine, words truly produce our salvation. The sacraments are dynamic actions of the Person of Christ in his Passion at the same time that they retain their own integrity, and thus nobility, of being veritable instruments of Christ; they are not mere occasions of Christ’s dynamic justifying activity, they do not simply point to or accompany Christ’s saving actions, but are true causes of Christ’s sanctifying activity (“not only as signs, but also as causes,” is how Aquinas puts it).16 The Source of the Redemption of Human Sexuality: The Sexuality of Christ That the sacraments derive their power from Christ’s death and resurrection, that they apply the fruits of Christ’s Passion to us, has direct bearing on our sexuality. For, the body that hung upon the Cross and which rose from the dead was (is) a sexed body, that is, a male body. Sex marks an essential property of the human nature wedded to the Godhead in the Incarnation. This incarnational reality, as a consequence, raises our own sexuality to a culminating share in the economy of salvation. Unparalleled in his esteem for the full humanity of Christ and for the objective goodness of God’s entire created order, St. Thomas is unambiguous on this point at the very outset of his writing career: Christ came to restore [or redeem] human nature by his very assumption; and for this reason it was necessary that he assume everything following upon human nature, namely, all the properties and parts of human nature, among which is sex; and therefore it was proper for him to assume a particular sex. . . . He assumed a sex not in order to use it but for the perfection of nature.17 16 ST III, q. 62, a. 1 ad 1. 17 In III Sent., d. 12, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 1, sol. 1, corpus and ad 2. This comes in response to the query of “whether Christ had to assume any particular sex at all” (utrum Christus debuerit sexum aliquem accipere), a query that Aquinas himself adds to the Sentence commentary tradition.While Thomas does not pick up the matter again in the Summa, we know from this passage in his Commentary on the Sentences that he does clearly imply Christ’s sexed humanity when he asserts, for instance, in ST III, q. 9, a. 4, that “nothing implanted in our nature by God was lacking in the human nature assumed by the Word of God.” For more on this, see my own “The Truth of Christ’s Human Nature ‘In All Its Singular Parts’: The Case of Christ’s Male Sexuality,” in my The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 391 If Aquinas stood alone in making such a claim, he yet did not do so without drawing upon the much celebrated patristic tenet known as the “soteriological principle,” which echoes unmistakably in the opening sentence, “Christ came to restore human nature by his very assumption.” As the traditional formulation of this principle goes, what was not assumed by Christ was not healed by him.18 For the whole of human nature to be healed or redeemed, then, Christ had to take on the whole of our human nature. That the whole of our nature includes our sexuality St. Thomas takes as self-evident, given his view that it represents an essential property of our animal-like bodies, that is, of our concrete materiality or animality.19 (Aquinas sees sex as so integral to our nature, in fact, that he insists we shall retain it even in the resurrected state.)20 If we wish to affirm the concrete realism of Christ’s humanity, then, we cannot abstract Jesus’s male sex from it. Otherwise we compromise his full humanity. In addition to this, Thomas was committed to the view, also going back to certain venerable Church Fathers, which holds that Christ in his very incarnate being, and not simply at the moment of his death and resurrection, already represents redeemed humanity—a view that remains Aquinas (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002; reprinted, Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2009), 145–50. John Grabowski (Sex and Virtue: An Introduction to Sexual Ethics [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003], xi) notes that any genuine renewal in moral theology must ground its view of the human person in the doctrine that man is fully revealed in the light of Christ. Along these lines, cf. John Paul II’s call for a renewal in moral theology, Veritatis Splendor, §§6–8; and Livio Melina, Sharing Christ’s Virtues: For a Renewal of Moral Theology in Light of ‘Veritatis Splendor,’ trans. William May (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001). 18 See, e.g., ST III, q. 5, a. 4. Those Fathers who employ the soteriological principle include Origen, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, and John Damascene. (Aquinas usually cites Damascene’s formulation of the principle.) 19 This is covered in detail in my previous essay, “The ‘Inseparable Connection’ between Procreation and Unitive Love,” 738–42. 20 “The diversity [of sex] is becoming to the perfection of [our human] species. . . . Wherefore . . . (human beings) shall rise again of different sex. And though there be difference of sex, there will be no shame in seeing one another, since there will be no lust to invite them to shameful deeds which are the cause of shame.” ST Suppl., q. 81, a. 3 (this is pulled from In IV Sent., d. 44, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1). Thomas offers this same argument on sex “belong[ing] to the perfection of nature” as the reason for its inclusion in our glorified risen bodies in ScG IV, ch. 88: “(The risen) will, therefore, have all the members of this sort [i.e, sexual members], even though there will be no use for them, to re-establish the integrity of the natural body.” 392 Paul Gondreau liturgically alive to this day in the western Church’s practice of bowing during the Creed when the line “and became man” is recited.21 For these reasons, then, Aquinas is unabashed in his recognition of what the tradition has otherwise been loathe to acknowledge, save at the time of the Renaissance (whose artistic representations, inspired by what one scholar terms an “incarnational theology,” draw deliberate attention to Christ’s male sexuality): Christ was a male individual in the fullest sexed sense of the term!22 Long a champion of “no more docetism” before this slogan became fashionable in twentieth-century theology (from the Greek , “to seem,” docetism alleges that Christ only appeared to have come in the flesh, and thereby denies Christ’s full humanity), St.Thomas refuses to leave the doctrine of God-made-man in the abstract.23 He knows that Jesus is no generality, he is not “humanity,” 21 The theological position claiming that “the being of Christ already represents redeemed man,” to quote Aloys Grillmeier (Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), vol. 1, trans. J. Bowden [2nd ed., Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975], 531), and which is sometimes called the mystic doctrine of redemption, goes back to Irenaeus, Athanasius, and especially Leo the Great. For more on the mystic doctrine of redemption, cf. J.-P. Jossua, Le salut, incarnation ou mystère pascal, chez les Pères de l’Église de saint Irenée à saint Léon le Grand (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968); and Jean-Pierre Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères: La vie et l’oeuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 91–92. 22 We have Leo Steinberg’s The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (2nd revised and expanded edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) to thank for bringing to light the “incarnational theology”—to use John O’Malley’s term in his “Postscript” to this work (213–16, at 213)—that inspired much of Renaissance art. With ample evidence, Steinberg shows that many Renaissance paintings of the infant Christ and of the dead Christ depict a veritable ostentatio genitalium, that is, a deliberate viewing of Christ’s genitals (as when the infant Christ’s clothes are deliberately removed to reveal his genitals), with the goal of making manifest his full humanity. Steinberg writes: “In many hundreds of pious, religious works, from before 1400 to past the mid-16th century, the ostensive unveiling of the Child’s sex, or the touching, protecting or presentation of it, is the main action [there follow two images]. And the emphasis recurs in images of the dead Christ, or of the mystical Man of Sorrows [there follows an image]” (3). Though seemingly unaware of the patristic “mystic” doctrine of redemption (see preceding note), O’Malley (“Postscript,” 214) implies that such a doctrine stands behind the Renaissance’s “incarnational theology” when he suggests: “Humanity [according to Renaissance thought] was saved, redeemed, at least inchoately, at the moment the Godhead assumed human flesh.” The connection between the Renaissance regard for Christ’s male sexuality and Aquinas’s theological regard is not accidental, as Steinberg observes that Aquinas was held in honor by Renaissance Rome “beyond any medieval figure” (55). 23 Docetism has ravaged Christianity since its very inception in various, sometimes diluted or masked forms. Already in the Johannine and Pauline writings of the Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 393 as is no human being. Whether affirming the reality of Christ’s maleness, or of Christ’s assumption of a “carnal and earthly” body, or whether giving unparalleled attention to Christ’s emotions or affectivity, Aquinas at all points seeks to uphold Christ’s full human consubstantiality.24 But we should not wonder at this element of Aquinas’s teaching, given his proclamation, in what almost certainly amounts to a profession of profound spiritual attachment to the Person of Christ, that there is “nothing more wonderful (nihil enim mirabilius) for us to consider than the divine achievement of true God, the Son of God, becoming true man.”25 Christ’s Male Sex and the “Scandal of Particularity” We cannot overemphasize the redemptive significance that God’s assumed male sex bears on our own sexuality, given the evident confusion that persists today, at least in some circles, on this point. Some contemporary theologians, for instance, scandalized by the “naïve physicalism” of giving weight to the particularity of Jesus’s maleness, are fearful that such focus “collapses the totality of the Christ into the human man Jesus,” and so wish that discussion on this topic would simply “fade away.”26 These theologians, in other words, want to warn us that if we accentuate Christ’s New Testament, one can see clear anti-docetic retorts: 2 Jn 7, for instance, warns that “many deceivers . . . will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh,” while Jn 1:14 and Col 2:9 announce, respectively, that “the Word became flesh” and that “in Christ the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.” For its part, Heb 2:14–16 attests that Christ “partook of the same nature” as “the children of flesh and blood” and as “the stock of Abraham.” For more on Aquinas’s anti-docetic adherence to Christ’s full humanity, see my own “The Humanity of Christ, the Incarnate Word,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. J. Wawrykow and R. van Nieuwenhove (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 252–76; and “Anti-Docetism in Aquinas’s Super Ioannem: St.Thomas as Defender of the Full Humanity of Christ,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. M. Dauphinais and M. Levering (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 254–76. 24 Jean-Pierre Torrell (Le Christ en ses mystères, 188) does not hesitate to assert that Aquinas affirms “wherever possible that Christ is a man fully subject to the laws of humanity.” For a brief sampling of passages confirming this, cf. In Ioan. (Commentary on John’s Gospel ), ch. 1, lect. 7 (n. 168) ; ch. 4, lect. 1 (n. 563); ch. 11, lect. 5 (n. 1535); ST III, q. 5, aa. 1–2 and 4; q. 14, aa. 1–4; q. 15, aa. 1–10; q. 19, a. 2. For an exhaustive treatment of Aquinas’s theology of Christ’s human affectivity, cf. my own The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas. 25 ScG IV, ch. 27. Aquinas offers almost the identical phrase in In Ioan., ch. 2, lect. 3: “There is nothing more wonderful than that God should become man.” 26 Thus, the charge of the feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, “The Maleness of Christ,” in The Special Nature of Women? Concilium 6 (1991): 108–15, at 113 and 115. Eleonore Stump repeated this same charge during the discussion portion of 394 Paul Gondreau maleness, we do so at the theological peril of women, as this will obscure the way Christ’s redemptive accomplishments extend to all without distinction: male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free man, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Such concerns, while not entirely without merit, arise from a mindset that is wont to pit the particular against the universal. More generally, this is the mindset that is troubled by the “scandal of particularity,” as it is sometimes called, which is part and parcel of the larger Christian story of salvation. The scandal of particularity refers to the irony that a salvation of universal import should be bound up in, because accomplished through, not only a particular history of a particular people, namely, the Jewish people, but especially a particular member of this Jewish people: Jesus of Nazareth, who is himself God “particularized,” embodied, in a human individual.27 To many it seems scandalous that the God of all peoples should bind himself to one particular people, the Jews, thereby raising them above all other peoples, and should unite himself substantially to one particular human individual, to a man, to the male Jesus, thereby granting him “the name which is above every name,” to quote St. Paul (Phil 2:9). However, if we but reflect upon the full meaning of the Incarnation, particularly along the lines of the doctrine of the hypostatic union, we can easily overcome the perceived divide between the universal and the particular, and thereby sidestep the fear that focusing on Jesus’s male sex will lead to an implosion of the “totality of Christ.” In truth, the Incarnation unites the particular with the universal. How so? The concrete reality of Christ’s humanity is joined to a divine hypostasis, the one divine Person of the Son. Put more directly, the particulars of the Incarnation ( Jesus’s maleness, his Jewishness, his body and soul, etc.) subsist in a divine Person who, as God, transcends all particulars and all limits of time and place. The whole of God and the whole of his infinite power, a power that cannot be quantified or temporally constrained in any way, are at work in every existential particularity of the life of Jesus. a paper I presented on Aquinas’s thought at a conference at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, in March 2006. 27 The scandal of particularity is touched upon by many authors. For instance, C. S. Lewis broaches the notion in Mere Christianity. Normally, it is used in reference to God’s becoming a member of the Jewish race, as when Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics, IV.1, §59 [ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961), 166–67]) stresses how the universality of the Son of God is revealed in the particularity of the Son’s assumption of Jewish flesh (Barth bemoans the “all too generalised views of the man Jesus” which lose sight of “the simple truth that Jesus Christ was a born Jew”), or when William N. Ewer whimsically pens in a rhyme: “How odd of God, / to choose the Jews.” Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 395 The reality of God’s accomplishing our redemption through his assumed manhood presses us to say more. If the universal (namely, salvation of the human race) does not occur through the particular (that is, through the man Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph of Nazareth whose historical male body was put to death on a cross in Palestine nearly two thousand years ago only to come to life again three days later), it does not occur at all: “Christ gives life to the world through the mysteries that he accomplished in his flesh,” writes Aquinas, for whom “flesh” always signifies the particular.28 We must ever be on our guard against recycled forms not only of docetism, the heresy denying Christ’s full humanity, but also of gnosticism, that other ancient heresy which proposes universal (spiritual) salvation with no necessary, immediate link to historical particularity. The Jewishness of Jesus, a favorite topic of current biblical scholarship, provides a fine illustration of universal salvation being linked to the historical particularities of Jesus’s humanity. If we stress the fact that Jewishness is inseparable from the historical reality of the Incarnation, it does not follow from this that we are slighting non-Jews and calling into question St. Paul’s claim in Galatians 3:28 that there is “neither Jew nor gentile” in Christ. In the same way, laying stress on Jesus’s maleness does not of itself undercut the place of women in the “totality of Christ.” If God became human, then he had to become one of us in all the existential particulars that being genuinely human requires. Indeed, it is the same St. Paul who, through his use of the term kenosis when discussing the Incarnation in his celebrated “Hymn to the Philippians” (Phil 2:6–11), exalts the soteriological import of the existential particulars of the God-man. Kenosis, on the Apostle’s account, signifies the fact that the Son of God freely emptied himself of his divine condition in order to embrace our human condition in all its particulars. Kenosis in the Pauline sense, in other words, implies God’s self-emptying embrace of a true flesh-and-blood embodiment, and thus of such things as subordination to human parents and to the Mosaic Law, or subjection to the penal 28 In Ioan., ch. 6, lect. 4 (n. 914); English translation: Commentary on the Gospel of St. John by St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. J. A. Weisheipl and Fabian Larcher, Part I (Albany: Magi Books, 1980), 364 (Part II published by St. Bede’s, Petersham, MA). Similarly, in ch. 5, lect. 5 (n. 791), Aquinas writes: “through the mysteries Christ accomplished in his flesh we are restored not only to an incorruptible life in our bodies, but also to a spiritual life in our souls.” More generally, Aquinas likes to say it is the humanity of Christ that leads us to God, as in the prologue to the entire Summa theologiae itself (I, q. 2, Prol.): “Christ, who, as man, is our way to God,” or again in In Ioan., ch. 7, lect. 4 (n. 1074), “the humanity of Christ is the way that leads us to God.” Cf. as well ST III, q. 9, a. 2. Paul Gondreau 396 demands of Roman law as regards the execution of criminals. Kenosis implies God’s becoming a Jew, a Nazarene, a man “in all the singular parts” of being a man, to use Aquinas’s phrase.29 It is, then, a great paradox of the faith: the universal is realized through the particular. Universal reconciliation of humanity with God is achieved only because God became the individual man Jesus of Nazareth. To aver the existential particulars of the Incarnate Christ, including his male sex, is to affirm the indispensable means through which we arrive at the doctrine where “there is neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28). As Jesus is no generality, so neither is the means of our redemption a mere generality. Regarding our sexuality proper, it is because the Son of God took on a particular sex, the male sex, that the redemption of our sexuality, universally considered, is made possible. To call this “naïve physicalism” is to misconstrue fundamentally the realism of the Incarnation and instead veer towards a semi-docetic Christology, towards an abstract Christ, as well as towards a Cartesian bias against the body. The Power to Justify Marriage Through the offering of his (male) body to the Father, then, Christ redeemed our sexed human bodies, he redeemed our male and female bodies. Christ thus redeems not only our souls but also our bodies (with their desires) as well. And this returns us to the sacrament of marriage, since Christ chose the natural institution of marriage, to which our sexuality is ordered as its normative proportionate good, as fit for inclusion in the sacramental economy. Through this sacrament Christ redeems and divinizes our sexuality in its nuptial signification, that is, in its ordering to the joint goods of procreation and unitive love (marriage). Celibates, too, we should note, have a share in this redemption, for the celibate state of life is “spousal,” in that it is ordered to “spiritual” procreation, as Aquinas says.30 Making this clearer, Pope John Paul II points out that celibacy involves the supreme gift of self not to another human person “in the flesh,” but to all of God’s people “in the spirit,” and this “constitutes the 29 De veritate, q. 26, a. 10. 30 In ST II–II, q. 152, a. 2, corpus and ad 1, St. Thomas explains how God’s command in Gn 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply” entails both physical and spiritual fecundity, for human nature tends to sexual generation as well as to knowledge of the truth: “Whereas the command to be fruitful concerns humanity as a whole, it nonetheless requires not only bodily generation but spiritual growth as well.” To this latter type of fecundity celibates devote themselves: “holy virginity [celibacy] refrains from all sexual pleasure in order more freely to have leisure for divine contemplation [and to share the fruits of this contemplation with others].” Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 397 very meaning of human sexuality,” to quote the Pontifical Council for the Family.31 Because it participates in God’s taking on of our sexed, embodied nature for the purpose of its redemption, the sacrament of marriage in its turn redeems our sexuality. We cite again Pope John Paul II, who well underscores this very point: The fact that theology also includes the body should not astonish or surprise anyone who is conscious of the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. Through the fact that the Word of God became flesh, the body entered theology . . . I would say, through the main door. The Incarnation—and the redemption that flows from it—has also become the definitive source of the sacramentality of marriage.32 Holding in mind, then, Aquinas’s tri-partite formula, or three distinct moments, of the sacraments—namely, sacramentum tantum (the external rite, or the outward sign of the sacrament), res et sacramentum (the symbolizing reality, or the intermediate cause and effect of the sacrament), and res tantum (the grace conferred, or the ultimate effect of the sacrament)— we can say the following.33 In the sacrament of marriage, husband and wife attach themselves, in faith, to the Person of Christ, that is, to the Person of Christ in his very redemptive act. Just as the sacrament of baptism has us undergo symbolically, though really, Christ’s own death and resurrection, with water as the sign or symbol (the sacramentum tantum) of it (see Rm 6:3–4), so does the sacrament of matrimony place the love between husband and wife symbolically, though really, on the Cross with Christ, with the vows acting as the sign or symbol (sacramentum tantum) of it.34 31 The Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexual- ity: Guidelines for Education within the Family (Boston, MA: Pauline Books, 1996), 34; this statement is undoubtedly drawing upon John Paul II’s thought. For John Paul II’s remarks on the “spousal” meaning of celibacy, see his Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston, MA: Pauline Books, 2006), 190, and 440–43; General audiences of Jan. 16, 1980, and May 5, 1982. 32 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, General audience of April 2, 1980 (ed. Waldstein, 221); emphasis his. 33 I am grateful to Rev. Paul J. Keller, O.P., for providing me with his (unpublished), “Tri-Partite Formula (Three Moments of the Sacraments: Sacramentum Tantum, Res et Sacramentum, Res Tantum),” the insights of which have proved invaluable to me. 34 For a textual analysis of the notion of marriage vows in Aquinas, cf. Mary Catherine Sommers, “Marriage Vows and ‘Taking Up a New State,’ ” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 679–95. 398 Paul Gondreau So what happens to marriage, as an institution, by its participating in the redemptive offering of the Son of God? Here we take our cue from the fact that marriage as a natural institution remains normative for sacramental marriage. What the grace of matrimony perfects is precisely what natural marriage is ordered to: children and unitive love. The sacrament of marriage redeems and divinizes marriage as a procreative-unitive institution. (This renders nonsensical, we should not fail to point out, any talk of same-sex partners enjoying a “sacramental marriage.”) How does this redemption of marriage occur? Through the configuring of the natural and indissoluble loving bond of husband and wife unto the supernatural and perfectly indissoluble loving bond of Christ and the Church (the res et sacramentum). The res et sacramentum of matrimony, in other words, gives husbands a share in Christ’s perfect self-emptying love and wives a share in the Church’s perfect reciprocal love: “(Marriage) is a great mystery,” St. Paul again asserts in Ephesians 5:32, “and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.” The graced effect (res tantum) of this sacrament, because it draws upon Christ’s power over sin, confers upon husband and wife this very power over sin, especially over sin’s assault on marriage (let us call it power over “marital” sin). To be sure, each sacrament confers its power to justify or its power to redeem in view of the particular human need Christ intends it to meet. This includes “over and above [sanctifying] grace,” affirms St. Thomas, a special divine assistance which targets the precise aim of that sacrament.35 In Need of Particular Divine Assistance That the institution of marriage stands in particular need of divine assistance no one would deny, certainly not today. Facing obstacles particular to the married state, all spouses would admit it is not easy being married. To be sure, the challenges that come with marriage are only too easy to enumerate. These challenges would include: riding through the inevitable dissipation of romantic feelings, which come and go of their very nature, and the subsequent temptation to reduce one’s marital love to a mere “feeling”; learning to live in intimate communion with another person who remains subject to inevitable “mood swings” and who retains his/her shortcomings and personality quirks, not to mention his/her distinctive male/female “hardwiring” (and the tension that results); handling the strain and stress that result from financial straits and from the countless sacrifices of time and desire demanded of spouses each day, especially 35 “[S]acramental grace confers, over and above [sanctifying] grace commonly so called, a certain divine assistance in obtaining the end of the sacrament.” ST III, q. 62, a. 2. Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 399 when raising young children; learning to resolve the disagreements that inevitably arise, even between spouses who are committed to growing in holiness, and which are often exacerbated by the human tendency to dig in one’s heels when in a dispute, no matter the objective truth of the matter; bearing the annoyances and personal grievances, often quite minor, that commonly occur in marriage and which often gnaw at each others’ hearts, especially as these pull towards hurtful arguing; learning to forgive each other for and to bury in the past, even when they do not “feel” like it, those unavoidable hurts that spouses inflict upon each other on account of human shortcoming; learning to deal with and to overcome that ubiquitous albatross on all human relationships, especially marriage, namely, misunderstanding and miscommunication; and the list goes on, to say nothing of the more grievous harms, such as divorce or marital infidelity (including “virtual” or “cyber” infidelity, such as where the husband falls, often quite regularly, to the allure of internet pornography, or, worse yet, to chat-room sex or “cybersex,” often with the inability to break himself of said allure, though he might desire it, and no matter the documented deleterious effects pornography exacts on marriage and family).36 These challenges make it clear that there must be more than just the spouses’ own wills, however well intentioned, to fall back on in order to make their marriages work. Indeed, it would hardly be surprising if many couples getting married today, bearing in mind the plague on marriage marked by the near fifty-percent divorce rate, the rising tide of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock sex, or the growing legal recognition of gay marriage, were to approach the institution of marriage with a cynical attitude. More than ever, married couples today need divine assistance. While it would be silly to deny this need, many yet remain unwilling to acknowledge their personal inadequacies, both moral and spiritual, relative to their relationships, or to renounce the propensity to resort to one’s own will power and to “go it alone” without God’s help, as it were, in marriage. Pelagiansim, that ancient of heresies encouraging us to think we 36 In his “Pornography—and Marriage” (The Catholic Thing online [nfiproofs.com]; Jan. 29, 2010; a duplicate of “The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community,” from the Family Research Council website [frc.org]; Dec. 2, 2009), the psychologist and researcher Patrick F. Fagan enumerates some of the “documented effects [of pornography] on family life,” including: infidelity and divorce; a loss of interest and satisfaction in sexual intercourse with one’s spouse; emotional distancing from and general dissatisfaction in one’s spouse; the perception of infidelity by the other spouse (usually the wife), resulting in a sense of “betrayal, loss, mistrust, devastation, and anger,” as well as of sexual inadequacy, if not in outright depression; a strong tendency by men who engage in voyeurism to view women as “commodities or as ‘sex objects’ ”; etc. 400 Paul Gondreau are capable on our own of always making the right choices, remains an ever persistent temptation to overcome.37 Particularly insidious to marriage, the Pelagian trap induces us, foolishly, to think that we possess the inherent ability, the right judgment and the strength of will whenever we call upon them, to make our marriages work and be happy: “Whatever happens, we’re never going to get divorced,” is how one journalist, sounding a distinct Pelagian-like ring, describes her mindset when she got married, determined as she, along with much of Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980), were not to inflict the pain and anguish of divorce upon their children, and yet who later got divorced themselves.38 Contra the Pelagian mindset, Christian revelation makes clear the fact that every human individual possesses a fallen condition, that we all, without exception, are born into original sin. It is this—sin—that accounts in large measure for the struggles that all married persons face. Moral shortcoming, sin, remains a fact of life—of everyone’s life—and thus of married life, no matter how good the spouses’ characters. All our relationships, but especially marriage, bear witness to the brokenness within all of us and of how we carry that brokenness into our relationships. Divine Grace Needed Even for Natural Virtue Catholic tradition proclaims that God, who is the Author of our sexed nature with its teleological ordering to marriage, wishes that couples might attain the happy, fulfilling marriages they desire. Indeed, he wants happiness 37 Specifically, “Pelagianism is the heresy which holds that man can take the initial and fundamental steps towards salvation by his own efforts, apart from Divine Grace.” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 1058. The Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, ed. Pietro Parente et al., trans. E. Doronzo (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing, 1951), 211, adds as one of Pelagianism’s “basic principles” the view that “[m]an, with his natural forces and his free will, can avoid all sin and win the beatific vision.” 38 Susan Gregory Thomas, “The Divorce Generation,” The Wall Street Journal, “The Saturday Essay,” July 9, 2011 (online.wsj.com). Continuing in a Pelagian-like strain, Gregory Thomas, who writes as one such member of Generation X, elaborates: “No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family. . . . Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: ‘Kids come first’ meant that we would not divorce.’ ” Yet as all Pelagianism in the end comes to naught, so too Gregory Thomas’s determination to avoid divorce through her (and her spouse’s) sheer will power: “And yet divorce came. In spite of everything.” Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 401 in marriage for us more than we even want it ourselves. And so, in view of this and aware of the particular struggles against sin that the institution of marriage wages, Christ the Lord wished that married couples might share in the power which he alone, in virtue of his Passion, death, and resurrection, possesses over sin. Christ wishes to place himself squarely in the center of our marriages. Concretely, this divine assistance, of which Christ alone, because of his redemptive accomplishment, is the source, again takes the form of justifying (or sanctifying) grace.39 The only real antidote to sin, Christ’s justifying grace alone can heal us of our brokenness, of our fallen condition. It is this grace that gives the sacraments, employed by Christ as “separated” instrumental mediums, the power to justify, the power to redeem. This power to justify, the ultimate effect of the sacraments, is precisely what the term res tantum signifies in Aquinas’s sacramental theology. Is it possible to obtain happiness in marriage without this grace? Since the corrosion of sin does not succeed in completely eradicating the human ability to do good—“human nature is not altogether corrupted by sin, so as to be shorn of every natural good,” insists St. Thomas40—it would seem that we should, in principle, respond in the affirmative. However, without Christ’s healing, justifying grace, the natural good we can do on our own, like being honest or just, or a self-giving spouse, will never amount to much. Wishing to underscore this very point, Aquinas gives rather paltry, almost laughable, examples of “good works” (and the context implies that he is speaking of good moral works), that we can perform without grace: “build dwellings, plant vineyards, and the like.”41 Thomas does not put forward such examples trivially. He knows that virtue denotes a stable disposition for doing good (as signified by the term habitus), which implies the unity of all the virtues. The virtuous individual, in other words, loves the good and does the good in all areas of his life, not just in some areas. If, say, one finds a man committing adultery, one cannot speak of his being virtuous, even if he otherwise appears generous and just in his dealings with others. At most, one can say he performs good external acts, or attains an external approximation of virtue, but not virtue strictly speaking. And so it is for anyone without grace. As Aquinas makes clear, our sinful condition leaves us with a diminished ability for purely 39 For Christ as the source of all grace, see ST III, q. 7, a. 9. 40 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 2. 41 Ibid. Later, in a. 5, showing that he follows Augustine on this point, he reiterates the same view: “without grace man . . . can perform works conducive of a good which is natural to him, as ‘to toil in the fields, to drink, to eat, or to have friends,’ and the like, as Augustine says in his third reply to the Pelagians.” 402 Paul Gondreau natural virtue.42 For this reason, to excel even at purely natural virtue, that is, to attain to the habit (habitus) of natural virtue, one must have more than the acquired moral virtues, as these virtues result from our own, very limited efforts. Owning a fallen condition, we can perform nothing more on our own than good external acts, or imperfect virtuous acts; we cannot attain to the true (natural) habit of virtue. To attain to this, we must have benefit of the (natural) habit of virtue consequent upon the healing effects of divine grace, namely, the infused moral virtues.43 Divine grace is therefore necessary to excel even at the natural love of man and woman, to excel even at doing the moral good that is natural (or proportionate) to us. Only sanctifying grace, God’s supernatural assistance, can give husband and wife the power to overcome their selfish tendencies and moral shortcomings. Indeed, lest our desires to have happy marriages, which most newlyweds deep down yearn for, all in accordance with God’s design, be left frustrated on account of sin, God must, in a sense, offer us the help necessary to attain happy, fulfilling marriages. Divine Marital Assistance Given Ex Opere Operato Scholastic theology employs the phrase ex opere operato, famously canonized at the Council of Trent (1545–63), to stress that this divine assistance is necessarily given in the sacrament of matrimony, as it is given in all the sacraments whenever they are validly celebrated.44 To put it in Aquinas’s equivalent phrasing, the sacraments necessarily “effect what they signify.”45 Though much maligned, especially in Reformation theology, which sometimes speaks pejoratively of the sacraments as autonomous 42 ST I–II, q. 85, a. 1. Later in a significant passage in q. 109, a. 3, Thomas adds: “unless is it cured by God’s grace, the appetite of man’s rational will follows its private good, on account of the corruption of nature. . . . [I]n the state of corrupt nature [then], man needs the help of grace to heal his nature.” 43 On this point, I am indebted to Steven A. Long, “The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and Their Indispensability for the Christian Moral Life: Grace as Motus,” given at the annual conference of the Academy of Catholic Theology, May 26, 2011, Washington, DC. On the practical befefits of infused moral virtue, Long writes: “Reason is fortified and elevated [by infused moral virtue] so as to be able to discern the practical implications of the Christian life, and to remediate the wounded natural inclinations so that action is befitting both to the proportionate natural and to the ultimate supernatural end.” 44 The phrase ex opere operato comes in Canon 8 of the Council of Trent’s decree on the sacraments (Session 7, March 3, 1547): “If anyone says that grace is not conferred by the sacraments of the New Law ex opere operato . . . let him be anathema.” Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 685. 45 ST III, q. 62, a. 1 ad 1. Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 403 “magical” rites, the phrase ex opere operato remains yet much misunderstood. At bottom, it signifies the fact that the sacraments are, indeed, dynamic actions of the Person of Christ, that in the sacraments we are guaranteed to encounter Christ on the Cross, receiving from him his power over sin: “The efficacy attributed to the sacrament is subordinated to the efficacy attributed to Christ as Mediator of salvation,” writes the sacramental theologian Colman O’Neill.46 The sacraments own an objective integrity, whereby the Person of Christ, as principal efficient cause of justifying grace, promises to be present in the sacraments conferring the grace he intends to give. For married persons this means they are guaranteed to share in Christ’s power to break them from the grip which sin holds on their conjugal life; they are guaranteed a divine assistance whose aim is to heal marital brokenness and to bolster and perfect spousal love. Giving our marriages a share in Christ’s redemptive victory over sin, a share in Christ’s power to justify, the sacrament of marriage has the power to redeem human sexuality in its inherently nuptial meaning, and so promises spouses a happy, successful marriage! Does this mean spouses will be spared the hardships mentioned above, spared the manifold ways that sin assails the institution of marriage? By no means! The grace of the sacrament of marriage does not erase the effects of our fallen condition. But it does mean Christian marriage will not succumb to these hardships, that Christian marriage is guaranteed not to fail, since husband and wife are guaranteed the divine assistance to overcome their marital struggles. What a treasure the Church possesses and offers freely in the sacrament of marriage! The Duty of Cooperating Opus Operans with the Grace of the Sacrament At this point, calling to mind St. Paul’s assertion in Romans 3:22 that “the righteousness of God [is] through faith in Jesus Christ,” we must stress the requisite role of faith in reaping the fruits of the grace offered ex opere operato in the sacraments, as Aquinas himself insists.47 Colman O’Neill explains what a mistake it is to separate the act of faith, and more 46 Colman O’Neill, Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the Sacraments (Prince- ton, NJ: Scepter, 1998), 16. Just before this, O’Neill observes how sacramental personalism, i.e., seeing the sacraments as dynamic actions of the Person of Christ, helps “clear up misunderstandings about what the Council of Trent was trying to say when it attributed to the sacraments efficacy ex opere operato.” See as well O’Neill’s extended discussion on ex opere operato in his Meeting Christ in the Sacraments (rev. ed., revised by Romanus Cessario; New York: Society of St. Paul, 1991), 119–26. 47 ST III, q. 68, a. 8 (here Thomas is speaking of baptism proper). Paul Gondreau 404 precisely faith acting through charity, from the objective action of Christ ex opere operato in the sacraments.48 Faith and ritual sacrament are two essential heads of the same coin. Properly understood, in other words, and in order to avoid being reduced to a static, purely formalized and impersonal reality, the doctrine of ex opere operato demands as its necessary counterpart what O’Neill terms the opus operans of the sacrament, by which he means: [the believer’s] personal dedication of himself to God, [which] is the effect of God’s loving action within him, [and the corresponding] obligation [that] lies on the recipient to exercise his liturgical [i.e., sacramental] function with full deliberation and whole-heartedly; this applies not only to the period of preparation for the sacrament and the actual moment of reception but also to the time afterwards . . . [T]he sacraments . . . are seen in a false light if they are thought of as sudden inputs of spiritual energy having no relation to what goes before or afterwards.49 “What goes before or afterwards.” We can appreciate the practical demands this places on couples, not only in their preparation for their wedding, but throughout the whole of their married lives. At the very least, it demands faith—faith on both partners’ parts, since marriage is indeed a partnership—that Christ can and does effect what he intends to effect in this sacrament. It demands faith in the supernatural quality of their marriage. In their preparation for marriage, couples should at the very least seek to inform themselves adequately of the Church’s teaching on the sacrament of matrimony and, more generally, of the Church’s vision of the meaning and purpose of human sexuality and of marriage’s role in it. (This places no small duty to articulate this teaching faithfully and clearly on those responsible for marriage preparation, whether through the Pre-Cana program or its equivalent, as some dioceses in the United States seem well to understand.)50 Strict lifelong fidelity to each other and openness to children are, in this regard, the sine qua non starting point. Full deliberate and wholehearted participation in their sacramental function also means bride and bridegroom must ensure that the primary focus—and for them the prayerful focus—is placed squarely on 48 Colman O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, 38. 49 Ibid., 126–27. 50 For instance, the Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, has recently inaugurated a nine- month marriage preparation course “in an effort to reverse a trend to marital breakdown,” as reported by Catholic World News (catholicculture.org; Jan. 27, 2010). This course includes “instruction in natural family planning, the theology of Christian marriage, and common problems that face young married couples.” Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 405 the wedding ceremony and on the exchange of vows. (How often do we find the wedding reception afterwards, rightfully a joyous occasion, yet to be the highlight of the wedding day?) Then there are the sometimes “thorny” moral issues that a life of faith united to charity must resolve according to the mind and heart of the Church. The principal point to stress here is that the only sure road to follow in properly disposing oneself for faithful reception of the sacrament of marriage, beyond the reception of the sacrament of reconciliation (which the Church’s common tradition invites engaged couples to receive just prior to the wedding ceremony), is to live in strict fidelity to the Church’s moral teaching. This necessitates living chastely and avoiding all occasions of pre-marital sexual intimacy, including, obviously, cohabitation. Ideally, couples should follow this path with a view not so much to observing Church “rules” per se, as to the true good of the marriage and to the “new beginning” in the relationship that living in accordance with the Church’s moral teaching promises (most couples, even those cohabitating, deep down hope their wedding day will mark a new beginning). It is no mere coincidence that those married couples who live in accordance with Church teaching enjoy much happier marriages and an exceedingly lower divorce rate. Extending throughout the whole of their married lives, this moral duty of cooperating with the grace of the sacrament through fidelity to the Church’s moral teaching implies, among other things, avoidance of all use of artificial contraceptives, even in those circumstances where responsible parenthood might for the moment mitigate against having children (in which case, the natural method of birth control can be observed). It also includes, if we consider the opposite dilemma relative to procreation, the resolve not to resort to artificial methods of reproduction (IVF) when encountering difficulty in achieving pregnancy. Artificial methods either of contraception or of reproduction contravene the objective moral law (natural law), since they constitute intrinsically disordered actions (malum in se), as the Church’s teaching makes clear. Not meant to stand in isolation from the other sacraments, sacramental marriage also requires the spouses’ full participation in the sacramental life of the Church (regular Mass attendance, frequent reception of the sacrament of reconciliation, etc.). And since grace perfects nature, to quote a familiar Thomist adage, the grace of marriage presupposes a certain kind of natural human compatibility between the partners, as well as the disciplined effort of observing the practical duties which growing and sustaining marital love and friendship require (such as the regular communication that friendship normally demands, confessing guilt and 406 Paul Gondreau expressing contrition when having wronged each other, granting forgiveness whenever such guilt and contrition are expressed and then letting the issue rest, and the like). Hence, the duty to marry the right person, namely, the person of living faith and of sound moral character who has proved his/her commitment to living virtuously and to handling relationship issues maturely—and to turning to God for help. It is imperative to realize that Christ’s guarantee of a happy marriage does not release married couples from their duty to work diligently at their marriages; indeed, it requires it! In particular, it requires couples continually to call upon and exercise that most necessary and useful of virtues for the conjugal life: prudence, the aim of which is right judgment in all our practical decisions. Prudence, as one Thomist scholar puts it, “involves doing the right thing, for the right reason, with the right choices and emotions, at the right time.”51 In a word, as grace perfects nature so does the grace of this sacrament perfect the partners’ own natural efforts at cooperating with this grace by doing their best to make their marriages work. The Thomist authors Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais sum up well the grace-perfecting-nature dynamic of Christian marriage when they write: [T]he natural life and the supernatural life do not exist as two separate planes of existence. Instead, they interpenetrate each other. The supernatural life reaches down to heal and to elevate the natural life without destroying its integrity. For example, Christ has elevated marriage into a sacrament of his grace. Christian marriage, nevertheless, has many aspects belonging simply to the natural order of marriage: earning a living, sexual intercourse, having and raising children, and so on.Yet in Christian marriage each of these natural elements now participates in the power of Christ’s cross and resurrection.52 The opus operans of marriage implies, then, all the (natural) practical demands enumerated above, and only by observing all these demands can married couples hope to share in Christ’s guarantee of a happy and successful marriage delivered through the Church’s sacrament of matri51 Craig Steven Titus, “Reasonable Acts,” in Philosophical Virtue and Psychological Strength: Building the Bridge, ed. Romanus Cessario, Craig Steven Titus, Paul C. Vitz (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming). For an enlightening study on the role of “right reason” in the moral life, cf. Laurent Sentis, “La lumière dont nous faisons usage. La règle de la raison et la loi divine selon Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 79 (1995): 49–69. 52 Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 50. Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 407 mony. Otherwise this sacrament would indeed simply amount to an empty “magical” rite. The Divinized Love between Husband and Wife Let us return to the res tantum of marriage, the ultimate effect of this sacrament, to see how there is still more, much more to the redemptive or sanctifying work of the sacrament of marriage. St.Thomas cues us into this deeper reality when he observes that the sacraments (each of them) offer us not merely a remedy for sin, but also a supernaturalizing principle. In brief, Christ’s justifying grace offered in the sacraments has a twofold aim: first, to heal us of our corrupted nature by restoring us to our natural abilities; and, second, to elevate us, proportion us, to our supernatural good, whereby we are ordered to acting in a genuinely supernatural, divine-like way.53 Wishing to give full weight and veracity to the supernaturalizing power of Christ’s justifying grace, and following the lead of both Scripture (2 Peter 1:4 refers to grace as a “participation in the divine nature”) and the Greek Fathers, Aquinas does not hesitate to use the bold terms “deify” (deificare) and “deiform” or “divinization” (deiformitas) in reference to the res tantum of sanctifying grace.54 In one famous passage, Thomas insists that by grace we gain a participated likeness of the divine goodness after the manner of “whiteness mak[ing] a thing white.”55 While distinct, then, the two aspects of the res tantum of the sacraments, namely, healing medicine and divinizing power, must not be seen as separable realities, as if the one were simply “stacked” on top of the other, but instead as deeply interpenetrating principles. To be precise, as grace perfects nature, so the deifying element implies and subsumes the 53 “[T]he sacraments of the New Law are ordained, first, as a remedy against sin and, second, for the perfecting of the soul in things pertaining to the divine worship” ST III, q. 63, a. 1. This is even clearer in I–II, q. 109, aa. 2 and 5: “in the state of corrupt nature, [man needs a gratuitous strength added to natural strength, i.e., he needs sanctifying grace] in order to be healed, and in order to do and wish supernatural good [and thus] to carry out works of supernatural virtue . . . [Indeed, since] everlasting life is an end exceeding the proportion of human nature . . . a higher force is needed, namely, the force of grace.” 54 ST I–II, q. 112, a. 1. For more on “deification” or “divinization” in Aquinas’s theology of created grace, including references to ample texts and to the patristic heritage, cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, 126–28; Torrell notes in particular that “grace is a deiform structure . . . [and] Thomas uses the terms ‘deify’ and ‘deiform’ so often as to leave no doubt on the subject.” For even more extended discussion on this, cf. Jean-Hervé Nicolas, Les profondeurs de la grâce (Paris: Beauchesne, 1969), 56–76; cf. as well Luc-Thomas Somme, Thomas d’Aquin, La divinisation dans le Christ (Geneva: Ad Solem, 1998). 55 ST I–II, q. 110, a. 2 ad 1. 408 Paul Gondreau healing one. And so in divinizing the purely human love of husband and wife by likening it unto the indissoluble love between Christ and the Church, by likening it unto the God who is himself love, the res tantum of marriage implies also the healing of marital sin. Much more than a mere safeguarding against the manifold ways sin assails the institution of marriage, then, the sacrament of matrimony, through its deifying work, elevates the natural human love of man and woman, of husband and wife, to the level of the divine, making it attain to the very love that is proper to God himself ! As the economy of salvation, of which the sacraments are expressive, makes clear, God never intended marriage to remain a purely natural institution; he never intended the love between man and woman to remain a purely natural phenomenon, satisfying nothing more than natural, proportionate needs. Christ, in his sacramental (instrumental) action, takes the institution of marriage, common to all human societies as owing to the natural law, and divinizes the human love (eros) between husband and wife and orders it immediately to the supernatural love of God (agape).56 For when bride and bridegroom pronounce their vows before an ordained Church minister, their natural love becomes, truly, albeit symbolically (symbolized, that is, by the consent or exchange of vows), Christ’s own perfect, indissoluble (or unfailing) love for his Bride, the Church, and the Church’s own perfect, indissoluble love for her Bridegroom, Christ.57 We are now in a position to appreciate the full import of the scholastic adage that the sacraments necessarily effect what they signify, at least as it applies to the particular case of the sacrament of marriage. In Christ we see what kind of lover God is, namely, a lover who takes on our lowly body and soul not for his benefit but for ours, and who offers himself completely, to the point of undergoing the worst imaginable—not to mention undeserved—suffering, utterly for our sake. What the sacrament 56 “Matrimony as ordained to natural life is a function of nature. But in so far as it has something spiritual it is a sacrament.” ST III, q. 65, a. 2 ad 1. While not addressing the sacrament of marriage per se, the first part of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est makes this very argument, that eros, if it is not to degenerate into a dehumanizing love, needs to be taken up into and finalized by agape. 57 “Since there is in the human species a natural exigency for the union of male and female to be one and indivisible, such unity and indissolubility must needs be ordained by human law. To that ordinance the divine law adds a supernatural reason, derived from the fact that marriage signifies the inseparable union of Christ with His Church (ex significatione inseparabilis coniunctionis Christi et Ecclesiae), which is one as He is one.” ScG III, ch. 123. For similar wording, see Thomas’s commentary on Romans, Super Romanos, ch. 7, lect. 1 (cited in Mary Catherine Sommers, “Marriage Vows,” 693). Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 409 of marriage proclaims is that God, desiring that we enjoy truly happy, fulfilling marriages, wants husband and wife, man and woman, to be this kind of lover to each other as well, and guarantees to communicate to them the divine grace (or help) that alone can bring it about. Without the sacrament of marriage, the love between husband and wife would never become the kind of love God intends it to be; with the sacrament of matrimony, it is guaranteed to become this kind of love. We know that the best husband, the best father, is the one who serves the needs of his wife and children before his own, who gives of himself to his family completely without thought of cost to himself. The best husband and father is the one who loves as Christ loves; the best wife and mother is the one who loves as the Church loves. And so it is that in the sacrament of marriage, Christ transforms the husband’s love into his own and the wife’s love into the Church’s: “husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave his life up for her,” St. Paul adds in Ephesians 5:25, just after telling wives to be subject to their husbands, “just as the Church is subject to Christ.” And because, as Aquinas tells us, the union of Christ and the Church is “one to be held forever,” in that “there is one Church” and that “Christ will never be separated from his Church,” it follows that the sacrament of marriage “is a union of one man to one woman to be held indivisibly [or indissolubly].”58 Too rarely do those who partake in this sacrament understand or appreciate the “great mystery” that marks Christian marriage, a mystery that the ancient Christian author Tertullian (†c. 220) grasped and sought movingly to describe in a treatise addressed to his own wife: Both [Christian spouses] are brethren, both fellow servants, no difference of spirit or flesh; nay, they are truly “two in one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Where the flesh is one, one is the spirit too.Together they pray, together prostrate themselves, together perform their fasts; mutually teaching, mutually exhorting, mutually sustaining. Equally are they both found in the Church of God; equally at the banquet of God . . . 59 58 ScG IV, ch. 78. Previous to this Thomas writes: “Because the sacraments effect what they signify, one must believe that in this sacrament a grace is conferred on those marrying, and that by this grace they are included in the union of Christ and the Church.” 59 From “To His Wife,” trans. S. Thelwall, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 4, Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994 [1885]), 39–49, at 48; quoted in On Marriage and Family: Classic and Contemporary Texts, ed. Matthew Levering (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 26. 410 Paul Gondreau A Ministry of Body and Soul When looking for a term that denotes the heart of this sacrament, Aquinas opts for a term that occurs to few, if any, of us when thinking of marriage: ministry. Christian spouses, St. Thomas tells us, “are those who propagate and safeguard the spiritual life by administering to both body and soul . . . [since] husband and wife are joined together in order to beget children and to bring them up in the fear of the Lord.”60 On this score, the ancient Christian author Clement of Alexandria (†c. 215) puts it nicely when he interprets the passage in Matthew 18:20, “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” to signify the Christian family of father, mother, and child praying together.61 Behind this recognition of marriage as a type of ministry stands Aquinas’s teaching, unique to him, that the sacramental life (or the Christian spiritual life) parallels the dynamic growth and development of bodily life (this provides another example of how retaining a robust view of nature with all its ontological density pays dividends in the perfecting, supernatural order).62 And it owes to the nature of our embodied life to live in society (that is, to live in community with other embodied persons), for which marriage is essential, inasmuch as its fecundity makes human society possible.63 Since marriage not only unites in love a man 60 ScG IV, ch. 58. 61 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.10.68.1, quoted in Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 135. 62 ST III, q. 65, a. 1. While there is the foundation for this teaching on the sacramental life paralleling bodily life in In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 2, its first explicit appearance comes in the just-cited ScG IV, ch. 58, as Jean-Pierre Torrell (Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, 295, n. 60) points out. On the uniqueness of this teaching, Torrell continues: [W]hile the theologians of Thomas’s time sought to justify the number of seven sacraments by a correspondence with the seven deadly sins (Albertus Magnus) or by the three theological virtues completed with the four cardinal virtues (Bonaventure), Thomas seems to be the only one to develop this parallel between corporeal and spiritual life, simultaneously more natural and fecund.Virtues or vices, good works or sins, the expressions of the spiritual life do not appear in him as more or less artificially tacked on to the Christian life, but rather as manifestations of a living organism, one which can certainly be affected by illnesses and recover its health or even die, but whose growth is the usual rule and which can also, through regular exercise, firm up and consolidate itself. 63 This view can also be found in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VIII, ch. 12 (1162a17–19); for Thomas’s commentary, In Ethic., Bk. VIII, lect. 12 (nn. 1719–23); trans. Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, by C. I. Litzinger Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 411 and a woman, but also and especially brings human individuals into existence, all of whom (spouses as well as children) own a supernatural destiny, or all of whom God wills to deify, marriage entails profound spiritual and bodily needs. It is in order to meet these needs that Christ elevates the natural institution of marriage to the level of a sacrament.64 More specifically, because marriage, as a natural institution, comprises a unity of proximate goods or ends, in particular, procreation and unitive love, the healing and divinizing efficacy of the res tantum of marriage perfects these same joint goods. It bears repeating: the whole of married life, encompassing both spousal and parental goods and duties, is sanctified, that is, healed and deified, in this sacrament.65 Thus, when husband and wife administer to their own and their children’s physical and spiritual needs, they perform a ministry of body and soul. Summing up these physical and spiritual needs, at least as regards the rearing of children, Thomas writes in one passage: “the young need not only bodily nutrition, as animals do, but also the training of the soul.”66 That marriage demands a “training of the soul” (instructione quantum ad animam)—a splendid phrase for parental undertaking that points to the “personalist” strain of Thomas’s views on marriage against those who (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993). For its part, Vatican Council II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, §12, affirms that marriage is the bedrock of all social institutions. In his “Children as the Common Good of Marriage,” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 697–709, Michael Waldstein points out that while marriage puts us squarely in relation to the common good of human society, this notion is largely ignored in current discussions on marriage and human sexuality. The ill fruits of this are especially apparent in the same-sex marriage debate. 64 “The spiritual life has a certain conformity to the life of the body, just as other corporeal things have a certain likeness to things spiritual. Now a man attains perfection in the corporeal life in two ways: first, in regard to his own person; secondly, in regard to the whole community of the society in which he lives, for man is by nature a social animal. . . . In regard, then, to the whole community, man is perfected . . . by natural propagation. This is accomplished by Matrimony both in the corporal and in the spiritual life, since it is not only a sacrament but also a function of nature.” ST III, q. 65, a. 1. Although Thomas, as was common among medieval authors, gives exclusive attention to the procreative ordering of marriage, his argument holds for the unitive ordering as well. 65 In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, §11, the Second Vatican Council implies this when it proclaims: “Christian spouses, in virtue of the sacrament of Matrimony, whereby they signify and partake of the mystery of that unity and fruitful love which exists between Christ and His Church, help each other to attain to holiness in their married life and in the rearing and education of their children.” 66 ScG III, ch. 122. 412 Paul Gondreau criticize him for being overly “physicalist” in his excessive emphasis on procreation—we should interpret broadly, inasmuch as it covers a whole gamut of needs (emotional, moral, and spiritual), and not only in the children but also in the spouses.67 Each member of the family is made to know and love the good, each is called to holiness, and so husband and wife must administer both to their children and to each other. To this administration the sacrament of marriage is ordered. In short, this administration, or this ministry of body and soul, follows upon the procreative and unitive orderings of marriage. As I have argued in this essay, marriage as a procreative-unitive institution suffers mightily on account of human sin, for which reason it seeks a share in Christ’s redemption. Granting it this share, the sacrament of matrimony confers a grace, or a divine power, that is both healing and deifying, and that targets, specifically, the procreative and unitive dimensions of marriage. (Aquinas in one passage affirms that this grace helps spouses attend to “fleshly” and “earthly” matters “in such a way that these are not disconnected from Christ and the Church.”)68 Through their partaking in the sacrament of matrimony, then, Catholic married couples find themselves healed, strengthened, fortified, perfected, divinized in their very spousal (unitive) and parental (procreative) roles, that is, in the natural teleology of their conjugal union. Conclusion In a world where the institution of marriage labors under an unprecedented assault, whether from widespread marital infidelity (including the invasive allure of internet pornography and “cybersex”) or the near 50 percent divorce rate, or whether from rampant cohabitation or the push to redefine this institution to cover same-sex unions, the Church, in its 67 For a sustained argument on Aquinas’s recognition of what today we call the “personalist” dimension of marriage, see Angela McKay’s essay “Aquinas on the End of Marriage.” Further, Charles J. Reid (Power over the Body, Equality in the Family: Rights and Domestic Relations in Medieval Canon Law [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004], 87) notes that this teaching on parental responsibility by St. Thomas marks a significant theological development. Indeed, Reid explains that by appealing to 2 Cor 12:13–15 in expressing his view on the matter in ST Suppl., q. 49, a. 2 ad 1 (which opens with the assertion “offspring signifies not merely the begetting of children, but also their rearing”), Aquinas suggests that “sacrificial giving should characterize the parents’ relationship with the child.” Indeed, the moralists John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly (Contemporary Moral Theology. Vol. 2: Marriage Questions [Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963], 49) quite rightly point out that “one should not make the mistake of imagining that procreation and the rearing of children are not personalist values, too, or that the socalled personalist values do not contribute to the biological or social ends.” 68 ScG IV, ch. 78. Human Sexuality and the Sacrament of Marriage 413 sacrament of marriage, acts as a true beacon of hope. Dynamic acts of the Person of Jesus Christ and fitted to seven particular human needs, the sacraments have as their aim the ongoing application of the fruits of Christ’s salvation. By electing marriage as fit for elevation to the level of a sacrament, Christ has willed to include this natural institution within his economy of salvation. The sacrament of marriage joins our sexuality in its nuptial ordering to the Person of Christ, thereby redeeming it. If on the outside, then, it seems that those who are sacramentally married are no different from any other married couple, including those who have contracted a purely civil marriage, the reality is quite different: Christian marriage inhabits another world, so to speak, it is of a whole other order. For, deep within Christian marriage flows, as from a wellspring, divine sanctifying or justifying grace, whereby husband and wife gain a share in Christ’s redemption; they become sacramentally joined to the Person of Christ in his very redemptive act, namely, in his Passion, death, and resurrection. Carrying with it both the power to heal the wounds of marital sin and the power to divinize or deify our sexuality, the grace of this sacrament (res tantum) targets marriage as a procreativeunitive institution, that is, it heals and divinizes marriage in its very procreative-unitive ordering. Thus, those who, with a living faith, cooperate opus operans with this grace are guaranteed to attain happy, successful marriages ex opere operato, since the signifying reality (res et sacramentum) of Christian marriage, which causes or disposes one for the res tantum, is nothing other than the indissoluble love between Christ and the Church. Indeed, without the sacrament of marriage, the love between husband and wife would never become the kind of love God intends it to be, namely, the love between Christ and the Church. But with this sacrament, it is assured of becoming this kind of love. Would that every marriage-preparation N&V program build its core message on this marvelous truth. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 415–36 415 St. Thomas on the Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage* P ETER K WASNIEWSKI Wyoming Catholic College Lander, WY T HE ATTENTIVE reader of St. Thomas Aquinas is struck by a conundrum in his doctrine of marriage. On the one hand, he says that from a certain vantage the sacrament of marriage stands first among the sacraments: “As regards what is signified . . . marriage is the noblest, because it signifies the conjunction of the two natures in the person of Christ”1 and “the perpetual conjoining of Christ to the Church.”2 On the other hand, he says: “As having something spiritual in terms of sign and effect, in that way it is a sacrament—and because it has the least of spirituality (minimum habet de spiritualitate), therefore it is put last among the sacraments.”3 How is it both the first and the last? In a fascinating * The author expresses his gratitude to the International Theological Institute in Austria for the sabbatical semester that facilitated research on this area of St. Thomas’s thought. My special thanks go to Jeremy Holmes for his close reading of an earlier draft of this paper and his expert advice. Translations from St. Thomas are usually mine, but I have also borrowed phrases from existing translations. References to an article in St.Thomas without further qualification always indicate the response or “body” of that article. If I quote statements from objections (cited as “arg.”), without adding any further remarks, the reader may assume that Aquinas agrees with those statements, and takes exception rather to some other part of the argument. 1 In IV Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 1, qa. 3. In this text, St. Thomas relegates marriage to last place among the seven sacraments because, while it has the greatest signification (habet maximam significationem), it works a lesser effect as regards the spiritual life than the other six sacraments do. See also ST III, q. 65, a. 3. 2 In IV Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, qa. 2, arg. 1; cf. In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 2, ad 7. 3 In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1; cf. In IV Sent., d. 26, exp. textus. In the ST he gives the same reply to the same objection, in almost identical words (see ST III, q. 65, a. 2, arg. 1; ad 1). 416 Peter Kwasniewski way, we will find, as we examine St. Thomas’s theology of marriage, that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” St. Thomas did not have a chance to pen his definitive account of holy matrimony in the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae, in which he had reached the fourth sacrament, Penance, before ceasing his literary labors in December 1273. Nevertheless, we have in the Scriptum super Sententiis, the Summa contra Gentiles, and numerous other works relevant and often detailed discussions that permit us to ascertain Thomas’s “mind.” Since his views on marriage and family remain substantially the same throughout his career, there is no reasonable objection to citing side by side texts from a broad variety of works and periods, at least in a theoretical inquiry such as this. If there was any “development of doctrine” in this area of Aquinas’s thinking, it was extremely subtle, having to do with shades of emphasis or vocabulary, but not with doctrine as such. On matters matrimonial, St. Thomas is not famed as a towering giant; there is little that is “original” in his writings on this topic except—and this is quite enough to merit our attention—the way in which he masterfully analyzes and synthesizes traditional data.4 Nevertheless, there is much for us to learn (or relearn) from St. Thomas, particularly when it comes to truths we may be in danger of losing sight of, with our laudable desire to defend the dignity of marriage in the face of countless attacks against it. Aquinas had a balanced view that combines a healthy approval of everything God deems “good” (cf. Gn 1:31; 2:18) with a robust preference for that which God deems “better” (cf. Mt 19:10–12; 1 Cor 7:38). The first part of this article will illustrate the “grandeur” of the sacrament; the second and more speculative part will speak about its “limitations.” I. The Grandeur of Marriage There are, to begin with, countless anti-Manichaean swordthrusts in the works of Aquinas, who defends, at times pugnaciously, the metaphysical goodness of bodiliness, sexuality, marriage, and procreation, as well as their moral goodness when right use is made of them. All that comes from the infinitely good God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is itself good.5 4 Can it be said that much in Aquinas is purely and simply “original”? He, with Augustine, would have said that originality is another name for the sin of the devil, who strives to produce “of himself ” and is therefore a liar and a murderer. See Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris §17; Augustine, Confessions 12.25. 5 Good, of course, by participation, and therefore finitely good. This is the reason why God alone can satisfy the human person made to his image: man is capax Dei, and thus every created good leaves unsatisfied his longing for absolute truth and perfect love. See Michael Augros, “In Defense of God’s Power to Satisfy the Human Heart,” The Aquinas Review 16 (2009): 37–73. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 417 Marriage was intended by the Creator for man and woman, and so it is natural to them, and pleasing to God when used according to his plan.6 Unlike many of his contemporaries, Aquinas confidently argues that the marital embrace, duly motivated, is sinless or blameless,7 in accord with right reason,8 honorable,9 valuable for the human community,10 meritorious for spouses on their pilgrimage to God,11 and holy (sanctus).12 It is worthwhile to hear his own language on these points. He says, for example, that marriage was ordained against guilt “by preventing it from occurring” and by cleansing the soul “from the cause of guilt, which is concupiscence—and thus, marriage, which restrains and orders it, has a cleansing power”;13 that “marriage offers a remedy by repressing concupiscence at its root, through the grace that is given in it”;14 more generally, that “the goods of marriage pertain to grace or virtue.”15 Whenever the motive for the marital act is either children or sacramental fidelity, “spouses . . . are totally excused from sin.”16 Even a pagan husband “commits no sin in knowing his wife, if he renders the debt either for the good of children or from the fidelity with which he is bound to his wife, since this is an act of justice or temperance.”17 On Hebrews 13:4, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled,” St. Thomas comments: This [verse] shows that the marital act can exist without sin; which is against certain heretics:“If a virgin marries, she does not sin” (1 Cor. 7:28). 6 See In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1 and ScG III, chs. 122–26 for extended argumen- tation in favor of the naturalness of monogamous, indissoluble marriage. Cf. Super Matt. 19, lec. 1 (Marietti ed., n. 1551). 7 See In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3, and the citations in the next several notes. 8 See ScG III, ch. 126; ST II–II, q. 153, a. 2; In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3; In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3, ad 6; In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 4, ad 4; ST II–II, q. 153, a. 2, ad 2. 9 See Super Hebr. 13, lec. 1 (Marietti ed., n. 732); Super Ioan. 2, lec. 1 (Marietti ed., n. 341); In IV Sent., d. 30, q. 2, a. 1, qa. 2, sc 2. 10 See ScG III, ch. 136, solutio ad tertium. 11 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 4. 12 See In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1: “by the goodness of the sacrament . . . an act is called not only good, but also holy (sanctus); and the marital act has this goodness from the indivisibility of the conjoining, by which it signifies the conjoining of Christ to the Church”; In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1: marriage is a “remedy of holiness for man against sin, remedium sanctitatis homini contra peccatum.” 13 In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 2. 14 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3. 15 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 2, arg. 1. 16 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 2. 17 In IV Sent., d. 39, q. 1, a. 2, ad 5. Peter Kwasniewski 418 Hence, the Lord, in order to show that the marital act is good, worked His first sign during a wedding and ennobled marriage by His bodily presence [there], and [moreover] willed to be born of a married woman.18 It is of tremendous importance to understand that, for St. Thomas, the conjugal act does not belong to marriage’s essence but is rather its natural consequence. As he explains with customary rigor: “Fleshly commingling is a certain activity or use of marriage, through which a faculty is given for this [use]; hence fleshly commingling will be of the second integrity of marriage, and not of the first.”19 He cites approvingly a statement of St. John Chrysostom: “it is not sex but free will that makes a marriage” (matrimonium non facit coitus, sed voluntas).20 Thomas distinguishes marriage’s “first perfection,” its very form, described as “an indivisible conjoining of souls, by which one of the spouses is bound to keep faith indivisibly with the other,”21 from its “second perfection,” the activity by which it attains its end, which is “the begetting and upbringing of children” through “conjugal intercourse . . . and the other works of husband and wife by which they mutually serve each other (sibi invicem obsequuntur) in rearing their children.”22 This distinction is at the heart of his defense of a true marriage between Mary and Joseph.23 The curious 18 Super Hebr. 13, lec. 1 (Marietti ed., n. 732). 19 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 4. 20 In IV Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, sc 1. 21 ST III, q. 29, a. 2. 22 Ibid. 23 According to St. Thomas, Mary and Joseph “consented to the conjugal uniting, but not expressly to the fleshly uniting save on condition that it should please God” (ST III, q. 29, a. 2); hence their marriage really came into existence. Thomas concludes his discussion with a quotation from St. Augustine: “All the goods of marriage are fulfilled in these parents of Christ: offspring, fidelity, and sacrament. The offspring we know to have been the Lord Jesus himself; fidelity, because there was no adultery; sacrament, because there was no divorce. Only marital intercourse was not present there” (ibid., citing On Marriage and Concupiscence I). A modern reader is tempted to say: “Only? If this is lacking, how can the rest of it be a true marriage?” Indeed, Aquinas himself raises the same objection in this context: “Where the final consummation is lacking, there is no true completion” (In IV Sent., d. 30, q. 2, a. 2, arg. 3). St. Thomas argues as he does because, in his view, the consent to marriage is not a consent to carnal intercourse, but a consent to the marital consortium or societas that implies such intercourse, or put differently, a consent to the mutual power of the spouses over each other’s bodies that is explicitated in the commixtio carnalis (see In IV Sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 4; In IV Sent., d. 34, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1). Thus Aquinas maintains it was not inconsistent for Mary and Joseph to know that God wanted them to remain virgins, and yet for them to keep their hearts so open to the divine will that they The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 419 fact that a marriage can be true but yet to be consummated will be useful further on in our investigation. This fact suggests its contrary: a relationship can be consummated but not true, that is, not marital. At one point St. Thomas brings up an argument that sexual intercourse ought to be construed as sufficient consent to marriage, because, says the objector, “there can be no greater construal of consent (interpretatio consensus)” than this act.24 But he rejects this idea, since the sexual act in and of itself is ambiguous, and need not mean commitment to lifelong marriage; even a favorable construal “does not change the truth of the matter.”25 The reason is that this act becomes marital through marital consent and in no other way. As Thomas wryly puts it: “What that [unmarried] man who mingles carnally consents to, is, in truth, carnal intercourse—but from this fact alone he does not consent to marriage.”26 What one sees here and elsewhere is a rudimentary awareness of a theology of the body that recognizes how our physical acts are a language that we speak to one another, presupposing a hermeneutical context. My thinking and willing affect the very meaning of what I am doing with my body. If I lie with a woman who truly loves me but I intend no permanence in the relationship, I am lying to her, because she will “construe it as consent” to permanence—as Thomas remarks: “consent to someone for a period of time (ad tempus) does not make a marriage.”27 The same thing is true when it comes to procreation: did not insist on maintaining this virginity “at all costs”: “She planned on virginity, unless the Lord should arrange otherwise; hence she entrusted herself to the divine arrangement. To the idea that she consented to fleshly intercourse, one should say that she did not; she consented to marriage directly, but to fleshly intercourse implicitly, so to speak, if God should will it” (Super Matt. 1, lec. 4 [Marietti ed., n. 93]; cf. In IV Sent., d. 30, q. 2, a. 1, qa. 1). Hence Mary and Joseph, fully consenting to be each other’s spouses, thereby became spouses, but because it was the Lord’s will that they not unite sexually, they remained “in suspension” as regards the bodily exchange that normally follows upon this consent (In IV Sent., d. 30, q. 2, a. 1, qa. 1, ad 1–3). In fact, if Mary had not, in wedding Joseph, willed to remain open to the procreation of children by him if God wanted this, then their marriage would have been invalidated through her rejection of one of the essential goods of marriage, the bonum prolis (In IV Sent., d. 30, q. 2, a. 1, qa. 2, ad 2). It may be noted that this curious state of being “in suspension” with regard to legitimate earthly goods typifies the entire eschatological orientation of the Christian condition. For this reason, the marriage of Mary and Joseph is, paradoxically, an exemplar of religious life no less than it is of married life. 24 In IV Sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 2, arg. 2 25 Ibid., ad 2. 26 Ibid., ad 1. 27 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4. 420 Peter Kwasniewski there would seem to be no greater consent to children than the generative act, yet if the possibility of offspring is obstructed, the act is a contradiction in terms, a lie. That the marital act is meritorious and holy for spouses in a state of grace, a view that strikes us now as obvious, was routinely denied in the Middle Ages. In the Scriptum super Sententiis Thomas frequently rehearses arguments that express a crass contempt for marriage and sexuality28 and refutes them with crystal-clear logic.29 Probably the worst is an opinion he reports before trampling on it: “To seek out pleasure in this act would be mortal sin; to accept the pleasure offered would be venial sin; but to hate it would be a thing of perfection.”30 To this Thomas replies, in modo aristoteliano: “the pleasure connected with a good activity is good, with an evil, evil.”31 From the perspective of sacred doctrine he is able to go further: “by the goodness of the sacrament [of marriage] . . . an act is called not only good, but also holy (sanctus); and the marital act has this goodness from the indivisibility of the conjoining, by which it signifies the conjoining of Christ to the Church.”32 Elsewhere he calls marriage a “remedy of holiness for man against sin (remedium sanctitatis homini contra peccatum).”33 About properly sacramental marriage, St. Thomas has still better things to say. Considered as a sacrament of the New Law, marriage between the faithful is a genuine cause of grace, indeed a continual cause.34 Although 28 See, e.g., In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, arg. 1; In IV Sent., d. 42, a. 1, arg. 3; In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3, arg. 3 and arg. 6; In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 3. 29 It should not embarrass Catholic theologians to admit that the medieval period, notwithstanding its incomparable achievements, bequeathed to succeeding ages certain erroneous habits of thought and omissions that have taken centuries to redress.The contemporary crisis of marital morality in the Church cannot be unrelated to the frequent lack of sound teaching and wholesome piety for married couples. That Catholics so easily fell prey to the lies of the sexual revolution points to an utter paucity of intellectual and moral preparation. Could a Baconian-Cartesian-Enlightenment conception of sexual freedom and mastery over nature have triumphed if a robust culture of the intrinsic nobility of the marital vocation and the sacredness of sexuality in service of the gift of life had been firmly in place? At the same time, we should guard against oversimplifications regarding the highly complex thought and practice of medieval Catholics regarding the sacrament of marriage. For a positive assessment, see F. Stan Parmisano, O.P., “Spousal Love in the Medieval Rite of Marriage,” Nova et Vetera 3 (2005): 785–806. 30 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 3. 31 Ibid. 32 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1. 33 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1. 34 In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, qa. 2; the same point is made more extensively in In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3 and ST III, q. 65, a. 1. Cf. In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, sc. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 421 marriage does not confer a sacramental character,35 it establishes something like a character, namely, a permanent spiritual nexus between spouses, which “operates dispositively to bring grace by the power of divine institution.”36 This nexus is an ever-flowing source of actual graces for spouses who remain in the state of grace. Moreover, “from the fact that Christ represented it in his passion,” marriage has power to sanctify the spouses, even as His passion sanctifies the Church.37 It joins spouses not only in body but, more importantly, in soul, in spirit;38 it empowers them to live their common life in the friendship of charity. Along these lines, Aquinas answers a slightly humorous objection with a noble reply. The article is on whether marriage is a sacrament, and an argument against it goes like this: “The sacraments have their efficacy from the passion of Christ. But the human being is not conformed to the passion of Christ, which was penal, through marriage, since the latter has pleasure attached to it.Therefore it is not a sacrament.”39 The reply: “Although marriage does not conform [a spouse] to the passion of Christ as regards punishment, it nevertheless conforms one to it as regards the charity through which he suffered for the conjoining of the Church to himself as [his] Bride.”40 Agreeing with Aristotle, moreover, Aquinas writes that “the friendship that is between husband and wife is natural and comprises in itself the noble, the useful, and the pleasant.”41 He pursues this point in the Summa contra Gentiles: The greater the friendship the more stable and lasting is it. Now, between a man and his wife there seems to be the greatest friendship; 35 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, ad 5. Formally speaking, marriage confers a specific power “for bodily acts,” namely those ordered to the suitable and dignified procreation of children, which includes the power to bring them up well. This is why marriage does not confer a character, which is always ordered to “spiritual acts” (see In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, ad 5), as can be seen in the sacraments that do confer it—baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. Put differently, since character is a metaphysical participation in the high priesthood of Jesus Christ, only those sacraments confer a character that confer the ability to share in the very activity of Christ; and marriage equips earthly spouses to do something other than what Christ Himself actually does (although obviously not anything inherently incompatible with what he does). Some Thomists speak of a “quasi-character” conferred by Christian matrimony. 36 See In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2. 37 See In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1. 38 In IV Sent., d. 42, a. 1, sc 2; ibid., ad 3. In IV Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1, qa. 2, ad 3. 39 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 3. 40 Ibid., ad 3. 41 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 2. Peter Kwasniewski 422 for they are made one not only in the act of fleshly intercourse, which even among beasts causes an agreeable fellowship, but also as partners in the whole of domestic life (ad totius domesticae conversationis consortium).42 Indeed, Thomas’s insistence that there must be a “generous and intense friendship” (liberalis amicitia, amicitia intensa) between husband and wife is one of his main arguments against the practice of polygamy, which, given the resurgence of radical Islam, is no mere speculative question.43 Finally, marriage supplies new members for the Church, the populum fidelium or fidelium collectio, even as it replenishes and expands the human race.44 The sacrament obliges and equips husband and wife to bring back to God, through Christ and his Church, the gift of children they receive from God. “The uppermost good of marriage is offspring brought up for the worship of God ( proles ad cultum Dei educanda).”45 The married, in a way properly theirs, help build up the human race into the body of Christ, the true goal of humanity. When treating of the sacraments of the New Law, St. Thomas makes a distinction between agents and recipients in “hierarchical actions,” and notes the obvious but still wonderful truth that without suitable recipients, there could be no giving of sacraments by their agents.46 We tend to pass over too quickly the enormous privilege granted to Christian men and women of, as the saint puts it, “bringing 42 ScG III, ch. 123, Amplius. 43 See ScG III, ch. 124; cf. In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, where it is said that polygamy “greatly impedes the second end” ( fides) and “completely destroys the third end” (sacramentum). Although a discussion of Thomas’s views on marital friendship exceeds the purpose of this article, it deserves mention that modern commentators tend to be blinded by a preoccupation with his purported sexism and thereby fail to see the nobility of his conception of spousal love, which is apparent only when one adopts a properly theological hermeneutic. For an example of the reductionist treatment, see Colleen McCluskey, “An Unequal Relationship of Equals: Thomas Aquinas on Marriage,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 24 (2007): 1–18. 44 On the natural plane marriage is given “as a remedy . . . against the decrease in numbers that results from death”; on the supernatural plane, it has the privilege of “bringing into being the recipients who approach the sacraments” (ST III, q. 65, a. 1, corp. and ad 3). ScG IV, ch. 78, Quamvis: “Since the people of the faithful ( populum fidelium) were to be perpetuated even to the end of the world, it was necessary that this be done by generation, through which also the human race is perpetuated. . . . Now human generation is ordered to several ends: the continuation of the species; the securing of some political good, such as the preservation of the people in some civic body; it is, moreover, ordered to the perpetuity of the Church, which consists in the assembly of the faithful ( fidelium collectione).” 45 In IV Sent., d. 39, q. 1, a. 1. 46 See ST III, q. 65, a. 1, ad 3. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 423 into being the recipients who approach the sacraments,”47 and so, assisting Christ in providing spiritual nourishment for His people. Upbringing, says Thomas, has to take into account the bodily nourishment of one’s children, of course, but it has much more to do with “nourishment of the soul (nutrimentum animae).”48 Accordingly, there is a strong link between marriage and the common good, bonum commune.49 In the Scriptum, when treating of the proper order in which to enumerate the sacraments, Thomas voices the argument that marriage and holy orders have a certain precedence over the other five because they directly serve the common good, which is more divine than the good of the person50—and rather than simply disagreeing, he twice observes that individuals must be perfected before a community can be perfected, since the latter is constituted out of the former.51 This seems to grant a qualified primacy to that which perfects a community as such. In fact, Thomas holds that “among natural acts, generation alone is ordered to the common good.”52 He underlines the excellence of the good in question: “Just as the preservation of the bodily nature of one individual is a true good (vere bonum), so, too, is the preservation of the nature of the human species a very great good (quoddam bonum excellens).”53 In one of many lists of the results of marriage, Aquinas enumerates “the good of children, the restraining of concupiscence, and the multiplication of friendship.”54 Two out of three are social goods, diffusions of the good. The uppermost reality at work in and displayed by the passion and death of Jesus Christ is, for St. Thomas, the burning charity of His Heart.55 This being so, the statement that “the conjoining of Christ to the 47 Ibid. 48 In Super I Cor. 7, lec. 1. See In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1; In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, ad 5; In IV Sent., d. 39, q. 1, a. 2; ScG III, ch. 122; ScG IV, ch. 58. 49 For the definitive treatment of this central concept in the theological vision of St. Thomas, see Charles De Koninck, The Primacy of the Common Good, in The Writings of Charles De Koninck, Volume 2, ed. Ralph McInerny (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). For discussions that have many points of contact with the present inquiry, see Michael Waldstein, “The Common Good in St.Thomas and John Paul II,” Nova et Vetera 3 (2005): 569–78, and idem, “Children as the Common Good of Marriage,” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 697–709. 50 In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, arg. 3; cf. In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, arg. 3; In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 1. 51 In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, corp.; ad 3. 52 ScG III, ch. 123, Ulterius. 53 ST II–II, q. 153, a. 2. 54 In IV Sent., d. 40, a. 4, arg. 5. 55 See, e.g., ST III, q. 47, a. 2, ad 1 & ad 3; q. 48, aa. 2–3. Peter Kwasniewski 424 Church, which marriage signifies, is perfected by charity”56 amounts to saying that this state of life, if lived as St. Paul instructs in Ephesians 5, both objectively assimilates the spouses to that supreme mystery of redemptive love and subjectively fills them with it. This, it would seem, is implied in Thomas’s statement that grace is the reality contained by the sacrament (its res contenta).57 Unfortunately for us, he did not explicate this truth as much as he might have done; still greater mysteries commanded his attention, the sovereign mystery of the Eucharist most of all. And with good reason: the Eucharist, says Thomas again and again, really contains the very One who suffered for us, and thus brings to the communicant the very source and goal of charity.58 What Christian marriage symbolizes is truly present in the Eucharist; it is this sacrament that brings about, and ever deepens, the “spiritual marriage”59 (as Thomas 56 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 2, arg. 2. 57 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3; for further references, see notes 34–37 and the surrounding discussion. 58 See, e.g., ST III, q. 65, a. 3, arg. 1: “Marriage is ordained to the common good, in a bodily way. But the common spiritual good of the entire Church is contained substantially in the sacrament itself of the Eucharist.” ST III, q. 73, q. 3, ad 3: “the Eucharist is the sacrament of the Passion of Christ inasmuch as man is perfected in union with the Christ who suffered (in unione ad Christum passum). . . . Thus the Eucharist is called the sacrament of charity, which is the bond of perfection.” In IV Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 2, qa. 3, ad 5: “The Eucharist is called the sacrament of charity—expressive of Christ’s, and effective of ours (sacramentum caritatis Christi expressivum, et nostrae factivum).” For similarly rich texts and discussion of their far-reaching implications, see Peter Kwasniewski, “Aquinas on Eucharistic Ecstasy: From Self-Alienation to Gift of Self,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 157–204. 59 Aquinas appeals many times, directly or indirectly, to the idea of matrimonium spirituale. Usually he is speaking of the soul’s spiritual union with God, or the Church’s union with Christ. Typical examples would be: “in the state of the Church militant, a spiritual marriage is contracted with Christ by faith” (In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 4, a. 1, arg. 4); “in the justification of sinners man contracts a kind of spiritual marriage with God, as is written in Hosea 2:19: ‘I will espouse thee to me in righteousness’ ” (De veritate, q. 28, a. 3, sc 4); “through charity, the soul is united to God as a spouse according to a kind of spiritual marriage” (De caritate, a. 12, arg. 24); “in its mystical meaning, the mother of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, is present in spiritual marriages as the one who arranges the marriage, because it is through her intercession that one is joined to Christ through grace” (Super Ioan. 2, lec. 1 [Marietti ed., n. 343]); “Christ espoused the Church by His Incarnation and Passion: wherefore this is foreshadowed in the words ‘A bridegroom of blood thou art to me’ (Ex. 4:25)” (In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 4, a. 4, sc 2). He also uses such language when speaking about the relationship of a bishop, or the pope, or even a parochial priest, to his local church. The most impressive of these texts is from the Contra impugnantes: “the Spouse of the Church is Christ . . . He, by His The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 425 expressly calls it) in which eternal life consists: the indissoluble unity of the Bride and the Bridegroom, of the members with their Head. While the sacrament of marriage signifies the highest mystery, it does not, unlike the other sacraments, effect precisely what it signifies.60 That is, it does not actually bring about the union of Christ and the Church; rather, it is derived from that preexistent union and points to it as the reality signified but not contained (the res significata non contenta). This point deserves a closer look. All the sacraments signify grace as the res tantum, but in order to do so, they must first signify some determinate effect as the res et sacramentum, which then serves as the sign of that grace. The external visible sign that we experience, the sacramentum tantum, is constituted by the conjunction of the sacrament’s matter and form. These technical terms point to three inseparable aspects of a sacrament: the sacramentum tantum is the immediate sensible sign; the res et sacramentum is the reality given to us under that sign, which is itself the sign of a further reality; the res tantum is the ultimate reality to which the sacrament grants access. The sacramentum tantum of the Eucharist, that is, the words of consecration spoken over the bread and wine, signifies and brings about the real Body of Christ, which in turn signifies and brings about the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ; the sacramentum tantum of baptism, that is, the baptismal formula spoken while immersing the candidate in water or pouring water over his head, signifies and brings about the washing away of sin and the Christian’s spiritual death and resurrection; the sacramentum tantum of penance, that is, the words of absolution spoken “over” the penitent’s self-accusation, signifies and brings about absolution from sin, etc.—whereas the sacramentum tantum of marriage signifies but does not bring about the union of Christ and the Church as such; rather, it brings about an indissoluble bond or nexus Church, begets children to bear His name. Others who are called spouses are [in reality] servants of the Bridegroom who co-operate with him exteriorly in this work of spiritual generation . . . [T]hey are termed spouses, because they take the place of the true Spouse. Hence, the Pope, who is the vicegerent of Christ for the whole Church, is called the spouse of the universal Church; in like manner a bishop is termed the spouse of his diocese, and a priest of his parish. . . . Thus, Christ, the Pope, the bishops, and the priests are but the one spouse of the Church” (Part II, ch. 3, ad 22). 60 See In IV Sent., d., 26, q. 2, arg. 4 (“marriage does not effect the union of Christ and the Church that it signifies”) and ad 4. In contrast, for example, the pouring of water in baptism accompanied by the words symbolizes washing from sin and dying and rising in Christ—and it does wash from sin and make one die to sin and rise spiritually with Christ (see In IV Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, qa. 1). At In IV Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, qa. 2; cf. ibid., qa. 4, Aquinas states: “The expression of words [in giving consent] stands to marriage as the exterior washing stands to baptism.” Peter Kwasniewski 426 that is like that union, but not identical to it. Among other things, the union of Christ and the Church is eternal, whereas that of human spouses is temporal and temporary, and however spouses are united in heaven, it is not a connection such as they had on earth, as the response of Jesus to the Sadduccees proves.61 André-Charles Gigon maintains that the mutual in-the-present consent of a marriageable man and woman is the sacramentum tantum, the indissoluble bond between them is the res et sacramentum, and the matrimonial grace for living their state in holiness is the res tantum.62 Therefore, marriage does effect what it signifies, if the effect be understood as the grace to live the spousal union in holiness— which is itself a sign of something further, Christ’s union with the Church. This Aquinas openly says in the Summa contra Gentiles: Because the sacraments effect what they symbolize, we must believe that this sacrament confers upon the bridal pair the grace by which they may reach/relate to/pertain to ( pertineant) the union of Christ and the Church, which is most necessary for them, so that they may seek fleshly and earthly things in such a way as not to be disjoined from Christ and the Church.63 Matthias Scheeben maintains that marriage does build up the union of Christ and the Church by multiplying the latter’s members, in order that Christ might be united to more souls.64 In a sense, then, marriage augments that union mediately and indirectly; in itself, however, the sacrament is perfected prior to that augmentation occurring, and the addition of members to the Mystical Body makes us part of the preexisting Church of the blessed united to its Head, even as our prayers do not move God to new divine action but rather make us receptive to that which the unchanging God is prepared to bestow on those who ask, seek, and knock. What is most special about Christian marriage, then, is its unique and proper signification: “since wedlock (conjugium) is a sacrament, it is a sacred sign, and of a sacred thing,”65 namely, “the mystery of the conjoining of Christ and the Church,”66 “which is made in the freedom of love (secun61 See Matthew 22:23–33; Mark 12:18–27; Luke 20:27–39. 62 See André-Charles Gigon, O.P., De Sacramentis in communi (Fribourg: Typographia Canisiana, 1945). 63 ScG IV, ch. 78. 64 See Matthias Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946), ch. 21, “Christian Matrimony.” 65 In IV Sent., d. 26, prologue. It is a distinct sacrament because it uniquely signi- fies a determinate sacred thing (In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2). 66 In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, one among a hundred such texts. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 427 dum libertatem amoris).”67 So important is marriage’s sign-value that Thomas can say: “In every way, ‘sacrament’ is the foremost of the three goods of marriage, for it pertains to marriage insofar as it is a sacrament of grace, whereas the other two [goods, viz., offspring and fidelity] pertain to it insofar as it is an office of nature—and the perfection of grace is nobler than the perfection of nature.”68 Indeed, it is this “marriage” of God and man that captivates St.Thomas even more than the human marriage that signifies it. In company with nearly all theological writers of the Eastern and Western traditions who preceded him, Thomas often utilizes marriage as a metaphor or image of God’s dealings with His people in covenant history, of Christ’s one-flesh relationship with the Church, His Body, and of the individual soul’s intimate union with the Lord.69 In these respects he and they are willing exponents of the mystery revealed in Sacred Scripture: the “good news” of God’s love for us and of our being caught up in that love, a “mutual indwelling” (mutua inhaesio)70 that is likened in many revealed texts to the relationship of husband and wife—above all in the Song of Songs, Psalm 45,71 the prophets Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the Letter to 67 The full statement: “marriage signifies the conjoining of Christ to the Church, which is made in the freedom of love. Therefore it cannot happen by coerced consent” (In IV Sent., d. 29, a. 3, qa. 1, sc 2). 68 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3. In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, sc 2. As Marc Ouellet reminds us (Divine Likeness:Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2006], 125–26), Thomas sees the sacramentality of marriage as a perfection that God introduces from without, so to speak, rather than something that wells up immanently from human nature, the way offspring and fidelity do. Thus, to the question “What is most essential to marriage?” there must be two answers: one from the vantage of its natural function, namely to promote the human race by “increasing and multiplying,” and the other from the vantage of its supernatural function, which emanates from and concerns itself with the nuptial union of Christ and the Church. Of course,Thomas always says that if by offspring or fidelity one means not the thing itself but the intention thereof, then either of these is more essential to marriage than sacramentality, inasmuch as the nature of a thing precedes its elevation by grace. If there is no man, there is no saint; so too, if there is no permanent sexual relationship ordered to offspring, there is no indissoluble grace-giving bond (see In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1). At In IV Sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 3 Thomas says: “the [final] cause of marriage per se is that to which marriage is of itself ordered, namely, the procreation of children, and the avoidance of fornication”; ibid., ad 1: “that which has one end per se and principally can [also] have many per se secondary ends, as well as an infinity of per accidens ends.” 69 See note 59 on matrimonium spirituale. 70 See ST I–II, q. 28, a. 2. 71 Super Ps. 45[44] is one of Aquinas’s most ample treatments of the marriage between Christ and the Church. He says at the start of his remarks: “The content 428 Peter Kwasniewski Ephesians, and the Book of Revelation.72 Such texts on “spiritual marriage” are regularly cited by Thomas, not as mere ornamentation but as authoritative premises and as doorways that lead the reader or listener back into the inspired word, where he may nourish himself in lectio divina, for the personal appropriation of revealed truth.73 After all, it was not a frivolous decision when Aquinas, in his magnificent divisio textus of Scripture,74 declared the point of arrival for the whole inspired word to be our spiritual marriage with the Lord, and doubly so: in the Old Testament the peak is the Song of Songs (which treats of “the virtues of the cleansed soul, whereby a man, with worldly cares altogether behind him, delights in the contemplation of wisdom alone”),75 while in the New Testament it is the Book of Revelation: after learning of the beginning and the progress of the Church, we come to “the culmination of the Church, with which the Apocalypse concludes the contents of the whole of Scripture—until which time the Bride is in the bridal chamber of Jesus Christ awaiting her participation in the life of glory; to which may Jesus Christ himself lead us, who is blessed forever.”76 of this psalm and that of the book called the Song of Songs is the very same (eadem est materia hujus Psalmi et libri qui dicitur Cantica Canticorum).” 72 For an excellent example of a text in which Thomas expressly refers to a number of these texts to refute a view of some of his contemporaries on why having had more than one wife invalidates a man for holy orders, see In IV Sent., d. 27, q. 3, a. 1, qa. 3. 73 One who researches St. Thomas’s citations of the Song of Songs will see the extent to which the traditional allegorical/mystical exegesis influences his interpretation and applications. There is enough material in the master’s writings to permit a speculative reconstruction of a Thomistic Song commentary, or at least an ample prologue to such a commentary. 74 The De partitione sacrae scripturae of the second Principium, on the text “Hic est liber mandatorum Dei.”The two Principia or inaugural lectures are printed (albeit in reverse order) in the Opuscula theologica, vol. I, ed. R. A.Verardo (Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1953), 435–43; see nn. 1203–8 for the divisio textus of Scripture. On the importance of this divisio, see Peter Kwasniewski, “Golden Straw: St. Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology,” Nova et Vetera 2 (2004): 88–89, with references in n. 89 (see also 74 with n. 39). 75 That middle phrase (taken from the De partitione sacrae scripturae, n. 1207 in the Marietti ed.) is difficult to translate: In tertio gradu sunt virtutes purgati animi, quibus homo, saeculi curis penitus calcatis, in sola sapientiae contemplatione delectatur; et quantum ad hoc sunt Cantica. The description is that of the highest peak of holiness according to ST I–II, q. 61, a. 5, where the state is also called “a perpetual covenant with the Divine Mind.” 76 Tertio ecclesiae terminum; in quo totius Sacrae Scripturae continentiam Apocalypsis concludit, quousque Sponsa in thalamum Iesu Christi ad vitam gloriosam participandam; ad quam The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 429 II. In Praise of Spiritual Marriage It is at this point, the climax of Thomas’s appreciation of marriage, that we begin to understand his relativization of the sacrament of marriage. We have to remember that a certain imperfection attaches to all the sacraments, precisely because they are veiled and transitional. Recall the closing stanza of the Adoro Te: Ihesu, quem uelatum nunc aspicio, quando fiet illud quod tam sicio? Vt te reuelata cernens facie, uisu sim beatus tue glorie.77 Jesus, whom veiled I now behold, When will it come to pass—what I so thirst for? That, looking intently upon your then-revealed face, I may be blessed with the sight of your glory. The sacraments begin in us a work that is complete only in the life to come, when they shall have fallen away as means no longer necessary, however urgently needed they are in this present life. As Thomas states: “Conjoining to the [ultimate] end . . . according to the full participation thereof . . . is not accomplished by any sacrament, but the sacraments dispose [their recipient] to it.”78 Or as he puts it in the Summa: The state of the New Law is between the state of the Old Law, whose figures are fulfilled in the New, and the state of glory, in which all truth will be openly and perfectly revealed—wherefore then there will be no sacraments. But now, so long as we know “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. nos perducat ipse Iesus Christus, benedictus in saecula saeculorum (from the De partitione sacrae scripturae, n. 1208 in the Marietti ed.). 77 From the critical text established by R. Wielockx, available in his article “Poetry and Theology in the Adoro te deuote: Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist and Christ’s Uniqueness,” in K. Emery and J. Wawrykow, eds., Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998); translation mine. 78 In IV Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4: “Conjoining to the [ultimate] end is twofold. In one way, according to the full participation thereof; and that conjoining is not accomplished by any sacrament, but the sacraments dispose [their recipient] to it, and among them, extreme unction does that most nearly; and thus it is placed last among the sacraments ordered to the remedy of one person. In another way, according to an imperfect [participation thereof], and such is the enjoyment [of God] in the wayfaring state; and to this the Eucharist is ordered. And so there is no need to place it last simply, but last in making progress towards the good.” See also ScG IV, ch. 70. Peter Kwasniewski 430 13:12), we need sensible signs in order to reach spiritual things; and this is the province of the sacraments.79 St. Thomas even stresses that our beatitude resides not in Christ’s humanity as such, which is created, but solely in the uncreated divinity, which is the source of the beatitude of Christ’s own soul and remains an incomprehensible and beatifying Mystery to His human mind.80 Even the Eucharist, the sacrament of sacraments, is the bread of wayfarers, the viaticum, the instrument of our healing and elevating communion with Christ in this life, not the destination or definitive union. Thus we would have a greater cause for alarm if Thomas had a higher esteem for the sacrament of marriage than he already has; it would be all out of proportion with the transiency, non-ultimacy, and “utility” (in Augustine’s sense) of everything here below, on our pilgrimage—everything that is not God. Why is it so very difficult for us moderns to come to terms with the seeming indifference towards or “contempt” of genuine earthly goods that we find expressed in countless classic texts of the Christian tradition, such as the Imitation of Christ? There may be many reasons, but the root cause must surely be the eclipse of heaven as the object of our most passionate longing.81 With this eclipse of heaven comes also the loss of a vivid awareness of and delight in the presence of God in the here and now—the proper gift of the contemplative soul, as was the Angelic Doctor, whom his contemporaries described as miro modo contemplativus. In regard to marriage in particular, we find an ambivalence in Aquinas that is somehow disturbing to us, as when he says: “Marriage is conceded as an indulgence/forbearance to the state of weakness, as is evident from 1 Corinthians 7. Therefore it is necessary for it to be excused by certain goods,”82 or again, “the choice of such a [nuptial] conjoining cannot be ordered [i.e., reasonable] except through the recompense of certain things by which the said conjoining is dignified; and these are the goods that excuse marriage and render it honorable.”83 The evidence indicates that St. Thomas values marriage more as a symbol of something else than as a thing in its own right, a Christian state of life; he values more the reality signified than the thing signifying it. 79 ST III, q. 61, a. 4, ad 1. 80 See, inter alia, ScG IV, ch. 96; ST III, q. 9, a. 2, ad 1–3, and especially q. 10, a. 1. 81 See A. J. Conyers, Eclipse of Heaven: The Loss of Transcendence and Its Effect on Modern Life (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). This is a major theme in the homilies and addresses of Pope Benedict XVI. 82 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 1, sc 1. 83 Ibid., response; see In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 1. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 431 A sign of the “impact” of this preoccupation with marriage’s signvalue in reference to the definitive “wedding of the Lamb” is the reduction, in practice, of most of Thomas’s actual writing on the sacrament to canonical details of validity: who may be licitly married to whom; when and how and before whom; what prevents or invalidates a contract; what spouses must do to live up to their contract; and so on. Now, most people who read this sort of treatise think: “Here is a theologian who has no appreciation for love, for what makes marriage real in the lives of those who are married; he is dealing with it in terms that are purely abstract, impersonal, and cold; where is the warmth of eros? Where is the personality of the spouses? They are stick figures.” But this is the wrong way to interpret the matter. St. Thomas is focusing on those basic constitutive elements by which the natural love of man and woman can become, in reality, a grace-filled sign of the union of Christ and the Church. Because he is thinking and writing as a theologian, not as a philosopher, psychiatrist, sociologist, spiritual director, or poet, he is concerned about the insertion of the baptized man and baptized woman into the overarching and grace-giving mystery of Christ’s spousal union with the Church.84 Without this insertion, it does not matter how much passion they have, or how “sincerely” they love; how colorful they are, like Heloise and Abelard; how rich their personal histories. Lacking vital contact with the mystery of Christ’s marriage, all these human resources are, in some fundamental sense, isolated and infertile, as far as supernatural life and eternal life are concerned.The only way for the love of man and woman to attain the grandeur of eternity and the fruitfulness of Trinitarian love is by its dying and rising in Christ, as an expression of his passion for the Church, a realization of his mastery of nature and matter—the only true mastery, since it is founded in self-gift to the pouring out of his own blood (not in the exploitation of the other, spilling the other’s blood). If this analysis is correct, then Thomas in his treatise on marriage is looking exactly where he ought to be looking, and leaving other legitimate concerns aside—concerns that perhaps never occurred to him to pursue. He is focused on the one thing needful: sacramental assimilation to the mystery of communion, the gift of at-onement, accomplished and manifested on the Cross. So, on this hypothesis, we would expect to find that St. Thomas, if he does praise human marriage or the love of man and woman, will praise it for its likeness to the union of Christ and the Church that endows all 84 There is also the simple fact that Thomas, by temperament and vocation, well deserved Cajetan’s axiom: semper formaliter loquitur. Peter Kwasniewski 432 human loves with their durability and spiritual fecundity. And that, as a matter of fact, is what we do find. A corollary is that, far from evaporating the density and value of marriage in itself, St. Thomas shows that it can only have goodness, meaning, and value as long as it is seen within a larger cosmological and Christological context.Take that context away, and one actually disembowels the living organism of marriage, one freezes it in its immanence. Marriage does not gain in dignity or depth of reality by being detached from its present anchor and future-leaning symbolism; rather, it loses its dignity altogether and crumbles into incoherence. Can we really find any other explanation for what is happening around us in the modern world, with the ever-accelerating destruction of marriage, atomization of the family, and contempt for human life? Is it not because there is no longer any meaning to something that is “purely” or “merely” human? Its meaning comes to it from above, always from above, and (to borrow a phrase from Proclus) its health consists in “upward tensions,”85 its being actively united to its transcendent source and goal. “That is the theology behind the story of the Garden of Eden,” writes Herbert McCabe. “There was no way that human beings could be simply human.They had to be either superhuman or inhuman.”86 The formulation is exaggerated, of course, and may evoke Henri de Lubac’s erroneous position on nature and grace; but undoubtedly there is great truth in this Chestertonian saying, and much of St. Thomas’s own mind. An excessive exaltation of the married state, such as we have seen in some postconciliar theology, in fact obscures or even begins to undermine its sign-function, its transparency as a state announcing an ultimate intimacy of love, total, all-fulfilling, perpetual, lacking in nothing, that is actually impossible between two mortal human beings, however great their own eros and agape may be or become. The paradoxical truth is this: Christian marriage at its best leads us to long all the more for a perfection essentially and altogether beyond the state of human marriage, even with all of its blessings intact. It accomplishes this task not at the expense of these goods but through the faithful use of them. Marriage is not man’s fulfillment but it is an image of that fulfillment, and in its sacramental perfection it is already a certain promise and foretaste of it.87 85 Proclus, Elements of Theology, trans. E. R. Dodds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), prop. 23. 86 Herbert McCabe, O.P., God, Christ, and Us, ed. Brian Davies, O.P. (London: Continuum, 2006), 65. 87 See the suggestive comparison between vowed religious life and vowed marital life in Mary Catherine Sommers, “Marriage Vows and ‘Taking Up a New State,’ ” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 679–95. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 433 St. Thomas is very insistent on one point: essential to the definition of marriage is that the spouses-to-be consent to give to each other power over each other’s body, so that through the resulting marital intimacy they may be fruitful and multiply, for the benefit of the Church.88 Because marriage is inherently ordered to procreation of offspring, one can say more generally that marriage, of its essence, is immersed in the transient order of this world, it is bound up with “the generation that is passing away” and the generation that is coming to be.89 Simultaneously, at the level of the good of sacramentum, marriage stands in a direct relationship to that union of uttermost intimacy and perpetuity, namely the union of Christ with His beloved Bride, the Church. Even if human marriage does not actively bring about this mystical reality,90 it does possess a special capacity to represent it in a way that surpasses all other earthly forms of communion, as far as the anthropological totality of the union is concerned. The Catechism of the Council of Trent explains it thus: When Christ our Lord wished to give a sign of the intimate union that exists between Him and His Church and of His immense love for us, He chose especially the sacred union of man and wife. That this sign was a most appropriate one will readily appear from the fact that of all human relations there is none that binds so closely as the marriage-tie, and from the fact that husband and wife are bound to one another by the bonds of the greatest affection and love. Hence it is that Holy Scripture so frequently represents to us the divine union of Christ and the Church under the figure of marriage.91 This combination of temporal lowliness and symbolic sovereignty points to a paradox. In his book Eros and Allegory, Denys Turner argues that what makes marriage the most suitable image of the relationship of Christ and the Church, God and the soul, is what makes virginity the most suitable way of life for the one who wishes to internalize and embody this relationship. Hence we find it is often the very same theologians who have a lofty doctrine of mystical marriage and a relatively mean or meager appreciation of earthly marriage inasmuch as it involves sexual union, sensual pleasure, and in general worldly cares. It is the very intensity, unanimity, and fecundity of covenanted sexual love that makes it both the superior 88 On the relationship between spousal consent and the conjugal act, see note 23. 89 In IV Sent., d. 32, a. 3, arg. 4: “Marriage is chiefly ordered to the conjugal act.” 90 See In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4 and the discussion above of the res significata non contenta. 91 The Catechism of the Council of Trent, trans. J. McHugh and C. Callan (Rockford, IL: TAN, 1983), 345. 434 Peter Kwasniewski model and the inferior reality.92 What we are saying is that marriage is a sign of the consummated union of Christ and the Church at the end of days, the ultimate intimacy between God and man that is our destiny, whereas the consecrated state is a proleptic participation in that new life to come, when none will marry or be given in marriage, but will be as the angels in heaven (Mk 12:25).93 While both married and celibate share in the true marriage of Christ to his Church, those who willingly practice perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom have begun to pass over into that consummated union of which marriage is the sign. Thus, marriage is in sign what celibacy or consecrated virginity is in reality.94 As Aquinas says: “The spiritual marriage is signified by the fleshly marriage”; indeed, “spiritual marriage is more blissful than fleshly marriage.”95 The temporary nature of marriage is built into its very sacramentality: when the end comes, the sign will pass away. But the consecrated state is forever. In heaven we are all, if you will, consecrated religious: we are “brought 92 Superior, as compared with other types of relationships (fraternal bonds; non- sexual friendship; “colleagues engaged in a common adventure”; parent-child; master-disciple; ruler-subject; and any other candidates there might be); inferior, as compared with the more perfect attainment or realization of the supernatural union of love it so successfully models. For further thoughts along these lines, see Peter Kwasniewski, “The Ecstasy of Love in Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences,” Angelicum 83 (2006): 87–93. 93 Commenting on Matthew 22:1 (“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son”), St. Thomas writes: “It can be said that this bridegroom is the Word incarnate; the bride, the Church; hence the Apostle [says]: ‘This is a great mystery, and I speak of Christ and the Church’ (Eph. 5:32). Likewise, [the marriage] of the Word himself to our soul. For the soul becomes a partaker of God’s glory through faith, and in this way our marriage [with him] comes about: ‘I will espouse you in faith’ (Hos. 2:20). Likewise, there will be a marriage in the common resurrection, of which resurrection Christ is the way: ‘I am the way’ ( John 14:6). There will be a [heavenly] marriage at that time, when our mortal [body] is swallowed up by life, as is said in 2 Corinthians 5:4” (Super Matt. 22, lec. 1). 94 I am speaking here, of course, of the finality or trajectory of the consecrated state, of its potential for facilitating total surrender to Christ and the practice of the contemplation of the life to come. I think it is not unfair to say that the Church’s traditional teaching is that this total surrender and this summit of contemplation is made more difficult in numerous ways by the life that is, so to speak, “natural” to man—to be married, with children; to own and dispose of property; to be self-governing and independent in mind and manner. I do not speak here of the subjective experience of any one particular religious or priest struggling (or not struggling) to actualize the spiritual potential of his or her state in life or place in the Church. 95 In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 4, a. 1, sc 1 and sc 2. The Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage 435 over into the home of the heavenly spouse, in the manner of a spouse”;96 and “in spiritual marriage there are no burdens, especially in the state of the Church triumphant.”97 It is a theme about which St. Thomas writes in many places, such as the following: The dowry is usually settled on the bride not when she is espoused, but when she is taken to the bridegroom’s dwelling, so as to be in the presence of the bridegroom, since “while we are in the body we are absent from the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6). Hence the gifts bestowed on the saints in this life are not called a dowry, but rather those which are bestowed on them when they are received into glory, where the Bridegroom delights them with His presence.98 And what will heaven be like? Thomas spells it out in a memorable phrase: “Perfect vision, full embracing, and the clinging of consummated love.”99 Marriage is at its best, so to speak, when pointing beyond itself, to a spousal intimacy, a union of love, infinitely greater and more fulfilling and more fruitful. This paradoxical situation—the earth-boundedness, transiency, immersion in mortal materiality, that is inseparable from the exercise of sexuality,100 yet at the same time the capacity, under the influence of grace, for insertion into and representation of the paschal mystery— explains, on the one hand, Aquinas’s occasionally lackluster treatment of human marriage, and on the other hand, his profound and moving thoughts on the spousal union of Christ and the Church, where marital imagery becomes a central element of mystical theology at its peak. When 96 The dowry is given “ei qui traducitur in domum caelestis sponsi per modum sponsae” (In II Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 5, arg. 3). 97 In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 4, a. 1, arg. 3. In the reply he adds: “although there are no burdens in the spiritual marriage, there is nevertheless the greatest gladness; and that this gladness may be perfected the bride is dowered with gifts, so that by their means she may be happily united with the bridegroom.” 98 In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 4, a. 1, ad 4. 99 In I Sent., d. 1, a. 1, arg. 10: perfecta visio, plena comprehensio, et inhaesio amoris consummati. 100 The husband or wife who engages in the marital act “renders him-/herself unfit for spiritual things, because in that act a human being is made to be entirely flesh (homo efficitur totus caro)” (In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 3, ad 4); “though free from guilt, the marital act, because it suppresses reason due to fleshly pleasure, renders man unfit for spiritual things. Therefore, in the days [of the Church year] on which one should especially give oneself to spiritual things, it is not permitted to request the debt” (In IV Sent., d. 32, a. 5). Cf. In IV Sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 1; In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2, where Aquinas asserts that while the marital act in no way impedes the habit of grace, it does impede the activity of contemplation and God-directed love. 436 Peter Kwasniewski Aquinas treats of marriage as such, marriage between man and woman, he sees in it both its lowliness and its loftiness, the one insofar as it pertains to a world that is passing away,101 the other insofar as it symbolizes, and permits access into, the time- and space-transcending spousal covenant that was consummated on the Cross, confirmed in the resurrection, proclaimed to the human race after Pentecost—the definitive marriage that will be celebrated forever in the wedding feast of eternal life. N&V 101 In IV Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3: “Marriage, according to Augustine, is a good of mortals; hence in the resurrection there will be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, as is said in Matthew 22; and hence the bond of marriage does not extend beyond the life in which it was contracted; and thus it is called ‘inseparable’ because it cannot be dissolved in this life—but by death it can be dissolved, either by bodily death after fleshly conjoining, or by spiritual death [through entrance into religious life] after a merely spiritual conjoining.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 437–62 437 Live Action and Planned Parenthood: A New Test Case for Lying T HOMAS P ETRI , O.P., AND M ICHAEL A. WAHL Providence College Providence, RI P ERIODICALLY over the course of the early months of 2011, the pro-life group Live Action released a series of videos of undercover “stings” they had initiated in several Planned Parenthood clinics around the country.1 In these stings, a man or a woman (or sometimes both) entered a Planned Parenthood clinic posing as persons engaged in the sex industry who were interested in securing care for illegal underage immigrants they had hired for prostitution. None of this was true, but the Live Action activists were convincing. It is unknown how many such stings the group conducted, but they released close to one dozen videos. In these videos, employees of the targeted Planned Parenthood clinics invariably intimated or explicitly suggested ways to avoid reporting the child sexual abuse to the proper authorities. As expected, there was great political fallout from these videos, but there was also moral outrage among voters and politicians throughout the country. As a result, several states have moved to defund Planned Parenthood clinics.2 Of course, given Planned Parenthood’s abortion rates, this is a good 1 Live Action referred to the effort as the Mona Lisa Project. The videos are avail- able at www.liveaction.org/monalisa. See also Erik Eckholm, “Group Releases Hidden Tapes Against Planned Parenthood,” The New York Times, February 2, 2011; Erik Eckholm, “Virginia: Second Planned Parenthood Tape Surfaces,” The New York Times, February 4, 2011; Anemona Hartocollis, “Latest Hidden Video by Abortion Foes Shows Bronx Clinic of Planned Parenthood,” The New York Times, February 9, 2011. 2 The state of Indiana was the first. See Associated Press, “Indiana: Planned Parenthood Funds Are Cut,” The New York Times, May 10, 2011. Cf. Erik Eckholm, “New Laws in 6 States Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks,” The New York Times, June, 27, 2011. 438 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl development.3 For our purposes, however, the Live Action stings afford us a new test case for discussing the morality of lying: is it permissible to lie about one’s occupation to deceive an employee of an abortion clinic for the sake of exposing the corruption of said clinic to the public, especially if one is convinced that doing so will limit the number of deaths from abortion because said clinic will lose state funding and other private support? Christian moral theory has long debated the possibility of lying for a good purpose, such as saving another person’s life.We need think only of the standard casuist dilemma of the Gestapo coming to a German family’s home and inquiring whether Jews are present. Oceans of ink have been spilled arguing the proper answer to such an inquiry. Naturally, the Live Action stings have reignited the debate among Catholic thinkers, especially on Internet sites such as The Public Discourse, on the permissibility of speaking falsehoods and of lying.4 In light of this debate, Janet Smith, who holds the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair for Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, has critiqued St.Thomas Aquinas’s position that all lying is sinful, even lies that save the life of oneself or another.5 She is hesitant to be critical of St. 3 Periodically, Planned Parenthood releases a fact sheet that lists its services.The latest fact sheet, published in July 2011, reveals that while the clinics perform a variety of services for women, when it comes to children, the “service” provided to the vast majority of children “served” is abortion: in 2009, they aborted 332,278 children while referring only 977 to adoption. See Planned Parenthood, “Fact Sheet,” July, 2011, www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/PP_Services.pdf [accessed August 11, 2011]. This fact sheet reports more abortions and fewer adoptions referrals than in 2008 (324,008 and 2,405, respectively). See Planned Parenthood, “Fact Sheet,” September, 2011, www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/fact_ppservices_201009-03.pdf [accessed August 11, 2011]. 4 See Christopher O. Tollefsen, “Truth, Love, and Live Action,” Public Discourse (February 9, 2011), www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/02/2529 [accessed August 11, 2011]; Christopher Kaczor, “In Defense of Live Action,” Public Discourse (February 11, 2011), www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/02/2538 [accessed August 11, 2011]; Christopher O. Tollefsen, “Why Lying is Always Wrong,” Public Discourse (February 14, 2011) [accessed August 11, 2011]; Hadley Arkes, “When Speaking Falsely is Right,” Public Discourse (February 19, 2011) [accessed August 11, 2011]; Christopher O. Tollefsen, “Speaking Truth to Evil,” Public Discourse (February 21, 2011) [accessed August 11, 2011]; Peter Kreeft, “Why Live Action Did Right and Why We All Should Know That,” CatholicVote.org (February 19, 2011), www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=14306 [accessed August 11, 2011]. 5 See Janet Smith, “Lying: A Metaphysical Issue Before a Moral Issue,” CatholicVote.org (February 25, 2011), www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p= 14539 [accessed August 11, 2011]; Janet Smith, “Fig Leaves and Falsehoods,” First Things 214 ( June-July, 2011), 45–49. A New Test Case for Lying 439 Thomas. Yet, she offers a salient critique of the Angelic Doctor that may be persuasive to the untrained eye.We argue, however, that she has misunderstood key points of his teaching on lying and so has misrepresented him to her readers. In fact, it is not entirely clear that St. Thomas would disagree with her assessment of many of the cases that she presents. In this essay, we will first present an overview of Aquinas’s thought on lying, within his understanding of the nature of speech. We will then challenge Janet Smith’s reading of St. Thomas on this issue. Finally, we will present our concerns regarding the Live Action stings on Planned Parenthood and the central problem with the debate surrounding them, namely, that commentators seem unconcerned about the effect that the choice to lie has on the character of the liars. I. Lying, According to St. Thomas Aquinas A. St. Augustine St. Thomas Aquinas’s view of language and lying follows naturally upon the thought of St. Augustine. Others have thoroughly investigated Augustine’s insistence that lying is always morally impermissible.6 We need not repeat their work here. However, to understand the tradition that Aquinas inherits from St. Augustine, it will be helpful to summarize briefly the teaching of the Doctor of Grace on lying. St. Augustine’s two major works on lying are his De Mendacio liber unus, written in 395, and his Contra Mendacium liber unus, written in 420. The later Contra Mendacium neither alters nor adds anything substantial to the ideas Augustine laid out in the earlier De Mendacio. During this interval, St. Augustine was also collecting his various sermons on the Psalms. His commentary on Psalm 5 is particularly important for understanding his view of lying.7 Initially, St. Augustine says that a person lies when he “has one thing in his mind and utters another in words, or by signs of whatever kind.”8 He also clarifies that a person who speaks a falsehood mistakenly, because he believes what he speaks is true, is not lying.Therefore, the defining characteristic of a lie is that the person speaks that which he understands to be false. Augustine writes, “From the sense of 6 See Boniface Ramsey, “Two Traditions on Lying and Deception in the Ancient Church,” The Thomist 49 (1985): 504–33, and Joseph Boyle, “The Absolute Prohibition of Lying and the Origins of the Casuistry of Mental Reservation: Augustinian Arguments and Thomistic Developments,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 44 (1999): 43–65. 7 See Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps. 5. 8 See Augustine, De Mendacio liber unus, 3, 3. 440 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl his own mind, not from the verity or falsity of the things themselves, is he to be judged to lie or not to lie.”9 In the De Mendacio, St. Augustine clearly says that jokes do not count as lies since “they bear within them in the tone of voice, and in the very mood of the joker a most evident indication that he means no deceit, although the thing he utters be not true.”10 The intention to deceive is important for Augustine’s notion of lying. He writes that “no one doubts that it is a lie when a person willingly utters a falsehood for the purpose of deceiving: wherefore a false utterance put forth with will to deceive is manifestly a lie.”11 But he is quick to clarify “whether this alone be a lie, is another question.”12 Thus, St. Augustine remains open to the possibility that there may be some lies that are told without the intention to deceive. In his sermon on Psalm 5, he indeed says that some lies have other intentions, such as to entertain and to amuse or to save the life of another.13 Thus, St. Augustine recognizes three types of lies: a lie told in jest, a lie told to be of service to someone, and a malicious lie.14 Regardless of intention, however, every lie is a sin in Augustine’s view.15 Yet, the gravity of the sin will vary depending on the reason for which it is told.16 But a lie remains a sin, even if a lesser sin. It is morally illicit to lie even to save another person’s life.17 Augustine says that it is better to pass over the truth in silence than to speak a lie to a murderer who asks you the location of his intended victim.18 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 2, 2. 11 Ibid., 4, 5. 12 Ibid. The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites this passage from Augustine on the nature of lying: “ ‘A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving’ [St. Augustine, De Mendacio, 4, 5]” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2482, original emphasis). However, as we just cited, the clear thrust of this passage in De Mendacio is whether one can lie without the intent to deceive. 13 See Augustine, Ennarationes, Ps. 5, 7. It is difficult to tell why Augustine suggests in the Enarrationes that a joke could be a lie, whereas in the De Mendacio he sets them aside. One possible reading might be that in the De Mendacio he is speaking of jokes when the hearers clearly understand that the speaker is joking, whereas in the sermon on Psalm 5 he is speaking of lies told “in jest,” and thus, lies told to amuse (but in which the hearers do not know they are being lied to). In the former category, we might find the casual joke told between friends, whereas the latter category would include loquacious dinner guests who tell embellished stories as if they were true. 14 See ibid. 15 See Augustine, Enchiridion de Fide, Spe et Caritate liber unus, 18. 16 See Augustine, Ennarationes, Ps. 5, 7. 17 Augustine, De Mendacio, 6, 9. 18 See Augustine, Ennarationes, Ps, 5, 7, A New Test Case for Lying 441 In Contra Mendacium, he writes that a good purpose cannot make a lie to be something other than a lie; it remains morally impermissible.19 A lie is a sin whether it helps someone or not and whether it harms someone or not.20 A good motive does not change the nature of the sin. St. Augustine draws a parallel with adultery and theft. A lie is no less a sin than adultery and theft, even when they are employed as a means to a good end.21 Because he considers damnation a possibility for every lie, he asserts that a lie is of greater spiritual harm than any possible temporal benefit (even saving a life).22 In fact, St. Augustine suggests that lying in order to avoid a greater evil measures reality according to a human rather than a divine standard.23 Joseph Boyle has noted that St. Augustine provides little philosophical argumentation for why lying is always wrong and that his teaching instead rests primarily on biblical interpretation.24 It is true that St. Augustine is guided by various passages in Scripture which condemn lying: Exodus 20:16, Wisdom 1:11, Psalm 5:7, Matthew 5:37, and Ephesians 4:25.25 But St. Augustine did argue from a basic principle to his conclusion that all lies are sins. St. Augustine understood that a lie was either a verbal or non-verbal communication contrary to what one understood to be the truth. Since God is truth, we must speak and communicate in truth.26 This is the purpose of speech: to communicate that which is in one’s mind.27 As we have seen, Augustine insisted on this absolutely. One cannot lie, even for the sake of doing good. Boniface Ramsey notes that “Augustine’s unwillingness to accept a lie under any circumstances—even to protect someone from rape, death or the most loathsome uncleanness—is consistent with his belief in the absolute precedence of eternal with respect to temporal goods.”28 Two particular biblical narratives warrant our attention. The first is Abraham’s apparent lie to Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister rather than his wife (Gn 12:10-20). The second is when the Hebrew midwives lie to Pharaoh that the reason they did not kill infant boys is because the 19 Augustine, Contra Mendacium liber unus, 8, 21. 20 See Augustine, Enchiridion, 17 and 22. 21 See ibid., 22; Cf. Augustine, Contra Mendacium, 8, 21. 22 See Augustine, De Mendacio, 6, 9 and 9, 18. 23 See ibid., 18, 38. 24 See Boyle, “Absolute Prohibition,” 52-53. 25 Cf. Augustine, De Mendacio, 4, 5–5, 5. 26 Ibid., 19, 40 27 Augustine, Enchiridion, 21. 28 Ramsey, “Two Traditions,” 513. Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl 442 Hebrew mothers gave birth before they could get there, when the real reason was that they feared the Lord. The narrative says that God dealt well with the midwives (Ex 1:15-21). As St. Augustine reads these passages, he understands that the lies must be condemned. In the latter, God rewards the complex activity (saving the children, for example), even though the lie was avoidable and not meritorious.29 In the former, Augustine points out that Sarah was a “sister” to Abraham since she was related to him on his father’s side.30 Generally, St. Thomas Aquinas agrees with St. Augustine in these interpretations. The lies of the midwives were not rewarded, and Abraham did not lie.31 B. St. Thomas Aquinas Following closely upon the thought of St. Augustine, St. Thomas notes in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, written in the mid-1250s, that the purpose of speech is to enunciate the thoughts that are in one’s heart, and that speaking something that is contrary to what is one’s heart (even for a good purpose) is a sin: “Since, therefore, speech was established in order to express the conception of the heart, whenever anyone speaks that which is not in the heart, he speaks that which he should not. This happens in every lie. Hence, every lie is a sin, even if somebody lies for a good reason.”32 For St.Thomas, what is important is that the speaker must intentionally assert something that is contrary to what he knows. It is important to note that St. Thomas understands that, if, for the sake of argument, a person speaks something he knows well to be false, he does not lie unless he asserts (asserendo) it to be true.33 The manner in which a person speaks clearly indicates whether he intends to speak that which is contrary to what he knows. So it seems that, for Aquinas, a lie has less to do with the expectations of the hearer, and more to do with the way the speaker engages the faculty of speech, namely, whether he actually makes an assertion. St. Thomas followed Augustine’s distinction of lies (the mischievous, the jocose, and the officious). Developing and clarifying Augustine’s position, St. Thomas holds that even jokes count as lies (and are, therefore, sinful), precisely because the speaker speaks something he knows to be 29 See Augustine, Contra Mendacium, 6, 15-7, 17. 30 Gn 20:12. Cf. Augustine, Questionum in Heptateuchum Libri Septem, lib. I, q. 26; Augustine, Contra Mendacium, 10, 23. 31 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II–II, q. 110, a. 3, ad. 2 and ad 3. 32 See Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, lib. 3, d. 38, a. 1, corpus. 33 Ibid., a. 5, ad 1. A New Test Case for Lying 443 false, although he does concede that a joke is only minimally a lie.34 Thus, St. Thomas also holds that not all lies are equally grave. There are some lies that do not turn a person away from the love of God or away from one’s neighbor. Such lies are venial sins, not mortal ones.35 In fact, he says that all officious and jocose lies are venial sins.36 In the Summa theologiae, St.Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of lying is situated more broadly within the Secunda secundae of his mature work, which is devoted to elucidating a system of moral theology that is not rooted in appeals to authority or to theories of obligation, but which is rather situated within a teleological framework. Aquinas thus considers the ends that a moral agent ought to pursue and investigates the means that ought to be employed in order to attain those ends. Aquinas considers laudable actions to be those which are in accord with reason and which lead man toward the perfection of his nature.37 This treatment of ends and means in St. Thomas’s ethical discourse is not limited to the moral agent, however. Because all created goods are endowed with a particular nature by virtue of their identity as creatures created for particular purposes, created beings also have specific ends that constitute their perfection.38 While man was given dominion over creation, his exercise of power is not one of manipulation and destruction, but rather one of stewardship, which ensures that the goods entrusted to his care are used wisely in accordance with their natures. It 34 Ibid., a. 1, ad 5. Since Aquinas maintains that the speaker must assert as true that which he thinks is false, it would not, therefore, be a lie to speak a falsehood in such a way that one is purposefully not asserting as true what one speaks. This happens commonly in games and in theatrical productions. This also happens at cocktail parties as friends exchange jokes. It is quite a different matter, however, when the target or targets of a prank are not “in” on the joke. 35 Ibid., a. 4, corpus. 36 Consider, for example, his response to the argument that nothing is prohibited by divine precept unless it is a mortal sin, and, therefore, since the Decalogue prohibits it, lying must therefore be a mortal sin. For Aquinas, however, the commandment not to give false witness is a direct prohibition against pernicious or mischievous lies, which he holds to be mortal sins. Jocose and officious lies, however, are only indirectly prohibited, as are all other venial sins. See ibid., a. 4, ad 5: “Divino praecepto prohibetur aliquid dupliciter. Uno modo directe, quod contra praeceptum dicitur; et sic prohibetur mendacium perniciosum, quod praeter praeceptum dicitur; et sic mendacium jocosum et officiosum, sicut et alia peccata venialia, praecepto divino prohibentur.” 37 See ST I–II, q. 3, a. 5. 38 See ST I–II, q. 1, a. 2. See also ST I, q. 5, a. 5, in which St. Thomas explains that everything moves toward the perfection of its form. He calls this movement “appetite” and every natural appetite has an inclination or tendency to perfection (Cf. ST I, q. 19, a. 1; I, q. 60, a. 1). 444 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl is clear, then, that when considering moral questions from a teleological perspective, Aquinas believes it is necessary to reflect on the nature of the beings in question. Within this context, he understands that a lie corrupts the inherent purpose of speech, and so it stands against the virtue of truthfulness. St. Thomas is able to examine the components of both truthful speech and lies in order to distinguish the two. The virtue of truth, Aquinas writes, “regards a manifestation made by certain signs: and this manifestation or statement is an act of reason comparing sign with the thing signified.”39 Instances of both truthfulness and the vices that are opposed to it, which include lying, are actions relating to communication (through either speech or gesture) and, consequently, they are related to human reason.40 For Aquinas, speech involves the work of signification—using symbols, namely words, to express the concepts that are present in one’s mind and to communicate those concepts to others.41 In St. Thomas’s metaphysical worldview, truth is the correspondence of the mind with reality. Thomistic realism asserts that objective reality corresponds to the species in the Divine Mind. The human intellect adheres to the truth when it understands reality as it is.42 Therefore, Aquinas makes a threefold distinction to explain the nature of falsehood.43 When words are spoken contrary to reality, the statement is false. Aquinas calls this “material” falsehood. A statement may be materially 39 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1. 40 Though we are speaking in this article of spoken lies, it should be noted that St. Thomas considered the spoken word as the principal form of signifying one’s thoughts. Nevertheless, he holds any sort of signification or gesture contrary to what one thinks to be true to be a lie. See ST, II–II, q. 110, a. 1, ad 2: “As Augustine says, words hold the chief place among other signs. And so when it is said that ‘a lie is a false signification by words,’ the term ‘words’ denotes every kind of sign.Wherefore if a person intended to signify something false by means of signs, he would not be excused from lying.” 41 See, for example, ST I–II, q. 93, a. 1, ad 2: “With regard to any sort of word, two points may be considered: viz., the word itself, and that which is expressed by the word. For the spoken word is something uttered by the mouth of man, and expresses that which is signified by the human word. The same applies to the human mental word, which is nothing else than something conceived by the mind, by which man expresses his thoughts mentally.” In this reply, St. Thomas goes on to apply this understanding of the word to the second Person of the Trinity, whereby he is understood as both the Word and the knowledge of the Father. The analogy Aquinas employs between the human word and the divine Word should give us pause in abusing the faculty of speech. 42 See ST I, q. 16, a. 1. 43 See ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1. A New Test Case for Lying 445 false despite the agent’s intentions, for an agent may be unaware that he is mistaken when he speaks. St. Thomas says that such an error would not constitute a lie, even if it is a material falsehood.44 Since man is a rational creature, he is also a moral agent inasmuch as he acts voluntarily for the sake of further ends.Therefore, every statement an agent makes is rooted in some intention, and, as a result, every utterance possesses a moral dimension. While some actions may be morally indifferent in their kind when considered abstractly, in Aquinas’s view, no concrete action itself can be morally indifferent.45 This distinction is important for our discussion and rebuttal of Smith’s reading of Aquinas. Every action that is seemingly morally indifferent is, in fact, specified as good or evil by the remote end to which it is directed.46 What separates a materially false statement from a lie is, therefore, the speaker’s intention. Aquinas writes that “the essential notion of a lie is taken from formal falsehood, from the fact namely, that a person intends to say what is false.”47 Formal falsehood is the “will to tell an untruth.”48 Note here the intention is not to deceive. The will to tell an untruth is itself a formal falsehood, and a formal falsehood is a lie.This is because in Aquinas’s view the intrinsic purpose of signification, whether with word or gesture, is to represent that which is in the mind. The agent is morally responsible for the evil committed if he knowingly and willingly perverts the nature of speech. It is an intrinsic evil.49 44 Ibid. 45 See ST I–II, q. 18, aa. 8–9. 46 Joseph Pilsner offers an illuminating commentary on this point in Aquinas’s action theory: “According to Aquinas, actions which are indifferent in kind will always assume a moral quality of either good or evil if they are considered within the context of an individual action. Why is this so? If an action such as ‘picking up straw’ were (implausibly) the final end of an agent, it would be evil, since it would have to be willed in place of God, who is the only proper final end for human beings. If, on the other hand, it were willed as a proximate end, it would (ultimately) have to be directed to some final end. Since, according to Thomas, the only two possible final ends for human beings are God or some unworthy alternative, . . . any proximate end in an individual action will be rendered good or evil on account of its being directed to God or some ersatz substitute.” See Joseph Pilsner, The Specification of Human Action in St.Thomas Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 235. 47 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1. 48 Ibid. 49 See ST II–II, q. 110, a. 3: “Mendacium autem est malum ex genere. Est enim actus cadens super indebitam materiam, cum enim voces sint signa naturaliter intellectuum, innaturale est et indebitum quod aliquis voce significet id quod non habet in mente.” Because this article addresses the question utrum mendacium semper sit 446 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl The intention or will to deceive is the third distinction Aquinas makes. This constitutes an “effective” falsehood. Intending to deceive is not part of the species or the definition of a lie, but it “perfects” the lie inasmuch as lies are often (but not always) told in order to deceive.50 This is Aquinas’s development and clarification of Augustine’s thought. Whereas Augustine suggested that the intent to deceive was constitutive of lying but nevertheless acknowledged that some lies are told for other intentions, St. Thomas has made clear that every liar intends to speak a falsehood even if he does not intend to deceive. Deception is the end or fulfillment of lying even if such deception is directed to another, further end, such as to harm another, to save another, or to amuse another. Following in the tradition of St. Augustine and Peter Lombard, St. Thomas divides the genus of the sin lying into three species, specified according to the further ends for which they are told. The first of these, mendacium perniciosum—the pernicious or mischievous lie—is told with the intention of harming another by means of deceiving him through one’s false assertion. The second, the mendacium iocosum—the jocose lie— is “told in fun,” and often is not meant to deceive another.51 The third species of lying, the mendacium officiosum—the officious life—is told “for the wellbeing and convenience of someone.”52 These three forms of lying peccatum, Aquinas proceeds to argue that since the genus of a lie is evil, every particular species in that genus is sinful. It would seem, therefore, that since every lie is sinful not on account of its circumstances or the intention for the sake of which it is told, but simply on account of the definition and per se ordering of this action itself, the act of lying must be intrinsically evil. Despite the fact that this terminology would be unfamiliar to St. Thomas, it seems a fitting interpretation of his thought, for he says that a lie takes its character from the fact that the agent intends to speak falsely (and not whether he intends to deceive). If by lying we mean a perversion of the nature and purposes of speech, then it seems that lying may properly be termed an intrinsic evil, while still remaining faithful to the tradition of Thomistic categories of moral taxonomy. The question of the moral gravity of specific lies, however, is another matter, which we will consider below. This does not necessarily mean, however, that deception is an intrinsic evil. 50 Christopher Tollefsen presents a convincing argument that there is no such thing as a knowing but unintended falsehood, for the act of assertion is one in which knowledge and intention necessarily coexist. See Christopher O. Tollefsen, “Lying: The Integrity Approach,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 52 (2007): 282–84.Tollefsen’s argument is similar to ours, and, we believe, to Aquinas’s. Lying is universally prohibited not only because of the purposes of language but because lying violates the integrity of the person who lies. See also Christopher O. Tollefsen, Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry (New York: Routledge, 2008), 58–64. 51 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 2. 52 Ibid. A New Test Case for Lying 447 all fall within the evil genus of the lie, and are therefore morally evil and sinful on account of their perversion of the nature and purpose of speech. What Aquinas recognizes in his treatment of lying is that lies are simple components of complex human acts, which involve more remote goals in addition to the intention of “speaking against one’s mind” which is inherent in lying.These three categories of lies are discriminated on the basis of the intention (the remote end) that undergirds this complex human act. The question on lying is thus a study in St. Thomas’s analysis of human action. The opening sentences in the corpus of the first article of the question situate his understanding of lying within his understanding of the moral act: “A moral act takes its species from two things, its object, and its end: for the end is the object of the will, which is the first mover in moral acts. And the power moved by the will has its own object, which is the proximate object of the voluntary act, and stands in relation to the will’s act towards the end, as material to formal.”53 Over the last several years, there has been a great deal of debate among Thomists on the proper interpretation of St. Thomas’s theory of moral action.54 In his magisterial study on moral specification in Aquinas’s theory of action, Joseph Pilsner has successfully shown that St. Thomas often uses various terms to refer to the relation between the end of an action and the choice of means to achieve that end. Sometimes he speaks of the remote end and the proximate end. At other times, he uses the words “end” and “means,” “exterior object” and “interior object,” or “end” and “object.” It is important to understand that these pairings essentially refer to the same two elements in a moral action.55 In our reading of St. Thomas, we understand that the object of the will is the end or goal sought by the will in this particular action, also known as the remote end of a particular action. This may also be called the interior object of the will—the goal for which an action is engaged.56 The will is seeking the good (as apprehended by the intellect) and commands powers other than itself as the means to achieve that goal.57 Moreover, even though every action has a remote end (an interior object) and a proximate end (an exterior object), every action is directed 53 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1. Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, aa. 6 and 7. 54 Steven Jensen’s recent book, Good and Evil Actions, does an admirable job of summarizing the debate among various theologians and philosophers regarding Aquinas’s psychology of human action. See Steven J. Jensen, Good and Evil Actions: A Journey through Saint Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). 55 See Pilsner, Specification, 218. 56 See ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6. 57 See ST I–II, q. 8, a. 1; q. 9, a. 1. Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl 448 by reason to further ends. One of Aquinas’s most notable examples of this principle is the mixing of medicine for the sake of health.58 The remote end of the action of mixing medicine (the production of the medicine itself) is directed to the further end of health. In this case, two choices are made: not only producing the medicine but also taking the medicine. And both choices are made for the last end in this series: health. This last end, however, is referred to even further ends (returning to work which can be referred to earning money, etc.). Powers exterior to the will have their own proper object, a natural tendency to certain effects.59 The intellect and will work together—with the will commanding the exercise of the intellect and the intellect specifying the exercise of the will—to discern the best means in particular circumstances for the will to choose in order to achieve the desired end.60 Although these may seem to be two distinct acts, willing the end and then willing the means, according to St. Thomas it is one and the same action.61 While the end is the object of the will, every power has its own proper object—a natural purpose or activity to which it is directed, since every power is also an agent in its own respect.As we saw above, St.Thomas holds that every agent has its own perfection or goal. Aquinas thus distinguishes between the natural species of an act and the moral species. For example, the sexual act has one natural species (procreation and union). But adultery and the conjugal act differ morally because the will engages in the sexual act in ways that differ according to human reason.62 The moral specification of the action, however, cannot depend entirely on the intention—the reason the will engages in the particular action in the first place. In other words, the moral quality of an action does not depend entirely on the intention of the agent, even though the intention is highly significant. Aquinas makes this clear when discussing the specific difference between hypocrisy and lying.63 If the end intended were the specifying quality of moral action, then there would be no reason to distinguish between actions that achieve the same goal. Moreover, all actions that are done with char58 See ST I–II, q. 12, a. 3. 59 See Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo, q. 15, a. 1, ad 4; ST, I–II, 18.5, ad 3. 60 See ST I–II, q. 9, a. 3 and a. 4. 61 See ST I–II, q. 8, a. 3; q. 18, a. 7. Cf. Pilsner, Specification, 226–27; Daniel West- berg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (New York: Oxford, 1994), 119–35. 62 This is the exact example Aquinas himself uses to explain the difference between the moral and natural species of an action. See ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5, ad 3. 63 See ST II–II, q. 111, a. 2, obj. 3 and ad 3. A New Test Case for Lying 449 ity (and so ordered to God as the end) would have no specific difference from each other, since all would be directed to the same end.64 In the case of a lie, the formal element, the will to speak an untruth, is the interior object (remote end) as St. Thomas sees it. The exterior object (or the means) is engaging the speech to do so. The reason deception is not constitutive of the act of lying, according to Aquinas, is that the end of lying is not deception but the will to speak a falsity. Deception can be a further end to which the end of lying is directed. It can be a perfecting element of a lie, inasmuch as it may be the ultimate reason the lie is told, but deception is not constitutive of the lie itself.The reason lying is never permissible in Aquinas’s view is, therefore, not that deception is inherently evil. In fact, he never actually speaks about the morality of deception itself.65 Rather, his concern is that the interior object of the action (the will to speak an untruth), even though it may be necessarily directed to deception as further end, is itself immoral because “words are naturally signs of intellectual acts, [and] it is unnatural and undue to signify by words that something that is not in his mind.”66 The evil of a human action comes from some defect in its object, in its end, or in its circumstance. In the case of the lie, the action is evil on account of its end—the will to speak an untruth—precisely because it is an “action bearing on undue matter.”67 Namely, engaging speech to communicate an untruth perverts the nature of speech. This is why a lie is evil in its genus. From St. Thomas’s understanding of the nature of speech and the perversion thereof in which lying consists, it becomes clear that lies are contrary to the highest natural activity of the human person: reason and the pursuit of truth. Consequently, every specific lie is itself sinful, regardless of the further ends for which the lie is told. Lying is not inherently ordered to saving a life. The speaker cannot be sure that a lie will produce the intended effect. The intention to save a 64 See Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus, q. 1, a. 12. Cf. Pilsner, Specification, 219–22. 65 The closest he comes is in writing on ambushes during war. Many contempo- rary commentators have cited this article (see ST II–II, q. 40, a. 3) as an instance of his condoning deception.While he maintains that it is permissible “that we do not declare our purpose or meaning” to an enemy, this cannot be done if it involves the direct speaking of a falsehood. It goes without saying that St.Thomas is addressing a very particular situation in this article. It is not readily apparent that his conclusion is applicable in every instance of deception in which one might want to employ the principles he elucidates concerning ambushes. 66 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 3. 67 Ibid. 450 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl life is a good one, but because lying is not necessarily ordered to it, there are two moral species to consider: saving life and lying. From this vantage point, lying becomes one end ordered to another (saving a life). But the action of lying is evil in its genus, and, thus, is an immoral means to saving life. Just as in the case of stealing to give alms, one sins and does that which is immoral in order to do good. To suggest that the intention to save life makes the moral action of lying good is to conflate the moral evaluation of the end of lying (speaking what one believes to be false) with the moral evaluation of saving another’s person’s life. While Aquinas is faithful to the moral principle that one may never do evil for the sake of good, he recognizes that the motivations of a complex act have the capacity to mitigate the sinfulness of a lie told for the sake of a further end. Thus, the three different species of lies are not equal in their moral gravity.68 In the Summa, he continues the same position he held earlier in life when he wrote his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences. St. Thomas suggests that the officious and the jocose lie are always venial rather than mortal sins.69 Mischievous lies, on the other hand, are contrary to the love of God and neighbor and, therefore, are mortal sins.Venial sins neither cut one off from grace nor deprive one of salvation, but they do weaken the bond of charity that unites man to God, and they create dispositions that make one more susceptible to the commission of mortal sins.70 As a result, venial sins ought to be avoided. A virtuous person is a truthful person, even in the smallest matters. II. Janet Smith on Lying In her initial “tentative” essay published on CatholicVote.org and in her more refined article in First Things, Janet Smith critiques St. Thomas’s doctrine that condemns every lie, including the officious lie. Her argument challenges Aquinas’s understanding of the nature and purpose of speech as the truthful signification of mental concepts. In addition to communicating the concepts of one’s mind to another person through the mode of verbal signification, as St. Thomas teaches, Smith contends that enunciative speech has two other purposes, each of which has several other sub-purposes. While these functions of speech will often involve the intentional speaking of material falsehoods, she maintains that the fact that such statements are intended to be false (formally false) is irrelevant to their capacity to fulfill their nature as 68 For an excellent treatment of the moral gravity of lies, see Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, Lying, and Venial Sin,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 279–300. 69 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 4. 70 See ST I–II, q. 88, a. 3. A New Test Case for Lying 451 speech and thus ought not to be classified as lies. Indeed, in both articles she departs from the language of Aquinas and rarely uses the word “lie,” preferring instead “falsehood” or “false signification.” In her view, Aquinas has made a critical mistake by applying a pre-lapsarian moral standard to a post-lapsarian world. According to Janet Smith, lies are necessary in a world plagued by sin. The first of the alternative purposes of speech is what Smith identifies as “conventional falsehoods,” defining them as “enunciations that are meant simply to create or maintain an atmosphere of cordiality.”71 She provides several examples of such falsehoods, including those told to offer encouragement and reassurance or routine pleasantries such as “I am fine” or “I am pleased to meet you.” These falsehoods, she maintains, are not intended to deceive another, and the recipients of such falsehoods would not expect their interlocutors to speak truthfully. Rather, the recipients of conventional falsehoods would likely accept these statements willingly without evaluating their truthfulness. This, she holds, is because the categories of truth and falsehood are irrelevant concepts in these particular modes of speech. The other mode of speech to which truthfulness is irrelevant is what Smith terms “protective falsehoods,” which are falsehoods told to enemies in order to protect the lives of the innocent.72 Smith’s argument favoring this sort of falsehood is a variation of the oft-cited “right to know” argument, which holds that evildoers and those who would use truths obtained in order to commit evil deeds have surrendered their right to the truth.73 Consequently, if the most pragmatic way to prevent such evildoers from obtaining the truth is to utter a false statement, then 71 Smith, “Lying,” 6. 72 Ibid., 9. 73 The first edition of The Catechism of the Catholic Church said: “Lying is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth” (no. 2483). The second edition of the Catechism notably alters these lines, “Lying is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.” Smith knows that her position is not in line with the editio typica of the Catechism, but she justifies her departure from this normative text by noting that the Apostolic Letter which accompanied the authoritative edition, Laetemur Magnopere, “never indicated that the earlier version was in error” (Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 46).We find this to be a weak argument.The changes were clearly made so as to express the Catholic faith better. It is true that this does not make the paragraph on lying infallible, but certainly the change should not be dismissed as easily as Smith does, especially if it is the “more probable opinion” as she herself concedes (ibid.). 452 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl this is morally acceptable. Thus, Smith writes that “telling falsehoods might be the best way at times of protecting the truth.”74 While Smith maintains that “all changes [she] make[s] to Aquinas’s work are based on the fundamental principles that guide his analysis,” there are three important components of St. Thomas’s teaching on lying, and human acts in general, which Smith seems to misunderstand.75 First, her teaching on the multiple natures and purposes of speech appears to conflate Aquinas’s distinction between the interior and exterior objects of human action. Secondly, she either misses or ignores St. Thomas’s important distinction between formal falsehood and effective falsehood. She is overlooking the distinction between the ordering of the proximate end of an action (which is intended) to the remote end of a complex act (which is also intended), and the ordering of remote ends to further ends. Finally, although she recognizes that St. Thomas approaches the purpose of speech from the standpoint of virtue, Smith’s analysis of his discussion on lying is extracted from Aquinas’s ethical thought, which is rooted in the moral development of the agent through the cultivation of virtue rather than through a casuist evaluation of cases. These three misinterpretations cause Smith to offer a critique of Aquinas that is based on premises that he would likely reject. This renders her attempt to revise the Thomistic teaching on the basis of Thomistic principles rather ineffective. We will consider these three weaknesses in turn. A. The Conflation of Interior and Exterior Objects First, although Smith appeals to the Thomistic principle of actio sequitur esse in order to justify her moral taxonomy, it seems that many of her distinctions concerning speech acts, which she claims to make on the basis of the nature of the act of speech itself, split hairs to a greater degree than can be justified. This concern is particularly germane to her discussion of conventional falsehoods, for St. Thomas would maintain, unlike Smith, that the act of speech itself does not change whether one is answering a question before a court of law or telling one’s wife whether or not her dress looks flattering. As we noted earlier, for St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, the words which one speaks relate to a concept in the mind. Either the act of speech will convey the concept in the mind, or it will fail to do so. Regardless of the further ends for which a lie is 74 Smith, “Lying,” 9. It is interesting to note that while Smith advocates taking the most pragmatic route toward the noble end of saving life by deceiving one’s enemies, even if it involves lying, she firmly maintains that she is “in no way making a consequentialist argument.” See also Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 48. 75 Smith, “Lying,” 1. A New Test Case for Lying 453 told, the lie itself has its own proximate and remote ends, its own interior and exterior objects of the will. The further ends cannot change the proximate end of any particular act of lying, and, therefore, cannot change its nature. To repeat, lying is evil in its genus. The failure to understand this distinction leads Smith to insist that “when a coach tells a young boy going up to bat that he knows he ‘can do it’ even though the coach really believes the boy cannot, he is speaking in a context where such words are uttered as encouragement [and, thus, not lying].”76 The coach’s ultimate intention is to offer encouragement in this context. But this does not have the capacity to change the nature or purpose of speaking per se. An action that is already specified as evil by its proximate end or remote end cannot be otherwise by specified by further ends. The coach is speaking something contrary to what he believes to be true. While the further ends that motivate a particular action can have an important effect on the gravity of the act, they cannot fundamentally change the inherent goodness or evil of that act, nor can they alter the nature or purpose of the act. Thievery in order to give alms remains immoral.77 Smith knows that all lies are immoral according to St. Thomas, but she disagrees that all falsehoods are lies.78 76 Smith, “Lying,” 6. 77 Janet Smith has argued that this is what Martin Rhonheimer has done in his argu- ment that HIV-infected married heterosexual couples can licitly use condoms since the contraception would be praeter intentionem and so their conjugal act could not properly be termed a contraceptive act. See Janet Smith, “The Morality of Condom Use by HIV-Infected Spouses,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 27–69, especially at 52–59. Cf. Benedict Guevin and Martin Rhonheimer, “On the Use of Condoms to Prevent Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5 (2005): 37–48, especially 40–48. It should be noted that this point of disagreement that Smith has with Rhonheimer’s position on condom use is the same one that allows Rhonheimer to argue that some instances of speaking falsehoods are not instances of lying. Namely, in his view, the ulterior intention for the further end, must be known in order to specify the concrete action under consideration. Moreover, such an intention is specified within an ulterior context, in this case, whether the listener has the right to know the truth. See Martin Rhonheimer, “The Perspective of the Acting Person and the Nature of Practical Reason:The ‘Object of the Human Act’ in Thomistic Anthropology of Action,” in The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 226–33. Smith notes that she has significant differences with Rhonheimer on “what constitutes the object of the moral act, what the ‘end’ of the act is, what practical reason is, and how ‘nature’ impacts the evaluation of an action” (see Smith,“Morality of Condom Use,” 28n4).We wonder how these differences permit her to disagree with him on the use of condoms, but not on what constitutes a lie. 78 See Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 47. 454 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl B. The Conflation of Formal and Effective Falsehood Since she has conflated the end of lying with further ends, it not surprising that Smith also conflates formal and effective falsehood. We noted above that when discussing the essential components of a lie, St. Thomas identifies three elements of a lie.79 The material element of a falsehood is the specific falsity of what is said. This material element does not depend on the agent’s knowledge but on the objective correspondence of the utterance with reality. The formal element of falsehood is simply the will or intention to speak a falsehood, which is to speak that which is contrary to the concepts in one’s mind. The species of a lie is determined by the formal or defining element— the will to speak what is false: “the essential notion of a lie is taken from formal falsehood, from the fact namely, that a person intends to say what is false.”80 Again, this is the interior object of the will. Whether the agent is objectively correct or not in his knowledge is irrelevant to the definition of a lie. Thus, St. Thomas writes, “If one says what is false, thinking it to be true, it is false materially, but not formally, because the falseness is beside the intention of the speaker: so that it is not a perfect lie, since what is beside the speaker’s intention [prater intentionem] is accidental.”81 He further clarifies this point in response to an objection that cites St. Augustine, who had insisted that a person who speaks the truth, thinking it to be false, lies.82 The Angelic Doctor responds that “a thing is judged according to what is in it formally and essentially, rather than according to what is in it materially and accidentally. Hence it is more in opposition to truth, considered as a moral virtue, to tell the truth with the intention of telling a falsehood than to tell a falsehood with the intention of telling the truth.”83 The third and final element of a lie is the effective element. This element is the will to impart a falsehood, which is the will to deceive. This effective element, however, does not belong to the specific definition of a lie according to Aquinas. He writes, “That a person intends to cause another to have a false opinion by deceiving him, does not belong to the species of lying, but to a perfection thereof.”84 This corresponds to Aquinas’s theory of human action. The agent wills the end (to deceive) and he wills the means to the end (to speak a falsehood—to lie). As we noted above, to lie is to signify something by word or gesture that is 79 See ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 See ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1, obj. 1. 83 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1, ad 1. 84 Ibid. A New Test Case for Lying 455 contrary to what is in one’s mind, even if it is not contrary to what is really true. Janet Smith misses this distinction in her reading of Aquinas’s question on lying. She writes: The essence of a lie is that a person intends to make a false statement, something contrary to what the person believes to be true. This action necessarily entails the intention to cause another to have a false opinion and that is what really makes the falsehood a lie. For a person to have spoken a lie in the full sense there must be the deliberate telling of a falsehood (or the making of a statement thought to be false) and telling with the intent to deceive.85 She thus implies that the intention to deceive another is essential to a falsehood’s classification as a lie—an implication that is quite inconsistent with Aquinas’s own position. The threefold classification of lies as mischievous, jocose, and officious presumes that some lies are told without the intention to deceive. Even without the intention to deceive, Aquinas holds, a false statement willfully uttered for any purpose is a considered a lie. By including the intention to deceive in the specific definition of a lie, Smith has placed an undue emphasis on deception, which is inconsistent with St. Thomas’s own position. If Smith is correct, then any statement in which the speaker does not intend to deceive his interlocutor could not be classified as a lie.This, in turn, allows her to justify conventional falsehoods. Smith’s interpretation of St. Thomas’s teaching on lying on the one hand becomes too lax in some cases as a result of this misreading; on the other hand, her confusion of formal and effective falsehood also leads to an overly strict understanding of Aquinas’s principles in other cases. Including the intention to deceive as one of the essential criteria of lying leads Smith to make untenable conclusions in Aquinas’s name. For example, she argues that Aquinas would condemn a person as a liar who speaks the truth with the intent to deceive. In both of her articles, she uses the classic of example of the man who answers his neighbor’s door and responds to the Nazi soldier’s interrogation about the presence of Jews in the house with “There are no Jews in my house.”86 The intent to deceive, 85 Smith, “Lying,” 2 (our emphasis). Smith’s language on the relationship between a lie and reality can also be ambiguous. Here she remains true to Aquinas’s language that a lie is speaking something “contrary to what the person believes to be true.” She repeats this in “Fig Leaves and Falsehoods,” but also insists that it is a lie “to lead another to think falsely about reality” (see Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 47). 86 Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 47 (original emphasis). 456 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl in Smith’s view, is enough to classify the speaker as a liar. But this is not what St. Thomas says. The man may have intended to deceive the Nazi soldier, but the means he chose to do so was not a lie, because he did not speak that which was contrary to what he believed to be true (that there were no Jews in his house). To support her conclusion Smith cites the same rebuttal that we cited above: it is more in opposition to truth to tell the truth with the intention of telling a falsehood than to tell a falsehood with the intention of telling the truth. But as we noted above, Aquinas’s reply assumes the speaker thought what he was saying was false, even though it happened to be true. The speaker intended to speak a falsehood (the formal element), but because he was mistaken, the information he imparted was true (i.e., the material element was not actually false).87 The man at his neighbor’s door offers no material falsehood, for it is true that the there are no Jews at his house down the street. Neither is there a formal falsehood, for the man intends to speak a true statement for the further end of deception. There is, however, a desire to deceive the Nazi soldier. But since there is no formal falsehood, St. Thomas would not consider this statement a lie. Smith’s understanding of effective falsehood as an essential component of a lie introduces an overly strict interpretation of Aquinas’s position when it comes to the issue of deception, a question which St. Thomas himself never directly addresses. It is an erroneous reading of Aquinas to suggest that he would classify as a lie a statement that is neither materially nor formally false simply because the speaker intends to deceive his interlocutor. Smith’s conflation of the formal and effective elements of lying in her reading of Aquinas leads to an unnecessarily lax treatment of statements 87 Smith can be perhaps be excused for her error here. The Benzinger English edition of the Summa theologiae mistranslates a key passage in the corpus of II–II, q. 110, a. 1: “If, on the other hand, one utters a falsehood formally, through having a will to deceive, even if what one says to be true, yet inasmuch as this is a voluntary and moral act, it contains falseness essentially and truth accidentally, and attains the specific nature of a lie” (our emphasis). Contrary to what Aquinas says earlier in the same corpus, this translation suggests that the will to deceive is the formal and essential element of a lie. But the Latin reads: “Si vero formaliter aliquis falsum dictat, habens voluntatem falsum dicendi, licet sit verum id quod dicitur, inquantum tamen huius modi actus est voluntarius et moralis, habet per se falsitatem, et per accidens veritatem” (our emphasis). A corrected translation should read: “If, on the other hand, one utters a falsehood formally, through having a will to speak falsely, even if what one says is true, yet inasmuch as this is a voluntary and moral act, it contains falseness essentially and truth accidentally, and attains the specific nature of a lie.” Thus, St. Thomas is consistent throughout the article. A lie is the will to speak a falsehood, and not a will to deceive. A New Test Case for Lying 457 that are formally false but not effectively false, and it leads to an overly strict treatment of statements that are not formally false but are effectively false. C. The Divorce from Virtue The third problem with Smith’s understanding of permissible lies is that her discussion of the Thomistic teaching on lying is lifted from its context in Aquinas’s theory of virtue.This removal detracts from the proper understanding of lying in relation to the moral life as an integrated whole. Because St. Thomas’s moral theory is teleological, it is focused on respecting and fulfilling the natures of created goods, and so it is focused explicitly on the moral perfection of the human agent through his choices. This is the context in which St. Thomas treats the question of lying, considering it in relation to virtue, vice, and the development of character in the moral life. Lying is a vice that is opposed to the virtue of truthfulness.88 For St. Thomas, virtue and vice are the habitual dispositions that respectively perfect man by orienting him to his final end or harm him by deterring him from that end. It is impossible for man’s moral character not to be affected by his particular choices, even when they concern relatively unimportant matters.89 Although Smith’s conventional and protective falsehoods are not likely to be mortal sins, such falsehoods create an inclination, however small, toward speaking falsely in general. Such falsehoods may only be uttered in situations where they are meant to maintain cordiality, offer encouragement, or to protect another, but these actions do not occur in a vacuum. It is quite difficult to compartmentalize the moral life in such a way that one’s habits in one set of circumstances do not affect choices in a different set of circumstances. The notion that vice affects one’s character is all the more confirmed in the case of those who habitually utter conventional or protective falsehoods, such as those involved in undercover investigations or espionage. These individuals spend a significant portion of their time uttering falsehoods for purposes which are certainly noble, but it is nearly impossible for this habit of speaking falsely not to enter into the other spheres of their lives as an inclination to lie in graver matters.90 88 See ST II–II, q. 109, prol.: “Deinde considerandum est de veritate, et vitiis oppositis” and ST II–II, q. 110, prol.: “Deinde considerandum est de vitiis oppositis veritati. Et primo, de mendacio.” 89 See ST I–II, q. 18, a. 9. 90 Aquinas argues that the commission of venial sins creates a disposition toward committing moral sins. See ST I–II, q. 88, a. 3: “Since the end for one who has a habit, as such, is to work according to that habit; and the consequence will be that, by sinning often venially, he becomes disposed to mortal sin.” 458 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl Smith’s treatment of lying removes it from the framework of virtue, vice, and the moral development of the agent and instead offers case studies focused entirely on the telos of the act itself with no consideration of the telos of the agent. The only attention she gives to this matter is her assertion that “the fact that good people regularly tell such falsehoods indicates that they do not corrupt character.”91 This statement, given without any argumentation, is flawed in two ways. First, Smith is begging the question by assuming that people who regularly tell conventional or protective falsehoods are, in fact, good people. Without knowing whether the falsehoods these individuals tell are good or evil, it is impossible to evaluate their character. These people may appear virtuous in every other respect, but that does not imply that every particular action they perform is itself praiseworthy. Though we certainly do not intend to impugn those who tell so-called conventional and protective falsehoods, it is a weak argument that Smith offers to suggest that such falsehoods are permissible because those who tell them are otherwise seemingly upstanding people. The second defect in Smith’s claim that conventional and protective falsehoods do not corrupt character is that she bases her contention on empirical observation. The sinfulness of such falsehoods is significantly mitigated by the good intentions with which they are told, and consequently, they often would not lead to visible patterns of behavior that would cause an observer to qualify that person as “bad.” Rather, such venial sins introduce an added element of struggle into the moral life by inserting temptations and proclivities to lying, forcing one to think twice before making a statement rather than habitually speaking truthfully. It may be an inclination that is overcome and, therefore, not manifested in one’s external actions, but it is inclination that is present nonetheless.That is the manner in which such falsehoods have adverse effects on character, and it is not readily observable from one’s concrete actions. Thus, Smith’s conventional and protective falsehoods are wrong, albeit with lessened moral gravity, not only because they are contrary to the nature and purpose of speech, but also because they are harmful, even if only to a minimal degree, to the moral character of the agent. Although Smith knows that St. Thomas’s moral theory is centered on virtue and the moral character of the acting person, her arguments have focused exclusively on a casuist treatment of cases and their impact on the state-of-affairs: the Gestapo, fraudulent passports, etc. But the state-ofaffairs caused by our actions is not Aquinas’s primary concern. In fact, the gradual transition from a moral ethic based on virtue to an ethic based on 91 Smith, “Lying,” 8. See also Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 48. A New Test Case for Lying 459 the evaluation of individual cases and their relationship to the moral law has been already identified as a degradation of St. Thomas’s work.92 Aquinas understands that in a sinful world, people engage in evil deeds, but he certainly does not excuse those deeds. Smith suggests that he nonetheless has applied a pre-lapsarian ethic to a post-lapsarian world. She says, “Aquinas believes that we can kill in self-defense but that we can never lie to defend our own lives or the lives of others.”93 That Smith would say that the Angelic Doctor approves of killing an aggressor in selfdefense or stealing food in the case of need simply because he understands the inevitability of evil in a post-lapsarian world is a serious misinter pretation of St. Thomas. In his famous article on self-defense, St. Thomas clearly says that “it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense.”94 Killing a man may not be the intended remote end of any action. One may never intend to kill for self-defense. He must intend to defend himself and use the appropriate force necessary to do so, even if this happens to cause the death of the assailant. Some activity is simply not directed to self-preservation. For example, Aquinas explicitly says: “The act of fornication or adultery is not necessarily directed to the preservation of one’s own life, as is the act from which sometimes killing follows [ex quo quandoque sequitur homicidium].”95 But the killing of the assailant must be beside the intention since “moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention.”96 Similarly, St.Thomas understands property and material things to serve man’s natural needs such as his health.97 Thus, the human right to property is inferior to both divine right and natural obligation, and thus, when a man is in dire need, he is free to take the property of another for his 92 See Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 216–79. 93 Smith, “Lying,” 2; cf. Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 47. 94 ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7. St.Thomas does say, however, that lawful civil authorities may intend to kill for the sake of the common good. This is another element that has been missing in the discussion surrounding the actions of Live Action. For St. Thomas, because original sin has affected the common good, he routinely argues that some actions are morally licit for public authorities that are not for private citizens. Capital punishment here is one example. Another would be the oftcited example of soldiers laying ambush for their enemies (see ST II–II, q. 40, a. 3). Whatever may be determined about the morality of the Live Action stings on Planned Parenthood need not necessarily be applied to the actions of the government authorities on enemies of state. 95 ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, ad 4. 96 Ibid. 97 See ST I–II, q. 2, a. 1. 460 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl own sustenance. He is free, for example, to take food that belongs to another to save himself from hunger. In such a case, Aquinas says, it is not properly theft or robbery “because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need.”98 It is at least arguable that St. Thomas does not hold the positions that Smith ascribes to him. He does not think that it is theft or robbery to take something that belongs to another in order to save one’s own life. He does not think that it is permissible to intend to kill an assailant in self-defense. His positions are much more nuanced than Smith suggests.99 Finally, addressing Smith’s assertion that Aquinas is imposing a pre-lapsarian view of speech on a post-lapsarian world: St. Thomas argues that the principles of human nature and the properties that flow from them (which include reason and choice) were in no way destroyed by sin.They were not even diminished.100 To suggest that sin destroys our nature or even diminishes our nature would be to suggest that sin has fundamentally changed human nature; it has not.101 What has been diminished in human nature is the inclination to virtue.Thus, reason has not been diminished, even though our virtuous use of it has. Since speech is by definition related to reason, its function and purpose are not diminished by original sin either. III. The Live Action Sting: Concerns It is clear now that there are several concerns surrounding the Live Action stings of Planned Parenthood. First, it is always a sin to tell a lie with the purpose of deceiving another person. Granted that, for Aquinas, lies can be told without the intention to deceive, it is uncontestable that speaking falsely with the intention to deceive is a lie, and all lies are sinful. Live Action operatives lied to the Planned Parenthood employees. Certainly, the results of these stings were a good thing (the defunding of Planned Parenthood in several states). However, if the morality of an action is to be determined by its outcome, we fall into consequentialism.102 Focusing only on the state-of-affairs that our actions cause, without focusing on the effects our choices have on our characters and our souls, 98 ST II–II, q. 66, a. 7, ad 2. 99 See Jensen, Good and Evil Actions, 225–78, for a treatment of just how elaborate Aquinas’s position on the moral specification of self-defense and thievery actually is. 100 See ST I–II, q. 85, a. 1. 101 Suggesting that human nature itself had been changed by sin would have consequences for the incarnation of Jesus Christ. See ST III, q. 4, a. 6. 102 Even a casual survey of the comment boxes accompanying the online articles we noted above (note 4) reveals that there are a great many readers who have taken just such a consequentialist interpretation of the situation. A New Test Case for Lying 461 is contrary to the moral theory of both Augustine and Aquinas, and it is contrary to the moral theory promoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.103 No one can doubt that the ultimate aim of Live Action was to expose the evil deeds of Planned Parenthood. However, the means we choose to achieve our goals are just as important as the goals themselves. Though it is likely that the sins committed by the Live Action operatives were venial, they remain sins nonetheless. We would not presume to judge the character of those involved in the Live Action operations, but it is clear that even such “white lies” intensify the struggle for virtue and holiness by introducing new temptations to be overcome. The academic community should not engage in the justification of any sin, even the smallest “white lie,” precisely because seemingly small sins dispose us to committing greater sins. If we truly seek to build a culture of life and virtue, then we must not surrender the integrity of our own character in order to preserve the integrity of the human person. Some have suggested that the absolute prohibition against lying would render all those who engage in national espionage for the protection of the country as sinners; perhaps it is true. And perhaps it is true, as Janet Smith has suggested, that in a fallen world, there is a need for lies. But we should not, therefore, excuse them as mere falsehoods for the preservation of harmony.104 In a fallen world, it is true that lies are inevitable because we are all sinners. Yet, this does not excuse us from pursuing virtue and holiness. As necessary as the Central Intelligence Agency or National Security Agency may be, we would not recommend a person who is seeking to grow in virtue and holiness to join either of them. IV. Conclusion Having surveyed Augustine’s teaching on lying and Aquinas’s development of it, we have identified St. Thomas’s specification of the act of lying. With his teaching in mind, we have shown why deception is not part of the species of lying. In fact, Aquinas never directly addresses the question of deception itself. Given what he says about soldiers and ambushes, it is likely that he is in favor of dissimulation and deception in limited circumstances. However, the choices made to achieve that further end cannot themselves be evil. Lying is evil in its genus because it perverts the purpose of speech. Even though not all lies are mortally sinful—and certainly lying to save another’s life is a venial sin—this does not, therefore, permit us to excuse or to advocate in favor of them. If we are serious about pursuing 103 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1731–38. 104 See Smith, “Fig Leaves,” 48. 462 Thomas Petri, O.P. and Michael A. Wahl virtue and holiness, we should not excuse our own sinfulness or that of others on the grounds that we live in a fallen world. This is what we have found unfortunately lacking in the discussion surrounding Live Action’s operations vis-à-vis Planned Parenthood. Few commentators have expressed concern about the effects that these lies have on the characters of the Live Action agents. And this is why we find fault with Smith’s presentation. Her reading misrepresents Aquinas and does not pay adequate attention to his concern for the growth of virtue and holiness. In a certain sense, also, she has set up a straw man to knock down: as we have shown, St.Thomas is neither the rigorist she makes him out to be, nor as lax as she desires. With the publication of her article in First Things, Janet Smith has moved this debate from the Internet to published print; we welcome and are grateful for this move, since it offers the possibility for discussion that is both more rigorous and more collegial. As we have put forward in this essay, we find Smith’s understanding of Aquinas on the question of lying to be deficient in a number of ways. She has confused the end of lying itself with the further ends to which lying may be directed. Moreover, by blurring this distinction she has specified the action of lying according to those further ends (to save a life, to encourage a baseball player, to flatter someone, etc.) rather than according to what St. Thomas says is the end proper to lying itself, which is knowingly speaking that which is contrary to what one believes to be true. In sum, we do not think that Smith has presented an adequate argument for her opinion, and further, we find that in places her argument is based in a faulty reading of St. Thomas. It is true that the Church has not definitively declared a position on what constitutes a lie and what does not; discussion about the matter should therefore be conducted with the utmost care and with due attention paid to the (admittedly not definitive) authoritative sources of teaching about it. Foremost among these are those two great moral theologians and doctors of the Church St. Augustine and St. Thomas, whose thought is reflected in the teaching found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It does seem to us that one ought to begin with these authorities and remain most reluctant to depart from them. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 463–84 463 John Paul II’s Theology of the Body on Trial: Responding to the Accusation of the Biological Reduction of Women M ICHELE M. S CHUMACHER University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland T HE CONCEPTION of the human person in the works of Pope John Paul II—a concept implying a certain dynamism, or becoming, through action in union with others—does not, the Canadian theologian Patrick Snyder judges, “find its full potentiality in his teaching on the nature and vocation of woman.” This is so, Synder argues, because the defining of one’s action in common with others and the realization of oneself in this action requires an account of the historical, cultural and social realities in which we live. “In these conditions, woman cannot be defined a priori; it belongs to her—as to each man—to define her identity, to choose her mission, her vocation and to judge her moral and evangelical action in her ‘acting in common with others.’ ”1 Snyder is concerned, more specifically, that precisely in the attempt to maintain the coherency of Church teaching, John Paul II has in fact sacrificed the coherency, or integrity, of woman by reducing her to her biological structure, or to her “nature” as it is dictated by men, with the result that she is no longer authentically free to realize herself as a person and to choose her vocation. In confrontation with this feminist accusation of biological reductionism on the part of Pope John Paul II, this essay proposes as its primary goal to give voice to the late pontiff, whose very rich philosophical and theological anthropology actually safeguards woman’s freedom of self-realization—I 1 Patrick Snyder, La femme selon Jean-Paul II. Lecture des fondements anthropologiques et théologiques et des applications pratiques de son enseignement (Québec: Fides, 1999), 230. 464 Michele M. Schumacher will argue—by anchoring it in the very human nature that mainstream feminism has largely called into question as menacing this freedom. To this end, I will begin by exposing the historical background to Snyder’s accusations, so as to set the context for my reply to these same accusations with the very tools supplied by John Paul II’s integral vision of body-persons and of human fulfilment through self-giving love, through which also human communion and community are realized.Then, in part two, I will expound John Paul II’s theology of the body, as it highlights the importance of human freedom within the whole of human nature, metaphysically conceived, and thus also within the project of self-realization. I. Background to the Problematic To begin, it is not difficult to see where Snyder’s sympathies lie. I cite him as representative of a whole line of feminist thinkers who recognize in the magisterial upholding of an all-male priesthood and in its ethical prohibition of contraception examples of the biological reduction, or biological determinism, of women, on the one hand, or the social construction of nature, on the other.2 The first of these—biological reductionism—would reduce women to their bodies and their vocation to motherhood, understood in the minimalist sense of having babies and giving birth. Because women can have babies, it is here reasoned, they should have babies: the “ought” is, as it were, derived from the “is.”3 The second—the social construction of nature—would allow society—in this case, a male hierarchy—to dictate what is and what is not “natural” and to educate girls to this end. Hence women are “maternal,” for example, because girls are raised to be mothers and not because of some innate quality. In this thought, we confront the central problematic addressed by the feminist refusal of nature: the infringement that social (especially patriarchal) conditioning imposes upon women’s freedom in the name of (or under the pretext of ) “nature.” To be fair, it must be admitted that these seemingly arbitrary notions of nature have not come from nowhere. Sr. Prudence Allen has, for example, exposed in a very thorough manner that the Aristotelian model of sex polarity, attributing to women weaker intellects than those of men, disordered wills and a natural subservience to men, dominated the west2 See, for example, ibid., 222. For a reply to the feminist argument for women priests, see my essay “Towards a New Feminist Theology of the Body,” in Women in Christ: Towards a New Feminism, ed. Michele M. Schumacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2004), 201–31. 3 Clearly, the vocation to consecrated celibacy is not easily reconciled with this idea, but that is a different argument. Women and the Theology of the Body 465 ern philosophical conception of woman for centuries. Sr. Allen argues that through the commentaries on Lombard’s Sentences by St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas, this same notion was, moreover, “fully integrated into the study of theology.”4 Given the multi-papal endorsements of Thomas’s theology as “the model for truth and the avoidance of error,” it should come as no surprise that Allen recognizes—in her second volume of her still-growing work—that Thomas’s integration of Aristotelian principles became “an important source for a natural foundation for gender polarity.” Sr. Allen adds, however, that this polarity is “balanced” by Thomas’s theology of grace, whereby he tends toward a model of sex complementarity, namely, “a differentiated equality of men and women in the communion of saints.”5 As a negative outgrowth of this sort of philosophical belittling of women, it would be difficult to deny—at least within the wake of the socalled women’s liberation movement at the origin of modern feminism— the very real oppression of women, ranging from diminished educational and professional opportunities to forced marriages, domestic violence and even sex-selection abortions, to name but a few examples. Historical conditioning has, as Pope John Paul II recognized in his 1995 Letter to Women, posed a serious obstacle to the legitimate progress of women. Often “relegated to the margins of society and reduced to servitude,” he admits, women have not been permitted to be their authentic selves, and this, in turn, has led to the “spiritual impoverishment of all of humanity.”6 Within this context, it is not surprising that feminists should call into question one of the most basic tenets of traditional metaphyics ascribed to Aristotle and espoused by Catholic theology in the tradition of St.Thomas: 4 Prudence Allen, R.S.M., The Concept of Woman I: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC–AD 1250 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 1997), 469. 5 Prudence Allen, R.S.M., The Concept of Woman II: The Early Humanist Reform, 1250 –1500 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2002), 150. See also Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Ethical Equality in a New Feminism,” in Women in Christ: Towards a New Feminism, ed. Michele M. Schumacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2004), 285–96. In that which concerns the magisterial elevation of Thomas’s theology, Allen makes reference to the papal bulls of Clement VI, Benedict XIII, St. Pius V, and Clement XII. In that which concerns sex complementarity, she presents this concept as involving “the relationship between two complete individuals one of whom is a man and the other a woman. Both are whole persons, and neither is incomplete without the other. However, sex complementarity arises when these two complete individuals come into relationship with one another” (The Concept of Woman I, 477). 6 John Paul II, Letter to Women, on the occasion of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing ( June 29, 1995), no. 3. Printed in Origins 25 ( July 27, 1995): 139. Michele M. Schumacher 466 ordo essendi est ordo agenda; the order of essence, or of nature (who we are), is the order of operation (what we do), whence comes the call, or vocation, to become who we are. For many feminists, this important philosophical principle is categorically refused for implying that “biology is destiny,” as makes sense within the context of the Aristotelian sex-polarity argument. As Prudence Allen explains in her exposé of this thought: Their [women’s] virtue (and their vice) will have a lesser measure than that of man because their deliberative reason is weak, and their reason is weak because of the imperfect nature of their body. He [Artistotle] gives the further amplification that women are usually governed by their emotions. So the ethical principle for gender polarity is traced to the epistemological principle for gender polarity, which is traced back to the natural principle for gender polarity.7 Reasoning in much the same way, albeit abhorring Aristotle’s conclusions, Simone de Beauvoir argues that it is woman’s “misfortune” to have been “biologically destined” to transmit life, whereby she is closer to the animal realm, “more enslaved to the species,” than is man. This very influential feminist thinker challenges women to transcend the natural realm— to rise above the “animal” act of giving life—so as to enter into the properly human sphere, wherein they might share in the masculine act of risking life, beginning, it would seem, with her battle against men. It is in woman’s possibilities—which Beauvoir contrasts to woman’s actual state—that she is comparable to man who, the French feminist-philosopher maintains, is a historical idea rather than a natural species.8 For Beauvoir, following Jean-Paul Sartre, nature has no intrinsic meaning, which is to say that human freedom precedes and dictates the content of human nature;9 hence, the birth of the famous Beauvoirian phrase, “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman,”10 which has been presented as the very hallmark of modern feminism.11 7 Concept of Woman II, 145. 8 This view of human nature Beauvoir maintains with reference to Merleau- Ponty. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 33, 64, 255, 34. 9 These ideas are developed in her monumental work, The Second Sex (see previous note).The influence of Jean-Paul Sartre is particularly apparent on this point. See, for example, his Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984). 10 The Second Sex, 267. 11 See, for example, Donna Haraway, “ ‘Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word,” in Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1992), 131. Women and the Theology of the Body 467 Beauvoir’s philosophy is a good example of how feminism has adopted the “divide and rule” mentality that it would ascribe to “patriarchal” thinking: the setting at odds of nature and culture, of body and soul, of man and woman, of the individual and the community, and ultimately of nature and grace: God’s action and ours. Hence, for example, her observation that Man’s design is not to repeat himself in time: it is to take control of the instant and mold the future. It is male activity that in creating values has made of existence itself a value; this activity has prevailed over the confused forces of life; it has subdued Nature and Woman.12 This dialectical manner of thinking is even more pronounced in the work of Shulamith Firestone, who dedicates her book to Beauvoir and who takes her argument one step further. Firestone too accepts the natureculture divide and others that follow therefrom, but rather than seeking to transcend the natural realm, she wishes to destroy it. “Humanity has begun to outgrow nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origins in Nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone it is beginning to look as if we must get rid of it.”13 More specifically, she advocates that women regain full “ownership” of their bodies and, more radically still, that we also gain at least temporary control of human fertility and of “the social institutions” of childbearing and childrearing. Ultimately she has in mind the elimination of sex distinction itself, which is to say that biological sex would carry no cultural value and artificial reproduction would replace natural reproduction and destroy the so-called “tyranny of the biological family.”14 While all of this might have appeared extreme in 1970 when Firestone penned these words, their prophetic power should resonate horror in our hearts today as we witness—less than forty years later—the systematic movement in the western world to legally recognize and even protect gay marriages, as well as medically assisted pregnancies, frozen embryos, testtube babies, and even human cloning. From this perspective, John Paul II’s observation that our society tends to measure progress “according to the criteria of science and technology” to the neglect of the “more important” social and ethical dimension of “human relations and spiritual 12 Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 65. 13 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Bantam, 1970), 10. 14 Ibid., 11. In this line of thinking, Firestone is a predecessor of Judith Butler. See, most especially, her Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). 468 Michele M. Schumacher values”—a dimension in which, he notes, women tend to excel15—has dramatic significance. Similarly, his challenge of promoting “a new feminism” which seeks to transform culture “so that it supports life”16 takes on capital importance within the very real threat of a culture of death. II. Self-Determination and the Theology of the Body It is within this context of the legitimate concerns of feminism, on the one hand, and its succumbing to the temptation of “imitating models of ‘male domination,’ ”17 on the one hand, that we might better grasp Patrick Snyder’s critique of Pope John Paul II’s anthropology of women. “The real question,” as the former sees it, “is not to determine if women are similar to or different from men.” Rather, Christian feminists want, Snyder claims, “to appropriate the discourse about their own bodies, to master their bodies so as to become autonomous subjects.” As a case in point, he cites Anne Carr, who maintains that feminist theology “tends towards the idea that ‘the nature’ of the human being is found in human hands.”18 To protect human freedom, one must naturally—it seems, obvious enough to Snyder and Carr, in the wake of Sartre and Beauvoir—do away with nature. As for Pope John Paul II, because he so clearly “denounces” himself as an essentialist, he must also—Snyder reasons—be a reductionist. Because, more specifically, he refers to scientific analysis as confirming “that the very physical constitution of women is naturally disposed to motherhood—conception, pregnancy, and giving birth— which is a consequence of the marriage union with the man,”19 it follows for Snyder that the “biological dimension” of woman written with a large W—including “a natural disposition to maternity,” is the “dogmatic reference” for John Paul II’s teaching on the nature and vocation of woman.20 Before responding to Snyder’s concern—one that is representative of feminists in general—I cannot help but point out what I consider an act 15 “In this area, which often develops in an inconspicuous way beginning with the daily relationships between people, especially within the family, society, certainly owes much to the ‘genius of women.’ ” John Paul II, Letter to Women, no. 9 (Origins, 141). 16 Evangelium Vitae, no. 99. 17 Ibid. 18 Snyder, La femme selon Jean-Paul II, 166, 167. 19 Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 18. 20 Snyder, La femme selon Jean-Paul II, 222. “C’est donc la dimension biologique de la Femme avec un grand F, dimension qui comporte une disposition naturelle à la maternité, qui est la référence dogmatique de Jean-Paul II dans sa conception de la nature et de la vocation de la femme.” Women and the Theology of the Body 469 of intellectual dishonesty: the isolation of this passage of John Paul II’s teaching from that which directly precedes and succeeds it.The late Holy Father argues, within the previous paragraph, for “a deeper understanding of the truth about the human person” as “a subject who decides for himself,” that is to say, who strives toward self-realization which can, however, only be achieved “through a sincere gift of self.” Furthermore, in the very sentence which follows the passage cited by Snyder, John Paul II purposefully guards against “an exclusively bio-physiological interpretation of women and motherhood,” a view which he judges as “restricted” and attributes to “a materialistic concept of the human being and of the world.”21 It would thus seem, ironically, that in attributing to John Paul II a reductionist understanding of woman, Snyder has himself fallen into the trap of a reductionist understanding of the human body, as it—this reductionist view—is described by Pope John Paul II: [T]he body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relation with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: From being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another in all the other’s richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts.22 Even if we were to presume the best of Snyder’s intentions so as to attribute to him no greater wrong than that of poor scholarship, we can hardly pardon him for claiming to recognize within John Paul II’s theology of the body—which he regards as “the key” for understanding John Paul II’s thought touching upon “the nature and vocation of the woman”—a form of “corporal determinism,”23 such that the body is said to “really and irreducibly confer upon the person a specific nature and vocation . . . defined by the simple observation of its reproductive biology.”24 Similarly, his 21 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women, Mulieris Dignitatem, August 15, 1988, no. 18. 22 Evangelium Vitae, no. 23. 23 See Snyder, La femme selon Jean-Paul II, 97. 24 Ibid., 228. The accusation is even more astonishing when read in its entirety: “We are in agreement with John Paul II when he affirms that the person is incarnated in a body. However, the body, or to utilize the vocabulary of the pontiff, its determination, can it really and irreducibly confer upon the person a specific nature and vocation which would be defined by the simple observation of its reproductive biology?” To my knowledge, the pope never uses the vocabulary ascribed 470 Michele M. Schumacher phenomenological method is deemed by Snyder to be prisoner to both cultural and biological determinism, with the result that a woman is said to discover “through her biological or spiritual maternity the specific determination of her body and her sex, the profundity of her femininity.” As for John Paul II himself, he is, Snyder argues, “prisoner” of a conception of woman “which in no way allows her to escape her identity of beingmother.” More specifically, Snyder depicts John Paul II as being one for whom “it is God who thinks, decides, [and] creates the human being [as] man and woman.” From this it follows in Snyder’s argumentation—which is not unlike that of Sartre and Beauvoir—that the late pontiff de facto sacrifices human freedom to God, or at least to his conception of God as it is interpreted by Snyder: the God of the patriarchs, I presume, and thus also the God of patriarchy, interpreted as machoism. More specifically, John Paul II “presents himself,” Snyder claims, “as the docile spokesman of a God who permits no freedom to newly interpret, according to a knowledge renewed by the evolution of human history, that which has been fixed in advance by a certain tradition.”25 Biological determinism here meets cultural determinism, and both of these in the form of dogmatism. Such is Snyder’s criticism in a nutshell. Without denying the whole background to this problematic, as I have exposed it above, I am convinced that a faithful reading of John Paul II’s theology of the body—far from reducing the human person—or more particularly, woman—to the body understood as a merely natural or biological fact, actually elevates the human body to the level of person, by to him by Snyder (i.e., “determination”); nor does he refer to the person in reproductive terms, unless, that is to say, Snyder were to incorrectly attribute to him an understanding of motherhood as reduced to its reproductive function. With regard to woman’s so-called “nature,” it is important to insist that the pope refers to woman’s “dignity and vocation,” as the English title of his 1988 apostolic letter suggests, and not to her “nature and vocation.” 25 Snyder, La femme selon Jean-Paul II, 222. The accusation is, in fact, pre-empted already in the pre-papal writing of Love and Responsibility. There, Wojtyl/a writes: “Nobody can use a person as a means towards an end, no human being, nor yet God the Creator. On the part of God, indeed, it is totally out of the question, since, by giving man an intelligent and free nature, he has thereby ordained that each man alone will decide for himself the ends of his activity, and not be a blind tool of someone else’s ends. Therefore, if God intends to direct man towards certain goals, he allows him[,] to begin with[,] to know those goals, so that he may make them his own and strive towards them independently. In this amongst other things resides the most profound logic of revelation: God allows man to learn His supernatural ends, but the decision to strive towards an end, the choice of course, is left to man’s free will. God does not redeem man against his will.” Love and Responsibility, trans. J.T.Willetts (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 27. Women and the Theology of the Body 471 recognizing it as a constitutive part of the human being. This “expressly demands,” however, the pope insists, “that we link the reflections on the theology of the body with the dimension of man’s personal subjectivity,” wherein is unfolded “consciousness of the meaning of the body.”26 Such, more specifically is a consciousness of the “unitive meaning of the body in its masculinity and femininity,”27 which is, as it were, both a revelation and a consequence of the ecstatic nature of the human person. In other words, human nature is characterized by what John Paul II calls an “adequate relation ‘to’ the person,” and thus also by an “opening toward and [a] waiting for a ‘communion of persons.’ ”28 It follows that the human body has an intrinsic natural value and an intrinsic orientation, or directedness, to the human “other,” which is not simply or arbitrarily conferred by our so willing it. Rather, our conscious appreciation of the body—our own and that of others—is an adequate estimation, a rational or right judgment, of its intrinsic objective value, a value that cannot be separated from the person-self. Hence, in contrast to the divine will, which creates the good in things and persons, our own human will is moved by the good pre-existing in things, as St. Thomas fittingly teaches.29 We are (subjectively) attracted to other body-persons, because they are (objectively) attractive: they draw us to themselves by their natural goodness, which the angelic doctor presents as a participation in divine goodness. This, in turn, supposes that we are also capable of being drawn—that we are oriented, as it were—to their beauty or goodness, and this orientation, or directedness to the human other, is itself an aspect of our own natural goodness; for we are naturally drawn—as implied in the mystery of our creation by an all-good and loving God— to what is good for us, or befitting us. “The affirmation of the person,” Pope John Paul II explains, “is nothing other than welcoming the gift, which, through reciprocity, creates the communion of persons,” a communion, he specifies, which “builds itself from within,” all in comprising “man’s 26 General audience of December 12, 1979, in John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 171. 27 General audience of November 21, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them), 169. “Sexual differentiation,” writes Mary Rousseau, “is, in some way, what makes human communio possible” (“John Paul II’s Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women: The Call to Communio,” Communio 16 [Summer, 1989]: 212–32, at 222). 28 General audience of November 14, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 162). 29 “[M]an’s love does not wholly cause the good of the thing, but pre-supposes it either in part or wholly” (ST I–II, q. 110, a. 1; Benzinger Brothers edition, 1947). See also ibid., I, q. 20, a. 2; and idem, Ioan. V, lect. 3, no. 753. Michele M. Schumacher 472 whole exteriority, that is, all that constitutes the pure and simple nakedness of the body in its masculinity and femininity.”30 Exemplifying this truth is the second creation account; there, the human being is presented as a covenant “partner of the Absolute,”31 and thus also as a “personal subjectivity,” whereby he is conscious of the spousal meaning of his body, namely its capacity for self-giving love, which we will examine more thoroughly in what follows. Of particular significance to this narrative is, therefore, the awakening of human selfconsciousness, which accompanies man’s discovery of the created world. Precisely in and through this discovery, he comes to discover himself as a subject: as one for whom the world is given as an object to know and thus to name.32 Beyond this, or more profoundly still, he becomes for himself—in an act of reflexive consciousness—an object of consideration, for he esteems himself unlike the animals. His self-knowledge is, however, still only negative at this stage: “there was not a helper fit for him.”33 In his encounter with Eve, he discovers himself in a positive sense, in his personal value: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!”34 Adam’s self-knowledge is thus mediated through the gift of the woman: a gift which is absolutely unmerited, completely gratuitous, a grace. On the other hand, she is a gift which corresponds to, or is befitting the man, and in this sense she is somehow—unconsciously—sought by the man within his search for himself, for his proper identity, or his self-definition.35 This is not to say that his encounter with the woman is the direct effect or fruit of his search: it is not his seeking that has led him to her, for she is an unimaginable gift, a gift which nonetheless confirms the meaning of his own humanity and masculinity and simultaneously reveals these to him. Thanks to the Creator’s gift of the woman, Adam understands himself, more specifically, as a being created “for” the other and thus destined to communion with her, supposing his own freely bestowed gift of self.36 His acceptance of the woman is, as it were, “a first donation,” but it also incites a further act of giving on his part: his finding of himself in and 30 General audience of January 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 188). 31 General audience of October 24, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 38). 32 Cf. Gn 2:20. 33 General audience of December 12, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 171). 34 Gn 2:23. 35 See General audience of October 10, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 149). 36 See General audience of November 14, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 163). “In the ‘unity of the two,’ man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist ‘side by side’ or ‘together,’ but they are also called to exist mutually ‘one for the other.’ ” (Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 7) Women and the Theology of the Body 473 through the very act of giving himself becomes, the pope teaches, the source of a new giving of himself. He is thus enriched not only by the gift of the woman, but also and especially by the act of giving himself to her. Through the self-knowledge obtained within the sexual embrace, both man and woman obtain—the pontiff teaches—greater self “possession” in virtue of which they are each rendered still more capable of giving of themselves and of receiving the other’s self-gift.37 In this way, receptivity conditions giving which, in turn, leads to further giving in a harmonious development of self-realization. In other words, human freedom—in John Paul II’s teaching, and consistent with the tradition—must itself be received as a gift before it can give itself further. This, in turn, means that human freedom follows upon, or presupposes, human nature precisely as God has entrusted it to the human creature—in himself and in the other—for the good of the human person and for the construction of the human community. We might thus note a significant correspondence between Wojytla’s philosophy and his theology: “as activity reveals esse, the gift of self reveals the capacity of the human person. It is in the person’s structure of self-possession and self-governance that a person can,” Kathleen Curran Sweeney rightly explains, “give himself or herself as a gift to another.”38 We are thus confronted with two truths concerning body-persons in John Paul II’s theological anthropology. Firstly, there is the truth concerning the person as “an object” of knowledge and love: the human person is revealed as a body, which is to say that the human body is a sort of epiphany of the person-self, in virtue of which he or she is visibly beautiful, attracting others to his or her internal beauty or goodness. Indeed, it must be insisted that every body—no matter how “ordinary,” deformed, or otherwise unusual—has an intrinsic beauty, whether or not it is so esteemed.This is to say that the human body reveals a value and a beauty that “goes beyond the simply physical level of ‘sexuality’ ” so as to manifest the fact that the person is created “for his own sake.”39 Secondly, there is the truth concerning the person as a subject of knowledge and love: precisely as body-persons, our knowledge of the world and others, and thus also our judgment of their value or goodness, are provided in and through—that is to say, by means of—our bodies.“[A] mass of potentialities” and “a potential of relations,” the 37 See General audience of February 6, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 195–96). 38 Kathleen Curran Sweeney, “The Perfection of Women as Maternal and the Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla,” Logos 9:2 (Spring 2006): 129–54, at 149. 39 General audience of January 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 188); cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 24. 474 Michele M. Schumacher human body, as described by Marie Hendrickx,40 is that whereby the person enters into relation with the world and with others, and these relations—I might add—are essential to his or her human condition. Our bodies are, in other words, that whereby we are receptive of these epiphanies, that whereby the world and its inhabitants leave their impressions upon our souls, so as to be—at least in a certain sense—given to us. They are also, moreover, that whereby we ourselves are—precisely as subjects, that is to say, in authentic freedom—willingly given, or revealed (and in this sense surrendered) to others so as to be known and loved; only in this sense, John Paul II insists, might a person rightfully be considered as an “object.”41 Combining these two truths, we might argue that knowledge of human persons is not, so-to-speak, heady stuff: it presupposes the real encounter of bodies, even in non-sexual knowledge and even—it is worth adding—in our knowledge of the Christian God. Neither, however, may our knowledge of persons be reduced to bodily encounters that do not entail any form of free self-revelation: authentic selfgiving, an unveiling, as it were.42 This means that our knowledge of persons—or even of things, for that matter—both presupposes and incites our actual communion with them: our more or less proximate experience of relations and relationships that are both given and achieved.43 This 40 See Marie Hendrickx, “Un autre féminisme?” Nouvelle revue théologique 112 (1990): 67–79, at 70–71. Hendrickx refers to the human being as “a being who necessarily bears within himself a project of relations.” 41 John Paul II follows the Kantian categorical imperative: “whenever a person is the object of your activity, remember that you may not treat that person as only a means to an end, as an instrument, but must allow for the fact that he or she, too, has, or at least should have, distinct personal ends. This principle, thus formulated, lies at the basis of all the human freedoms, properly understood, and especially freedom of conscience” (Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility, 28). On the importance of this imperative for his thinking, see George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography off Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper Collins, 1999), 128. 42 See Karol Wojtyl/a, “The Person: Subject and Community,” in his Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, O.S.M. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 245. 43 A similar point is made in the distinction, emphasized by Wojtyl/a, between community and communion. In his commentary on Gaudium et Spes, no. 24, he explains, more specifically, that the phrase “union in truth and charity” is “the ultimate expression of the community of individuals. This union merits the name of communion (communio), which signifies more than community (communitas). The Latin word communion denotes a relationship between persons that is proper to them alone; and it indicates the good that they do to one another, giving and receiving within that mutual relationship” (Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980], 89). Women and the Theology of the Body 475 in turn means, in the first instance, that the object or subject known must be given or surrendered to the knowing subject. When, more specifically, the “object” of our knowledge is actually a subject—a person44—this fact of being given (datum) requires that he or she has willingly, or freely, given or revealed him- or herself to the knowing subject (donum).45 Hence it must be admitted—as John Paul II does—that the woman’s revealing presence to Adam occurs not only in the objective—and in this sense passive—form, whereby she is rightfully considered God’s gift to Adam. Precisely because Eve is a person, the gift, whom she is, is also and especially a gift of self. In other words, God’s gift to Adam is confirmed, and in this sense appropriated, by her own gift: she actively—that is, freely and consciously—gives herself to Adam.46 This, in turn, presupposes that she really “possesses herself,” that she has effectively appropriated her freedom, that she is spiritually mature, that—in short—she understands herself as possessing a particular value before God (cf. Gn 1:31) and also a particular value for herself, which includes the fact that she is “for the man and vice versa, the ‘man’ is for the woman.”47 In short, precisely as a human person, she has a human nature, which, as such, is also sexual. Beyond this we might argue—and herein we continue our exposition of the second truth concerning the body-person, namely that human knowledge is necessarily bodily—the knowing subject must himself be engaged with the object or subject known. Such is obviously the case in any act of knowledge insofar as it depends upon bodily sensation, but it is most especially, or obviously, true in that act of knowledge whose “object” is a person—and it is still more evident when by the word “knowledge” we mean the one-flesh union of man and woman. “In conjugal ‘knowledge,’ ” John Paul II explains, “the woman ‘is given’ to the man and he to her, because the body and [its] sex enter directly into the very structure and content of this ‘knowledge.’ ”48 Hence, the biblical text describing the one-flesh union of primordial man and woman (Gn 4:1-2) stresses the spousal meaning of the body as datum: a giftedness that is more factual, or objective in character, than subjectively determined or humanly willed. It is, in this sense, “a creative donation.”49 The pope insists: 44 On this point, see idem, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 240–46. 45 This is, in fact, the meaning that John Paul II gives to Genesis 2:25: “They were naked and not ashamed.” 46 See General audiences of November 21, 1979, and February 6, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 168 and 197). 47 General audience of November 14, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 161). 48 General audience of March 5, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 208). 49 General audience of January 9, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 183). Michele M. Schumacher 476 One must keep in mind that each of them, the man and the woman, is not only a passive object defined by his own body and his own sex, and in this way determined ‘by nature.’ On the contrary, precisely through being man and woman, each of them is ‘given’ to the other as a unique and unrepeatable subject, as ‘I ’, as person.50 It follows that by the engagement of the knowing subject is meant not only a sort of passive, bodily surrender, but also and especially a willed surrender, a conscious and free giving of him- or herself. If, even on the physiological level, the female body is never only a receptacle for sperm, as Margaret Farley rightfully insists,51 all the more reason to recognize in the mutual “knowledge” of the marital union the coinciding of activity and receptivity: the man giving himself in a receiving sort of way, as William May aptly expresses it; the woman receiving the man in a giving sort of way.52 Pope John Paul II takes these insights even further: “giving and accepting the gift interpenetrate in such a way that the very act of giving becomes acceptance, and acceptance transforms itself into giving.”53 Indeed, in the mutual self-giving of spouses there is, he reasons, “a common and reciprocal discovery, just as the existence of man, whom ‘God created male and female,’ is common and reciprocal from the beginning.” In contrast to “a one-sidedly ‘naturalistic’ mentality” whereby the knowledge obtained in the sexual union (as expressed in Genesis 4:1: “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived . . .”) would be interpreted as “a passive acceptance of one’s own determination on the part of the body and [its] sex,” there is thus implied a self-determination empowered by knowledge.54 Certainly the experience of being a body-person can be discovered in other, non-sexual relationships as, for example, in the experience of a child 50 General audience of March 5, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 208). Emphasis mine. 51 “Knowledge about the ovum, and the necessity of two entities (sperm and ovum) meeting in order to form a new reality, forever ruled out the analogy of the earth receiving a seed which was whole in itself and only in need of nourishment to grow. Suddenly enwombing took on a different meaning, and inseeding had to be conceptualized in a different way. Even the passivity of the waiting womb had to be reinterpreted in the face of discoveries of its active role in aiding the passage of the sperm” (Margaret A. Farley, “New Patterns of Relationship: Beginnings of a Moral Revolution,” in Theological Studies 36 [December 1975]: 627–46, at 637). 52 See William E. May, Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 48–49. 53 General audience of February 6, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 196). 54 General audience of March 12, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 210). Women and the Theology of the Body 477 in a woman’s womb or at her breast: an experience which might prove to be an important phenomenological input in the formulation of the socalled genius of women.55 What is unique to the experience of sexual knowledge—that is, knowledge through sexual intercourse—is the discovery of the spousal meaning of the human body, wherein is also revealed— or better, confirmed—the whole covenantal meaning of our persons: the fact that we were created “for” another who has been created for us, that we are so radically other-centered, or ecstatic, in nature that our orientation to the other is, as it were, actually inscribed within our flesh at the time of our creation.56 To acknowledge this is also to admit that the sexual differentiation of the human body-person has an objective meaning or value that is more profound than our skin is deep. It witnesses, more specifically, to what John Paul II refers to—already in his pre-papal writings—as “the law of the gift”57 and what Hans Urs von Balthasar calls, with reference to Genesis 2:23,58 the “basic law” of the human person: that “it is in the Thou . . . that we find our I.”59 In this regard it is worth repeating that this spousal attribute60—the capacity of the human body to express self-giving love—does 55 On this subject, see Michele M. Schumacher, “The Prophetic Vocation of Women and the Order of Love,” in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 2:2 (Spring 1999): 147–92; see also Kathleen Curran Sweeney, “The Perfection of Women as Maternal.” 56 By this I do not mean to set the experience of sexual intercourse over against that of bearing a child and giving birth, which are obviously also very formative experiences of being for another. Rather the experience of maternity is itself understood as a consequence and continuation of the primary gift of self in the married union. Theses are two different but inseparable experiences. 57 Karol Wojtyl/a, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination” in idem, Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, O.S.M. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 194. 58 “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” 59 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Convergences:To the Source of Christian Mystery (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 128. Balthasar explains, “God became man so that this law, which is understandable to us—perhaps the most understandable of all the laws of life—should turn for us into the definitive law of being, explaining and satisfying everything. In Christian faith alone, then—to say it once more—lies the single sufficient explanation for human existence” (ibid., 130–31). See also Balthasar’s A Theological Anthropology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 312–13. The similarity with John Paul II’s teaching is particularly evident in Wojtyl/a’s teaching that “in the normal course of events, the thou assists me in more fully discovering and even confirming my own I ”: the thou contributes to my selfaffirmation. In its basic form, the I-thou relationship, far from leading me away from my subjectivity, in some sense more firmly grounds me in it” (“The Person: Subject and Community,” 242–43). 60 See, for example, General audiences of January 9 and 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 181–90). 478 Michele M. Schumacher not mean simply that the human body is a potential source of fruitfulness in the form of procreation. To adequately interpret this teaching, we must insist—as does John Paul II—that it be connected sufficiently with “the fundamental characteristic of human existence in the personal sense,” that is to say, with human freedom. Only thus is it possible to raise the analogy of the human body and sex “in relation to the world of animals—which we can call analogy ‘of nature’ ”—“to the level of ‘image of God’ and to the level of the person and communion among persons.”61 From the two preceding truths concerning the body-person—first, that the body has an objective meaning, or value, to be discovered and consciously appropriated in authentic acts of self-realization, and second, that knowledge of persons requires both that those who are known willingly reveal themselves and that those who are said to know simultaneously surrender themselves (so as to be effectively engaged) in the act of knowing—we might thus draw this third truth: the human body has an essentially spousal meaning, which consists not only “in the whole reality and truth” of the human body and sex, but also and simultaneously, as John Paul II puts it, “in the full freedom from all constraint of the body and [its] sex.”62 Precisely as male and female, human beings are “created for unity.” Their actual one-flesh union is nonetheless really derived from a free choice.63 This means that the gifted character of the human body-person is not only divinely willed and bestowed; it is also humanly chosen and conferred. The spousal meaning of the body is, therefore, expressive of the spousal, or covenantal, meaning of the human person.This, in turn, means that although the human person is created for himself, so as also to decide for himself— and this, for reason of being willed by God “for his own sake,” as the Council teaches in a passage of focal importance for the magisterial teaching of John Paul II—he can, nonetheless, “only find himself in giving himself,” that is to say, in freely becoming a gift for others.64 61 General audience of January 9, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 185). On the other hand, Wojtyl/a insists upon the distinction between “the order of nature”—which has God as its author—and “the biological order.” The latter he presents “as a product of the human intellect which abstracts its elements from a larger reality [and which] has man for its immediate author. The claim to autonomy in one’s ethical views is a short jump from this. It is otherwise with the order of nature, which means the totality of the cosmic relationships that arise among really existing entities” (Love and Responsibility, 56–57). 62 General audience of January 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 185). 63 General audience of November 21, 1979 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 168). Emphasis mine. 64 Council Vatican II, Pastoral Document on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, no. 24; cf. John 17:21–22 and Mulieris Dignitatem, nos. 7 and 18. Women and the Theology of the Body 479 This insight—this “law of the gift . . . inscribed deep within the dynamic structure of the person”65 wherein is summarized for John Paul II “the whole of Christian anthropology”66—contains both an ontological affirmation (the human being is a gift: datum) and an ethical implication (the human person must become a gift: donum), which the pontiff formulates in personalist terms: “Only a person can love and only a person can be loved”;67 hence the commandment of love, already in the Old Testament, which becomes the heart of the Gospel “ethos.” In that which concerns the specific “ ‘ethos’ of spousal love,” John Paul II insists not only upon “a fundamental affirmation of the woman as a person”68 but also upon what he refers to, with reference to Ephesians 5:21, as a “Gospel innovation”: namely, the “mutual subjection” of the spouses “out of reverence for Christ.” This awareness of a mutual subjection, “and not just that of the wife to the husband, must gradually establish itself in hearts, consciences, behaviour and customs,” he argues.69 Hence, despite such feminist accusations as Snyder’s, of biological reductionism and cultural determinism in the theological anthropology of the late pontiff, John Paul II’s presentation of the spousal meaning of the body—its capacity to express self-giving love—actually ensures the self-determination of the human subject as implied by his or her consciousness and freedom.70 It is this consciousness—this personal awareness of the objective value of the body, as expressing the objective value and thus also the objective On the importance of Gaudium et Spes, no. 24 for the magisterial teaching of Pope John Paul II, see: Pascale Ide, “Une théologie du don. Les occurrences de Gaudium et Spes, no. 24, § 3 chez Jean-Paul II,” Anthropotes 17/1 (2001): 149–78 ; 17/2 (2001): 313–44. 65 Karol Wojtyl/a, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 194. 66 See Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter on the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World, Dominum et Vivicantem (May 30, 1986), no. 59. 67 John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (August 15, 1988), no. 29. In that which concerns the connection between ontology and ethics, see no. 30. 68 It is this affirmation that “makes it possible,” he explains, “for the female personality to develop fully and be enriched” (Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 24). 69 Ibid. In contrast, Pius XI argued (in Casti Connubi, no. 15) for “the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children” and “the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience.” 70 In his commentary on Genesis 2:23, for example, the pope argues that consciousness of this meaning is actually “deeper” than the somatic structure of the human being as male and female. “In any case,” he continues, “this structure is presented from the beginning with a deep consciousness of human bodiliness and sexuality, and this establishes an inalienable norm for the understanding of man on the theological plane” (general audience of November 14, 1979 [Man and Woman He Created Them, 165]). See also general audience of December 12, 1979 (ibid., 171). 480 Michele M. Schumacher meaning, of the person—which allows the human person to make of himor herself a gift for the other.71 The human body is, in the words of John Paul II, “orientated from within by the ‘sincere gift’ of the person.”72 When, therefore, Adam is said (in Genesis 4:1) to “know” his wife such that she conceives, this knowledge in no way detracts from the original and fundamental self-awareness implied by his act of naming the animals. In virtue of this act of naming, Adam differentiates himself from other living beings and affirms himself as a person. In knowing Eve, he has still greater self-consciousness: he discovers thereby the meaning of his own bodyperson, as intrinsically related to the woman.73 Such self-consciousness and human freedom are also operative in a woman’s choice for motherhood. On the one hand, a woman is physiologically predisposed to bearing children. On the other hand, being a mother implies a choice: a free gift of self. In the words of John Paul II: “Motherhood is linked to the personal structure of the woman and to the personal dimension of the gift.”74 It is thus possible to distinguish different levels of motherhood within a woman: 71 “[I]n the experience of self-determination the human person stands revealed before us as a distinctive structure of self-possession and self-governance. Neither the one nor the other, however, implies being closed in on oneself. On the contrary, both self-possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a ‘gift of oneself,’ and this a ‘disinterested’ gift. Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift.”Wojtyl/a, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 194. 72 General audience of January 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 188). 73 See John Paul II, general audience of March 12, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 208–10). Something of this mystery is expressed in the poetic images, adapted from the same scriptural reference to Genesis 2 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who reasons in a complementary fashion. See his A Theological Anthropology (New York : Sheed and Ward, 1967), 312–13. 74 Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 18 ; emphasis his. Sr. Prudence Allen comments: “If through the exercise of intellect and will a woman chooses to develop a personalistic attitude toward her child, she may nurture a capacity to lead other persons into a similar development of personal identity.” “Philosophy of Relation in John Paul II’s New Feminism,” in Women in Christ (ed. Schumacher), 99. It is precisely this central element of motherhood that is overlooked by Snyder’s presentation of John Paul II’s thought. On the one hand, Snyder admits: “It is true that maternity is not, for the pontiff, purely biological or physical, that it takes on a personal and spiritual value.” On the other hand, he explains that “what permits John Paul II to pass easily from biological maternity to spiritual maternity is that his argumentation is developed from the conviction that a woman does not become a mother only at the moment that she bears a child and brings it to birth, but by the fact that this potentiality is inscribed in her biological dimension” (La femme selon Jean-Paul II, 35). Women and the Theology of the Body 481 Motherhood in the bio-physical sense appears to be passive: the formation process of a new life “takes place” in her, in her body, which is nevertheless profoundly involved in that process. At the same time, motherhood in its personal-ethical sense expresses a very important creativity on the part of the woman, upon whom the very humanity of the new human being mainly depends.75 Corresponding to a woman’s maternal orientation is, in other words, what Kathleen Curran Sweeney refers to as that which is “dynamically creative in each woman’s unique personal expression of this.”76 Conclusion It might thus be insisted that Pope John Paul II avoids the error that many feminists attribute—often with good reason—to a traditional theology of woman: that of reducing nature to biology. He avoids this error, I have argued, precisely by presenting a theological anthropology in which the human person is revealed in the body and realized in relations enabled by the body. He thereby necessarily departs from a sex-polarity model of male-female relations, proposing instead an anthropology of complementarity—mutual complementarity77—wherein human persons may be said to freely realize themselves within a communion of persons: a communion that is willfully chosen and thus also purposefully realized by man and woman. As Sr. Prudence Allen has well remarked, “it is obvious” that man and woman are each “oriented ‘towards the other’ because of the biological structure of genes, hormones, systems, and anatomy. Because the individuals are human beings, however, the exercise of this orientation is not forced but is conditioned by choice.” More specifically, each may decide “how to act in relation to the other, and they may choose a variety of different alternatives in relation to one another.”78 By this, she obviously 75 Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 19. Emphasis his. Similar to the distinction between the two levels of motherhood is the distinction between specifically human agency and a passive occurrence within the human body structure: “The first definition of self-determination in the experience of human action involves a sense of efficacy . . . ‘I act’ means ‘I am the efficient cause’ of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely ‘happens in me’ ” (Wojtyl/a, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” 187). 76 Kathleen Curran Sweeney, “The Perfection of Women as Maternal,” 131. 77 “Woman complements man, just as man complements woman: Men and women are complementary. Womanhood expresses the ‘human’ as much as manhood does, but in a different and complementary way.” John Paul II, Letter to Women, no. 7 (Origins, 141). 78 Prudence Allen, “A Woman and a Man as Prime Analogical Beings,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (Autumn 1992): 476. In another place, she explains 482 Michele M. Schumacher does not mean to sustain homosexual relations as a valid choice among others, for human freedom is exercised in communion with the Creator’s intention as inscribed within the human body. To admit this, is not, however—I insist—to de facto advocate some form of biological determinism, wherein the human person might be comparable to an animal.79 Nor is it, however, to advocate some sort of Cartesian mind-body dualism, which would allow the person to govern his body as his own creation or as a detached instrument having no intrinsic value or meaning.80 Indeed, the same human freedom that permits the conscious recognition of the spousal meaning of the body—a meaning that expresses the deepest meaning of the person-self, namely that self-realization requires that one willingly become a gift for others, either in marriage or in consecrated celibacy—does not permit that we redefine the body’s (sacramental) meaning according to our own, subjective will. Just as we cannot reconstruct our bodies in a manner that suits our freedom of self-expression, neither can we choose a sexual orientation that cannot be authentically expressed in our bodies. Freedom to self-determination is not, in other words, opposed to the conscious acknowledgment and willing acceptance of the spousal meaning of the body, which includes—without being reduced to—our intrinsic orientation to a person of the opposite sex, an orientation that must nonetheless be personalized through a free that “man and woman who interact as persons can be seen as analogous to the interbonding of three-dimensional tetrahedronal figures into complex structures. In other words, the bonding together into communities comes through interpenetration of self-gift by men and women to one another.This can occur in marriages, in friendships, in church ministries, in religious communities, and so forth” (Prudence Allen, R.S.M., “Integral Sex Complementarity and the Theology of Communion,” Communio 17 [Winter, 1990]: 538). See also Rousseau, “Pope John Paul II’s Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” 220. 79 See supra, note 61, and the corresponding text. 80 Indeed, the pope notes: “This purely anthropological verification brings us, at the same time, to the topic of the ‘person’ and to the topic of the ‘body/sex.’ This simultaneousness is essential. In fact, if we dealt with sex without the person, this would destroy the whole adequacy of the anthropology we find in Genesis. Moreover, for our theological study it would veil the essential light of the revelation of the body, which shines through these first statements with such great fullness” (general audience of January 9, 1980 [Man and Woman He Created Them, 182–83]). Similarly, Mary Rousseau notes: “For a univocal equality between men and women would relegate sexuality to the material realm, exclude it from the personal, and thus introduce an ontological split between matter and spirit in the make-up of the human person. Such a Gnostic reduction would weaken, indeed destroy, the dignity and vocation of women, and of men as well” (“Pope John Paul II’s Letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” 229). Women and the Theology of the Body 483 decision to give of oneself to the other in an indissoluble bond. “It is,” in the words of John Paul II, not only “a question . . . of ‘welcoming’ the other human being and of ‘accepting’ him or her” but also “of such an ‘acceptance’ or ‘welcome’ in reciprocal nakedness that it expresses and sustains the meaning of the gift.”81 All in acknowledging the validity of protecting human freedom from anything that hinders or otherwise threatens its expression—as, in the present context, the biological reductionism of women and cultural determinism—John Paul II seeks to direct freedom towards responsibility. This means that freedom is not understood in primarily negative and thus minimal terms, as an absence of constraint: freedom, for example, from sex and biology82 or freedom from cultural conditioning. Rather, it is formulated in positive terms as freedom for the other, freedom to give of one-self and freedom to receive the other as a gift.83 From this perspective, human liberty is granted the wide open space of a God-given nature that is orientated not simply or primarily by the human body, but also and especially by the human intellect and will, which are nonetheless tightly bound to the body in a relationship of mutual dependency and mutual conditioning, for human knowledge is indebted to human sensation. From this perspective, freedom is endowed with a positive content—namely, that of self-mastery84—through which the human person is capable of authentic self-realization within a community of relations and relationships, which are—it bears repeating—both given and achieved. As such, human freedom is itself realized, or perfected, within the authentically human acts of giving and receiving. Indeed, the act of receiving—even the “receiving” of our nature itself by way of what John Paul II refers to as the act of self81 General audience of February 6, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 195). Worth noting on this point is the position paper presented by Mary Ann Glendon,Vatican Representative to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women (4–15 September 1995) in Beijing, who explains that while the Holy See “excludes dubious interpretations based on world views which assert that sexual identity can be adapted indefinitely to suit new and different patterns,” it likewise “dissociates itself from the biological determinist notion that all the roles and relations of the two sexes are fixed in a single static pattern” (Mary Ann Glendon, “Vatican Stance: Women’s Conference Final Document,” Origins. CNS Documentary Service 25, no. 15 [September 28, 1995]: 236). 82 To be sure, the pope does not simply dismiss these as “constraints,” but insists that the human body is not reduced to these. See General audience of January 9, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 184–85). 83 See Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 7. Similarly, John Paul II acknowledges that “freedom of conscience is never freedom ‘from’ the truth but always and only freedom ‘in’ the truth . . . ” (Veritatis Splendor, August 6, 1993; no. 64). 84 General audience of January 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 186). Michele M. Schumacher 484 possession85 —enables or equips our giving, and vice versa in a continuous, almost organic manner, wherein the human person actually realizes him- or herself. Those who are free in this way are, in the words of John Paul II, “free with the very freedom of the gift.”86 N&V 85 This is the case when, for example, we act in accord with our nature, that is to say, rationally and thus also virtuously. 86 General audience of January 16, 1980 (Man and Woman He Created Them, 185). Emphasis his. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 485–506 485 Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence* M ARY S HIVANANDAN John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America Washington, DC I N THE LAST homily of John Paul II’s Catechesis on Human and Divine Love, no. 133, he makes it clear that Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae provided the impetus for the composition of these reflections. “In some sense, one can say that all the reflections dealing in the “Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage” seem to constitute an extended commentary on the doctrine contained precisely in Humanae Vitae.”1 He goes on to say that “the reaction the encyclical stirred up confirms the importance and difficulty of these questions.”2 Yet John Paul II finds much more in the controversial encyclical beyond defending it from its critics and reaffirming the soundness of its teaching on responsible parenthood. Besides seizing the occasion for a renewal of a Trinitarian anthropology of man3 from Paul VI’s emphasis on an “integral vision of man,” he sees in it “the main lines of the Christian spirituality of the conjugal * This paper was originally given at the 2nd International Symposium on John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Man and Woman He Created Them, Maynooth, Ireland, June 11–14, 2009. 1 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), November 28, 1984, 133, no. 2. Again in the very last paragraph: “The most important aspect seems to be the essential aspect that, in the whole of the reflections carried out, one can specify as follows: to face the questions raised by Humanae Vitae above all in theology, to formulate these questions and to look for an answer to them.” These questions include the “difficult questions of our contemporary world concerning marriage and procreation.” Ibid., no. 4. 2 Ibid., no. 2 3 Throughout this essay, unless otherwise specified, the meaning of “man” should be understood to be “human.” 486 Mary Shivanandan life and vocation, and likewise that of parents and the family.”4 This is precisely because Humanae Vitae (no. 25) speaks of the couples’ consecration “for the carrying out of their proper vocation even to perfection.”5 Conjugal spirituality, for those familiar with the discussion of the papal Birth Control Commission, convened by Pope Paul VI to consider the licitness of the “pill,” is far from a side issue. Who could forget that a prominent Catholic spirituality movement, the Christian Family Movement (CFM), played a major role in the majority report of the Commission, which recommended that the Church change its 2000-year-old ban on contraception. Over and above the dissenting voices of the moral theologians, it was the worldwide survey of CFM couples instigated by Pat and Patty Crowley that is said to have tipped the balance. Married couples, it was argued, are the ones affected, and they gave the testimony of experience that the Church’s teaching was outmoded and, even in some cases, impossible.6 It is noteworthy that John Paul II, in response to this challenge, did not shy away from the testimony of experience but embraced it and made it a centerpiece of his analysis of the Genesis text.7 One can see, then, that although the section on conjugal spirituality comes right at the end of the Catechesis, it is by no means an afterthought. John Paul II takes as his cue Paul VI’s reference to the Lord’s entrusting to couples “the task of making visible to men the holiness and sweetness of the law, which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with the love of God the author of human life 4 Ibid., October 3, 1984, 126, no. 2. 5 Ibid., no. 1. 6 A full report of their part in the Papal Birth Control Commission can be found in Robert McClory, Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission, and How Humanae Vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1995). One respondent is quoted as summing up for all: “The statements on this subject must come from those who live in the situation on a daily basis. Second hand knowledge is not adequate to serve as the foundation upon which this important area can be discussed” (94). The data of the survey was later reanalyzed and it was found that, in fact, 64 percent of the couples stated that Rhythm (an earlier and imprecise method of periodic continence) was in some way helpful to their marriage. For some it brought an increased spiritual awareness, and greater discipline and self-mastery from the prayer and sacrifice involved; these findings were completely overlooked at the time. Richard J. Fehring and Elizabeth McGraw, “Spiritual Responses to the Regulation of Births (A Historical Comparison),” in Life and Learning XII: Proceedings of the Twelfth University Faculty for Life Conference, 2002, ed. Joseph W. Koterski (Washington, DC: University Faculty for Life, 2003): 265–83. 7 John Paul II, Man and Woman, September 26, 1979, 4, no. 5. See especially fn. 8. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 487 (HV no. 25).”8 His analysis of how they accomplish this task centers on the gift of piety. “The link of purity with love,” he says, “and the link of that same purity with piety as a gift of the Holy Spirit, is a little known thread in the theology of the body, but nevertheless deserves particularly deep study.”9 In the Wednesday Catechesis the leading scriptural texts for the pope’s reflection on piety are the Pauline texts on the human body as the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19–20) and the need to “keep one’s body with holiness and reverence” (1 Thes 4:4). In a footnote, the pope notes that eusebeia or pietas in the Greco-Roman period generally applied to the veneration of the gods in terms of devotion, but it still kept its original and broader meaning of “reverence for the vital structures of life.” A wider meaning referred it to inter-human relations.10 Both are important in John Paul II’s interpretation of the Pauline texts in relation to Humanae Vitae. According to Thomas Aquinas, piety is both a virtue and a gift of the Holy Spirit.11 As a virtue it is linked to the cardinal virtue of justice. “The piety that pays duty and worship to a father in the flesh is a virtue but the piety that is a gift pays this to God as Father.”12 Earlier he cites Romans 8:15: “You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: ‘Abba (Father).’ ”13 Piety involves both duty and reverence: “ ‘duty’ referring to service, and ‘homage’ to reverence or honor.”14 John Paul II concurs with this understanding, preferring to emphasize the notion of reverence, particularly before the sacred. As such it appears 102 times in the Catechesis.15 It is that reverence for the holiness of God and the vital structures of life that John Paul II highlights in his presentation of piety and its relationship to love and conjugal spirituality. 8 Ibid., October 3, 1984, 126, no. 1. 9 Ibid., March 18, 1981, 57, no. 3. 10 Ibid., fn. 64. 11 Thomas Aquinas treats of piety as a virtue in Summa theologiae II–II, q. 101 and as a gift of the Holy Spirit in II–II, q. 121. Michael Waldstein gives as the Pope’s definition of piety, that it is “the virtue that regulates one’s relation to one’s parents, fatherland, ancestors and other family members, and above all one’s relationship to God, where its proper act is reverence for the holiness of God.” He concludes that for John Paul II, “Among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, piety is the one most congenial to the virtue of sexual purity, because it is sensitive to the beauty and sacredness of the body as temple of the Holy Spirit.” John Paul II, Man and Woman He Made Them, “Index of Words and Phrases,” 712. 12 Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 121, a. 1, ad 1. 13 Ibid., 1, a. 14 Ibid., q. 101, 2 a. 15 Man and Woman, “Index of Words and Phrases,” 714. 488 Mary Shivanandan In this article I shall begin by looking at the Holy Family, where the gift of piety or reverence as the core of conjugal spirituality is displayed in all its purity. I shall show how some contemporary scriptural exegesis has rediscovered the full meaning of Joseph’s piety, when he is faced with Mary’s pregnancy; this new view overturns other, inadequate interpretations. I propose that this interpretation sheds new light on Joseph’s married life with Mary with implications for conjugal spirituality. I shall then consider what is meant by “justice towards the Creator” and its relationship to the gift of piety. Finally I shall examine the pope’s own treatment of the gift of reverence in the homilies 126 through 132 and shall show its relevance to conjugal spirituality, which looks to the Holy Family as the model of the “domestic church.” The Holy Family as the Domestic Church Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation on St. Joseph, Redemptoris Custos, is a short and comparatively neglected teaching on the husband of Mary and the father of Jesus.16 Yet it contains an astonishingly rich and vital reflection on the family as the “domestic church,” especially St. Joseph’s contribution to the Incarnation through his fiat, corresponding to Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation. Together with the Fathers of the Church, John Paul II affirms that Joseph’s marriage to Mary is the juridical basis of his fatherhood of Jesus. “While it is important,” he says, “to profess the virginal conception of Jesus, it is no less important to uphold Mary’s marriage to Joseph, because juridically Joseph’s fatherhood depends on it” (RC, no. 7).17 Tradition, in the steps of St. Augustine, has accorded the Holy Family all the goods of marriage, proles, fides, and sacramentum, offspring, fidelity, and sacrament.18 The newness of John Paul II’s reflection is to develop an understanding of the Holy Family as the model and source of meaning for all families in a way never before expressed in the Church. The pope points out that just as there is a married couple at the beginning of the Old Covenant, Adam and Eve, who unleashed evil on the world, so at the beginning of the New Covenant, which renews all things in Christ, there is a married couple and from them “holiness 16 John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos: Apostolic Exhortation of the Supreme Pontiff on the Person and Mission of Saint Joseph in the Life of Christ and of the Church (Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1989) In the text citations will be given as RC, and section number. 17 His fatherhood is particularly evident in the command of the angel to name Jesus. Not only does he name Jesus, but he gives him the lineage of David, all through his marriage to Mary. 18 Sacramentum in St. Augustine referred to an unbreakable sacred bond; not until the Middle Ages was marriage defined as one of the seven sacraments. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 489 spreads all over the earth” (RC, no. 7). The Holy Family, whose innermost meaning is constituted by both human and divine love, is for that reason specified as the original “domestic church” (ecclesia domestica) in which every family ought to find itself reflected (RC, no. 7).19 John Paul II recalls how, in a preface to the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she is celebrated as “united to Joseph, the just man, by a bond of marital and virginal love” (RC, no. 20).20 From this he concludes that the two kinds of love symbolized by the marriage of Mary and Joseph—virgin and spouse—together represent the mystery of the Church. Not only do they not contradict each other but one presupposes the other. They are two simultaneous ways of expressing God’s one Covenant of love with humanity. Both are found par excellence in the Holy Family. Joseph’s virginity was his husband’s “gift of self ” to Mary’s mission of virginal motherhood. Just as a couple’s consent forms the basis of sacramental marriage, so Joseph’s and Mary’s fiat to God and each other brought into being their marriage.While conjugal union, the total gift of self, consummates a sacramental marriage, something new entered history with the Incarnation, the total bodily gift of self to God in Christ. Joseph and Mary were uniquely called to this total bodily gift to God in Christ within their marriage. In every way apart from the conjugal act, theirs was a true marriage. The Holy Family as a Communion of Persons John Paul II particularly wants to emphasize the union of hearts of Mary and Joseph, ensuing from their mutual consent, in line with both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Yet he goes further, seeing the marriage of Mary and Joseph as realizing in full “freedom” the “spousal gift of self ” in a perfect communion of persons (RC, no. 7). It is in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio that the pope particularly develops the idea of the family as a communion of persons. “Its first task,” he says there, “is to live with fidelity the reality of communion in a constant effort to develop an authentic community of persons.”21 The pope had devoted much of his philosophical work before elevation to the papacy to articulating what he means by a communion of persons.22 For a communion of persons to come into being implies first and foremost 19 “Ideo sacra in familia primariam nempe apud hanc ‘ecclesian domesticam’ referri et resplen- dere velut in speculo debent Christianae familiae cunctae.” 20 Footnote 31, p. 38. 21 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio: The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, Apostolic Exhortation, November 22, 1981, no. 18. 22 See especially Karol Wojtyl/a, “The Person: Subject and Community,” “The Family as a Community of Persons,” and “Parenthood as a Community of Persons,” 490 Mary Shivanandan the existence of persons. The human being is not only, as in the Boethian definition, a rational animal, but an irreducible subject, an incommunicable person.23 Incommunicability means that the person is sui iuris. No one can will for him, even God. What this means, he says in Love and Responsibility, is that a person must never be treated simply as an object. Being a person and subject must always take precedence in any union with another.24 Man is not a self-enclosed entity.The call to communion with another is inscribed in his very nature as a spiritual being. Not only has he received his being from God so that he is always in relationship with Him, but he has need of communion with other human beings. It is the nature of a spiritual being to go out beyond itself. God himself as supreme spiritual being pours himself out to generate the Son, and their reciprocal self-giving love is the Holy Spirit. As an image of God, Man also pours himself out to another. Unlike God, who pours himself out solely from fullness, man as a limited creature reaches out to another both out of desire to share his unique richness as well as to fill a lack in himself.25 At a foundational level, Man (male) has an innate need to share the riches of his masculinity with the woman, and to be completed in turn by her gift of femininity. In creation, Adam and Eve were called to the closest communion possible, the one-flesh union of marriage. Original nakedness was a sign that, before sin, they could share in the most complete communion possible, spiritual, psychological, and physical. It is important, however, to see how John Paul II interprets the biblical text to emphasize the priority of the communion that belongs to Adam and Eve as persons, similar in their humanity, before even being aware of their difference of sex. (It must be emphasized, however, that sexual differentiation belongs to them constitutively.) Their first awareness of each other is as brother and sister, a virginal communion in their humanity.26 in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 219–61 and 315–27. 23 Karol Wojtyl/a, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Person and Community, 211. 24 Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), 27. 25 John Paul II gives two meanings to what he calls “original solitude” in the Wednesday Catechesis. Man is created as a whole person alone before God in His image. He still lacks relationship with another human person like himself yet different in order to fulfill himself. Eve is created as a “double solitude.” Man and Woman, October 24, 1979, 6, nos. 1–4; October 31, 1979, 7, nos. 1–4; and November 7, 1979, 8, nos. 1–4. 26 Man and Woman, February 13, 1980, 18, no. 5. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 491 Priority of Virginal Communion What John Paul II wants to emphasize by this is that the “virginity” of the human person, alone before God, from whom all his being is received, must always be at the base of any physical spousal communion in marriage.27 The priority of this virginal communion is what pertains in the marriage of Mary and Joseph. Beyond the significance of virginity for establishing the integrity of the Incarnation of the Son of God, virginity plays a unique role in their marriage as the fruit of the gift of piety or reverence. St Joseph was heir to the whole Old Testament tradition, arising from Genesis 1:29–30, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” Virginity, especially in marriage, was alien to the chosen people who awaited the Messiah. How was it that Joseph took this unusual step in his marriage to Mary? I would like to propose a reflection on Joseph’s vow of virginity arising from his piety before the stupendous fact of Mary’s divine motherhood.28 Scripture scholar Ignace de la Potterie has made an exhaustive analysis of the text concerning the Annunciation to Joseph (Mt 1:18–25). After Mary was found with child, the text goes on: But Joseph, her spouse, who was a just man, and who was unwilling to unveil (her mystery), resolved to secretly separate himself from her. But as he devised his plan, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said to him: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your spouse into your home; for certainly that which has been begotten in her comes from the Holy Spirit.” (Mt 1:19–20) De la Potterie sees the initial sentence as key, which in Greek reads: ἸἸωσὴφ δὲ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς, δίκαιος ὢν καὶ μὴ θέλων αὐτὴν δειγματίσαι, ἐβουλήθη λάθρᾳ ἀπολῦσαι αὐτήν.29 The meaning of the text, culminating in a true understanding of St. Joseph, rests on three 27 David Schindler, following Joseph Ratzinger, calls this the state of filiality. “My being in its substantial unity is constitutively dependent on God and on others in God.” “The Embodied Person as Gift and the Cultural Task in America,” Communio (Fall 2008): 404. The gift of piety itself indicates the status of being a son. 28 This reflection makes no claims on the objective state of sanctification of Joseph or when it took place, since that has not been determined by tradition; obviously the grace of virginity was given to Joseph to fulfill his role as the virginal husband of Mary. Rather this essay reflects on the subjective state of Joseph before the stupendous fact of the Incarnation of Christ in Mary’s womb. This reflection also does not preclude Joseph being a widower with several children, as some traditions maintain. 29 Ignace de la Potterie, Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, trans. Bertrand Buby (Bandra, Bombay: St. Paul’s, 1995), 79. 492 Mary Shivanandan Greek words, δίκαιος (dikaios, just), δειγματίσαι (deigmatisai, unveil), and ἀπολῦσαι (apolusai, separate). The different translations of the word dikaios give an idea of the three ways the passage is interpreted.Those who translate “just” in a strictly legal sense portray Joseph’s justice as tempered but harsh. He decides to put Mary away rather than give her to be stoned, as the strict requirement of Jewish law for a woman caught in adultery would demand. A second interpretation translates dikaios as “good” and implies that although Joseph was suspicious he had a good heart and did not want to embarrass Mary. The trouble with this interpretation, says de la Potterie, is that dikaios is never translated as “good.” Such an interpretation attempts to read Joseph’s heart in a purely human way. The third and more biblical translation of dikaios is being in right relationship before God. The word has a different meaning for the Greeks, for whom it denoted a primarily social virtue of not transgressing the rights of others, a much more juridical view. The biblical meaning has to do above all with man’s relations with God and his walk with him.30 On the basis of the different interpretations of the word dikaios, “just,” as well as the other two Greek words, deigmatisai and apolusai, de la Potterie proposes that at least three interpretations of the passage arose. First, Joseph thought Mary was guilty of adultery and wanted to put her away according to Jewish law.31 Second, Joseph believed in Mary’s innocence but did not know how to explain the pregnancy.32 The third reading, to which de la Potterie and several contemporary exegetes subscribe, is that Joseph knew that Mary’s conception was by divine intervention and he wished to distance himself as unworthy of her, just as Peter after the miracle of the fishes said to the Lord, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man.”33 Joseph did not want to “unveil the mystery” and so he proposed to separate himself from Mary. John Paul II does not explicitly endorse this view, but he uses the word “astonishing” to describe Joseph’s view of Mary’s moth30 Hermann Cremer, Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek with Supple- ment, trans. William Urwick (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895) 184, 185. 31 De la Potterie points out (Mary in the Mystery, 82) that this was a fairly wide- spread view in the early Church, held by Justin, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine, and that it has been held as well by some modern exegetes, e.g., J. Schmid, A. Descamps, and R. Brown. 32 Ibid., 83. Jerome’s opinion was taken up in the Middle Ages and is held by some contemporary authors. 33 Ibid. De la Potterie introduces a line-by-line exegesis of the text to support this reading. He points out (93) that this view was held by several Fathers of the Church. It is not, however, held by every exegete, for some of them see this as more a theological interpretation. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 493 erhood, thus opening a way for such an interpretation. He seems to be aware of it also in his reference to the “mystery of Mary’s motherhood” when he comments on the passage (RC, no. 3).34 De la Potterie then interprets Joseph as being “full of religious awe before the mystery which is accomplished in Mary.”35 He withdraws from her out of reverence. The exegete finds confirmation of this through the words of the angel to Joseph, “Do not fear” (Mt 1:20).These words parallel those of Gabriel to Mary, “Be without fear, Mary . . .” (Lk 1:30). It is a “holy fear,” which is often expressed in the Bible at a direct intervention of God.This interpretation, which was widely accepted in the patristic era (both East and West) and in the Middle Ages, raises Joseph’s response from the moral or casuistic level to the sphere of salvation history.36 De la Potterie’s summing up of the significance of this episode for all Christians is pertinent to our theme. Joseph, the spouse of Mary, by his attitude of faith, humility and respect, furnishes us the example of the very first “acceptance” of this mystery. Thus his comportment becomes a model for all believers, especially today.37 He goes on to say that discussion of Mary’s virginal conception is confined all too often to the physical aspects in order to raise doubt. Joseph’s attitude of reverence points rather to the mystery of God. In just the same way, it is reverence for the mystery of conjugal love within the sweep of salvation history that John Paul II wants to highlight in these last few pages on Humanae Vitae and a conjugal spirituality. The Text of Humanae Vitae We can see from de la Potterie’s exegesis of Matthew 1:18–25 that the correct translation of words is important. Likewise, Janet Smith has pointed out that the Latin word “munus,” which appears in the very first line of Humanae Vitae, is central to an understanding of the encyclical. The word has several meanings, from “reward,” “honor,” “gift” to “responsibility,” 34 In formal Church documents John Paul II is conservative in his presentation of current scriptural exegesis, preferring to remain with well-proven interpretations. S. J. Prendergast, “A Vision of Wholeness: A Reflection on the Use of Scripture in a Cross-Section of Papal Writings,” in The Thought of John Paul II: A Collection of Essays and Studies, ed. John M. McDermott, S.J. (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 1993), 88. 35 De la Potterie, Mary in the Mystery, 94. 36 Ibid., 100–105. 37 Ibid., 105. 494 Mary Shivanandan “task,” “office,” “function.” Matrimony itself means the gift or duty of motherhood. Too often in English munus as duty is emphasized over the translation as reward or mission. Smith translates the “munus” of transmitting life in Paul VI’s encyclical as service to God, the Creator.38 It is a mission God has given to married couples. She cites a key passage from the Vatican Council II document Gaudium et Spes (no. 51): “Let all be convinced that human life and the [munus of ] its transmission are realities whose meaning is not limited to the horizons of this life only; their true evaluation and full meaning can only be understood in reference to man’s eternal destiny.”39 Especially noticeable in the Council documents is the emphasis on all believers sharing in the three munera or missions of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. To be priest means to sacrifice; to be prophet, to evangelize; and to be king is to govern, including one’s self. For the Christian married couple, love and life constitute their saving mission in the Church and for the Church.40 Smith concludes: “What is key here for understanding Humanae Vitae is to recognize that to reject the procreative power in sexual intercourse is not simply to reject some biological power; it is to reject a God-given munus and all it entails.”41 Here it would be profitable to examine the use of the adjective iustus (the Greek dikaios) in the encyclical and contrast it with the use of the adjective rectus. Rectus means upright or correct and it is used several times in Humanae Vitae, usually in connection with reason and right order, including right moral order and, here especially, the right order of generating offspring.42 The use of the word iustus seems to have a broader meaning. It first appears in no. 9, immediately after the marriage of the baptized is said to have the dignity of being the sacramental sign of Christ’s union with the Church. In fact the marks and requirements of conjugal love can be clearly seen in the light of this truth, and it is of the greatest importance to understand them in their right causes (iustis momentis).The same section (no. 9) speaks of unjust (iniustas) exceptions or reservations which cannot be admitted.The spouse is called to love with a total 38 Janet Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 270, 237. Smith examines its use in classical and medieval dictionaries as well as in Vatican II and other Church documents. 39 Ibid., 136. Smith also notes that the word munus appears in the first line of the encyclical. 40 Ibid., 143. 41 Ibid., 145 42 Humanae Vitae, no. 10, recte intellegenda or rightly understood, recta conscientia, right conscience or rerum bonorumque ordine recte servato, the order of goods rightly observed. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 495 love that loves the other not for any self interest but solely for the sake of the other. Again, in no. 16 iustae is used in reference to right causes or reasons, ones that are in conformity with the end of man.This broader use is noticeable again in no. 23, where Pope Paul VI speaks of having had justifiable concerns (iustas curas) in mind when he issued his encyclical Populorum Progressio. Finally, in no. 27 he speaks of couples seeking from physicians correct counsel (recta consilia) and a just way ( justam viam), one in conformity again with man’s true end. The word reverence (reverentia) is used only once in Humanae Vitae in the way that John Paul II uses it at the end of the Catechesis on the Theology of the Body, but its use is significant. It appears in Humanae Vitae no. 17, where it refers to the unsurpassable limits of the power of man over the natural [munera] of the body. These limits are derived from reverence [ob reverentiam] owed to the whole human body and its natural operations (naturalibus muneribus). I would say, therefore, that the virtue of reverence or piety is intimately linked with justice towards the Creator in respecting the “vital structures of life” and his design of salvation.43 Justice Towards the Creator Before we turn to an analysis of the gift of reverence in the Catechesis, it is useful to see what John Paul II has to say in his philosophical treatment of conjugal love in Love and Responsibility.44 The fourth section is entitled “Justice towards the Creator.” First he deals with marriage as horizontal justice. Marriage both is an institution and as such is established according to a concept of justice.45 It has two dimensions, interpersonal and social. It is first and foremost an interpersonal relationship of love, which normally extends into the structure of the society of the family with procreation. For the marriage relationship to be just, the interpersonal character must be realized to the full, and only if this is the case will the resulting family be a healthy society. The importance of marriage as an institution lies in justifying the sexual relationship between 43 Linking justice as obeying God’s laws with love is a constant theme of John Paul II. He joins devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus directly to justice. “Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times” (Ps 106:3).” John Paul II, “Address at Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sunday, June 6, 1999. www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_j 44 Love and Responsibility was first a series of lectures at the University of Lublin, 1958–59. The future pope was moved to reflect on the person and love from his pastoral experience with many who shared their own personal and spiritual journey with him. The work was intended to “give voice to this testimony.” Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility, 9. 45 Ibid., 216. Mary Shivanandan 496 a man and a woman in the eyes of society and so giving it the protection it needs to fulfill its purpose.46 Beyond the social justification, it is a fundamental requirement that sexual relations between a man and a woman are justified in the eyes of the Creator. Because of creaturely dependence on the Creator, God’s proprietal rights over man must be respected. This is especially important in marriage, which makes each spouse as it were the property of the other. Since the person is first and foremost the property of God, His approval must be obtained for the spouse both to surrender himself and to receive the other’s reciprocal gift of self. God’s proprietal rights are especially expressed in the intersection of the personal order and the order of nature. Sexual relations are justified if they conform to the personalist norm, which is a “union of persons affected by the possibility of procreation.”47 In other words, in marriage both the personal order and the order of nature meet. Love demands awareness of the possibility of parenthood in the sexual relationship. In order to be brought to its full realization, the order of nature cannot be mastered by force as in technology. It requires conscious cooperation through self-mastery.48 This is where respecting the natural times of fertility inscribed in the woman’s body is “closely bound up with that justice to the Creator.”49 The continence necessary also affirms the value of the person when it is disinterested and motivated by “just” reasons for avoiding pregnancy. The whole order of nature has its origin in God. Animals follow God’s laws through instinct. Man, on the other hand, has been endowed with reason. He can consciously know God’s laws and conform to them. By doing so he becomes what is called particeps Creatoris. He participates in God’s own purposes for creation. God has created the world in love and for love. As a person made in the image of God, man is called to love both God and others. Only when man and woman raise their marital relations to the level of love, in full recognition of God’s rights over the order of nature and the personal order, do they reach a truly personal union.50 It is this call to love that both elevates and surpasses the order of nature. The need to give one’s self to another has deeper roots than the sex urge. It is at the core of man’s creation in the image of the Trinitarian God of 46 Ibid., 219–20. 47 Ibid., 227. 48 Ibid., 228, 229. 49 Ibid., 241. 50 Ibid., 246–48. For a more extensive analysis of Karol Wojtyl/a’s treatment of justice towards the Creator, see Janet Smith, “Conscious Parenthood,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 927–50. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 497 love. In the normal course of things, man expresses this orientation to another in love through the one-flesh union of marriage. Yet by a special grace, the person can give himself to God in a total and exclusive gift of self, and this is usually expressed in physical virginity. Such a primary orientation to God at the heart of consecrated virginity looks to the eschaton, where there is no marriage or giving in marriage. It does not follow, however, that the married person renounces God for another human being. Both vocations represent a call to perfection through love.51 The Holy Family, as we have seen, is a supreme example of the total gift of self in both virginity and marriage and, as John Paul II says, is a model for both. The Gift of Piety or Reverence The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in listing piety as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, says: “They [the gifts] complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them.They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations.”52 In reference to docility in marriage John Paul II cites a passage of Humanae Vitae: Christian married couples, then, docile to [Christ’s] voice, must remember that their Christian vocation, which began at Baptism, is further specified and reinforced by the Sacrament of Marriage. By it husband and wife are strengthened and as it were consecrated for the faithful accomplishment of their proper duties, for the carrying out of their proper vocation to perfection, and for the Christian witness which is proper to them before the whole world. To them the Lord entrusts the task of making visible to men the holiness and sweetness of the law which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with the love of God, the author of human life (HV, no. 25).53 This docility applies to all the gifts of the Spirit but is especially pertinent in the gift of piety. Nowhere is the gift of piety or reverence more visible in marriage than in relation to the conjugal act. John Paul II offers the following definition: Reverence for the twofold meaning of the conjugal act in marriage, which is born from the gift of reverence for God’s creation, manifests itself also as a salvific fear: as the fear of violating or degrading what bears in itself the sign of the divine mystery of creation and redemption. It is this fear that the author of Ephesians speaks about. “Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ” (Eph 5:21).54 51 John Paul II, Love and Responsibility, 250–57 52 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1831. 53 The passage is in John Paul II, Man and Woman, October 3, 1984, 126, no. 1. 54 Ibid., November 14, 1984, 131, no. 5. 498 Mary Shivanandan Reverence is the attitude that upholds justice towards the Creator, when a person honors the interpersonal character of spousal love and its procreative purposes. It is also specifies the consecration to the perfection of holiness that Paul VI speaks about in Humanae Vitae.55 The encyclical in this way lays the foundation for a Christian spirituality of conjugal life and vocation.56 It is not a new spirituality but one that is rooted in the whole Christian tradition of marriage and of spiritual life in general. What is new is the application of the ascesis of continence to conjugal love. Continence is part of the virtue of temperance, which the ancient philosopher Aristotle named one of the four cardinal virtues and which Thomas Aquinas further analyzed in the light of the theological fact of concupiscence resulting from original sin. Concupiscence or disordered desire detached the body from the truth of its orientation to love especially in the union of man and woman.While St. Augustine could not accept that the conjugal act could be entirely free of concupiscence, Aquinas allowed for an ordering of the passions through the right use of reason.57 John Paul II lays greater stress on love as the key in overcoming concupiscence. In Creation, through the grace of original innocence, perfect harmony of body and soul enabled Adam and Eve to see and love each other as God loves—with a disinterested love.58 Through the grace of the sacraments, redemption in Christ has restored the capacity to reorder the passions to love.59 As he shows in his Catechesis on the theology of the body, this has profound implications for the sacrament of marriage. Resistance to concupiscence through the virtue of temperance is transformed directly 55 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae no. 25. 56 See especially Man and Woman, October 3, 1984, 126, nos. 1–5. 57 In steering a middle way between the Manichaeans and the Pelagians, Augustine was walking a tightrope and was without the philosophical categories later available to Thomas Aquinas. Against the Manichaeans, he proclaims that “marriage and fornication are not two evils, the second of which is worse; but marriage and continence are two goods, the second of which is better.” Against the Pelagians, he affirms that “while continence is of greater merit, it is no sin to render the conjugal debt, but to exact it beyond the need for generation is a venial sin.” St. Augustine, “The Good of Marriage (De Bono Conjugali),” in Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects, ed. J. Deferrari, trans. Charles T. Wilcox (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1955), ch. 7, p. 17, and ch. 8, p. 20. In the Summa theologiae Aquinas states: “Since in man the concupiscible power is naturally governed by reason, the act of concupiscence is so far natural to man as it is in accord with reason; while, in so far as it trespasses beyond the bounds of reason, it is, for a man, contrary to reason. Such is the concupiscence of original sin.” ST I–II, q. 82, a. 3, ad 1. 58 John Paul II, Man and Woman, January 7, 1981, 52, no. 1 . 59 Ibid., December 3, 1980, 49, no. 1 Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 499 into the power of love with the help of actual grace. Love does not simply control disordered desire but brings about “deeper and more mature values,” expressed in the power of the spouses to become a reciprocal gift, and to express the language of the body in truth.60 John Paul II analyzes here the way in which the ascesis of continence required for living out the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood, while difficult, enriches all of what he calls the affective manifestations between the spouses. Far from being opposed to loving communion, continence actually brings it to full realization.61 Conjugal communion is made up of far more than the ecstatic experience of sexual intercourse. John Paul II has made a particular study of emotion in his previous philosophic work drawing on insights from psychology.62 While sexual arousal is a physical reaction to either masculinity or femininity, there is another reaction which he calls psycho-emotive. It has less to do with the body than with the subjective experience of masculinity or femininity and is directed to the whole person. It is the task of the person through continence not just to restrain these psycho-emotive reactions in a negative sense but to orient them in an appropriate way to love.63 The person learns, especially through respecting the natural rhythms of fertility, when love is to be expressed through the “affective manifestations” only and when it may be fulfilled in the conjugal act. Each is a form of self gift: both respect the procreative potential of the person and the proprietal rights of the Creator either through abstinence or through complete physical union. In Love and Responsibility John Paul II shows how the woman is more drawn to emotional values and the man to the physical, sensual values of the body. The times of continence allow development of the “manifestations of affection,” which are so necessary to the woman, if she is to welcome the physical advances of her husband. By affirming her whole personhood, those times free her from any sense of simply being a sexual object. As the tradition shows, the personal communion of man and woman cannot be brought about by concupiscence as desire alone, since it has been deformed by original sin. By insisting on the virtue of continence or purity in the proper regulation of births, Humanae Vitae points the way to a restoration of the spousal meaning of the body and the fulfillment of love in the conjugal union. John Paul II wants to emphasize the significance of the attitude of “reverence for the work of God” in these “affective manifestations.” They express an 60 Ibid., October 24, 1984, 128, no. 2, and October 31, 1984, 129, no. 1. 61 Ibid., nos. 4 and 5. 62 Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility, 109–14. 63 John Paul II, Man and Woman, October 31, 1984, 129, no. 5. 500 Mary Shivanandan interest in the other that does not have the possessiveness of sexual intercourse. They show a delight and pleasure in the physical and spiritual beauty and gift of the person in his or her masculinity or femininity. Such a climate of reverence for the person has the power to bring about a truly mature and personal communion. That is the great gift of Humanae Vitae for conjugal spirituality. It ensures a proper harmony between the procreative and unitive significances of conjugal love, between agape and eros. It is the only spirituality worthy of the family as the “domestic church.” The Gift of Reverence and the Holy Family In Redemptoris Custos John Paul II has proposed the Holy Family as the model for all Christian families. How can that be, since there was no conjugal intercourse in the Holy Family? The answer lies, it seems to me, in the gift of reverence. We saw how there are three exegetical interpretations of Joseph’s response to Mary’s pregnancy. The first is legalistic and harsh; the second implies a kind of sentimentality. The third, the one preferred by John Paul II, interprets Joseph’s whole attitude as imbued with a gift of reverence for the mystery taking place in Mary.64 When Joseph is given the title “just,” it is understood that he possesses all the virtues of the just man in the Old Testament. In marriage he would expect to honor the command of Genesis to “increase and multiply.” He would also participate in what has been called the “profoundly spiritual, religious institution” of Family Purity.65 A contemporary Jewish author, Norman Lamm, has given an account of the practice of Family Purity and its role in the holiness of Jewish marriage. Both husband and wife are expected 64 The pope similarly finds three interpretations of the teaching of Humanae Vitae on responsible parenthood. In Love and Responsibility he addresses the issue of the first two interpretations of the proper regulation of births. Totally excluded is the use of contraceptive methods, which has been justified under the theory of the fundamental option that a single act does not harm the goodness of the person. Equally excluded is the rigorous interpretation of the encyclical. “To say that sexual intercourse is permissible and justified only on condition that the partners hope to have a child as a result of it would be an exaggeratedly strict ethical position.” Wojtyl/a calls that another disguise for a utilitarian position, because intercourse is necessary for love as well as for procreation. Marital love is an interpersonal act first and foremost. It is enough to understand that in performing the act a child may result. Otherwise the act becomes a mere instrument to achieve pregnancy. The third interpretation is reverence for God’s design of marriage as an interpersonal communion, the path to extending his family in creation and a vocation to holiness. Karol Wojtyl/a, Love and Responsibility, 57–61. 65 Norman Lamm, A Hedge of Roses: Jewish Insights into Marriage and Married Life (New York: Philipp Feldham, Inc., 1966), 45. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 501 to come to the wedding in a state of chastity and free of any negative views of the goodness of sex in marriage, which is both for procreation and for loving communion. The Institute of Family Purity protects both. In Jewish law a husband may not approach his wife during menses and seven days afterwards. During this time they are expected to show respect and affection towards each other but to avoid all physical caresses. At the end of the period the wife immerses herself in the mikvah or bath, after which relations may be resumed. In accordance with the natural rhythms of the woman’s cycle, this coincides with the peak of fertility, so that procreation as well as loving communion is enhanced by the practice. So important is the tradition of Family Purity that it is assigned priority by the Talmud over public prayer services, and harsh penalties are prescribed for its violation.66 Lamm points out that taharat ha-mishpahah, “the purity of the family,” is the name generally given to the code prescribed by Jewish law for husband and wife.67 He lists all the benefits of the practice of Family Purity to the marriage and the couple’s happiness: fostering of romance through periodic abstinence, respect for the wife as a person, the civilizing of sex.68 Even beyond these benefits, he sees its role in the sanctification of time. Holiness of place is held in high regard in Judaism. The most sacred place on earth is the inner sanctum of the Temple. Holiness also attaches to objects such as “a properly written Sefer Torah.”Yet, Lamm says, the holiness of time far surpasses the holiness of place.69 The holiness of time is enshrined right at the beginning of the 66 Ibid., 46. 67 Ibid., 53. 68 Ibid., 54–65. All of these benefits have been documented in the experience of faithful natural family planning couples. 69 This is confirmed by Rabbi Heschel. “The sanctity of time came first, the sanc- tity of man came second and the sanctity of space last.Time was hallowed by God; space, the Tabernacle, was consecrated by Moses.” “The meaning of the Sabbath,” he says, “ is to celebrate time rather than space. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.” Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 10. For Heschel, the “unique events of historic time were spiritually more significant than the repetitive processes in the cycle of nature.” Ibid., 7. Another rabbi, David Miller, would not include the woman’s cycle as a mere repetitive cycle of nature, since the laws of family purity are bound up with the very existence of Israel. He accords to the Mikvah, or ritual bath of purification, a higher place than the Temple itself. The community can dispense with theTemple but not with the Mikvah. Miller writes that sexual intercourse was submitted to the restrictions of holiness to preserve it from lust.” David Miller, The Secret of the Jew: His Life and His Family, vol. I (New York Committee 502 Mary Shivanandan Bible in the sanctification of the seventh day of creation, the Sabbath day of rest. The laws related to the Sabbath and festivals remind man, especially man (male), of the holiness of time. A woman does not need such reminders, since within her body is a rhythm that is attuned to time itself. If, however, this rhythm is not sanctified, says Lamm, she never attains the sanctity of time. “But if she observes the laws of Family Purity, then she has by virtue of observing this one mitzvah geared her inner clock, her essential periodicity, to an act of holiness.” 70 He concludes: “The laws of Family Purity are, therefore, a divine gift to womanhood, allowing her to attain this highest form of sanctity. Her responsiveness to history—the arena where God makes His will manifest and where man confronts his Maker—is internal, not external.”71 In sum, the law of Family Purity is an affirmation of life and its holiness. Beyond the reverence Joseph would have had for the married state, imbued as he was with Jewish tradition, one can now understand the reverence he would have experienced when faced with the mystery of Mary’s stupendous motherhood, carrying in her womb the source of holiness itself. Mary embodied the holiness of place, time, and eternity. With the Incarnation, eschatological time entered history. The virginity of Joseph was a response to the divine presence in his midst. Yet he still remained a husband, called to fulfill all the duties of protector and provider of Mary and Jesus. In commenting on Joseph’s assent to the angel to take Mary into his home, John Paul II asks: Are we not to suppose that Joseph’s love as a man was not also given a new birth by the Holy Spirit? Are we not to think that the love of God which has been poured into the human heart through the Holy Spirit (cf RM, 5:5) molds every human love to perfection? This love molds— in a completely unique way—the love of husband and wife, deepening within it everything of human worth and beauty, everything that bespeaks an exclusive gift of self, a covenant of persons, and an authentic communion according to the model of the Blessed Trinity. (RC, no. 19). By obeying the Spirit, Joseph found in the Spirit the source of love he experienced as a man and a husband. It “proved greater than this ‘just man’ could ever have expected within the limits of the human heart” of Rabbi David Miller Foundation, 1930, revised 1938), xvi. Kiddushin, the Jewish term for marriage, means “continuous sanctification of life” and symbolizes the very essence of Judaism and the relations between God and Israel.” The Secret of the Jew, xxvii. 70 Lamm, A Hedge of Roses, 76. 71 Ibid. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 503 (RC no. 19). In a similar way, the couple, by docilely and reverently obeying the Church’s teaching in Humanae Vitae, will experience a love greater than they could ever have expected. The Gift of Reverence and Conjugal Spirituality John Paul II singles out three ways in which the gift of reverence pertains in the conjugal spirituality of the Christian couple: honoring God’s design in creation by respecting the order of nature; preserving the interpersonal character of conjugal love; and fulfilling the sacramental dimension of marriage as a sign of Christ’s union with the Church. When stress is placed on the role of temperance in respecting the natural rhythms of fertility, it often seems that Humanae Vitae is more about not having sex than about joyful conjugal union. But we know and Humanae Vitae teaches that the conjugal act is designed for loving communion as well as for procreation. John Paul II interprets the Song of Songs as the way physical love would have been expressed in the Garden of Eden.72 Conversely, he sees in the resurrected state a perfect integration of the sensual, psychological, and spiritual powers of the human person, although they will be expressed only in virginal communion.73 In the historical state of sin, this integration is only imperfectly achieved through the virtue of temperance and the grace of redemption. Yet a couple may come to such a maturity of love through purity of heart that they experience the physical delight of their love in all its beauty the way it was designed to be.74 They give glory to God in such an act of communion. Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est has shown the link between eros and agape. Great love can only be expressed with passion, whether it is God’s love for us in giving his only Son or the spousal love of a man and a woman giving their whole life to each other. The body as the expression of the person is the very means of the gift in the conjugal act. (The gift is also expressed 72 John Paul II, Man and Woman, “The Song of Songs,” no. 108 (not delivered), fns. 95 and 96. 73 Ibid., February 10, 1982, 72, no. 4. 74 The married contemplative Linda Sabbath found that intercourse was experi- enced not just on the genital level but in the heart. “On the genital level it is something like acid rock, breaking all the instruments, a certain kind of pleasurable violence, and then when it comes into the heart it’s something like Bach and then when it goes beyond that it goes into ultrasound. The music becomes so refined, so delicate, so perfect, it is almost not heard.” Mary Shivanandan, Natural Sex (New York: Berkley Books, 1979) 141, 142. Just as in the spiritual life an ecstatic experience is no criterion of the perfection of the union of the soul with God, so in human marriage an ecstatic sexual experience is no criterion of the overall quality of self-gift in the union. 504 Mary Shivanandan when conjugal union is foregone for a higher purpose or a higher love, as in consecrated virginity, or when there are “just” reasons for avoiding pregnancy in marriage.) Reverence for God calls for an affirmation of the wonderful gift of conjugal union in marriage open to procreation. The gift of conjugal union is given to enable the spouses to fulfill the arduous task of rearing the children God gives them. A natural awe accompanies the conception and birth of a child, made even greater by Christ sharing in our human condition.75 Reverence for the gift of the child is part of the reverence implicit in the Church’s teaching in Humanae Vitae. Those couples are especially to be praised who prudently choose a large family. As John Paul II says, “Reverence for the two meanings of the conjugal act can fully develop only on the basis of a deep orientation to the personal dignity of what is intrinsic to masculinity and femininity in the human person, and inseparably in reference to the personal dignity of the new life that can spring from the conjugal union of man and woman.”76 Beyond reverence for the interpersonal and procreative aspects of the conjugal relationship, the gift of piety regulates the couple’s relationship in Christ. John Paul II finds the gift of piety or reverence for Christ at the heart of the spousal relationship at the beginning of the passage in Ephesians 5 on marriage: “Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ” (Eph 5:21). It is the same fear or reverence before the sacred that Joseph expressed before the mystery of Mary’s conception of Christ in her womb. “Such pietas, which springs from the profound consciousness of the mystery of Christ, must constitute the basis of the reciprocal relations between the spouses.”77 This is the “mystery of the election of each of them from all eternity in Christ ‘to be adoptive sons’ of God.”78 The analogy of their marriage to the mystery of Christ and the Church brings a whole new dimension to the couple’s relationship. They are called to make visible the love of Christ for the Church and God’s eternal plan for mankind to participate in the communion of the Trinity. They have the awesome responsibility of “rereading the language of the 75 John Saward brings this out in his book, Redeemer of the Womb (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), in which he reflects on the Gospels, the writings of the Fathers, and the later witness of the Middle Ages and the Baroque Age, with a special reference to liturgical art, to emphasize the great dignity with which Christ has imbued every phase of human life, including the first nine months in the womb. 76 John Paul II, Man and Woman, November 14, 1984, 131, no. 4. 77 Ibid., August, 11, 1982, 89, no. 1. 78 Ibid., no. 2. Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence 505 body in truth” so that the splendor of Christ’s love for the Church can shine forth. The gift of piety has a particular meaning here. It gives them a “deep reverence” for the teaching in Humanae Vitae on the significance of the two inseparable meanings of the conjugal act.79 They become aware that in their shared life and vocation they manifest the very mystery of creation and redemption. John Paul II echoes the encyclical Humanae Vitae in stressing the necessity of prayer and recourse to the sacraments to help build up the power of love which will enable them to overcome obstacles to living the truth of the language of the body.80 Love is not the same as the concupiscence that draws the man and woman together and that is often mistaken for love. Love is a power that comes from God and enables the couple to adhere to the truth in their relationship and to say yes to God’s plan for their marriage. Just as Joseph, in obeying the angel and taking Mary into his home, with all that implied for his married life of virginity, found a love greater than any he could have imagined, so in obeying God’s call in their marriage, and sustained by the donum pietatis, couples can find an inner harmony of marriage, beyond any they might imagine.81 It is also intrinsic to their call to holiness. Conclusion The universal call to holiness was laid out for the first time in Vatican Council II in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.82 Since that time there has been a great renewal of interest in the family as the “domestic church,” which had been proposed by St. Augustine. The family as a sphere of holiness, however, sinks it roots deep in the Old Testament. Joseph Atkinson, in his forthcoming seminal study Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Domestic Church, shows how in the Old Covenant the Temple was the extraordinary sphere of holiness, the family the ordinary. Its very raison d’être as an image of the covenant was to be holy.83 The practice of Mikvah constitutes an essential element of family purity or holiness by assuring marital chastity and respect for the vital structure of life. In other words, reverence for these structures which have God as their author lies at the heart of the family as a sphere of holiness. 79 Ibid., November 14, 1984, 131, no. 4. 80 Ibid., October 3, 1984, 126, no. 5. 81 Ibid., November 21, 1984, 132, no. 6. 82 Lumen Gentium, Chapter 5. 83 Joseph Atkinson, Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Domestic Church (Wash- ington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming). Two thirds of the holiness code in Leviticus directly relates to sexual behavior. 506 Mary Shivanandan In the New Covenant, by virtue of baptism, which incorporates them into the body of Christ, the Church, the spouses form a “domestic church,” where they encounter Christ in each other and in their children. Before being a sacrament, marriage is a created reality and needs to conform to the laws of love and life inscribed in the spouses’ bodies by the Creator. According to John Paul II, the gift of reverence or piety as the core of conjugal spirituality ensures respect for the vital structures of life and love. This faithful living out of their baptismal vows capacitates the spouses to fulfill their mission as a “domestic church” in the ordinary sphere of holiness, since marriage is a further specification of baptism. The presence of Christ at the heart of their communion and family life makes them a truly holy family on the model of the Holy Family. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 507–19 507 Craniotomy: A Response to Martin Rhonheimer J EROME Z EILER , O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC Introduction T HE ARGUMENT concerning the nature of craniotomy1—whether it is a legitimate form of self-defense or is illegitimate, direct abortion— has been raging among Catholic moral theologians for more than a decade. Since the procedure in question is now “anachronistic” and “obsolete,” except in poorer countries, it may seem to some that this argument is relatively pointless. But the argument is in fact very important and relevant, because thinking through cases such as this helps us to be precise about what specifies moral acts and why certain acts are legitimately chosen whereas others are necessarily intrinsically wrong. In short, the dialogue can help us to define the first principles, which in turn help us to distinguish between what is morally good and what is morally evil. And in this way it can help us to make the right decisions in our own lives and to help others to do the same. What is at stake is not only the moral character of an obsolete medical procedure but the precise articulation of how the fundamental principles of morality apply to particular concrete situations that concern life and death. Martin Rhonheimer’s recent book Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics: A Virtue Approach to Craniotomy and Tubal Pregnancies 2 has contributed significantly to the scholarly discussion about craniotomy and morally evil acts, and it will certainly influence the course of the discussion for years to come. In this paper, however, we wish to propose that the conclusion that Rhonheimer draws concerning the 1 A medical procedure which involves crushing the head of a child whose head is too large to fit through the birth canal in order to save the life of the mother. 2 Martin Rhonheimer, Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics, ed. William E. Murphy Jr. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). Jerome Zeiler, O.P. 508 nature of craniotomy, namely, that it is not intrinsically evil, is erroneous. We will begin by briefly mentioning some previous, significant contributions in the history of this conversation, beginning with St. Thomas’s explication of what has become known as the principle of double effect. After outlining Rhonheimer’s main argument, we will examine the essential elements that determine whether or not human actions are intrinsically good or evil. We will then point out how craniotomy differs from two other legitimate acts that cause the death of another human person, namely, the removal of a gravid fallopian tube during a tubal pregnancy and self-defense against an unjust aggressor. Finally, we will argue against Rhonheimer’s conclusion that craniotomy is not intrinsically wrong. Whether It Is Lawful to Kill a Man in Self-defense? In the Summa theologiae II–II, q. 64, a. 7, St. Thomas answers the question as to whether it is ever permissible to kill a human person in an act of selfdefense. He answers that it is sometimes permissible, and in the process of answering the question he articulates what has become known as “the principle of double effect.”3 The argument begins with the observation that “nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention.”4 St. Thomas proceeds to argue that an individual acting in self-defense can lawfully perform an action that in fact kills another man, so long as he intends not to kill the aggressor but only to repel his lethal attack. St. Thomas adds that lethal force can be used lawfully only if it is not more than is necessary, that is, only if there is no other way to save one’s own life. Perhaps more important than the particular conclusion of this article, however, is the major premise, one that has become the focus of much attention in recent years: “[M]oral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention ( praeter intentionem), since this is accidental as explained above (II–II, q. 43, a.3; I–II, q.72, a.1).”5 Could Craniotomy Be an Act of Lawful Self-defense? In 2001, Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle Jr. published an article in The Thomist arguing that the moral species of the act of craniotomy is not intrinsically wrong, as it can be seen to be a legitimate act 3 In what follows, “the principle of double effect” will be shortened to “PDF.” 4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7. 5 Ibid. Craniotomy 509 of self-defense.6 They state that “the species of a human act, which settles the moral character of the act as good or bad, right or wrong, is not its species in genere naturae (in the order of nature) but its species in genere moris (in the order of human deliberating and choosing).”7 They take their cue from Veritatis Splendor, which is directly quoted in the article: “By the object of a given moral act, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world.”8 They imply that the intention of the acting person enters directly into the object of the act such that the object of the act cannot be defined apart from the intention, and in the case of craniotomy, the intention is to reshape the head of the child to save the life of the mother. Thus they conclude that craniotomy could be morally permissible and that it might not be truly described as the direct killing of an innocent child, since this is not what is intended. They argue that the act could correctly be seen to be the reshaping of the child’s skull for the purpose of saving the mother’s life, so that the death of the child is an unintended side-effect. In a response to this article, Steven Long argued that just as “physicalism” is one extreme to be avoided, so is “angelism.”9 He states: “The essential matter of the act must always be included in the moral object, and is one—albeit only one—causal element in determining the moral species.”10 In other words, he argues that human acts are essentially formmatter composites, and that the essential matter cannot be excluded from the definition. Granted that the objects of moral acts are never merely of the physical order, they are almost always partially of the physical order— they are almost always essentially form-matter composites. Three years later, Basil Cole, following this train of thought, also argued against the conclusion of Grisez and his co-authors.11 He argues that the assertion that the crushing of the skull of a living human being is not an act of direct killing because it is not an “intended death-dealing action” is “counter to a realistic observation of and reflection on the facts of what is done regardless of intentions.”12 6 Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle, Jr., “ ‘Direct and Indirect’,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 1–44. 7 Ibid., 23. 8 Veritatis Splendor, no. 78. 9 Steven Long, “A Brief Disquisition Regarding the Nature of the Object of the Moral Act According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 45–71. 10 Ibid., 49. 11 Basil Cole, O.P., “Is the Moral Species of Craniotomy a Direct Killing or a Saving of Life?,” Nova et Vetera 3, no. 4 (2005): 689–702. 12 Ibid., 698. Jerome Zeiler, O.P. 510 Martin Rhonheimer: Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics Adding to this conversation, which has been joined by a number of moral theologians, Martin Rhonheimer took a somewhat unique stand in his Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics. In agreement with Long and Cole, but for different reasons, he too concludes that Grisez’s argument is not sound. He explains: “It disregards the Catholic teaching that in such cases everything must be done to save the lives of mother and child, even if the mother must sacrifice her life so that her child will survive.”13 However, like Grisez and his co-authors, Rhonheimer also comes to the conclusion that craniotomy can be employed as a legitimate act of self-defense under the principle of PDF. This conclusion of Rhonheimer seems to be based on his answer to a fundamental moral question: what makes “the direct killing of an innocent person” intrinsically wrong? Rhonheimer sees that the act cannot be said to be intrinsically evil simply because it involves the physical act of direct killing, which can be legitimate when employed necessarily against an unjust aggressor. He also sees that the act is not intrinsically evil simply because it results in the death of an innocent person, which also occurs, for example, in the case of the permissible removal of a gravid fallopian tube during a tubal pregnancy. What then, precisely, makes this act intrinsically wrong? Rhonheimer draws this conclusion: It is morally impermissible to weigh two lives against each other and to make a preferential choice. It is precisely this that seems to be the meaning of the Magisterium’s condemnation of direct abortion, in which the death of the child is chosen as a means to the end of saving the mother’s life, i.e., a decision is made, on the level of the choice of means, in favor of the mother and against the life of the child.14 Rhonheimer’s position on craniotomy seems to be very complicated, but it is actually very simple. It amounts to this: The physically direct killing of innocent persons in vital conflicts is intrinsically wrong when the physical act depends ontologically on the preferential choice of ending one innocent person’s life to save that of another, and the same physical act need not be intrinsically wrong when it does not depend ontologically on this unjust choice. Craniotomy does not depend on this unjust preferential choice. Therefore, craniotomy is not intrinsically wrong. In arguing for this conclusion, Rhonheimer spends most of his time trying to establish the minor premise: craniotomy does not depend on 13 Ibid., 128. 14 Ibid., 122. Craniotomy 511 this unjust preferential choice. For example, he states, “Only if the fetus would otherwise survive could its death be said to be chosen as a means—and thus caused ‘directly’ in a morally relevant way. But in our case the death of the fetus is not willed to save the mother; as far as the life of the fetus is concerned, it is beyond any kind of willing.”15 Rhonheimer further argues that the death of the child is “a nonintentional side effect, and thus . . . a purely physical evil caused praeter intentionem.”16 The fact that the death of the child is not intended is shown by the fact that “one would not feel justified in performing the intervention if the child had a real chance of survival.”17 The Heart of the Question In this brief survey of the debate, it is clear that all the participants are taking for granted the fact that direct abortion is intrinsically wrong. The question as to whether or not craniotomy is wrong depends entirely upon whether or not we equate it with direct abortion. All who argue for the legitimacy of craniotomy, therefore, do so by arguing that it is not direct abortion because the death of the child is not willed either as a means or as an end. Those who argue against the legitimacy of craniotomy, on the other hand, simply argue (rightly, in my opinion) that whatever is directly (i.e., physically) and knowingly performed enters into the nature of the act, and since the crushing of an innocent person’s skull is directly and knowingly performed in craniotomy, it is direct abortion. If this were all there were to the argument, everything would simply depend on how the word “direct” is really defined. And this is in fact the primary question upon which all of the arguments have hinged. But even if it could be (or had been) established that when the Magisterium condemns the direct killing of innocent persons it is condemning the deliberate and physically direct killing of them, the question would nevertheless remain: why is this physical act intrinsically wrong? Again, it is clear that the Church teaches that the killing of a human person is not always intrinsically wrong, for it is permitted in self-defense (under certain circumstances) against an aggressor.18 It is also clear that acts which cause the death of innocent human beings are not in and of themselves intrinsically wrong, for that too is permissible under certain 15 Ibid., 124. 16 Ibid., 125. 17 Ibid. 18 CCC 2265: “Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.” The Catechism cites ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, corp. 512 Jerome Zeiler, O.P. conditions, for example, the removal of the gravid fallopian tube in the case of a tubal pregnancy. So if it is true that (in the case of craniotomy) the physically direct act of killing an innocent human being, when his or her death is greatly lamented but known to be inevitable, is intrinsically wrong, is it possible to say concisely what the intrinsic disorder is, and why that disorder is not present in the other two permissible cases? Rhonheimer argues that the disorder in the “direct killing of an innocent person” is only the unjust preferential choice of one life above another. We want to argue, however, that there is another disorder, even more fundamental than this one—one that is common to all intrinsically evil acts. Once we have articulated what it is, we can show that this disorder is present in craniotomy but not in the other two death-causing acts mentioned above. To begin, however, we must look more closely at what it is that makes intrinsically evil acts to be such. Intrinsically Evil Acts Every intrinsically evil act has an intrinsic disorder within itself, and it is therefore intrinsically irrational. This disorder is inherent to the act itself. It is not necessarily physical or relative to another human person. Servais Pinckaers sums up St. Thomas’s teaching on this matter quite nicely: For St. Thomas, the moral quality of an action depends on two essential components: the ordering of the interior act, will or intention, to the end, and the ordering of the external act to its proper matter. Some acts are intrinsically evil in themselves by nature at these two levels, such as hating another and killing or torturing an innocent person. But in a single action, it suffices that the end willed or the matter of the act be evil in nature, to make the entire act evil, according to the principle, “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu,” the deficiency being essential here.19 It should be clear enough to everyone involved in this conversation that the interior act must be properly proportioned to its proper end, all relevant facts being considered, in order for any human action to be morally good. Indeed, all the participants in this conversation seem to be in agreement about this. However, what is often less clear is how an exterior act might be disproportioned to its “proper matter” and why this might be relevant to determining the moral quality of a human action. 19 Servais Pinckaers, “A Historical Perspective on Intrinsically Evil Acts,” in The Pinckaers Reader, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P., Craig Steven Titus, Michael Sherwin, O.P., and Hugh Connolly, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 210. Craniotomy 513 Fortunately, however, St. Thomas gives some clear examples of what he means. To take just one of many examples, St. Thomas considers whether or not every lie (mendacium) is a sin ( peccatum): An action that is naturally evil in respect of its genus can by no means be good and lawful, since in order for an action to be good it must be right in every respect: because good results from a complete cause, while evil results from any single defect, as Dionysius asserts (Div. Nom. iv). Now a lie is evil in respect of its genus, since it is unnatural and undue for anyone to signify by words something that is not in his mind.20 Once this principle has been articulated, it soon becomes clear that many actions which are known to be intrinsically wrong are wrong for precisely this reason: there is lack of due proportion between the action and that which the act bears upon. For example, it seems that every single one of the acts forbidden in the Ten Commandments is forbidden for the said reason: Do not worship as God what is not God. Do not use God’s holy name as if it were profane (and the same principle applies to the Sabbath). Do not dishonor or disobey those to whom honor and obedience are due. Do not hate and consequently seek to harm or destroy what should be loved.21 Do not take for your own what is not your own. Do not speak falsehood as if it were the truth. Do not desire to take for your own what is not rightfully yours (or potentially rightfully yours). It is not the intention, per se, nor the physical act, per se, nor the combination of the two, per se, that makes these acts intrinsically evil; it is an inherent disproportion between the action and the object22 —that is, an inherent disorder pertaining to the essential elements of the action itself. The same principle governs both components of the act. There must be due proportion between the interior act and its object, that is, the end, and there must be due proportion between the exterior act and its object, that is, that upon which the exterior act bears. Any deliberate act, for instance, adultery, which is judged to be intrinsically wrong/unjust, is such because 20 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 3, c. 21 St. Thomas explains why killing an innocent person is intrinsically wrong: “If we consider a man in himself, it is unlawful to kill any man, since in every man, though he be sinful, we ought to love the nature which God has made, and which is destroyed in slaying him” (ST II–II, q. 64, a. 6). 22 The meaning of the word “object” depends on the kind of act about which one is speaking. The object of the interior act is the end. The object of the exterior act is an exterior thing. The object of the act of knowing is the thing known. The object of the act of loving is the thing loved. The object of choice is a certain action or a certain kind of behavior. 514 Jerome Zeiler, O.P. it itself contains a lack of due proportion between two or more of its essential components. Another way of seeing the truth of the principle is by taking a virtue approach. What is it that primarily makes acts virtuous as opposed to vicious? It is clearly the same principle: It is a virtue to believe Truth Himself speaking and it is a vice to disbelieve Him. It is a virtue to love Goodness Himself supremely and it is a vice to love Him less than He deserves to be loved. It is a virtue to hope in the promised help of He who is omnipotent and it is a vice to despair of the same. It is a virtue to give to each what he is due and it is a vice to give less. It is a virtue to take nourishment according to the needs of the body and it is vice to take much more or less. It is a virtue to fear death as it should be feared and it is a vice to fear it much more or less. It is a virtue to consider what ought to be considered, for example, whether or not there is due proportion between our actions and their objects, and it is a vice to give less thought than is due. To act morally is simply to act rationally.To act rationally is to conform our actions to the real order of things. To choose actions that are not proportioned to their objects is to act irrationally.Therefore, to act in that way is immoral. How Craniotomy Differs from Two Other Death-Causing Acts With this in mind, we must first superficially articulate how it is that craniotomy differs from the other two death-causing acts mentioned above: quite simply, that which the act of craniotomy bears upon is (a) a human person who is (b) not performing an action which is harmful. In craniotomy, the action of crushing the child’s skull is the real and physically direct cause of the death of the child, but the child would not otherwise be the real cause of the death of the mother, for the child is not acting as an agent in any relevant, that is, lethal way. In legitimate self-defense against an unjust aggressor, however, the defender performs (or can legitimately perform) an act which is the real and physically direct cause of the death of the unjust aggressor whose aggressive action would otherwise be the real cause of the death of the defender (or some other innocent person). The act of the defender is truly a defensive act against a true attack. In the case of a tubal pregnancy also, where the baby is lodged in a gravid fallopian tube, it is permissible for the doctor to perform an act which is of its nature the per accidens cause of the death of the child. But in this case, the object of the exterior act is not the child; it is the gravid fallopian tube. That this act causes the death of the child is certainly true. Craniotomy 515 But precisely because (a) killing the child is not the object of the interior act, that is, the end, and because (b) the child himself or herself is not the object of the exterior act, that is, that which the act bears upon, the act itself is not that of killing. Whether or not the act is permissible is therefore determined by other considerations. However, craniotomy differs from these legitimate death-causing acts in that the object of the exterior act (that which the act bears upon) is a person who can in no way be reasonably said to be attacking another. (This observation in and of itself says nothing about the morality of the act, because the irrationality of the act has not yet been demonstrated.) Though the interior act is truly defined primarily by the intention to save the mother’s life, the exterior act is clearly that of killing a person who is not performing a life-threatening action. The act (craniotomy) cannot be accurately defined as an act of self-defense, because acts of this kind must meet two criteria: (a) the interior choice to act in a certain way must be brought into being wholly through the intention to defend one’s life, and (b) the exterior act must be an act by which a real attack is thwarted. That being said, we have not yet made any statements or drawn any conclusions regarding the morality of craniotomy. Why This Difference Makes All the Difference Granting our distinction, our interlocutors might nevertheless ask (and have in fact asked many times) why this distinction matters. The act in question does not seem to be manifestly irrational in the way that worshipping as God what is not God clearly is. In other words, have we made any progress in answering Rhonheimer’s fundamental criticism: “The only charge that can be leveled against [craniotomy] is that it is ‘direct,’ i.e., physically direct. But is this morally decisive?”23 If craniotomy is intrinsically wrong, what, precisely, is the inherent disorder? What, precisely, makes it to be inherently irrational? Consider the following answer: Craniotomy is intrinsically wrong because it is an act that treats a person who is neither evil (malum) in himself nor evil in relation to something else as if he or she were evil in one of those ways. We recall St. Thomas’s formulation of why killing the innocent is always wrong. Part of his reply may be controversial, but we are interested only in the uncontroversial principle that he articulates: An individual man may be considered in two ways: first, in himself; secondly, in relation to something else. If we consider a man in himself, 23 Rhonheimer, Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics, 124. Jerome Zeiler, O.P. 516 it is unlawful to kill any man, since in every man, though he be sinful, we ought to love the nature which God has made, and which is destroyed in slaying him. Nevertheless, as stated above (A.2) the slaying of a sinner becomes lawful in relation to the common good, which is corrupted by sin. On the other hand the life of righteous men preserves and forwards the common good, since they are the chief part of the community. Therefore it is in no way lawful to slay the innocent.24 Ignoring the question as to whether or not and/or under what circumstances it is lawful to kill sinners who corrupt the common good, we have a clear principle here: Individuals can rightfully be treated as evil only to the extent that they really are evil either in themselves or in relation to something else. To do otherwise is evidently immoral if it is agreed that moral actions must bear due proportion to their objects. Now the question arises: in what way can a person be rightfully considered an evil in relation to someone or something else? To begin to answer this question, we must first take note of the fact that relations exist only between relatives, and there are only three kinds of relatives: Things are “relative” (1) as double to half, and treble to a third, and in general that which contains something else many times to that which is contained many times in something else, and that which exceeds to that which is exceeded; (2) as that which can heat to that which can be heated, and that which can cut to that which can be cut, and in general the active to the passive; (3) as the measurable to the measure, and the knowable to knowledge, and the perceptible to perception.25 Referring to this passage, St. Thomas observes: “According to the Philosopher (Metaph. V.) every relation is based either on quantity, as double and half; or on action and passion, as the doer and the deed, the father and the son, the master and the servant, and the like.”26 (The relatives of the third class mentioned above are based on actions, for example, the measured and the measure are relatives based on the act of measuring.) Knowing this, the next question to ask is, in what sense is it that a human person can be considered evil in a way that is relevant to deciding whether or not it is morally permissible to kill him or her (directly or indirectly, however that is defined)? It should be evident however, that there is only one thing that needs to be considered: the nature of his or her own actions. 24 ST II–II, q. 64, a. 6. 25 Aristotle, Metaphysics, translation from The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), Bk. V, ch. 14, 1020b26–32. 26 ST I, q. 28, a. 4. corp. Craniotomy 517 All human persons are in themselves good, which is why it is always intrinsically wrong to hate them, intend to harm them, or intend to kill them as such. Like all relatives, human persons can be considered to be evil only in relation to someone or something else either (a) based on their quantity or (b) based on their actions. But human persons evidently cannot be considered to be evil based on their quantity (for no quantity is by nature harmful, but only actions involving quantities, for example, eating double or treble what is sufficient for one’s bodily needs), so a human person can be considered to be evil only in relation to someone or something else because of the nature of his or her actions. Therefore, the only question that remains is this: is the fetus performing an action that makes it a threat to the mother’s life? And the answer is no. Rhonheimer was right to see that the moral norm “it is always wrong to directly and deliberately kill an innocent person” is a kind of shortcut that requires further explanation. The norm itself does not explicate the moral disorder, and for this reason he was right to seek the more fundamental principle upon which the norm itself stands. But let us now attempt to articulate that principle. The norm is a short way of saying the following: Human persons are not evil either in themselves or in relation to something or someone else except when they act in ways that are sinful or in ways that are otherwise harmful to other human persons. Human persons, qua persons, are good and should be loved and treated accordingly. When human persons perform actions that are harmful, they can be treated as agents of harm to the extent to which they actually are agents of harm. But when human persons are not agents of harm in any respect, it is wrong to treat them as if they were; for example, it is wrong to act on them in such a way that is ultimately destructive of them. Killing is an act that destroys a human person and deprives him or her of the possibility of obtaining every other natural good. Therefore it is always wrong knowingly and deliberately to kill a human person who is “innocent” in the sense just explained. It is unjust in one of the most radical ways possible. This somewhat long explanation of a rather concise moral norm should serve to clarify why choosing to perform acts which do in fact kill “innocent” persons is in fact unjust. Killing an innocent person is an act that treats a human person as if he or she were evil in himself or herself or evil in relation to others when he or she is not. It is an act by which a moral agent chooses to treat as evil what is not evil in any respect. It is therefore intrinsically wrong in itself and unjust to the person being acted upon. Craniotomy is, as a form-matter composite, a particular instance of this kind of behavior. 518 Jerome Zeiler, O.P. One still might be tempted to argue, nevertheless, that a person need not be performing a lethal action in order to be considered a lethal agent; he or she could rightfully be considered to be the real cause of death qua having a certain quality and/or place—in this case, having a head that is too large to fit through the birth canal and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, in addition to what has already been said, the following observation might be helpful. From “if A then B ” and “if not A then not B ” it is often inferred that A is a cause of B. But this is simply a common logical fallacy. In what sense could the child legitimately be considered the cause of the mother’s death? He or she is clearly not the final cause, which does not exist, or the formal cause—the separation of soul and body. Nor is the child the material cause of the mother’s death, that being the rupture of the birth canal. Nor is the child the efficient cause, as this requires action.27 Therefore the child cannot be considered to be the cause of death in any way except equivocally. And for this reason, evil simply cannot be truly predicated of the child, but only of the tragic situation of which both mother and child are equally victims. Unfortunately, in this case, one cannot change the nature of the situation without killing the child, and that is precisely why it is so tragic. It is hard to understand why these events occur, and it is even harder to accept the fact that we can do nothing to change the nature of these situations without doing something wrong. But what more can be said? As many of our interlocutors would agree, craniotomy cannot be considered an instance of legitimate defense according to the principle of double effect, because the exterior act itself cannot be accurately described as an act that flows from the intention to thwart a lethal agent. But neither can it for any other reason be permissible to choose to act on the child in a lethal way, because the child is not evil according to any consideration that conforms to reality. Deliberately choosing to take the child himself or herself as the object of one’s exterior act and acting in a way that by its nature causes the event that is the cause of the death of the child, who is (according to not one but every consideration) deserving of our love and protection, are intrinsically disordered and immoral. The act can be accurately described only as killing one innocent person in order to save another. 27 The action that efficiently causes the death of both mother and child is the mother’s own inevitable birth contractions. Both the mother and the child are equally victims of the lethal ruptures that these contractions cause. It is clear however that this lethal action is in no way an act of the child. Craniotomy 519 Conclusion In conclusion, we can see that human acts can and must be considered and evaluated as intrinsically right or wrong according to the inherent proportions existing between the essential components of both their interior and their exterior parts. It is the character of these inherent proportions themselves that determines the moral quality of human actions. Though the ordering of the interior act to that which is truly good is what most formally determines the moral quality of human actions, we have seen that due proportion between the exterior act and that which it bears upon is also essential for moral integrity. If what we have argued is correct, we can see that to be good, we cannot simply desire things which are objectively good, form good intentions, and well order our interior and exterior actions according to our intentions. We must also conform our exterior actions to objective reality. Whether or not human actions are good or bad is primarily (and finally) determined by whether or not both their interior and exterior parts conform to the real order of things. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 521–30 521 Toward a Post-Secular, Post-Conciliar Thomistic Philosophy: Wisdom in the Face of Modernity and the Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. Thomistic Institute Washington, DC W HAT SHOULD post–Vatican II Thomism look like? How can the study of St. Thomas assist Christian thinkers in the midst of our increasing secular age? In what sense is classical metaphysics important for the renewal of contemporary Christian theology? Any possible responses to questions such as these are inevitably controversial for multiple reasons, and attempts to answer them are not the work of one person alone. However, a limited effort at responding to these queries is offered by this author’s work Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology.1 The editors of this journal have generously decided to make the book the subject of the colloquium of essays that follows. They do so, one would suspect, not principally because of the merits of the book, but because of the importance of the subject matter: the recovery of Thomistic natural theology in our current intellectual age. This is, of course, a topic as challenging as it is important. Why, however, is such a topic controversial? Clearly the Church historically has taught that natural knowledge of God is possible for human beings. Since the Council of Trent until the present, courses in metaphysics and natural theology have been required in Catholic seminaries for every candidate to the priesthood, and are considered essential to preparation for doctoral studies in sacred theology. Furthermore, the 1 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009). 522 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Roman Curia has recently reaffirmed the importance of this practice.2 And yet the subject is indeed fraught with difficulties. In what follows, I’ll attempt to sketch out briefly, as an introduction to the exchange that follows, the basic argument of the book under consideration, and then name some of the issues that affect the appraisal of Aquinas’s philosophical theology in our contemporary context. These reflections are meant to be introductory and topical in tone, serving as a backdrop to discussion on the renewal of Thomistic thought in the Church today. *** The book Wisdom in the Face of Modernity is written with three goals in mind. First, the book seeks to respond to the now habituated cultural presupposition (prevalent among academic theologians in particular) that, after the criticisms of “ontotheology” by Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger, philosophical arguments for the existence of God as they existed in classical form are no longer intellectually tenable. Given the criticisms of these thinkers, so it is said, we know today that it is impossible conceptually to promulgate the kind of metaphysical or philosophical theology that Aquinas develops in such works as the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa theologiae (especially in the “De Deo Uno” treatise of the Prima pars). Theology today has to be done in what Jürgen Habermas calls an age of “post-metaphysical thought,” and of course this truth has substantive repercussions for a re-evaluation of what we take ourselves to mean when we speak of God or the divine.3 In purposeful distantiation from such a view, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity looks at the concerns of Kant and Heidegger and argues that Aquinas’s own presentation of demonstrative knowledge of God simply does not fall afoul of the criticisms of classical thought enunciated by these paragons of modernity. Aquinas is doing something quite different from that which they take themselves to be criticizing, such that the “rules” of natural theology are articulated by these different thinkers as they would be, say, in different and incompatible games. Heidegger accuses Aquinas of cheating at philosophical checkers, but Aquinas is playing philosophical chess. His thinking can be called into question for many reasons, no doubt, but his thought cannot be catalogued as a common species of what is pejoratively termed “ontotheology.” What2 See the recent “Decree on the Reform of Ecclesiastical Studies of Philosophy,” released by the Vatican Congregation for Education, January 28, 2011. www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20110128_dec-rif-filosofia_en.html 3 See, for example, Jürgen Habermas, Post-Metaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994). The Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology 523 ever the merits of this modern criticism, it does not apply aptly to the metaphysical thinking of Aquinas. Although the scope of this argument is complex, the essence of the issue pertains to the question of aprioristic knowledge of God: Kant and Heidegger both seem to presume that classical natural theology appeals necessarily to an a priori (pre-philosophical) idea or intuition of God as the supreme cause of being (such as that exemplified in the ontological argument that is defended in St. Anselm and the subsequent Franciscan tradition [St. Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus]). Furthermore, they take it that this approach invalidates authentic thought about being by (a) mechanizing the world according to an artificially technological concept of being as “caused” (Heidegger), and (b) construing all of reality “always, already” in light of a mental systemization of being and a construction of God as supreme cause that is taken to be real, but which in fact is purely immanent to the mind (Kant and Heidegger). For Aquinas, however, metaphysics is not a mental system for conceptual domination of reality, but an analogical investigation into the deeper structures of reality. Furthermore, St. Thomas simply never accords Kant’s premise regarding the primacy and necessity of a priori knowledge of God. On the contrary, he argues consistently that the demonstrative knowledge we have of God is only ever derived a posteriori, that is to say, not prior to but subsequent to the study of the structure of beings we encounter in the world. Thus, God is “named” only in an indirect fashion, in the way a uniquely transcendent cause is known by and through his effects. The mind has no purchase on God except through the world of concrete existent beings (including of course that uniquely spiritual being that is the human person) considered insofar as they necessarily point to the existence of a transcendent but unknown cause. Second, the book aims to decipher a proper order of progressive discovery in Thomistic metaphysics (which following Aquinas we call a “via inventionis”). That is to say, how can the philosophical investigation of reality lead through a series of discoveries of metaphysical principles inherent in things (such as the distinction of substance and accidental properties, actuality and potentiality, existence and essence)? And how can this unfolding understanding of the deeper ontological structures of reality give rise organically to a more ultimate question regarding the grounds for the existence of the world, and therefore to the philosophical demonstrations of the existence of God? Here the book examines claims regarding the order of discovery as it is articulated in three influential twentieth-century Thomists: Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Karl Rahner. In each case, the goal of the study is to show how—despite 524 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. the real merits of each of these thinkers—recourse to the Aristotelianism of Aquinas helps us to correct certain deficits found in each of their viewpoints. In this respect, the book aspires (however broadly) to kinship with more classical readings of Aquinas, that is, those found in the great Dominican commentators of the Thomist tradition, who emphasized the Aristotelian elements of St. Thomas’s thinking. Intrinsic to this second aim there is parellel concern: How ought we to try to understand the different uses of the term “analogy” in Aquinas’s metaphysics, especially when he employs analogy theory to speak about the ontological similitude between creatures and God? Here the book looks at the respective uses of the analogy of proper proportionality, the analogy of attribution multa ad unum, and the analogy of attribution ad alterum, and seeks to discern how these different analogies are employed by Aquinas in the context of discussions of diverse principles and causes of being. For example, when St. Thomas is discussing the intrinsic likeness of being or goodness in diverse categorical modes of being (exp.: the being of a quantity vs. the being of a quality), he uses the analogy of proper proportionality (A [being] is to X [quantity] as B [being] is to Y [quality]). When he speaks about the causal dependency of one upon another, he employs the analogy of attribution ad alterum (A [being of the quantity] resembles B [being of the substance], because B is the cause of A ). The point of these reflections is to show how Aquinas’s use of analogy theory to speak about being, the causes of being, and ultimately about God, is all constructed in such a way as to permit us to refer to God and to signify what God is truly, without reducing the intelligibility of God to the realm of intra-worldly things (which would be akin to what Kant and Heidegger criticize as ontotheology). A proper understanding of the Aristotelianism of Aquinas, therefore, not only allows us to reflect on a proper order of inquiry into the question of God and the demonstrations of the existence of God, but also allows us to speak of God truthfully by analogy, and yet in ways that are genuinely respectful of the divine transcendence. The third aim of the book is to suggest (only briefly) ways that natural theology affects the study of Christian theology. The book does so primarily by engaging the philosophical question of the apophatic versus kataphatic dimensions of Aquinas’s thought regarding knowledge of God. On the one hand, natural theology—if it is to be what it aspires to—must manifest some real capacity to name and signify God as God is in himself. Otherwise the discipline falls inevitably into the ambivalence of a nearly agnostic, radical apophaticism. Aquinas showed understandable concern that the thought of Moses Maimonides tended toward this unhappy The Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology 525 extreme. On the other hand, the knowledge we might have of God even by way of the best and most exquisite metaphysical intelligence is marked by intrinsic limitations. Were this not the case, such thinking could readily mistake its own understanding for one that is maximally perfect in all respects. In this way, philosophical reason could become inherently closed to the higher and deeper knowledge of divine revelation, and the practice of natural theology could serve to imprison the mind within a rationalistic immanence. The analogical and causal argumentation of Aquinas, however, avoids these two extremes. On the one hand, we can know something of “what” God is analogically through the consideration of his created effects, and analogical language can signify God as he is in himself. On the other hand, the knowledge we have of God is necessarily indirect and limited, and consequently opens the mind naturally and philosophically to the desire for a yet-more-perfect knowledge of God, if this were possible. This pattern of true light and profound shadows in the domain of theological reasoning on the natural level manifests the real possibility and inherent meaningfulness (or congruency) of revealed knowledge of God. For revelation simultaneously completes what is lacking and fulfills an appetite for truth regarding God that is inscribed into human reason. In saying this, I am speaking structurally rather than temporally.The idea is not that one reasons first to an apex of natural reason’s limits, only then to offer one’s self to a higher plane of revelation that begins subsequently. Rather, in light of revelation, and within it, reason can simultaneously perceive within itself and by its own philosophical indications the “room” within itself for grace, and the place of contact or of congruent fittingness, wherein nature is intrinsically open to grace, and the natural light of reason intrinsically open to the higher and complementary light of divine truth. If this is the case, however, the life of grace not only enriches and speaks to our human nature’s highest intellectual aspirations, but also must preserve, purify, and assume those aspirations into itself.The grace of faith, for example, does not destroy our natural capacity to know God. This has implications for sacred theology as such. On the one hand, certainly a sapiential theology of Christian revelation (which perceives all things in light of the Triune God) is not reducible to a sapiential natural theology (which considers all creatures philosophically in light of the transcendent first cause). However, sacred theology cannot bypass philosophical thinking about God, either. On the contrary, it must develop and make use of a metaphysical theology of God within its speculations on Trinitarian theology and in its considerations of creation, the doctrine of grace, Christology, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The 526 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. natural, metaphysical range of human reason is not something optional for sacred theology. Those who claim that it is—and that they are working in theological disciplines without some form of recourse to metaphysical reflection—are in fact not avoiding metaphysical thinking of some sort but are in fact (all too often) substituting intuitively for classical metaphysical themes a set of modern ontological commitments that are underexamined and perhaps rationally questionable. What we need is not a post-metaphysical Christian theology, nor one that is rationalistic (employing philosophy in ways that obscure the mystery of faith). Rather, Catholic theology today needs to develop a more philosophically disciplined form of theology, one that seeks to renew metaphysical reflection about God, both for the sake of philosophy itself and for the sake of a more sound practice of Christian theology. *** This brief sketch marks out the basic vision that I seek to present in the book. As I have mentioned above, however, the road forward in any real renewal of post-conciliar Thomism is marked today by not a few significant challenges. Without attempting to give any kind of developed account of why this is the case, we can name briefly a few of the theoretical and cultural reasons for this situation. A consideration of these issues serves as a helpful introduction to the exchanges that follow. Consider first, in a thumb-nail sketch, the philosophical legacy of Thomism in recent Catholic intellectual history. Revised by the Roman universities and Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century, and subsequently legislated for formation in seminaries by Pope St. Pius X,Thomist doctrine came to a certain prominence in the first half of the twentieth century. Much of this period was in fact theoretically fruitful, and it gave rise to important historical studies of Aquinas in centers of thought such as Louvain and Toronto. In time, however, (and especially in the wake of Vatican II) “Neo-Thomist” doctrine came to be judged profoundly lacking as an intellectual doctrine. It was identified, for instance, with rationalism devoid of emotional realism and spirituality, manualism devoid of contact with the living questions of culture (the ever-present pejorative label: “Neo-scholastic manualist”), and ahistoricism that is conceptualist but unable to attend to the dynamic, changing element of human nature in general and intellectual history in particular. Along with the rise of this interpretation of the Thomism of modernity as fundamentally culturally incompetent, there was a simultaneous interest in the possibility of a new philosophical pluralism in the Catholic Church. The intellectual gains of existentialism, phenomenology, Heidegger, Wittgenstein (and, more The Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology 527 recently, analytic philosophy and various forms of post-modernism) were seen to open doors to the engagement of the life of the mind and to contemporary culture that were otherwise inaccessible. If Thomism were to survive and flourish, it would be in need of some kind of strategic alliance with one or more of these forms of thought. I have alluded here with almost caricatural brevity to a host of now standard criticisms of pre-conciliar Thomistic philosophy. Of course not all such criticisms were accurate. Nor were they all purely inaccurate. What they are all, however, is passé. The pressing question the present context raises is far different from that of our Vatican II–generation forebears. For they were essentially interested in widening the conversation of Catholic intellectual life in the face of a complex modern world and in fear of an embattled, enclosed Catholic intellectual provincialism. Meanwhile, the situation has changed drastically.The reason that there are pronounced dispositions toward conservatism among younger Catholic clergy and intelligensia today is not because of some kind of naïve, ahistorical “false-consciousness” on their part. Rather, many younger students of philosophy and theology have a historically realistic awareness that the problem of the post-concilar generation is not the core problem in the present and oncoming era. For the real challenge of contemporary Catholic life is to possess and transmit integrally any coherent account of classical philosophical and theological doctrine at all. It should be emphasized in this context that we live in a post-Christian and in many ways post-secular age, in which claims to the truth compete like food items for sale in a supermarket. The diets on offer are incomplete. The purchasers frequently lack informed discretion as to what to assimilate, because they truly lack prior substantive intellectual formation of any kind. This is all the more the case as one travels in the cultures of younger, secularized, post-Christian Americans and Europeans. That is to say, world views are on offer in fragments, but integral formation is often utterly lacking. In such a setting, it is difficult even to procure knowledge of a truly profound and coherent vision of the world, let alone learn to mediate disputes between competing visions. Those who hold the idea that “there are conservative Catholic people out there who already have a content of formation that needs to be broadened” are basically working under an anachronistic idea of an older generation. It is that generation which received a true philosophical formation and subsequently sought to broaden it (or reject it). The young do not have the luxury of such anachronistic prejudices, for they themselves know there is little in the way of a deeper sapiential philosophical vision of reality available in the modern university, Catholic or otherwise. What is 528 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. available in the modern university is only a fragmented collection of disciplines: anthropology, biology, theology, literature, etc., without an organic unity among them, and without an intrinsic intellectual connection to God that is in some way common to each. Often what one finds in Catholic universities under the name of the “Catholic intellectual heritage” is an absence of reasoned argumentation and philosophical doctrine, replaced by boilerplate presentations of secular, liberal social justice and Rawlsian, politically correct liberal intuitivism. In this context of post-modern fragmentation and non-formation, then, Aristotelian-Thomism is in its own way very much the order of the day. For precisely to interact with contemporary philosophical traditions and the diversity of modern sciences, students need formation in a coherent, realist philosophy: logic, philosophy of nature, philosophy of the living human being, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and natural theology. If the principles of these disciplines are investigated in an intelligible and clear order (being introduced in such a way as to become transparent to human reason through progressive philosophical demonstration), they can become the starting points for a person’s profound orientation to understanding the order of created reality, and creation’s relation to God. They can also become the basis for a disciplined, large-minded, and wise engagement with the broader culture and with the other academic disciplines. But you cannot give what you don’t have. And a generation of philosophers and theologians within the Church who themselves have (as slaves to convention, or through fear or mistrust) systematically refused to learn and to transmit many of the intrinsic treasures of the scholastic philosophical and theological heritage will be ill-equipped to help young people in a secularized, intellectually disoriented, a-doctrinal world. The latter need to find intellectual compass and principled grounds for ongoing intellectual discernment of what is true and good in human culture. Precisely to meet this need, Aristotle, as read by Aquinas, offers us important resources for moving forward in a postconciliar context, in highly constructive ways. Analogous things can be said in the domain of theology, and with greater brevity. In the wake of the debates between Karl Barth and Erich Przywara regarding the “analogy of being,” and in the face of the rising tide of secularism and unbelief in twentieth-century Europe, modern Catholic theologians by and large continued to affirm the traditional teaching represented by Vatican I: that human reason is capable in principle of coming to natural knowledge of God. However, they also increasingly admitted (plausibly) that the pursuit and health of this knowledge is highly qualified by the learning subject’s adherence or non- The Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology 529 adherence to the mystery of the Catholic faith. Grace, in other words, heavily conditions the natural success or failure of a philosophy that takes God seriously as a subject of reflection. Thinkers like Gottlieb Söhngen, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Walter Kasper kept open the possibility and even necessity of a metaphysical reflection on the mystery of God, but saw this possibility unfolding principally “always and only” within the sphere of an explicitly Christian theological culture. Philosophical aspects of theology represent thus a domain of nature preserved or revived virtually uniquely within an intensive realm of revelatory grace. This idea had of course important ecumenical overtones, and sought out a point of convergence with concerns of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions regarding the possibilities and dangers of using philosophical argument within the sphere of dogmatic theology. Such thinking was also suggestive of certain trends in post-modern theory, wherein diverse traditions (religious or secular) are seen to portray reality in irremediably diverse ways, across a spectrum of incompatible cultural-linguistic systems. In this context, Catholic theology may take itself to be the most integral, total account of reality (and indeed, one rooted in revelation from God) while also being a form of thought able to purify critically and assume into itself the philosophical treasures of past ages. Philosophy therefore has a function within theology, but it is not a mediating function in which philosophy sets the theologian on the supposedly “neutral ground” of “mere natural reason” for interaction with the representatives of other world-views. Rather, reason is always already specifically Christian in some real sense: subordinating and orienting all other forms of thought in and toward a Christological concentration of rationality. My concern here is not to contest in every respect this wholistic conception of Christian reason (which has many attractive and globally true features). I would simply like to underscore two main points. First, if Christian theology is going to have a capacity to evaluate, critique, and assimilate Christologically the truths of various cultures, moral ideas, metaphysical and scientific theories, etc., there is inevitably the need for a disciplined, ordered form of philosophical thinking as such, distinguishable from theology. Precisely for the health of the unifying totality of theology, there has to be a “moment” within theology of distinctly philosophical, scientifically ordered thinking. Subjects such as the hylomorphic unity of the human person, the spirituality and incorruptibility of the human soul, the nature of “creation,” the concepts of “essences” and “natures,” the structure of moral actions, et cetera—all of these require some true and 530 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. integral philosophical analysis, and this is not a form of disciplined thinking that serious theology can itself forego.Without it, theology as a science breaks down into a mere narrative of profound intuitions, devoid of internal order and incapable of coherent transmission to a younger generation. It frequently becomes pluralistic and divided among its diverse practitioners, who are unable to engage one another in depth even when they uphold the same doctrines, due to the (insufficiently scrutinized) diverse philosophical presuppositions that are present among them. Second, however we may construe the distinction and interactions of nature and grace in the dynamic historical life of human persons, there is surely a real distinction between the two “orders” of grace and nature, and this truth has consequences for human reason. Not all human knowledge is derived from grace or divine revelation. Therefore, if the revelation newly informs, assimilates, and makes use of the powers of human reason, it does not for this reason abolish the relative integrity of natural reason, and reason’s order toward God and capacity for argumentation. In a post-modern age that has difficulty discerning a true order and meaning in natural human reason, theologians need to underscore the integrity and meaning of the natural as such. They should do so for the sake of human culture, but also precisely so as to be able to show the openness of human reason to the gratuity of transcendent revelation. For grace is given freely in order to liberate human nature and natural reason to go beyond their own constraints, and to enter into a joy and transcendence that they are naturally capable of receiving, but which they cannot procure for themselves. The Catholic philosophical and theological response to our own secular and pluralistic age will require, among other things, the renewal of a more robust philosophical Thomism present within the intellectual life of the Church. What is required is not a return to manuals (though in truth, some of these were not always as unhelpful as advertised). Rather, what is needed is a conceptually accessible, existentially compelling formation in classical Thomistic principles of logic, philosophy of nature, metaphysics and ethics, one conducted in simultaneous conversation with our contemporary cultural Sitz im Leben. These are the two dimensions of Aristotelian science: dialectical engagement with the culture’s questions and answers, and renewed understanding and formation in the principles of the perennial philosophy. The world today is truth starved, lacking in knowledge of basic principles and ultimate perspectives. If we would respond to that challenge, our current challenge, then the philosophical heritage of Aristotle and Aquinas offers us not a romanticized vision of the past, but a challenging and viable way forward. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 531–37 531 On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity DAVID B. B URRELL , C.S.C. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN T HIS SUBSTANTIVE study of Aquinas does eminent justice to the Dominican tradition of inquiry, carrying out its argument in lucid, stepwise fashion. After sketching the charge of “onto-theology” which any move to articulate transcendence must meet after Heidegger, the author proceeds to an explicit and rather didactic outline of “Aquinas’s natural theology,” that is, the set of philosophical strategies Aquinas will employ when attempting discourse about divinity (chapter 3). Yet not divinity tout court (if there be such a One), but as a key subtitle puts it: “the esse /essence distinction and the metaphysics of creation” (81).This sketch of what will follow is bolstered by a dialectical treatment of three recent thinkers who have reflected on these issues in philosophical theology— Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Karl Rahner—allowing him to use these three eminent analysts to position his detailed elaboration (chapter 7) of the strategies already outlined.This will help him construct a “metaphysical study [which] does in fact attain to true knowledge of the existence and structure of things in themselves . . . [which] will eventually allow one to speak truthfully about God in analogical terms (by means of the analogy ad alterum), even while respecting the divine transcendence” (203). That ambitious and impressive goal will require a dialectical positioning with still other thinkers, which he carries out inter alia, since the key terms employed can often be interpreted in various ways: substance, accident, potency, act. One could indeed observe that presuming such key terms to be accessible—not to say univocal—can give Thomistic argumentation a deceptive simplicity, and one which thinkers outside the “school” find irritating. White’s dialectical positioning helps to save his 532 David B. Burrell, C.S.C. treatment from that curiously unwitting ambiguity, though one of his own strategies will render him vulnerable to it. He also tries to avoid the trap of deceptively simple terminology by offering ways to relate “an Aristotelian causal analysis of being [with] Aquinas’s metaphysics of the real distinction between esse and essence” (203), which is the true telos of these philosophical strategies for his (and Aquinas’s) extended argument. Yet as indispensable as this “Aristotelian causal analysis of being” will be, it will hardly be able (in Aristotle’s own terms) to arrive at what the Thomist traditions insists upon: that an authentic, metaphysical knowledge of God is indirect, apophatic, and radically incomplete. Therefore this knowledge itself calls for a deeper completion that can come about only by way of grace. . . . Furthermore, the classical Thomistic claim is that the identification of a philosophical approach to God is needed even within theology if we are to manifest this intrinsic, natural ordering of the subject toward the knowledge of God, such that the authentic revelation of God in Christ is not understood as something wholly extrinsic to human nature. (252) Here we see the judicious balancing act which executing this study will require, redolent of Denys Turner’s deft exposition of Vatican I’s insistence that the existence of God can indeed be proved, only to remind us that human reason can at best attain to the One as a “known unknown” (Lonergan). Rather than try to trace specific arguments, I shall focus on the points where the tension (between statement and expression) surfaces, asking whether his strategies are adequate to display its inner dynamics, or whether at crucial points the tension is simply reiterated. White advances his position in critical conversation with Gilson, Maritain, and Rahner. As White knows, my position on his topic makes common cause with such thinkers as David Braine, Sara Grant, Bernard Lonergan, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Victor Preller, and Robert Sokolowski. In what follows, I engage White’s project from this perspective. White’s central chapter 7—“Towards a General Order of Inquiry”— makes a sustained case for what he calls “an Aristotelian causal analysis of being,” which he insists must be preliminary to grasping “Aquinas’s metaphysics of the real distinction between esse and essence” (203). In fact, his extensive appreciation of the way Denys Turner deftly uses reason to arrive at God’s existence (in Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God) is pointedly critical of the way Turner’s argument for “the real distinction between essence and existence in creatures [turns on] a consideration of the gratuity of being in all things. All that we experience can be conceived of in light of the possibility that it not exist at all” (260–61). By side-step- On White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity 533 ping an Aristotelian approach which “begins with the contingency of individuals and reasons by causal series to something that transcends them,” Turner (with others like McCabe and Sertillanges before him) focuses baldly on existence to “treat the logical possibility of nothingness as the medium through which we conceive of the creation of things” (265). (White should have recognized Sokolowski’s pivotal God of Faith and Reason at this point as well.)1 So while both acknowledge the centrality of the “real distinction between essence and existence” in arriving at the need for a creator, for Turner that very distinction, with its “notion of esse, is closely aligned with his consideration of creation, that is to say, with the radical giving of existence to all things by God” (260). White, on the contrary, argues extensively (in chapter 7) that this distinction can and will emerge from a “causal analysis of actuality and potentiality in creatures [which] provides a metaphysical basis for understanding why God must be said to be pure actuality, and therefore permits the ascription of analogical names to God” (225). All that sounds quite plausible until one attends to the (surreptitious?) use of “creatures” in the argument, which suggests a revelatory dimension not ordinarily present in “causal analysis” as such. Yet White sees that, and so he expounds “places of continuity between Aquinas’s Aristotelian metaphysics of substance and actuality and the Thomistic metaphysics of creation, construed in terms of esse and essence” (226–27). This juxtaposition will allow him to conclude that “the real distinction of esse and existence can be analyzed as a metaphysical composition of actuality and potentiality in realities we know in via inventionis prior to the demonstrative arguments for the existence of God” (234). It will not surprise White that in my view what remains problematic is the very via inventionis which he champions. By his cannily relying on “Aquinas’s Aristotelian metaphysics of substance and actuality,” one might well query (with Josef Pieper) whether what moves Aquinas beyond Aristotle is not the affirmation of free creation itself?2 That is, whether the very premises of argumentation to the “real distinction” do not themselves presume—not a demonstrative argument for the existence of God but—the avowal of a creator? And if so, then one can wonder whether it 1 Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982; rpt. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995). 2 Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas: Three Essays (New York: Pantheon, 1957): “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas,” 47–67; for a critical look at traditional lines of delineation between “philosophy” and “theology,” see my “Theology and Philosophy” in Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed. Gareth Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 34–46. 534 David B. Burrell, C.S.C. is the case that “Turner and McCabe, like Gilson before them, introduce a properly theological perspective into the order of metaphysical argumentation prematurely” (266), as White insists; or whether the sharp division White presumes (between “metaphysics” and “theology”) is not itself questionable. Literally everything turns on this point, which I find quite undecidable. But even more telling for his presentation, such a sharp division between “theological” and “properly philosophical” argument also seems to fuel the central polemic of the critical penultimate section (260–82) which turns on an equally sharp opposition between positive and negative strategies, where terminological ambiguities introduce a confusion preventing his accurately articulating the very tension which animates the study: how “the Thomistic tradition [can and must] insist that an authentic, metaphysical knowledge of God is indirect, apophatic, and radically incomplete” (252). Clarity is crucial here, for this section attempts to develop what White presents as an authentic Thomistic position against “a series of modern Thomistic thinkers [who] have stressed the apophatic dimensions of Aquinas’s monotheistic thought” (253), though (we have already seen) his instincts will lead him to incorporate the concerns of Sertillanges, Gilson, Victor Preller, David Burrell, Herbert McCabe, Denys Turner, and Gregory Rocca as well (253, note 4). What keeps him from doing so, I contend, is the diptych—“positive” / “negative”—which I would suggest is virtually empty, thus terminally misleading, and will inevitably undermine attempts to illuminate the central tension of his provocative and challenging study. White sets up the opposition between “negative” and “positive” in this way: We can in no way be inclined naturally to the knowledge of God as a final end if we can know nothing of his existence, goodness, and perfection. In consequence, excessively apophatic interpretations of Aquinas risk to render this sapiential dimension of the human person nearly indecipherable, or so paradoxical as to be almost unintelligible, [whereas] this teleological dimension of the human person must be rendered perceptible by and through some kind of positive knowledge of God. (254) Henceforth what White calls “negative” will be deemed “knowing nothing of his existence, goodness, and perfection,” so “excessively apophatic,” yet the parentage between “apophatic” and a customary use of “negative” in “negative theology” is acknowledged. For White, what makes the position of myself and related thinkers “excessively apophatic” is that the knowledge I deem possible to human beings of divinity is not “positive” enough. This contrast between “negative” (as “excessively apophatic”) and “positive” pervades the following section, with little illumination as to On White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity 535 what the contrast term (“positive”) might portend except something like “real knowledge” (apparently without paradox [?] and not excessively paradoxical). Before scrutinizing his attempt to clarify his use of “positive” (270), let us recall what he presents as the Thomistic position: “that an authentic, metaphysical knowledge of God is indirect, apophatic, and radically incomplete.” We should recall that the contrast term for “negative” or “apophatic” (which intimates a radical inadequacy of expression) is not a generic “positive,” but the conviction that our expression in these matters is adequate to capture the subject at hand. White rightly remarks that “because God is known as pure actuality, the identity of God transcends all conceptual comprehension” (255). So then, what does his preference for “positive” amount to? I would urge him to simply drop the adjective and to substitute his more accurate: “we may speak truthfully of God through such language” (256), which captures Aquinas’s culminating remarks on “naming God” in article 12 of question 13 of the Summa theologiae: “whether affirmative propositions can be formed about God?” Aquinas’s response displays deft linguistic sophistication: Although [the human intellect] understands Him under different conceptions, it knows that one and the same simple object corresponds to its conceptions.Therefore the plurality of predicate and subject represents the plurality of ideas; and the intellect represents the unity by composition. So “knowing that one and the same object corresponds to its conceptions” is a matter of judgment, which the technical term “composition” intends here. So those who prefer to emphasize the “negative” in our knowledge of God intend to unmask an omnipresent judgment which must ever attend what we try to articulate. Indeed, a specific judgment: that we will probably get it wrong (put more gently in Aquinas’s insistence that our articulations can at best “imperfectly signify divinity” [ST I, q. 13, a. 4]). Have we found a (non-excessive) way to articulate how our knowledge of God is inherently apophatic? In the context of parsing Denys Turner’s approach to these matters, as he has been doing in this section, White explains: “Turner follows David Burrell in distinguishing between positive analogical characteristics of God [the ‘names’ in q. 13] and his merely ‘formal features’ or negatively derived characteristics” (262). Again, the term “positive” is either misleading or redundant here if one is referring to the “names of God” (in q. 13), which White will aver are profoundly analogous in use; and one can signal the difference between “names” and “formal features” by diagramming (as I have done) Aquinas’s 536 David B. Burrell, C.S.C. explicit way of dividing his treatment between qq. 3–11 (“formal features”) and q. 13 (“names”).3 The signal difference, as David Braine so clearly articulates,4 is that “formal features” are grammatically not features at all. The “names” parsed in q. 13 do intend to express features of God, however analogically they must be understood, taken as they are mostly from the psalms.Yet since q. 3 (on divine simpleness) reminds us that God can have no features, we must understand the “names” analogically, that is to say, apophatically (though let us hope, not excessively so). So to speak of “merely ‘formal features’ ” is to fail to appreciate the role they play in Aquinas’s thought and my own. Later White endeavors to correct this misapprehension in his own terms: The so-called negative perfections of God (which Turner and Burrell call “formal features”), such as simplicity, eternity, infinity, immutability, and impassibility, are in fact employed in order to qualify our truly positive designations that pertain to God’s preeminence as primary cause, [so] . . . the premise of such negations is the affirmation of the pure actuality of God, and the unique perfection of the latter. (272) Indeed, but note how his “explanation” of the difference turns on the diptych “positive”/“negative” (“truly positive designations”), when arguably the very structure of Aquinas’s treatment yields a differentiation between “formal features” and “names.” Apparently put off by this way of designating the difference à la Wittgenstein, White refers to “simplicity, infinity,” and so forth as “divine names,” perhaps in service of the “positive”/ “negative” diptych, insisting that they “are employed in true judgments concerning God as he is in himself ” (272). Indeed they are, yet not as premises but rather as rules of inference are employed in valid argumentation to structure the argument, for that is precisely what “formal features” do. Again, he acknowledges as much, but lacks a precise way to articulate the role, having missed the role that “formal features” play in argument, though he approximates it in his insistence that they are “employed in order to qualify our [true] designations that pertain to God’s preeminence as primary cause.” All this may seem overly refined except to philosophers, so not to Thomas Joseph, yet my primary intent is to eliminate the “positive”/ “negative” diptych, as it threatens to confuse White’s otherwise illuminating exposition. 3 See my Exercises in Religious Understanding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974) and Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979; reissued, Scranton, PA: Scranton University Press, 2011). 4 In his Reality of Time and the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). On White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity 537 A final remark about “pure actuality,” for this expression is hardly as clear as it portends, which White himself must acknowledge, since it emerges only at the term of his exposition of “Aquinas’s Aristotelian metaphysics of substance and actuality.” Yet knowing how utterly analogous it has to be,White offers the expression as the very paradigm of “the positive divine preeminence in its transcendence” (272). So lest his final argumentation fall prey to that deceptive simplicity to which Thomistic argumentation can be prone, and which thinkers outside the “school” find irritating, he must remind us again how expressions like “pure actuality” (“positive” as they are) must ever be modified by the reminder that “an authentic, metaphysical knowledge of God is indirect, apophatic, and radically incomplete” (262). Then any differences between his view and mine fairly vanish, once they are no longer exacerbated by the misleading diptych “positive”/“negative.” Amen! N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 539–62 539 Natural Theology and the Christian Contribution to Metaphysics: On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity N ICHOLAS J. H EALY, J R . John Paul II Institute Washington, DC From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature. . . . [T]he faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV). God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. . . . This inner rapprochement between biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history—it is an event which concerns us even today.1 It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; and it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind of thing.2 T HE QUESTION of the relationship between Greek philosophical wisdom and biblical revelation, which culminates in the incarnate Word, is both ancient and perennial. “If those who are called philosophers,” 1 Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Address to the University of Regensburg (September 12, 2006). 2 Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 136. 540 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. writes Augustine, “and especially the Platonists, have said things that are indeed true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from them, but to claim them for our own use.”3 In the eyes of Augustine, the most important truth discovered by Greek philosophy is the knowledge of God: “there are philosophers who have conceived of God, the supreme and true God, . . . and who have recognized him as being for us the origin of existence.”4 In his book Introduction to Christianity (1968), Joseph Ratzinger describes and defends what he calls “the decision of the early Church in favor of philosophy.” Wherever the question arose as to which god the Christian God corresponded, Zeus perhaps or Hermes or Dionysius or some other god, the answer ran: To none of them. To none of the gods to whom you pray but solely and alone . . . to that highest being of whom your philosophers speak. . . . When we say God . . . we mean only Being itself, what the philosophers have expounded as the ground of all being, as the God above all powers—that alone is our God.5 The reason for this “decision in favor of philosophy” is rooted both in Christianity’s claim to be true and in the comprehensiveness or catholicity of Christ’s redeeming work. The life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth, but the revelation of God’s Logos and, as such, the key to the meaning of reality as a whole. As we are told in the Letter to the Colossians, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (1:17). The Church’s reception of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ entailed a double affirmation: in the first place there was an acknowledgment of having received a new and higher wisdom—the folly of the Cross—that surpasses and in some sense overturns the philosophical wisdom of the Greeks (cf. 1 Cor 1:18–25). Secondly, there was a growing recognition that the gift of revelation presupposes and brings to fulfillment a human being’s natural capacity to know God, a capacity evidenced in the teaching of Plato and Aristotle. Why is this second affirmation essential to the integrity of the Gospel, and what is the relationship between these two affirmations? The key to answering both of these questions is the unity of creation and redemption within God’s plan to recapitulate all things in Christ. The new gift 3 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, II, 40. 4 Augustine, Civitas Dei, VIII, 10. 5 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 137–38 (Einführung in das Christentum [Munich: Kösel, 2005], 127). The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 541 of grace presupposes and brings to fulfillment the nature and purpose of creation. As Hans Urs von Balthasar avers, in the spirit of Irenaeus, “a redeemer who does not justify the creator has not truly redeemed anything.”6 The archetype of grace presupposing and perfecting nature is the hypostatic union of God and man in Jesus Christ. The incarnate Son reveals the truth of God and the truth of human nature without confusion or separation. One of the ways in which Jesus Christ reveals the full truth of human nature is that he presupposes it. In the event of the Incarnation, he respects with divine care the terms of the Father’s gift of creation, including the natural integrity and the natural capacities of human reason. The scholastic axiom gratia praesupponit et perficit naturam 7 is an inner requirement of the doctrine of the Incarnation, which in turn safeguards the unity and the distinction of creation and redemption. This is the reason why von Balthasar, responding to Karl Barth’s criticism of natural theology, was able to discern an authentic (i.e., Chalcedonian) Christocentrism in Vatican I’s declaration that “holy mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason.”8 It is simply not possible for the Church to bear witness to the whole mystery of Jesus Christ without presupposing and taking responsibility for human nature and the vocation of human beings to seek God through his created effects. Christian theology needs philosophy, especially a form of philosophical contemplation that, with Plato and Aristotle, desires to know the whole of reality in light of its ultimate cause. Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology 9 is a promising sign of the renewed interest in metaphysics and natural theology within contemporary Catholic thought. In light of the scope of the book’s argument, its careful exposition of Aristotelian and Thomistic principles and texts, its engagement with currents of modern philosophy as well as a range of contemporary Thomists, and, above all, in light of Fr. White’s patient but determined confidence that reason comes from God and is capable of demonstrative 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, vol. VII, Theology: The New Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 523. 7 For an account of the background and significance of this axiom in medieval thought, especially the theology of Bonaventure, see Joseph Ratzinger, “Gratia praesupponit naturam. Erwägungen über Sinn und Grenze eines scholastischen Axioms,” in Einsicht und Glaube: Festschrift für Gottlieb Söhngen zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. J. Ratzinger and H. Fries (Freiburg: Herder, 1962), 135–49. 8 Vatican I, Dei Filius, 2. 9 (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009). 542 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. knowledge of God, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity will help to encourage and guide a rediscovery of natural theology as integral to Catholic thought and Catholic education. As White correctly discerns, at issue in the question of analogy, or natural knowledge of God through his created effects, is not simply the role of philosophy within Catholic thought, but the meaning or logos of creation as a whole as well as the human being’s capacity for truth. The argument of the book unfolds on two inter-related levels. The initial context is a defense of natural knowledge of God in response to the philosophical objections of Kant and Heidegger and to the theological objections epitomized by Karl Barth and Luther. The second level of the argument concerns the interpretation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas; more precisely, White’s aim is to develop a Thomistic philosophical order of discovery or via inventionis in continuity with Aristotle’s causal metaphysics. Most of the book’s structure and content is preoccupied with this second concern. As Alasdair MacIntyre suggests (in his paragraph on the back cover), this is a book “within and about Thomism.” Perhaps the most fundamental concern of the book is to establish and elucidate the profound continuity and harmony between the causal metaphysics of Aristotle and the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Underlying the careful criticisms of other interpreters of Aquinas, such as Garrigou-Lagrange, Gilson, Maritain, Rahner, and Denys Turner (to mention only some of the figures discussed by White) is the claim that each of these authors has neglected an important aspect of the Aristotelian inheritance that structures St. Thomas’s doctrine of being. In light of the abundance of authors and themes discussed in the book, it seems worthwhile to focus attention on the unifying concern of White to depict and recommend an “ ‘Aristotelian’ view of Aquinas.”10 Accordingly, I will, in Part I, rehearse White’s main argument in the context of a question that has emerged within contemporary Thomism. Following this brief summary of the book, I will, in Parts II and III, frame two sets of questions that touch on Aquinas’s relation to Aristotle: Part II considers the non-Aristotelian provenance of the important Thomistic axiom “actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam”; Part III takes up the debate over the concept of “Christian philosophy” in light of John Paul II’s teaching in Fides et Ratio. It should become clear that while I agree with White in affirming natural reason’s capacity to know God, his further project of interpreting Thomistic natural theology in terms of a mode of causal 10 White, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity, 225, n. 49; hereafter, references to the book are provided parenthetically. The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 543 analysis that is wholly and exclusively a matter of a posteriori demonstration is open to serious philosophical and theological objections. I. The Argument—Aristotelian Causal Analysis and St. Thomas’s Real Distinction The book is structured into four parts and eight chapters. Part One sets the stage by identifying the contemporary challenge to natural theology and by introducing some of the requirements for an adequate response based on the thought of Aristotle and Thomas: [T]he chief consideration of this book is the right articulation of an appropriate way of progressive discovery for Thomistic metaphysics in the wake of the Kantian and Heideggerian accusations that all natural theology amounts to ontotheology. . . Precisely because it eschews any systematic schema of all beings, including divine being, based upon aprioristic conditions for understanding, Thomistic metaphysics falls outside the scope of the criticisms of Kant and Heidegger. (28–29) There are two points to notice in this summary account of the book’s purpose. First, here and throughout the book, White correlates the Kantian and Heideggerian accusation of ontotheology with a priori knowledge of God.11 Accordingly, and this is the second point, White suggests that the key to circumventing the problem of ontotheology is to develop a mode of analysis or demonstration that is exclusively a posteriori.12 11 For example, “is true natural knowledge of God possible that does not in fact presuppose its object a priori? Is there such a thing as a ‘natural theology’ that is not ‘ontotheological’ in the senses given that word by Kant and Heidegger?” (xxvii); “this reflection upon natural theology avoids the difficulties of undue aprioristic claims to knowledge of God, thereby circumventing the Kantian and subsequently by Heideggerian criticisms of ontotheology” (xxxii); “[According to Kant and Heidegger] natural theology is inevitably ontotheological because it attempts to study the conditions of existence for any possible being. To do so it must have recourse to a consideration of the immanent laws of human systematic thinking (i.e. principles of causality and sufficient reason) that are employed when metaphysicians attempt to explain sensible reality.The use of these principles eventually requires (or invites) the invocation of an aprioristic concept of God” (96–97; cf. 201); “This account does not commit one to any kind of pre-theoretical, conceptual understanding or intuition of God, and is not aprioristic in nature. It does not possess, therefore, the essential characteristics of ontotheological reasoning” (249–50). 12 It is outside the scope of this essay to challenge White’s interpretation of Heidegger, but it is perhaps worth noting that Heidegger’s critique of the ontotheological constitution of metaphysics is not concerned simply with a priori knowledge of God. For Heidegger, any form of thinking about a transcendent cause of beings (Seienden) or being (Sein), whether a priori or a posteriori, entails a forgetfulness 544 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. “Truly philosophical approaches to God,” he writes, “are not based upon aprioristic conceptions of the divine, but upon a posteriori argumentation” (202). And, “The primary claim of this book has been that there is a natural knowledge of God accessible to human persons that is not based either upon aprioristic philosophical conceptions of God, nor upon aprioristic commitments of Christian faith” (252). Instead of a priori knowledge, White seeks to show how we can progress “from an initial analogical knowledge of the beings we experience to an eventual, indirect, and analogical knowledge of the Creator” (xxix). In the words of St. Thomas, sapientis est ordinare. The task that White undertakes is to establish the proper order of philosophical discovery, that is, to show how metaphysics begins, and then to outline the requisite steps that allow one to proceed from an analysis of substance and accidents / act and potency toward a knowledge of the real distinction between esse and essence, and, finally, toward knowledge of God. The resources for this progressive analysis of our experience of beings toward indirect and analogical knowledge of God are found in the causal metaphysics of Aristotle as interpreted and developed by Aquinas. The project of developing a Thomistic philosophical order of discovery (via inventionis) is complicated by debates within contemporary Thomism regarding the status of philosophy in Aquinas’s writings and by an older quarrel concerning the relationship among various forms of analogy utilized by St. Thomas (analogy of proper proportionality, analogy multa ad unum— from the many to the one, and analogy ad alterum—toward the other).13 Part Two consists of two chapters devoted to the theme of knowledge of God as wisdom, in Aristotle and in Aquinas, respectively. These chapters are perhaps the strongest part of the book. White demonstrates an impressive grasp of the corpus of both authors, the historical settings for their work, and the current state of the question in Aristotelian studies and Thomism. In each of the two chapters, White introduces the key elements that will be gathered into a synthesis later in the book: Aristotle’s reinterpretation of the Platonic good in terms of final cause, the idea of the difference between being and beings. There is something odd in White’s suggestion that he has shown a path for knowledge of God that “circumvents” (or that is “immune to”) Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology precisely because this path is wholly a posteriori. 13 Bernard Montagnes provides a helpful overview of the idea of analogy as well as the history of interpretation from St. Thomas to Cajetan in The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press: 2004); also helpful is Gregory P. Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God:Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004). The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 545 of substance, the primacy of actuality over potency, St. Thomas’s understanding of the subject of metaphysics, the real distinction between esse and essence, the distinction between “first act” and personal operations, and the differentiation of the three forms of analogy mentioned above. Before presenting a synthetic account of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophical order, White turns, in Part Three, to examine three representative conceptions of St. Thomas’s doctrine of being and analogical predication. Individual chapters are devoted to the thought of Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Karl Rahner. The aim here is to show how each of these authors contributes to an understanding of some aspect of Thomistic natural theology, but in a partial or imbalanced way—Gilson’s writings provide insight into the metaphysics of esse and the ad alterum analogy; Maritain’s thought sheds light on the importance of the transcendentals and the analogy of proper proportionality; Rahner highlights the significance of personal spiritual operations and the multa ad unum analogy. On White’s reading, the partiality or imbalance in each of these authors stems from their having neglected an important aspect of Aquinas’s Aristotelian inheritance: Each neglects in some fashion important dimensions of Aquinas’s causal metaphysics. Correspondingly, each makes use of one of the three forms of analogical predication from Aquinas in ways that discriminate unnecessarily against the other two. For Gilson, a theologically inspired metaphysical doctrine of creation is substituted, in some respects, for an Aristotelian analysis of causes, and this leads to an exclusive emphasis on the ad alterum analogical thought of Aquinas. This usage threatens to impose a Christian theology of creation upon the metaphysical study of being, such that all secondary beings are conceived from the beginning of metaphysics as participated esse in relation to a primary notion of unparticipated, pure esse. For Maritain, the idea of an “intuition of being” yields transcendental notions that substitute for a causal analysis of being.This leads to an exclusive use of the analogy of proper proportionality. . . . This usage threatens to found a notion of the divine within a quasi-univocal understanding of being, attributed to accidents, to substance, and to the divine being in proportionally analogical ways. The passage to predication of attributes to God is based no longer on a causal demonstration of the Creator, but on a logical extension of concepts. For Rahner, an aprioristic “pre-apprehension” of the infinite esse of God acts as a kind of substitute for an a posteriori causal demonstration of God’s existence. This leads to an exclusive use of the multa ad unum analogy, which in turn threatens to engulf God and creatures within a common science of transcendentals. (99–100) 546 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. After reflecting on the shortcomings of Gilson, Maritain, and Rahner, White moves, in Part Four, to a constructive account of Thomistic philosophical order. Chapter seven, which is the centerpiece of the book, is titled “From Omega to Alpha: Toward a General Order of Metaphysical Inquiry.” The aim of this chapter is to outline and unfold the key steps that mark the beginning of metaphysics and the passage from “a consideration of the intrinsic formal cause of being (as actuality) to the eventual affirmation of God who is subsistent being-in-act” (202). Central to White’s overall argument is the idea that, in order to avoid ontotheology or aprioristic conceptions of God, it is necessary to patiently study the intrinsic formal causes of the concrete beings that we experience before progressing to a study of God as the transcendent cause of all that exists. I will say more about the content of this chapter below. The concluding eighth chapter, “Analogia Sapientiae,” which has the feel of a postscript, takes issue with a strand of contemporary Thomism that White judges to be excessively apophatic. Here White argues that “the knowledge offered by natural theological reasoning makes use of the via negationis, or negative way, primarily as a means of acknowledging God’s transcendence and perfection, and that this procedure ultimately leads in fact to a positive form of knowledge” (xxxii). At the same time this “positive knowledge” is intrinsically imperfect and, as such, open to the possibility of divine revelation. In order to appreciate the argument and the architectonics of Wisdom in the Face of Modernity, it is helpful to consider an aporia or difficulty bequeathed by Thomas Aquinas. The difficulty stems from the fact that whereas St. Thomas clearly distinguished between philosophy and theology, and just as clearly affirmed the legitimacy of philosophical reflection, he did not elaborate a philosophical order of inquiry or via inventionis. He did not, in other words, compose a Summa philosophiae. White explains the difficulty as follows: Aquinas himself did not seek to present a purely philosophical order of discovery, or via inventionis, even for many of the metaphysical principles that he invokes within the context of his Christian theological writings. A modern development of a Thomistic natural theology requires, then, an interpretation concerning the distinctly philosophical characteristics of Aquinas’s metaphysics and their order of exposition. (xxix) [Aquinas’s metaphysical doctrines] are articulated within a medieval cultural context in which a distinctly theological mode of investigation prevails; it is no secret that Aquinas does not give us a specifically philosophical via inventionis for many of his key metaphysical affirmations. (This arguably is the case even for the esse /essence distinction, which The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 547 was articulated within the context of a Christian theological study of creation.) Much of Aquinas’s metaphysics, therefore, is developed, as Norman Kretzmann has stated, from the top down: in reflecting on creation as seen in light of its relation to God the Creator. (98) The absence of a distinct philosophical order of exposition in the major writings of St.Thomas has generated different conclusions within contemporary Thomism. Mark Jordan, for example, suggests that it is unbefitting for a Christian (or at least a Christian who would be faithful to the thought of St. Thomas) to develop a philosophical order of exposition: Aquinas chose not to write philosophy. He did so partly because of other choices that he made—for example, to become a Dominican and a Master of Theology. . . Aquinas’s decision to write as a theologian when he wrote in his own voice was chiefly the result of his view that no Christian should be satisfied to speak only as a philosopher.14 A quite different conclusion is drawn by members of the River Forest School of interpretation, who suggest that Thomas did not elaborate a philosophical order because his philosophy, as distinct from his theology, is the philosophy of Aristotle. Ralph McInerny articulates this view: There are two possible explanations of this presence of Aristotelianism: either Thomas adopted the principles and procedures of philosophy as taught by Aristotle because he thought they were true, or he had a different conception of philosophy than Aristotle’s into which he was able to assimilate Aristotelian tenets as well as others. In favor of the second alternative is the fact that Thomas also exhibited sympathy for Platonic teachings. Must there not, then, be a larger whole, a specifically Thomistic philosophy, into which both Platonic and Aristotelian elements fit to the degree that they are in accord with its principles? I will endeavor to show that the first alternative is the correct one. The second has plausibility because Thomas did indeed advance the Aristotelian program beyond Aristotle and showed the kind of hospitality to Neoplatonism mentioned. But this, I would argue, was done in terms of a philosophical outlook that is fundamentally Aristotelian. Moreover, there are no peculiarly Thomistic philosophical principles that could supplant the Aristotelian ones he adopts.15 14 Mark D. Jordan, “Theology and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Philos- ophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 232-51, at 233. See also Jordan, Ordering Wisdom:The Hierarchy of Philosophical Discourses in Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). 15 Ralph McInerny, Praeambula Fidei:Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 160. 548 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. On this reading, the task of presenting a “specifically Thomistic” philosophical order of discovery is misguided from the outset. Hence the first “thesis” of the River Forest School, “the philosophy of Aquinas, as distinct from his theology, is best gathered . . . from the commentaries on Aristotle.”16 Where does Fr. White stand relative to this question within Thomism regarding the philosophy of St. Thomas? In many respects, White’s position is very close to that of McInerny. He describes Wisdom in the Face of Modernity as “a sketch of Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle’s metaphysics (or perhaps, inversely, an Aristotelian sketch of Aquinas’s ontology),” and directs the reader to McInerny’s Praeambula Fidei “[f ]or a similar ‘Aristotelian’ view of Aquinas” (225). “I treat Aquinas,” he writes, “primarily as an Aristotelian” (xxxii). The core argument of White’s book is that Aristotle’s causal metaphysics provides the indispensable foundation for a Thomistic approach to analogical knowledge of God. However, there are significant differences between White’s proposal and that of the River Forest School. Most importantly, White presents a compelling argument against the position of Benedict Ashley and Ralph McInerny that Thomistic separatio, which establishes the subject of metaphysics, presupposes prior demonstration of God’s existence at the level of natural philosophy (Aristotle’s Physics).17 More generally, White departs from the River Forest School in acknowledging the originality of St. Thomas’s doctrine of the real distinction between esse and essence, which is the centerpiece of a Christian “metaphysics of creation.” It may be helpful to view White’s account of Thomistic philosophy as mediating between, on the one hand, the identity thesis of “AristotelicoThomism” (as upheld by McInerny and other River Forest Thomists) and, on the other hand, the tendency in much twentieth-century Thomism to highlight the Christian, existential, and Neoplatonic dimensions of Aquinas’s metaphysics. As always, the terms of mediation are allimportant. White’s proposal is to begin with Aristotle’s causal study of substances and then, guided by St. Thomas’s own principles, to show how 16 Benedict M. Ashley, “The River Forest School and the Philosophy of Nature Today,” in Philosophy and the God of Abraham, ed. R. James Long (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), 1–16, at 2–3. 17 See especially White, Wisdom, 204–16. Similar arguments regarding “separatio” and the subject of metaphysics are developed by John F. Wippel in The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 23–62; also, Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, Physics, and the Principles of Metaphysics,” in Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 47–60. For a helpful survey of texts in Aquinas, see John F. X. Knasas, The Preface to Thomistic Metaphysics (New York: Peter Lang, 1990). The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 549 a progressive analysis of substances “opens organically from within” to a more ultimate level of the distinction between esse and essence. This allows White to affirm, in contradistinction to McInerny, the profound originality of a specifically Thomistic philosophy, and to acknowledge the importance of the Christian setting and the theological order adopted by Aquinas himself. At the same time, White can argue, with McInerny’s support, that one of the main weaknesses within contemporary Thomism is the failure to appreciate Aristotle’s causal metaphysics as integral to Thomas’s doctrine of being and analogical knowledge of God. The following passages illustrate how White conceives the continuity between Aristotle and Aquinas, as well as the novelty of the latter’s contribution to the science of being: Aquinas’s interpretations of Aristotle’s concepts and terms stand in a complex relationship to his own metaphysics of esse and essence, which he developed in an original way. In affirming a real distinction (or composition) of essence and existence in all created things, Thomas does not deny the Aristotelian structural principles of matter and form, substance and accidents, act and potentiality, as constituting the physical realities we experience. He introduces into such substances, however, a more fundamental distinction between the reality’s essential determination . . . and the existence, or being in act of the reality (which Aquinas called its “act of existence,” or actus essendi ). (81–82) If actuality is a transcendental feature of being (applicable to all the categories) then it bears intrinsic resemblances to the Thomistic notion of esse as a transcendental that is also common to all the categories. But being in act is also a fundamental feature of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s causal metaphysics. Therefore, if Aquinas’s real distinction between esse and essence can be employed to explain the being in act and being in potency of substances (and vice versa: if the esse/essence distinction must be understood in terms of act and potency), then Aquinas’s “real distinction” is itself a causal principle, that is intelligible in continuity with the framework of a metaphysical science of substance and actuality as a more ultimate discovery within this science. (224–25) In summary: I advocate for a harmonization between key elements of Aristotle’s ontology as appropriated by Aquinas, on the one hand, and original elements of Aquinas’s own thought, on the other. The latter are interpreted in homogeneous continuity with the former. In other words, I treat Aquinas primarily as an Aristotelian, yet without denying the original character of his metaphysics. (xxxii) 550 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. White’s account of a form of continuity between Aristotle and Aquinas that opens organically to St. Thomas’s more profound discovery of the act of being and ad alterum analogy is an extremely fruitful line of reflection. It holds the promise of a generous interpretation of Aristotle’s abiding significance for metaphysics (and the best possible reading of Aristotle is deeply in accord with St. Thomas’s own interpretation of the Stagirite) while doing full justice to the originality of Aquinas’s own contribution to the science of being, an originality as rediscovered by Thomists such as Fabro and Gilson.18 There are, however, some important metaphysical issues buried by White’s construal of Aquinas as “primarily an Aristotelian.” If White is correct in affirming a real continuity between Aristotle and Aquinas that opens a path to discovering St. Thomas’s original and more ultimate discovery of the act of being, there remains the possibility that White introduces St. Thomas’s “originality” too late. White insists that we begin with Aristotle’s causal analysis before introducing, at a later stage of analysis or demonstration, the metaphysics of esse. For example, he writes: 18 The middle years of the twentieth century witnessed a flood of publications that emphasized, on different grounds, the novelty of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the act of being (actus essendi ). Despite significant differences, and even relative opposition, C. Fabro, L.-B. Geiger, E. Gilson, G. Siewerth, and J. de Finance (to name just some of the leading figures) shared the conviction that Aquinas’s doctrine of being could not be assimilated to the metaphysics of Aristotle. The significance of this consensus must be seen against the backdrop of a tendency that characterized the initial phase of the modern Thomist revival to identify the philosophy of Aquinas with that of Aristotle. Of course, no one disputed the idea that Aquinas was a medieval Christian theologian whose teaching far surpassed and occasionally corrected the philosophical doctrines of the Stagirite. But the difference between the two thinkers was placed entirely on the side of revealed theology. This view of Aquinas’s philosophy as “Aristotelian” was challenged from two directions. Fabro and Geiger brought to light the fundamental importance of the Platonic and Neoplatonic idea of participation within Thomas’s metaphysics. Around the same time, Gilson showed how the Christian setting of Aquinas’s thought, and above all, the biblical idea of creation, provided Thomas with a new horizon for metaphysical reflection. To borrow (anachronistically) an image from Fides et Ratio, Gilson argued that Aquinas’s Christian faith prompted and inspired a genuine philosophical discovery of “the newness and radicality of being.” Both of these lines of interpretation—the rediscovery of the doctrine of participation and the idea of a Christian metaphysics of creation—converged on the thesis that Aquinas’s most original and enduring achievement was to provide a metaphysical account of created reality in terms of the real distinction between esse and essence, a distinction which presupposes and safeguards a new understanding of the act of being (actus essendi ) as intensive perfection. “What I call esse,” says Thomas, “is among all principles the most perfect” (De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9). The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 551 An analysis of the complexity of the causal composition of creatures in terms of form and matter, substance and accident, as well as substantial act versus teleological operation, must necessarily precede a consideration of created esse and essence, if the latter notions are to be appropriately employed in order to speak about God analogically. (264) (My italics) The initial concepts of “being” and of “existence” are related to simple apprehensions and judgments concerning existent realities at hand. They do not contain in themselves the conceptual depth and intensity of the notion of esse and essence as used to signify the real distinction and the metaphysics of creation. Correspondingly, they have a banal function in human discourse. (123) An aspect of what is best and deepest in St. Thomas’s understanding of the act of being (actus essendi) is missed if it is interpreted as an “addition” that leaves the beginning of philosophical reflection untouched or, even worse, if the beginning is viewed as “banal.”This question regarding the beginning of metaphysics is closely related to White’s unqualified rejection of any sense of a priori knowledge. Is it possible to arrive at an understanding of esse as the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections if this sense of esse is not present, however implicitly, at the beginning of one’s contemplative experience of beings (ens)? Conversely, one can ask whether there might not be a sense in which St. Thomas’s novel understanding of the act of being can affect a priori the beginning of philosophical reflection. I will suggest below how this may be understood. In order to explain the pertinence of these questions I will introduce two differences between Aristotle and St. Thomas that are under-emphasized by White: The first difference is the meaning of actuality as intensive, trans-formal, and infinite perfection. The second difference comes with the gift of Christian revelation and it concerns the possibility of a specifically “Christian philosophy.” II. Actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam: Aristotle and Aquinas on Actuality and Infinity In the preceding section I cited a passage from Ralph McInerny in which he argues that there is no “specifically Thomist philosophy” and that “there are no peculiarly Thomistic philosophical principles that could supplant the Aristotelian ones he adopts.”19 One way to probe the accuracy of this thesis is to consider each author’s respective account of “the first principles which are understood to be most universal . . . the principles of actuality and potentiality, for these divide being as being.”20 There are several reasons to 19 McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 160. 20 Thomas Aquinas, In XII Meta., lect. 4, 2482–83. 552 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. recommend such a study. What could be more basic to Aristotle’s vision of the world than the distinction between act and potency? If St. Thomas has a different understanding of actus/energeia, then McInerny’s thesis will have to be qualified. A second reason for considering the meaning of actuality in Aristotle and in Aquinas is that the unlimited perfection of act is an important premise in Thomas’s argument in support of God’s supreme and universal perfection: “Unumquodque perfectum est inquantum est actu; imperfectum autem secundum quod est potentia cum privatione actus. Id igitur quod nullo modo est in potentia sed est actus purus, oportet perfectissimum esse.Tale autem deus est. Est igitur perfectissimus.”21 The unlimited perfection of act is a crucial axiom for securing the possibility of analogical knowledge of God that safeguards the transcendence of God in relation to his created effects. In a seminal article first published in 1952, “The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism?” W. Norris Clarke called attention to the non-Aristotelian provenance of one of the fundamental principles of Thomistic metaphysics: “actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam,” which Clarke interprets as “no act or perfection can be found in a limited degree in any being unless it is conjoined with a really distinct limiting principle whose nature is to be a potency for that act.”22 Clarke’s study was provoked by the traditional and widespread assumption that, in the words of Garrigou-Lagrange, “Aristotle already taught this doctrine. . . . Act, he says, is limited and multiplied by potency. Act determines potency, actualizes potency, but is limited by the same potency.”23 Clarke uncovered a basic difficulty with this neo-Thomist view: not only is there no mention whatsoever of the doctrine of the limitation of act by potency in Aristotle’s writings, but, more significantly, Aristotle conceived of limit (or finitude) as a source of perfection and unlimitedness (or infinity) as an imperfection. In the words of Aristotle, “nature flees from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and nature ever seeks an end.”24 21 ScG I, c. 28: “A thing is perfect in so far as it is in act, and imperfect in so far as it is in potentiality and void of act. Wherefore that which is nowise in potentiality but is pure act, must needs be most perfect. Now such is God. Therefore He is most perfect.” 22 W. Norris Clarke, “The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism,” in Explorations in Metaphysics: Being—God—Person (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 67. 23 R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (St. Louis: Herder, 1950), 43–44, cited in Clarke, “Limitation of Act,” 67. 24 Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium I, ch. 1, 715b14. The background to Aristotle’s understanding of infinity, as well as a careful interpretation of the relevant texts, is provided by Leo Sweeney, Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought (New York: Peter Lang, 1992). The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 553 This view of the finite as perfect and the infinite as imperfect is intelligible in light of Aristotle’s account of the composition of form and matter as the archetype of the relation between act and potency. Clarke summarizes Aristotle’s teaching as follows: What, then, is the genuine meaning and purpose of the act and potency composition in Aristotle? There is only one: as function of the problem of change. Whatever is capable of change of any kind—and only that— must have within it in addition to its present act a principle of potency, or capacity to receive a further act. It is this potency which enables a being to be inserted in the endless cosmic cycle of change. . . . Act, on the other hand, is always identified with the fully complete, the actually present. Pure act, therefore, is simply a correlative of the immutable, i.e., of pure actualized form, complete in all that is proper to it and incorruptible. It is immutability, self-sufficiency, and incorruptibility which for Aristotle is the primary characteristic of the “divine” and the perfect. In the notion of act so conceived there is no necessary implication of infinity, at least in the substantial order. . . . Substantial infinity would simply have no meaning in this Aristotelian universe; there is no ultimate common perfection deeper than form.25 The final note in this passage brings us to what I take to be a chief implication of St. Thomas’s re-conception of act and potency in light of the distinction between esse and essence: A new understanding of actuality as trans-formal—“esse est actualitas omnium rerum, et etiam ipsarum formarum”26— coincident with a new understanding of perfection as unlimited or infinite: “Tanto actus aliquis perfectior est, quanto minus habet potentiae permixtum. Unde omnis actus cui permiscetur potentia, habet terminum suae perfectionis: cui autem non permiscetur aliqua potentia, est absque termino perfectionis. Deus autem est actus purus absque omni potentia, ut supra ostensum est. Est igitur infinitus.”27 25 Clarke, “Limitation of Act,” 74. 26 Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3: “existence is that which actuates all things, even their forms.” 27 Thomas Aquinas, ScG I, c. 43: “An act is the more perfect, according as it is less mingled with potentiality. Wherefore every act that has an admixture of potentiality has a limit to its perfection: while the act which has no admixture of potentiality has no limit to its perfection. Now God is pure act without any potentiality, as we have proved above. Therefore He is infinite.” Kenneth L. Schmitz, The Gift: Creation (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982), interprets and develops the significance of St. Thomas’s new understanding of actuality (in light of the actus essendi ). As Schmitz indicates, “[t]he philosopher who speaks of act here can only learn humility, for his dry language can scarcely hint at the drama with which the creature first begins to be and continues to be” (110). In holding together “what is most common with what is fullest and most 554 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. More recently, John Wippel has confirmed and extended Clarke’s argument by establishing beyond doubt the textual basis in Aquinas for the axiom “unreceived act is unlimited.”28 While acknowledging that he has “never succeeded in finding a demonstration or even an attempted demonstration of this point in [Aquinas’s] texts,”29 Wippel connects this axiom with St. Thomas’s original understanding of esse as the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections. “And that,” Fr. Wippel concludes, “. . . seems to me to be the ultimate ontological insight that underlies Thomas’s acceptance of the axiom in question. Precisely because esse is the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections, one cannot account for its limitation simply by appealing to esse itself.”30 Once the difference between Aristotle and Aquinas on unlimited act is granted, the relevant question is where to place the difference. On White’s reading, the difference between the two thinkers is essentially conceived in the manner of an “addition” to, which remains essentially within the horizon of, Aristotle’s principles of act and potency. In the order of discovery, as we have already cited, “[a]n analysis of the complexity of the causal composition of creatures in terms of form and matter, substance and accident, as well as substantial act versus teleological operation, must necessarily precede a consideration of created esse” (264) (my italics). In other words, St. Thomas builds on Aristotle’s foundation by extending the essentially unchanged Aristotelian analysis of the actpotency composition to the more ultimate level of esse and essence. There are at least two difficulties with this manner of interpreting Aquinas “primarily as an Aristotelian.” First, St. Thomas’s doctrine of the real distinction between esse and essence as a composition of act and potency is not simply an extension or application of Aristotelian principles, but a transformation of the core meaning of actuality as infinite, intensive, and trans-formal perfection. Hence the inadequacy or imbalance of White’s requirement that the real distinction be “explained in terms of previously established causes such as form and matter, substance and operation, potentiality and actuality” (265) (my italics). This does not mean, of course, that the account of the esse-essence composition simply radical and most complete in the thing,” St. Thomas gives us a light by which to understand the generosity of God at the heart of every real being. 28 John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom that Unreceived Act Is Unlimited,” in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 123–51. 29 John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 158. 30 Wippel, Metaphysical Themes II, 151. The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 555 overturns Aristotle. On the contrary, the position I am advancing is that, for Thomas, precisely the novel originality of the discovery of the esseessence composition transforms and, at the same time, preserves and deepens, the Aristotelian account of act and potency. Second, the very character of non-subsistent esse as the created source of all of the perfections of a created being (ens) requires that it be somehow present from the mind’s first contact with being. Of course, Fr.White might rejoin that we need to distinguish sharply between the ordo inventionis and the ordo rerum; esse may be immediately relevant in the ordo rerum, but it is not therefore being immediately relevant in the ordo inventionis. Now, a principle that becomes significant only at a later stage of philosophical demonstration is precisely not the perfection of all perfections and the actuality of all acts. Note that I am not suggesting that Thomas’s original teaching on the actus essendi must be made explicit or thematized at the beginning of philosophical reflection; rather, I am arguing that it must be present from the start in such a way that every further step is simultaneously a deeper awareness of what was given at the beginning. I suggest that this is why, here a faithful disciple of St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas teaches that omnia cognoscentia cognoscunt implicite Deum in quolibet cognito—“all knowers know God implicitly in whatever they know.”31 It would take us too far afield to show how this implicit knowledge of God has nothing to do with, and, in a certain sense, is even the opposite of, a Rahnerian Vorgriff. For present purposes, suffice it to say that the metaphysical underpinning for this implicit knowledge of God is God’s presence in his created effects by way of esse: “Quandiu igitur res habet esse, tandiu oportet quod deus adsit ei, secundum modum quo esse habet. Esse autem est illud quod est magis intimum cuilibet, et quod profundius omnibus inest, cum sit formale respectu omnium quae in re sunt, ut ex supra dictis patet. Unde oportet quod deus sit in omnibus rebus, et intime.”32 Prompting and guiding the philosopher’s search for God through his created effects (via inventionis) is the hidden presence of God at the origin of all being and knowing. The progressive a posteriori discoveries of the philosopher are also a retrieval of, and participation in, the a priori generosity of the Creator, who is the abiding origin of both being and the knowing of being. This suggests a final point.There is a certain a priorism lying unnoticed within Fr. White’s advocacy of Aristotelian a posteriorism: The scope of 31 Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 1. 32 Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 8, a. 1: “Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above. Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.” Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. 556 the novel originality of the discovery of esse is limited a priori by what Fr. White takes to be the teaching of Aristotle on act and potency. In much the same way, it is hard to see how a God who is not even implicitly known at any time prior to the achievement of an exclusively a posteriori demonstration of his existence is the true God. An exclusive a posteriorism leads just as surely to ontotheology as an exclusive a priorism. In either case, we lose the infinite God of philosophers or theologians, a God who is both superior summo meo and intimior intimo meo—“higher than my highest” and “more intimate to me than I am to myself.” III. The Question of “Christian Philosophy” The famous debate in France in the 1930s over the possibility and meaning of a specifically “Christian philosophy” continues to generate interest and controversy. The question is often misunderstood. To ask about the meaning of “Christian philosophy” is not simply to inquire about the relationship between philosophy and theology. The more difficult issue is whether and in what sense God’s revelation in Christ makes a difference to philosophy qua philosophy. Here it is helpful to recall the declaration of the First Vatican Council: There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object. With regard to the source, because we know in one by natural reason, in the other by divine faith. With regard to the object, because besides those things which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed, cannot be known.33 Once this distinction between philosophy and theology is accepted, there is a further question regarding the relationship between philosophical reflection and the revealed mysteries of God. Can Christian faith affect natural reason in its relation to its proper object without abrogating or compromising reason’s natural integrity? The question of “Christian philosophy” cuts close to the heart of White’s fundamental concern to develop a Thomistic philosophical order of inquiry. On several occasions he acknowledges the importance of the Christian context as well as the theological order adopted by St. Thomas. Furthermore, White suggests that the broader context of Christian faith allows Aquinas to develop and reinterpret Aristotle’s metaphysics in the direction of an original “metaphysics of creation.” At the same time, White criticizes Étienne Gilson’s notion of “Christian philosophy” as 33 Dei Filius, 3. The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 557 undermining the integrity of philosophy and the possibility of truly natural knowledge of God. The core of White’s criticism of Gilson is spelled out in the following passage: [According to Gilson] revelation is meant to act as a guiding light for the human mind even within its properly philosophical order of knowing and way of investigation. . . . One can raise the question of whether a kind of fideistic methodology has entered into Gilson’s later thinking, since he seems to make the natural, philosophical specification of the human intelligence directly dependent upon the objects we know by the light of faith. St. Thomas states quite clearly in ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2, that the light of faith gives the believer a certain judgment concerning the conclusions of natural sciences in their respective compatibility with, or opposition to, Christian faith, but that it does not befit the faith to be itself at the source of the demonstration of the principles of these sciences. In other words, the believer can judge in faith that certain philosophical conclusions are incompatible with the revealed truth to which he adheres, but in order to refute these errors, or to discover philosophical truths himself, he cannot avoid doing the work of philosophy. This requires an analysis of the objects of natural experience, as attained by the philosophical sciences. (130–31) Before considering a possible objection to White’s view of “Christian philosophy,” it is necessary to summarize John Paul II’s contribution in Fides et Ratio. At the heart of John Paul II’s encyclical on faith and reason is a “strong and insistent appeal . . . that faith and philosophy recover their profound unity which allows them to stand in harmony with their nature without compromising their mutual autonomy” (FR, 48). In the eyes of John Paul II, the contemporary crisis of reason is intimately related to the “fateful separation” of faith and reason that stems from the late medieval period and that has resulted in a false conception of philosophy as “separate from and absolutely independent of the contents of faith” (FR, 45). In the sixth chapter of the encyclical, John Paul II takes up the disputed concept of “Christian philosophy” in the context of distinguishing three different stances of philosophy in relation to Christian faith. First, there is “the stance adopted by philosophy as it took shape in history before the birth of the Redeemer and later in regions as yet untouched by the Gospel” (FR, 75); the second stance, often designated as “Christian philosophy,” is “philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith” (FR, 76); the third stance occurs when “theology itself calls upon [philosophy]” (FR, 77). The term “Christian philosophy,” he clarifies, “in no way intends to suggest that there is an official philosophy of the Church, since the faith as 558 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. such is not a philosophy” (FR, 76). Nevertheless, the influence of faith is not merely “negative” in the sense that philosophers who are also believers know that their philosophical conclusions, if true, will never contradict the faith. Faith also contributes positively to philosophy.This is why there is such a thing as “Christian philosophy,” which “includes those important developments of philosophical thinking which would not have happened without the direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith” (FR, 76). Christian philosophy thus has two aspects: “The first is subjective, in the sense that faith purifies reason,” providing philosophers with the requisite humility to engage questions “which are difficult to resolve if the data of Revelation are ignored.” Examples here include the problem of evil and suffering, the personal nature of God, and finally, “the radical metaphysical question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ ” (FR, 76).This leads to the second point: the influence of faith on philosophy is “objective, in the sense that it concerns content. Revelation clearly proposes certain truths which might never have been discovered by reason unaided, although they are not of themselves inaccessible to reason” (FR, 76). Finally, John Paul II affirms that philosophers whose thinking is positively influenced by Christian faith “have not become theologians, since they have not sought to understand and expound the truths of faith on the basis of Revelation” (FR, 76). Pope Benedict XVI confirms the teaching of his predecessor when he writes in Deus Caritas Est 28: “faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly” (italics mine). In criticizing Gilson for the view that “revelation is meant to act as a guiding light for the human mind even within its properly philosophical order of knowing” (130), and in limiting the influence of faith on the structure of philosophy to that of a “negative norm,” White criticizes what is essentially the position adopted and promoted by John Paul II. My point here is not to defend the position of Gilson; it may be the case that Fides et Ratio offers an important corrective to Gilson’s account of “Christian philosophy.” The relevant point is that White seems to suggest that natural reason at its source or starting point—an encounter or experience of created beings—must be completely independent from faith if it is to retain its proper integrity. The assumption underlying his criticism of Gilson is the idea that an intrinsic influence of faith represents a threat to reason’s natural integrity or autonomy. It should be noted that I agree with White in affirming that philosophy and theology have different starting points and different methods. Therefore it is illegitimate to use a datum of revelation as a premise in a philosophical argument. Once this is granted there remains the issue of The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 559 whether faith can influence natural reason “even within its properly philosophical order of knowing.” An adequate answer to this question requires reflection on the meaning of philosophy’s “autonomy.” Throughout Fides et Ratio John Paul II develops an account of the autonomy of philosophy that is at odds with the modern idea of autonomy conceived as strict independence or neutrality. The deepest meaning of “autonomy” is disclosed within the mystery of Christ: “The mystery of the Incarnation will always remain the central point of reference for an understanding of the enigma of human existence, the created world and God himself. . . . In the mystery of the Incarnate Word, human nature and divine nature are safeguarded in all their autonomy, and at the same time the unique bond which sets them together in mutuality without confusion of any kind is revealed” (FR, 80). In concluding his reflection on faith and reason, John Paul II returns to the Christian meaning of autonomy with an exhortation to philosophari in Maria: “Just as in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression” (FR, 108). For John Paul II, the positive influence of faith should enable philosophical reason to be more itself, that is, more attentive to the evidence that is in principle available to reason.This is why, pace White, revelation can “act as a guiding light for the human mind even within its properly philosophical order of knowing” (White, 130). At this point we can recall the passage from Cardinal Ratzinger cited at the outset of this essay: It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; and it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind of thing.34 It is important to stress that Ratzinger does not deny Vatican I’s teaching that natural reason can demonstrate the existence of God. The position he intends to criticize is the idea that natural reason is “strictly independent of any faith.” Note that Ratzinger’s rejection of this idea of autonomy as strict independence is not based on some sort of Barthian reduction of nature to grace, but on his judgment that it is inconsistent with the creaturely status of human being and knowing. In other words, the attempt to separate out a domain of absolute independence for 34 Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, 136. 560 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. philosophy runs afoul of what philosophy itself can, in principle, know— namely, that the abiding source of all natural integrity is the generosity of God who bestows the gift of real existence, at once from “higher than my highest” and “more intimately than I am to myself.” This is no mere paradox: The attempt to carve out an exclusively autonomous domain is unphilosphical. If philosophy can terminate in a discovery of the true God as principle and end of the world, it is because philosophy itself begins in a wonderment that, implicitly, is a response to the radical generosity of the creative act that pervades all beings within the world. Now, it is precisely for this reason that, according to John Paul II, the gift of faith can and should inspire philosophical reason at its origin and all along its path of discovery. For revelation, in bringing to light new mysteries, will re-confirm and deepen the novelty of the act of creation. Revelation will thus prompt and guide philosophers to contemplate and wonder more deeply over “the newness and radicality of being” (FR, 48). Something of the form and content of “Christian philosophy” is well expressed in the words of Paul Byrne cited by Kenneth Schmitz: There [in Acts 17:16–33] we read of that wonderful scene at the Areopagus in Athens when St. Paul brought something new to the Greek philosophers, namely, the absolute beginning to be of a creature totally dependent for its being on a Creator, or in other words, the very “newness” of the world itself.35 One of the great contributions of St. Thomas’s doctrine of being is that it provides grounds for seeing how this generous dependence or “newness” is available to philosophical reason as a promise given in the mind’s first contact with reality. Conclusion: Toward a More Generous Beginning Some years back Fergus Kerr claimed that “the deepest problem in Roman Catholic theology since Vatican II, has been the disappearance of 35 Paul M. Byrne, “Preface” to On the Eternity of the Word: St.Thomas, Siger of Brabant, St. Bonaventure, ed. C. Vollert, L. Kendzierski, and P. Byrne (Milwaukee: Marquette, 1964), ix. In a well-known essay, Josef Pieper describes the doctrine of creation as the “hidden key” to the philosophy of St. Thomas: “there is a fundamental idea by which almost all the basic concepts of his vision of the world are determined: the idea of creation, or more precisely, the notion that nothing exists which is not creatura, except the Creator Himself; and in addition, that this createdness determines entirely and all-pervasively the inner structure of the creature.” The Silence of St. Thomas, trans. John Murray, S.J., and Daniel O’Connor (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), 47. The Christian Contribution to Metaphysics 561 serious engagement with philosophy.”36 It is refreshing to encounter in Wisdom in the Face of Modernity an argument that grasps the essential importance of philosophical reflection for Christian theology. What is most needed in a pragmatic and technological culture is a philosophy that remains true to its ancient vocation to seek the highest wisdom and contemplate the highest cause. “The real problem at this moment of our history,” writes Benedict XVI, “is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.”37 Pope Benedict and Fr. White share the conviction that the dignity of human persons, the goodness of the created order, and the capacity of reason to attain knowledge of God through his created effects all stand or fall together. Theologians and philosophers owe a debt of gratitude to Fr. White for recalling this truth in the context of a thoughtful and constructive interpretation of the Thomistic philosophical order. Given the importance of St.Thomas’s thought for the life and mission of the Church, it is worth thinking together with Fr. White about the proper order of discovery or via inventionis for metaphysics. At the end of Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God the Philosophers, Ralph McInerny offers what he calls an “irenic proposal”: Let’s reestablish Aristotelico-Thomism as the norm. Let us proceed, as Thomas does, on the assumption that Aristotle has adequately set forth the subject matter of metaphysics once and for all.38 It may be worth considering a different suggestion. Taking St. Thomas as a “guide and model” for Catholic thought (FR, 78), one could proceed, as Aquinas does, on the assumption that [d]ivine love did not allow him to “remain in himself without fruit,” that is, without the production of creatures, but love “moved him to operate” according to a most excellent mode of operation according as he produced all things in being (esse). For from love of his goodness it proceeded that he willed to pour out and to communicate his goodness to others, insofar as it is possible, namely by way of similitude, and thus his goodness did not remain in him, but flowed out into others.39 36 Fergus Kerr, “Foreword: Addressing this ‘Giddy Synthesis,’ ” in Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 1–13, at 13. 37 Benedict XVI, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church Concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre” (March 10, 2009). 38 McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 305. 39 Thomas Aquinas, In div. nom., c. 4, lect. 9. 562 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. If this teaching is true—if being is a similitudo divinae bonitatis—what kind of concrete experience of beings (ens) is most appropriate for the start of metaphysics? Are there not resources in St. Thomas and in the larger Catholic tradition that might help us avoid the unfortunate idea that the beginning is banal40 and that what is best and innermost in all things only comes by way of addition? N&V 40 “[T]he initial concepts of ‘being’ and of ‘existence’ are related to simple appre- hensions and judgments concerning existent realities at hand. They do not contain in themselves the conceptual depth and intensity of the notion of esse and essence as used to signify the real distinction and the metaphysics of creation. Correspondingly, they have a banal function in human discourse” (123). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 563–604 563 Discovering the Given: On Reason and God D. C. S CHINDLER Villanova University Villanova, PA I N HIS first publication,1 which launched a career devoted in significant part to philosophizing in light of and in relation to Catholic faith, Robert Spaemann pointed out a certain irony in the famous passage from the Vatican I document Dei Filius, in which the Church affirms that anyone who claims that the existence of God, as the “principium et finis omnium rerum,” cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of reason thereby separates himself from the Church:2 the document does not offer rational arguments for the existence of God, but simply asserts the principle that such arguments can be given.The assent that such an assertion demands is not the agreement that reason comes to at the end of a demonstration, but rather that of obedience to authority. The irony, in other words, is that this assertion of reason is not reason’s self-assertion; it is instead the call for an act of faith, which goes beyond reason, though does so in this case only to give reason an inviolable space of its own. But there is indeed a further irony in this passage: the Church does not say, here, that one who denies reason this great power excludes himself from the community of knowers (though of course the passage does not exclude this implication) but specifically from the Church, that is, from the community of believers. Just as one may fairly assert that it can be reasonable to affirm something beyond reason, here we have faith insisting that faith, as it were, is not everything, but has room inside of itself—if we may put it thus—for something outside of itself. As Spaemann goes on to explain in this essay, drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas, such a safeguarding of reason by faith, though not necessary 1 Robert Spaemann, “Der Irrtum des Traditionalisten: Zur Soziologisierung der Gottesidee im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Wort und Wahrheit 8 (1953): 493–98. 2 See Dei Filius, Canon II.1. Cf., chapter two of the same document. 564 D. C. Schindler essentially and in principle, may become indispensable in certain historical circumstances. In his recent book, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity,3 Fr. Thomas Joseph White suggests that the age in which we live, an age characterized largely by disillusionment regarding reason’s capacity to discern a plausible meaning for human existence, presents just such circumstances (xvii). To evoke the tenor of our age, Fr. White appeals to the image of the “mid-winter spring” from T. S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding”: we live at present in the midst of a long and cold winter’s day. And yet, though its heat may not directly be felt, the sun—the source of all light, acknowledged in the classical tradition as a privileged symbol of reason— continues to shine, with a constancy that thus may nourish the hope for a new spring. Fr. White’s book seeks to promote this renewal. By drawing on the deep resources of the classical tradition, principally Aristotle and Aquinas, he aims to provide an apology for natural theology, that is, for reason’s capacity to come to know God as the transcendent cause of the cosmos. Though such an aim is by no means novel, what distinguishes his particular effort is its being made specifically in response to what he describes as the modern and postmodern critique of “ontotheology” (which we shall discuss below) and his accompanying critical evaluation of various recent interpretations of Aquinas, especially of three well-known twentieth-century Thomists who pursued, at least in part, a similar aim: Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Karl Rahner. In the following essay, we will offer a “nutshell” account of the main line of Fr. White’s argument as we understand it, and point out what we take to be the importance of some of Fr. White’s insights and basic interpretive positions. After this, we will argue that some of these insights threaten to be undermined by the line of reasoning he develops ostensibly in support of them.We will thus try to show that the positive achievement of Fr. White’s book would require a development of thinking in a somewhat different direction, indeed, ultimately in a direction that Fr. White explicitly excludes. We will argue that, insofar as he excludes that direction, the basic position he defends is a problematic one. Our most basic aim in this essay, however, is not to criticize Fr. White’s book, but rather to take a discussion of various claims he makes therein as an occasion to explore and reflect on fundamental questions regarding reason’s relationship to God. 3 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009). All unattributed parenthetical references in the text are to this work. Discovering the Given 565 I Fr. White develops his account of how natural reason is able to attain positive knowledge of God in some legitimate sense apart from revelation in response to two fundamental objections that he says one frequently encounters in modern thought (3–6; 282). The first comes from philosophy, and claims that it is not possible to come to knowledge of God unless one already posits the existence of God at the outset in an a priori way, which is ultimately without warrant. He refers to this objection as the critique of ontotheology, a critique originally formulated by Kant and then reformulated in a more postmodern idiom by Heidegger.4 Because of its aprioristic character, ontotheological thinking does not yield authentic knowledge of God. To the contrary, it reduces God, according to Fr. White’s account, to the immanent structures of human thinking, turning God, in the end, into the ultimate explanatory principle of human understanding governed by a “quasi-univocal” logic.5 This points, then, to the second, more directly theological, objection to natural knowledge of God, which we find perhaps most representatively in the work of Karl Barth, though it has clear roots in Luther’s “sola fide.”6 According to this objection, the aspiration to natural knowledge arises from our concupiscence, insofar as it represents a disordered desire to take knowledge of God for ourselves, as it were, rather than to receive it as a gift. To insist on natural theology would be to elevate human reason in a way that compromises God’s sovereignty. Both the philosophical and theological objections may be said to converge in a rejection of “conceptual idolatry,” by which we divinize the products of our own thinking, however different the two objections may be in the motives they ascribe to this divinizing or the genealogy they trace for it. In response to these objections, Fr. White develops a natural theology based on essentially a posteriori argumentation, which begins with a realist epistemology, proceeds from the things we experience in the world, drawing from that experience a genuinely metaphysical conception of being in terms of the categories of substance and accidents, act and potency, and finally moves from this conception to the ultimate cause of 4 Wisdom, 24. For Fr. White, the essential difference is that the problem of ontotheol- ogy in Kant is a necessary implication of the structure of human thinking, whereas, for Heidegger, it is due to the “unnecessary constructions of the thinking subject” (ibid.). 5 Although he presents ontotheology in chapter 1 of Wisdom, 3–30 and discusses it throughout the book, Fr.White’s most succinct description can be found on 96–97. 6 Fr.White traces the crisis of natural theology essentially back to Luther, although he also cites Alain de Libera’s suggestion that the more philosophical guise of the problem originates in Scotus’s reformulation of Avicenna’s metaphysics: see 4–7; 25fn51. 566 D. C. Schindler being, namely, God, through a disciplined application of the unique interpretation of analogy offered by Aquinas. While this progression of reason, he affirms, does indeed yield positive knowledge of the essence of God, it nevertheless brings to light at the same time, and precisely by virtue of its analogous character, the “radical incompleteness” of this knowledge (252; 273–74). In so doing, it does not in the least pre-empt the direct knowledge that God offers of himself to human reason in the gift of revelation. Quite to the contrary—and Fr. White’s presentation is particularly compelling on this point—since a negation can occur only in relation to some affirmation, the very positivity of natural knowledge does not threaten but rather allows us to deepen the mind’s openness to what lies beyond that knowledge. Thus conceived, natural knowledge of God answers both the philosophical and the theological objections mentioned above. It avoids both the Scylla of “immanentism,” which would eclipse God’s transcendence through the restriction of theology to the limits of natural reason, as well as the Charybdis of “extrinsicism,” which would concede a wholly secular form to human reason and make revelation and grace therefore altogether foreign to human nature. It does so through a sophisticated interpretation of analogy, which highlights in an uncommon way the importance of Aristotle. At the heart of Fr. White’s project is the development of a robust account of what he calls the “via inventionis,” the path of discovery, by which reason in its specifically philosophical mode reflects on the objects of experience and moves in a methodical way to the ultimate cause of those effects. This path has as its correlate the “via judicii,” which figures much less significantly in Fr.White’s account (we will return to this point below), and which complements the movement of the prior via by exercising judgment on reason’s starting points in the light of more ultimate discoveries.7 Fr.White argues that the via inventionis has a complex inner structure, which, if followed faithfully, leads to a non-ontotheological form of natural knowledge of God that does not falsely anticipate and thus compromise the novelty of revelation. The essence of his critique of the three twentieth-century Thomists he treats is that each of them short7 See Wisdom, xxix. Fr. White’s description differs somewhat from Aquinas’s own, as Aquinas presents it in the text cited by Fr. White, namely, ST 1.79.8. According to Aquinas, in the way of judgment, reason returns to the first principles in order to judge the conclusions in their light. Aquinas is making the point, here, that the simple apprehension of first principles—by intellectus—is the beginning and end of all discursive movement by ratio. His description of the two paths is, in this respect, a sort of exitus and reditus movement of ratio with respect to the intellective “rest” of the unmoving first principles. Discovering the Given 567 circuited crucial aspects of this path, so to speak, skipped over essential steps of the journey, and so ended up falling into just the sort of ontotheological dead-end the path is meant to circumvent.The great importance of Aristotle—whom Fr. White claims contemporary Thomists have tended to underestimate and who stands behind Aquinas almost as the true protagonist of this book—lies in the fact that he traced out the basic itinerary of the via inventionis, even if Aquinas provided decisive reinterpretations of that itinerary in the light of revelation. To oversimplify Fr. White’s account to a certain extent,8 the via inventionis prevents an over-hasty leap into the theological by requiring a patient analysis of the being that we encounter in our ordinary experiences, first in terms of its intrinsic causes (substance and accidents) and then in terms of its extrinsic causes (the categories of act and potency become crucial here).The first analysis considers being in its first act, by which it is what it is, while the second considers being in its second act, that is, in terms of its operations, by which it makes fully actual what it is and so attains its perfection. These analyses involve above all two forms of analogy that Aristotle introduced and Aquinas subsequently took over, namely, the analogy of proper proportionality, by which relations between diverse things and their properties are compared (A is to B as C is to D), and the “pros hen” or ad unum analogy (sometimes called the analogy of proportion or analogy of attribution), by which one or many things are compared to an other, which is primary. As Aristotle observed, being is not a genus, which can be understood by abstraction from all specific differences, but is distributed among all the categories differently in each case. To acquire an adequate concept of being therefore requires a comparison of the different ways in which being manifests itself.We thus compare accidents to substance, and the act-potency polarity across the different modes of being’s realization. But the reflection on substance in terms of act and potency moves reason to consider the transcendent cause of substances, and so discloses the separate substance(s) as primary. Because this ontological primacy, however, is decidedly not a logical priority, in the sense that we would have to understand the cause first in order to understand the effects, Fr. White insists that Aristotle does not fall prey to an ontotheological conception of metaphysics.9 8 Fr. White’s account is far richer than we indicate here. The impressive sophisti- cation of his presentation of natural reason’s acquisition of analogical knowledge of God is one of the real merits of his book. 9 See Wisdom, 64–66. Fr. White justifies Aristotle in the face of this critique, not so much on the grounds of a particular conception of God’s transcendence of the world (which is certainly at the very least ambiguous in Aristotle), as in terms of his methodology: according to Fr. White, Aristotle does not presuppose a 568 D. C. Schindler What, then, does Aquinas add to what we already have in Aristotle? According to Fr. White, Aquinas’s contribution, with respect to the question of natural theology, lies not simply in adding something, namely, the novelty of Christian revelation, but perhaps even more significantly in preserving what is old, so to speak, within the new context that transforms it. Thus, he introduces a third kind of analogy to the two one finds in Aristotle, in order to clarify whatever ambiguity there may be regarding God’s transcendence of the world, but he does so without eliminating the richly analogical sense of being founded in ordinary experience of the world that Aristotle offers. This new kind is the “ad alterum” analogy, which Aquinas explicitly distinguishes from the ad unum analogy that would threaten to lead us to think of the difference between God and the world as encompassed by a single order of being (88–94). This new form of analogy, based on a notion of God as creator, and thus of the world as entirely dependent on him in every respect, excludes the positing of a common ratio shared between cause and effect. God infinitely transcends the world. This means that the nature of God cannot be grasped intuitively, apprehended per se, or represented in any adequate sense by the knowledge we have of creatures. Nevertheless, as we discover especially at the end of Fr. White’s book, this does not mean that we are left with a radical apophaticism that would deny any positive natural knowledge whatever. To prepare for this argument, Fr. White makes the claim that, although the ad alterum analogy is primary for Aquinas, he does not simply reject the role played by the other two modes. In the middle chapters of his book, Fr. White attempts to show, through a discussion of the three modern Thomists, what happens when one focuses in too exclusive a manner on one sort of analogy in one’s philosophy, even if that happens to be the ad alterum analogy that Aquinas identifies as appropriate in our thinking about God, to the exclusion of the other two. The tendency toward ontotheology, that is, the compromise of God’s transcendence through the absorption of the being of the first cause into a metaphysical horizon, might be fairly evident in the exclusive use of the analogy of proper proportionality (in which the things compared share a common ratio) or of the ad unum analogy (in which many things are related to a “one” that represents their ground), which Fr.White attributes to Maritain and Rahner respectively, but somewhat more surprisingly he believes Gilson falls into ontotheology, so to conception of God as the a priori starting point for his reflection, which is why he cannot be said to commit the fault of ontotheological thinking. We will discuss the implications of a primarily methodological conception of ontotheology below. Discovering the Given 569 speak, from the other direction because of an overemphasis on the third form. In this case, we have, more specifically, a “theo-ontology,” in which the distinction between being and God is collapsed, not by reducing God to the horizon of common being, but rather by reducing common being, as it were, to the horizon of God’s being (117–20). The reason this move is problematic is that if we leap over the causal analysis of created being and proceed immediately to God, we will tend to impoverish the notions that are meant precisely to illuminate our understanding of God, so that we will require God’s own self-revelation to compensate. It is not an accident, according to Fr. White, that Gilson apparently fell into crisis regarding the question how one was to demonstrate the real distinction between essence and esse in dialogue with Scotists, for example, or other nonThomists, and to explain the meaning of esse, the act of being which represents the perfection of all perfections. As a result of this crisis, Gilson was eventually led to posit God’s revelation of himself as “I am who am”—or rather, to highlight Aquinas’s own positing of this revelation—as the origin of the notion of esse. By thus substituting the work of grace for that of reason, Fr. White claims, Gilson thereby abandoned the possibility of a meaningful natural theology (129–32). In the last—and perhaps most compelling—part of his book, Fr. White distinguishes his own position from those of other contemporary Thomists. On the one hand, there are the Aristotelian Thomists, such as Ralph McInerny, who insist that we must begin thinking with natural philosophy as a way to the notion of an unmoved mover, and so to the concept of a “separate substance,” that is necessary for metaphysics proper. Fr.White argues that these thinkers fail to see that the notions employed in physics are always already metaphysical, and also end up including God within metaphysics, rather than adhering to the proper order of the via inventionis (204–16). According to the path of discovery, God enters metaphysics, not as its subject (as would be the case in ontotheology), but strictly speaking only insofar as God is the cause of its subject, that is, being. On the other hand, against contemporary Thomists such as Denys Turner who he claims “overemphasize” the apophatic element in Aquinas’s thought, Fr.White argues that, even if God is not the subject of metaphysics, the via inventionis nevertheless opens up to genuinely positive knowledge of God. As a sort of counterpart to Gilson, Turner highlights the philosophical darkness, we might say, of the concept of esse outside of God’s self-revelation, a concept to which we attain, for Turner, through a reflection on nothingness—which Fr. White points out is merely conceptual because it cannot be encountered anywhere in experience. What is missing in Turner’s approach, for Fr. White, is once again the priority of a causal analysis of being, by which we gradually enrich 570 D. C. Schindler our understanding of esse through a posteriori reflections on the beings we encounter in the world rather than through an aprioristic conception of absolute nothingness. In this latter case, we would be looking at the world too immediately, so to speak, from God’s perspective, and would fail to undertake the patient labor of metaphysical reflection (265). What this renewed emphasis on the via inventionis brings home is that, to say it again, God does not lie within the horizon of metaphysics, which is what the critique of ontotheology charges, but is nevertheless approached most truly by metaphysical reflection, and specifically that metaphysical reflection which faithfully follows the itinerary of the via inventionis. According to this approach, in a nutshell, reason comes to desire knowledge of the essence of causes through a contemplation of their effects. Thus, the path on which Fr. White takes thought reveals that reason naturally desires an end that exceeds its nature, and that, moreover, this incompleteness is something that reason discovers in its own operations, rigorously followed out to their proper ends, so that one cannot insist that revelation is necessary in principle to bring this incompleteness to light (287–88). Such a conception, according to Fr. White, is crucial for us to be able to say, as we must, that revelation brings a novelty to reason, that is, that it introduces insight into God in a wholly gratuitous manner, a knowledge that reason cannot grasp on the basis of its own resources alone, and yet at the very same time it introduces this insight as something that is not simply foreign to reason, but rather fulfills its deepest aspiration. As Fr. White sees it, natural reason leads us genuinely to the threshold of the order of grace and revelation, if not in fact over it. He explains that we can best formulate this complex idea by saying that philosophy ultimately posits the existence of God—that is, it tells us simply that God exists—but that theology’s essential role is eventually to tell us who or what God is.10 Only God’s gratuitous invitation into his inner life— which as subsistent intellect and will in which subject and object are identical is the wisdom itself of which our metaphysical aspirations in the face of modernity are a mere, a glorious, image—is able to bring to completion the longings of the human heart. 10 “A philosophical and Thomistic emphasis on our knowledge that God exists, and our simultaneously radical ignorance of what God is, demonstrates the profound compatibility between Thomistic natural theology, and the claims of Christian divine revelation. Revelation is the answer of who or what God is, responding to the void in our knowledge of God that philosophy helps us to identify. This position seems comprehensive, insofar as it seeks to be a multi-sided response to the above-mentioned difficulties”—that is, concerning the avoidance of both philosophical agnosticism and a rationalist presumptousness. Wisdom, 253–54. Discovering the Given 571 There are a number of things to praise about Wisdom in the Face of Modernity. A vigorous defense of the scope and capacity of reason is no doubt one of the greatest needs of our age, and Fr. White provides this not only in terms of the central aim of the book—namely, to demonstrate the viability of natural knowledge of God—but also through the means by which he accomplishes this aim. A sustained philosophical argument, which patiently follows each of the paths it requires and which shows a careful attention to texts, is increasingly uncommon in the contemporary American academy. At the very same time, he insists on the modesty of reason, which is paradoxically just as urgent a reminder in our age as the former. While precisely the opposite may seem to be true, in fact the genuine modesty of reason cannot be separated from its strength, and vice versa. Fr. White demonstrates this paradox in his very helpful critique of Denys Turner’s negative theology as he describes it in the book’s final chapter (255–68). Turner is well known for his insistence on natural reason’s ultimate inability to know anything about God’s nature, and yet, as Fr. White respectfully points out, this excessive apophaticism results from a radical sense of contingency that is based on something that lies outside of any possible experience, namely, the concept of absolute nothingness, out of which God created. In this case, reason simultaneously knows both too much and too little: it begins, not with anything given in actual experience, but with its own projected concept, which in fact involves what Fr.White suggests is a presumptuous insight into God’s intentions in creating, and it is this very presumption that eventually leads reason to an empty silence regarding the nature of God. Its very “preemptive” conception of absolute nothingness makes reason improperly passive with respect to God’s self-revelation once it comes. In contrast to presumptuous passivity, Fr. White argues for the paradox of a natural desire for what lies beyond nature, which he rightly observes is the only way to avoid an extrincism between faith and reason without at the same time falling into an immanentism that would reduce faith to reason. What is certainly Fr. White’s most important contribution to the discussion is his sophisticated interpretation of the three different senses of analogy in Aquinas, which balances the more apophatic aspect of the ad alterum analogy with the more positive aspects of the other two types. While it is true that Aquinas identifies the first as the only appropriate analogy with respect to God,11 to isolate this analogy from the others 11 As Fr. White observes, Aquinas explicitly states that “only the ad alterum attribution is valid for the creature/God relation” in ST I, q. 13, a. 5 (see Wisdom, 90fns67–68; 90–91). Fr. White qualifies this statement shortly thereafter, however, by explaining that Aquinas speaks favorably of the analogy of proper proportionality in his 572 D. C. Schindler would significantly impoverish the concept of being we analogously attribute to God, and indeed would tempt us to substitute our intuitive leap to God—which Fr. White repeatedly criticizes as “aprioristic”—for the progressive development of a posteriori reflection. Fr.White helpfully observes that God is not revealed exclusively through the medium of existence, but also through essences, or in other words, the meaning of God comes to expression also in creatures (259–60). To find God, we might say, reason may not leap over or otherwise bypass the world through some aprioristic vision, but must rather patiently and attentively work its way through the world. One is reminded here of Hegel’s criticism of Schelling, whose philosophy of religion seemed to Hegel to be “shot from a pistol.”12 In more technical language, God is indeed not in any direct manner the subject of metaphysics, but is rather the cause of its subject, which is being qua being. Reason’s natural desire for God therefore leads it in some sense first into the being of the world, and only then into its transcendent principle. This is a principle that we cannot forget without far-reaching deleterious consequences for both reason and faith. Fr. White’s emphasis on the causal analysis of being as an indispensable moment of natural theology is crucial in this regard. II On the other hand, however, there are a number of philosophical decisions that Fr. White makes that, we hope to show, are not necessary to his essential positions and, moreover, in certain important respects weaken or even work against the very contributions his book offers. As we will see, these tend to concern not so much his positive claims as it does what he believes these claims have to exclude. It is not, of course, possible to comment on every argument constructed in the book, though his claims are so interesting and provocative that one is quite tempted to do so. Nor is there space here to pass judgment on the accuracy of his interpretations in every particular case. It would quickly become too complex to try to more mature commentaries on Aristotle; with reference to an essay by Leo Elders, though, he claims that one ought not to exaggerate the discontinuities between Aquinas’s early and later texts (92fn70). It is important for Fr. White to make this point because, as we have mentioned, he wishes to raise a criticism of what he says is Gilson’s too exclusive use of the ad alterum analogy. 12 Although Hegel did not mention Schelling by name, it is clear that he has his old seminary roommate in mind when he criticizes the “rapturous enthusiasm which, like a shot from a pistol, begins straight away with absolute knowledge, and makes short work of other standpoints by declaring that it takes no notice of them.” Preface, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 16. Discovering the Given 573 sort out, for example, Fr. White’s interpretation of Gilson’s interpretation of Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle’s interpretation of reality, and in any event such an endeavor can only be of secondary importance in the end.13 Instead, we will focus on certain basic positions that Fr. White adopts and judgments he makes, which we will evaluate on their own merits and above all in terms of their logical implications, leaving open in the present context the question to what extent his account of Maritain, for example, or Aquinas is an adequate one. As far as those questions go, the best hermeneutical approach is no doubt the one Eric Voegelin offers in another context (and that approach incidentally reflects the Catholic spirit of St. Ignatius): when one is faced with textual ambiguities in the writings of a great thinker that allow several possible readings, the best interpretation is always the most profound one. Fr. White, for his part, follows this principle with respect to Aristotle, when he rightly claims it is problematic to make him a simple foil against which to demonstrate the novelty of Christianity, as certain Thomists have a tendency to do (33). His book is a testimony to the way one’s thinking can be enriched if one avoids such a temptation. On the other hand, however, Fr. White himself falls to this temptation in his reading of other thinkers, and his own reflections are the worse for it. We will begin our assessment by focusing on just two examples, which prove to be decisive for Fr. White’s book. On the one hand, there is Fr. White’s reading of Plato, whom he presents, so to speak, as a simple foil against which to demonstrate the novelty of Aristotle. On the other hand, there is his reading of Heidegger, in particular the philosopher’s notion of “ontotheology,” which is pivotal for Fr. White’s general argument since it sets the terms of the problem to which he intends to respond. To say it again, our point in discussing his interpretations of these two thinkers is not in the first case to quibble over the right reading of their work—indeed, to do so would require a lengthy presentation and comparison of texts, along with discussions of different scholarly judgments on them, for which there is no space in the present context—but rather to show the implications Fr. White’s rather narrow interpretations have for the content of his own thinking. Fr. White’s interpretation of Plato boils down to two basic judgments: that Plato failed to come to any satisfactory articulation of the nature of wisdom, insofar as he offers a “progressively evolving” attempt (35), through 13 This is not to say that questions of the accuracy of interpretations are without signif- icance even with respect to what we are proposing as being of primary importance, namely, the judgment of the truth and goodness of philosophical claims. 574 D. C. Schindler his early, middle, and late dialogues, to reach a goal that remained elusive; and, second, that he conceived the ultimate cause of the cosmos, namely, the good, in a strictly univocal fashion (38). One of the implications of this univocity is that Plato is led to identify what is first in the order of logic with what is first in the order of being—which, as we will see in a moment, is a primitive incidence of what Fr. White will call ontotheology. We will pass over Fr. White’s first judgment, which presents a strangely flat-footed reading of Plato that demonstrates little sensitivity to the interpretive demands of the dialogue genre, not to mention the fact that the best recent scholarship on Plato, for good philosophical, historical, and philological reasons, no longer follows a simple “developmental” ordering of the dialogues.14 More directly relevant to the discussion to follow is the second judgment. Fr. White’s suggestion that Plato reduced the good to what Aristotle calls the formal cause15 overlooks a host of claims Plato makes about the good in the main place in his corpus it arises, that is, books 6 and 7 of the Republic. There, Plato not only refers to the good as a “form,” or more precisely, an “idea” (Rep., 505a) (which does not have the technical meaning that “formal cause” has, though it is clearly related in some sense), but he also identifies it as the source of all being, truth and knowledge (Rep., 509b) (that is, as what one might call the supreme “efficient” cause) and defines it as that which everyone desires in everything he does (Rep., 505d–e) (that is, as a “final cause”). Moreover, it is just this “comprehensively causal” character, as it were, which is due to its ultimacy, that complicates our attempts to know it: the soul, he says, is “unable to get a sufficient grasp of just what it is” (505e). The good, for Plato, can never be a simple object for the mind, as is the univocal concept to which Fr. White reduces it, because it is the cause of the mind’s objects and indeed of the very light by which the mind comes 14 Although non-developmental interpretations of Plato have never been lacking, we may fairly say that such interpretations have become mainstream in recent scholarship on Plato, at least among those outside of the analytic school. In 1991, Jacob Howland published an essay that demonstrated incontrovertibly that all of the attempts to establish a chronology of the dialogues are question-begging, resting on a set of prior assumptions about the content of that philosophy: see Howland, “Re-Reading Plato: The Problem of Platonic Chronology,” Phoenix 45.3 (1991): 189–214. 15 According to Fr. White, in Plato, “as a universal form, the good is conceived in a strictly univocal fashion” (Wisdom, 38). He goes on to say that “Plato’s quest for wisdom implies an identification of this wisdom with the form of the good, and entails a corresponding problem of how all things participate in this universal (univocal) form. . . . Aristotle, however, demonstrates that God (or the divine) cannot be the formal cause of the goodness of things” (Wisdom, 41). Discovering the Given 575 to know them. As we have tried to show at length elsewhere,16 Plato articulates a very sophisticated analogy by which the mind progressively ascends toward the good, but at the same time finds its path reversed to the extent that the good, which the mind discovers only at the end of its thinking,17 is never merely the end but reveals itself at the same time and for the same reason as prior to everything that the mind has thought. Plato calls the good the “unhypothetical first principle” (Rep., 510b), which is a paradox. Normally, because one can never achieve an absolute perspective from which to start (pace transcendental idealism), the starting points of one’s thinking are relative and so conditional, requiring confirmation by other discoveries. This is what makes them “hypothetical,” meaning both what undergirds and thus supports one’s thinking, and also what depends on something other than itself for its own truth. But the good, which is for Plato absolutely first, is a governing principle of thought without being conditional: its truth does not depend on something else, that is, it cannot be demonstrated in terms of something more fundamental and thereby confirmed, but for this very reason it cannot be a simple starting point for thinking. The good is therefore not an “aprioristic” concept from which one starts as a secure possession and which therefore “grounds” all of one’s subsequent thinking; instead, it is as he famously says, “beyond being” (Rep., 509b), which means in this context that, because being is the proper object of reason (Rep., 477c–d; 478a), the good is prior to the beginning, just as it is posterior to the end. The a priority of the a posteriori, if we may put the paradox thus, is arguably the hallmark of the Platonic tradition in matters of natural theology; we will return to its significance with respect to Fr. White’s general argument in a moment. Fr. White’s treatment of Plato is not unrelated to the account he offers of Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology. The issue in this case is not so much a facile dismissal as an oversimplification, which has an even more direct bearing since Fr. White constructs his interpretation of Aquinas (and various Thomists) precisely in response to and in the terms set by what he identifies as ontotheology. According to Fr.White, the core problem that Heidegger refers to as the “onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics” that defines Western thinking is that it 16 D. C. Schindler, Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press of America, 2008), 139–75. 17 “At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything.” Rep., 517b–c. 576 D. C. Schindler attempts to study the conditions of existence for any possible being. To do so it must have recourse to a consideration of the immanent laws of human systematic thinking (i.e., principles of causality and sufficient reason) that are employed when metaphysicians attempt to explain sensible reality. The use of these principles eventually requires (or invites) the invocation of an aprioristic concept of God in order to explain the sum total of all possible knowledge and experience. This structure of thinking places God at the summit of the science of metaphysics and simultaneously makes him the ultimate explanatory principle of human understanding. God is thereby assimilated by natural theology into its own systematic representation of “being,” and in this process the divine is inevitably conceived . . . as the “supreme being” who alone is self-caused (causa sui ). (96–97) The oversimplification that occurs in Fr. White’s interpretation of the critique of ontotheology becomes apparent in the fact that he takes it ultimately to concern methodology. The next sentence after the text just cited runs: “By these standards of measure, however, Aquinas’s methodological procedure cannot be characterized as ontotheological” (97).Whenever Fr. White mentions ontotheology, which represents as we have seen a central theme of his book, he essentially reduces it to a critique of “aprioristic” thinking about God.18 This is thinking that does not, so to speak, work its way gradually up to God (in a manner that leaves thinking open for revelation), but rather takes a concept of God for granted in one way or another as the basis of its interpretation of everything else: philosophical thinking starts with God, in other words, when it should rather end with him. Because this is the essence of the problem, as Fr. White sees it, a satisfying response requires little else, in the end, than developing a natural theology “that does not presuppose implicitly that which it seeks to attain by rational argument” (xxx), which means that, for a natural theology to be adequate, arguments for God must be “uniquely a posteriori” (97), based on experience of real beings rather than on concepts of possibility. An even cursory consideration of what is no doubt Heidegger’s most succinct explicit statement of the problem of ontotheology, a passage from the essay “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics” that Fr. White himself cites (23–24fn49), suffices to show that the issue is not primarily one of methodology but one of substance (and therefore also of methodology): 18 See, e.g., Wisdom, xxx, xxii, 26, 29, 34, 64, 65, 97, 174, 191, 201, 204, 206, and so forth. Perhaps the clearest example of this association, which connects the problematic directly with the question of the philosophy-theology relationship, can be found on 249–50. Discovering the Given 577 Because Being appears as ground, beings are what is grounded; the highest being, however, is what accounts in the sense of giving the first cause. When metaphysics thinks of being with respect to the ground that is common to all beings as such, then it is logic as onto-logic.When metaphysics thinks of beings as such as a whole, that is, with respect to the highest being which accounts for everything, then it is logic as theologic. . . . The onto-theological constitution of metaphysics stems from the prevalance of that difference which keeps Being as the ground, and beings as what is grounded and what gives account, apart from and related to each other; and by this keeping, perdurance is achieved. . . . The deity enters into philosophy through the perdurance . . . the perdurance results in and gives Being as the generative ground. This ground itself needs to be properly accounted for by that for which it accounts, that is, by the causation through the supremely original matter—and that is the cause as causa sui.This is the right name for the god of philosophy. Man can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god.19 As the text makes evident, the problem is not, in the first place, that one presupposes what one ought to prove—that is, it is not simply “aprioristic” thinking—but rather concerns most fundamentally our understanding of the nature of being, of the relationship that holds sway between being and beings, of cause, and of reason generally. Heidegger suggests that classical metaphysics tends to enclose reality, we might say, at its most basic level inside a relationship of ground to the grounded, so that even God himself is presented in essentially the same terms. In metaphysics, God appears as the “causa sui.” The upshot of such a conception is that nothing in the world stands outside of this essentially transitive relationship of one thing acting on another. One of the implications of ontotheology, in other words, is a world vulnerable to, and in fact positively inviting of, the tyranny of technology. This is why Heidegger responds to the problem, not, like Fr. White, by insisting on exclusively a posteriori reasoning, but rather by thinking of being in a way he takes to be radically different from the main current of the Western tradition: namely, most ultimately in un-grounded or non-causal terms. The strange language he uses—the “lighting” or “clearing,” the “Er-eignis,” the “Es gibt”—serves to evoke an attentiveness to the event of the “thereness” of being, which gives itself to our grateful thinking (denken als danken), without invoking a discrete cause that produces an effect. The disorientation that this alien idiom brings about is meant in part to make us fall 19 Martin Heidegger, “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics,” in Identity and Difference, trans. J. Staumbaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 42–74, here 70–72. Cited in Wisdom, 23–24fn49. 578 D. C. Schindler poetically silent before the mystery of being so that we may be alert to its own creative silence. The West has “forgotten” being because it has become incapable of meditative silence. This is of course just a thumbnail sketch of one aspect of Heidegger’s critique. The point in raising this as a contrast to Fr. White’s understanding of the matter, to say it again, is not in the first place to make an argument about proper readings of Heidegger, nor is it to defend him or his critique of ontheology. In fact, we have argued elsewhere that Catholics have generally been too quick to concede the terms of the problem Heidegger sets, and have typically responded only by showing why one figure or another ought to be excepted from his critique.20 This is essentially what Fr. White does in the present book, specifically with respect to Aristotle and an Aristotelian reading of Aquinas. A more fundamental response would require challenging the basic presuppositions regarding the nature of God, cause, being, thinking, and philosophy that lie behind Heidegger’s critique.21 In the present context, there is of course no room to present such a challenge. We wish only to suggest here that a narrow interpretation of Heidegger’s critique will provoke a narrow response. An engagement with Heidegger ought to provide the occasion, not simply for the articulation of a “general order of metaphysical inquiry,”22 but more fundamentally for a reflection on the very nature of reason in its relation to being and to God. Indeed, a prioritizing of methodology is arguably an expression of the very technologizing of thinking that Heidegger had in mind in his critique, so that an argument for exclusively a posteriori reasoning offends the spirit precisely in (and because of ) its attempt to obey the letter of that critique. In what follows we will try to show that Fr. White’s reductive interpretation of Heidegger, along with his facile dismissal of Plato, leads to problematically restrictive notions of both God and reason, and therefore to an inadequate conception of the relationship between philosophy and theology. More specifically, we will argue: (1) that the mode of reasoning that Fr. White champions finitizes God for the mind; (2) that the argument he advances for natural theology unreflectively presupposes 20 D. C. Schindler, “Wie kommt der Mensch in die Theologie? Hegel, Heidegger, and the Stakes of Ontotheology,” Revista Española de Teología 65 (October–December 2005): 437–65. 21 In a footnote, Fr. White does cite positively one of the rare examples of a genuine “turning of the tables” on Heidegger, namely, David Bentley Hart’s essay “The Offering of Names: Metaphysics, Nihilism, and Analogy” in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, ed. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 255–94, but he does not weigh the implications for his own discussion. 22 See chapter 7 of Wisdom, 201–50. Discovering the Given 579 the modern impoverished conception of reason that neglects the primacy of intellectus over ratio; and (3) that he leaves philosophy and theology ultimately too extrinsic to each other. We will also try to show that these three shortcomings are all logically connected. 1 Let us begin with the first charge. To put it in a nutshell, our claim is that an exclusively “a posteriori” approach to knowledge of God renders God a finite object to the extent that he is intelligible at all—a reduction that cannot be remedied by an insistence on the ultimate apophaticism of natural theology, as we shall see in a moment. There are two aspects to this problem. The first is that exclusively a posteriori reasoning makes the intelligibility of God unilaterally dependent on the intelligibility of the things we experience and reflect on in the world. Fr. White affirms that our knowledge of “the existence of God . . . is derived from creatures” (271). How strictly does he mean that what we know of God is derivative? Is God’s intelligibility less than and subordinate to the intelligibility of creatures? An appeal to the quoad nos–in se distinction does not suffice to avoid the disorder that this implication represents. Fr.White anticipates this potential problem by insisting on the analogical character of our knowledge of God, which comes about through the classical threefold method of naming God that Fr.White elaborates in the book’s final chapter: one posits a (finite) notion, negates whatever imperfection lies within it, and then attributes the thus purified notion in a “super-eminent” sense to God (268–74). The point of this method is precisely to avoid attributing something to God in a merely finite sense; the negation in the second moment allows the notion to stand for more in relation to God than it does when ascribed to creatures. But the danger is that, if the difference between God and the world is conceived in an exclusively negative manner—which is to say that if one moves from the finite to the infinite only by removing something, as it were (namely, what is taken to be an imperfection)—then anything positive in one’s resultant knowledge of God remains altogether finite.23 In this case, the “super-eminent” name 23 Along similar lines, but in a different context, Balthasar signals the danger in the philosophy of religion of “constructing” an idea of God by combining finite notions, in this case simply identifying the non-subsistence of esse with essence as we understand it, to achieve a concept of Ipsum Esse subsistens: “Thinking about the two finitudes together (even the nonsubsistence of the real points to such a finitude) does not result in the absolute.” Epilogue, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 49. If we acknowledge that the notion of the infinite achieved by simply negating the finite is a finite notion of the infinite, we 580 D. C. Schindler of God would essentially be a “super-sized” finite intelligiblity, alongside of which one would append an indeterminate openness to the infinity of God, which is void of content precisely because it is based simply on a negation. The “more” of God’s intelligibility in this approach lies therefore precisely outside of our thinking, rather than also in some (yet to be determined) sense “inside” of it.The significance of this crucial point will become more evident as we proceed. The only way to avoid simply juxtaposing the excess to the determinate concept is to acknowledge that the infinity of God bears in some sense positively on our understanding in the finite order. What could this mean? Here we come to the second aspect. To think of God as something we attain only at the end of our reasoning, that is, in an exclusively a posteriori manner, assumes that God lies, so to speak, “out there,” and not in any sense “in here” and always already present in our thinking, or to put it in more technical language, that it is possible to affirm God’s transcendence without necessarily and as a function thereof also affirming God’s immanence. It is precisely in this respect that Fr. White’s facile dismissal of Plato, and by extension the broad Christian tradition inspired by him, comes back to haunt him. Fr. White insists on the priority of a causal analysis of being in the development of a natural theology, and claims that a proper (natural) understanding of God emerges in our consideration of the extrinsic causes of being. Perhaps as a result of the importance Fr. White gives to Aristotle, he describes God almost exclusively in terms of final causality, and so in terms, not of being’s first act (its internal cause, namely, its substance), but of being’s second act, the operation by which being achieves its perfection. There is virtually no discussion, here, of God as creator, specifically as the first cause of the creative act that is in some respect prior even to substance. The danger here, of course, is that God thereby threatens to become a being that does not concern things in any sense as they are in themselves, but only that to which they subsequently relate. But, as the Platonic tradition strives always to recollect, as it were, if God is the transcendent cause of reality, then the meaning of God does not simply emerge after we get clear about the meaning of the world and so wholly on the basis of that meaning, but rather precisely because it is the meaning of God we must come to see that this meaning was always already operating in a manner that we can only ever be insufficiently aware of at any point over the course of our thinking. In other words, reason cannot attain to God exclusively in an a posteriori manner, but God must always also be “a priori” in some respect precisely insofar as he is the transcendent cause of all reality. This ought to heed the same warning in applying the divine names according to the method Fr. White elaborates. Discovering the Given 581 means that we cannot move, as it were, from A to B to C and then to God, but the attainment of God in our thinking necessarily requires us to go back to A, B, and C all over again and rethink their thus-transformed significance. This is what it would mean to say that the infinity of God bears positively on our notions, and is not something simply negatively derived therefrom. We will return to this point in a moment when we consider Fr. White’s conception of reason. One of the reasons Fr. White insists on excluding any “aprioristic” approaches to God is the very good one that it compromises God’s transcendence. If Aquinas acknowledges some “presentiment of God,” he explains, it has nothing to do with any “innate ideas” but is rather a desire for our perfection that is by implication a desire for God.24 The rejection of Cartesian “innate ideas,” however, and the compromise of God’s transcendence that they certainly do represent, need not lead to a rejection of any and all traces of the “a priori,” beyond a very general desire for perfection, in reason’s relation to God. One might say that the false dilemma that Fr. White presents himself—either a priori or a posteriori—is the price he pays for his facile dismissal of Plato. For a further alternative, beyond the two Fr. White allows, we might consider St. Augustine’s reflections on the mind’s relationship to God in the Confessions, above all in book X. Here, St. Augustine asks “where” and “when” it is he first encounters God, and passes from the “external” world of the senses to the “internal” world of the soul,25 getting closer as it were with each step, until he reaches the innermost region of the mind from which all of its powers spring, the region he calls memory. While one expects him to come upon God once this final door, so to speak, is opened, Augustine instead encounters a difficulty: to have a memory presupposes that one already has knowledge, that the encounter has already at some point taken place, which would mean that he had not yet in fact found the origin of that encounter. Affirming 24 Wisdom, 247. Although speaking of a “presentiment of God,” Fr. White indicates only one aspect of what Aquinas says regarding the appetitive order, and does not consider what he says regarding the understanding specifically. Aquinas insists in fact that God is implicit in our will, not only as final cause but also as efficient cause, and in our intellect as exemplar cause: “All things naturally tend to God, but not explicitly. . . . Accordingly, because God is the last end, He is sought in every end, just as, because He is the first efficient cause, He acts in every agent,” De veritate, q. 22, a. 2; “All cognitive beings also know God implicitly in any object of knowledge. Just as nothing has the note of appetibility except by a likeness to the first goodness, so nothing is knowable except by a likeness to the first truth.” De veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 1. The word “likeness” indicates the order of form. 25 Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), X. 6–8. 582 D. C. Schindler God as already part of one’s memory—as an “innate idea,” one might say—would compromise God’s transcendence, and ultimately eliminate the gratuity of the encounter with grace. On the other hand, however, Augustine points out that one could not seek God, and indeed could not recognize God if one in fact were to find him, unless one did already have a memory of God.26 This is, of course, a variation of “Meno’s paradox,” which Plato discusses in the dialogue of that name.27 Augustine solves the problem without short-circuiting the complexity through some reduction, and ends up describing the reality of the mind’s relation to God in extremely paradoxical terms: to put it succinctly, God lies indeed beyond the mind, and so beyond the memory, but not in the sense that God comes simply after the mind, as something it subsequently discovers simply outside of itself. Instead, God comes before the mind; he is, so to speak, earlier than the mind’s memory. Thus, after noting God’s presence in his memory,28 Augustine reflects: “Where, then, did I find you so that I could learn of you? For you were not in my memory before I learned of you.Where else, then, did I find you, to learn of you, unless it was in yourself, above me?”29 So, Augustine, here, reverses the perspective, as it were, and so discovers his mind in God rather than discovering God “in” his mind as an innate idea. This leads to the temporal paradox we have indicated, which he ascribes to God specifically as Beauty—“I have learnt to love you late, Beauty, at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late”—and provokes the realization: “You were with me, but I was not with you.”30 This, one could say, is the epistemological implication of the ontological truth Augustine affirms, namely, that God is “interior intimo meo et superior summo meo.”31 It 26 “So I must go beyond memory too, if I am to reach the God who made me different from the beasts that walk on the earth and wiser than the birds that fly in the air. I must pass beyond memory to find you, my true Good, my sure Sweetness. But where will the search lead me? Where am I to find you? If I find you beyond my memory, it means that I have no memory of you. How, then, am I to find you, if I have no memory of you?” Confessions X. 17. 27 Plato, Meno, 80e. Plato solves the paradox through what he presents as a myth of recollection, according to which the soul already knows what it “learns” in time. The fact that it is presented as a myth, and has obvious logistical problems, indicates that Plato does not mean it in the “literalistic” sense it is often presumed to have. In any event, Augustine’s problem is even more difficult, since it involves a truth above the soul rather than one that is ultimately identical to it, as Plato appears to believe that the truth of the forms is. 28 Confessions, X. 24–25. 29 Ibid., X. 26. Emphasis added. 30 Ibid., X. 27. 31 Ibid., III. 6. Discovering the Given 583 serves to show that the issue of ontotheology cannot be decided by methodology alone, since the nature of the object reason discovers has, we might say, retroactive implications for reason’s approach. Our understanding of God is, for Augustine, neither merely a posteriori nor merely a priori, but is in fact both at once, because God could not genuinely transcend the mind without also being at the same time already present within it. We genuinely discover God as a truth that we did not know before, but we discover him precisely as preceding and enabling our search, as already having been present in and guiding it all along the way.To reject this “a priori” dimension and insist that our knowledge of God is not presupposed in any sense by our inquiry but results simply from the purely natural efforts of reason is what we might call “epistemological semipelagianism.”32 The affirmation that our knowledge of God is a priori because it is a posteriori, to say it again, is nothing more than the epistemological expression of the ontological truth that God is immanent in all things precisely because he transcends them all, so that to deny his immanence is to deny his transcendence.33 This paradox is summed up perhaps most succinctly in Nicolas of Cusa’s famous formulation: God is so other, he is the not other, the “non aliud.”34 The Christian tradition took over and deepened this originally Platonic insight into the mind’s relation to the first cause for what is no doubt the best possible reason: because it is undeniably true. Now, to be sure, it was not Augustine’s aim, in book X of the Confessions, to present an argument for the existence of God. Instead, he was simply reflecting in these passages on the mind’s relation to God within the context of an already-established faith. It would be important to explore in detail what the truth of the paradox would imply for such arguments, which we cannot do in the present context except to make a very general observation.35 At the very least, one would have to say that the simple a 32 Whereas Pelagianism concerned a particular interpretation of Adam and the effects of original sin, “semipelagianism,” which was defined as a heresy at the Second Council of Orange in 529, consists of the claim that we can preserve the freedom of the act of faith only if we conceive it as initiated by an act of the natural will alone, without the aid of grace, even if we allow grace to give subsequent aid and bring the act of will to its fruition. 33 More specifically, to reject God’s immanence is to put God’s being in competition with the world’s being (where the world is, God is not, and vice versa), which is to reduce God and the world to beings of the same order, and thus to deny God’s transcendence of that order. 34 Nicholas of Cusa, De Li Non Aliud (On God As Not-Other ). 35 This is essentially what de Lubac does in The Discovery of God, especially chapter 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 57–86. 584 D. C. Schindler priori (so to speak) rejection in principle of all a priori arguments for the existence of God is suspicious—as would be any claim that only a priori arguments are legitimate. There would have to be room for both, with a priority given to a posteriori arguments insofar as God’s immanence is a function of his transcendence rather than the reverse. In this respect, we would have to reflect on why Fr. White, who otherwise champions Aquinas’s natural theology, would believe it necessary to reject Aquinas’s “fourth way” to God, which he deems to be itself “aprioristic” as Aquinas presents it, and which he therefore insists must be reread as founded on one of the other, more evidently “a posteriori,” arguments (168). 2 The paradox of the mind’s approach to God, in which it discovers “a posteriori” that God has preceded it, leads us to examine, not just reason’s initial principles, but more fundamentally the nature and operation of reason itself. If Augustine’s description of the mind’s relation to God is a good one, it is clearly insufficient to think of reason as following a simple progressive path from its self-evidential starting points, through an analysis of its experience, all the way up to God. The point is not to reject this path, but to refuse to isolate it as the whole of reason’s journey. Although it is certainly true that reason moves in a progressive way, if we absolutize this aspect, we will end up with what we might call an essentially “centrifugal” notion of reason, a view of reason as “fleeing its origins.” If, by contrast, it is indeed the case that the ultimate cause that reason seeks, adequately conceived, lies just as much at the origin as at the end, then on the one hand we will have to elevate the significance of reason’s “downward” or “reverse” path, by which it judges and so reconsiders its starting premises in the light of its later insights, and, on the other hand, we will have to enrich our sense of the intelligibility of the given, of what therefore precedes and enables the subsequent work that reason carries out in its achievement of knowledge. We will see how both of these dimensions come into play in aspects of Fr. White’s criticisms of Maritain and Gilson. Let us recall, first of all, that Fr. White’s case for natural theology centers on what he calls the “via inventionis,” the “path of discovery,” which he follows St. Thomas in distinguishing from the “via judicii,” the “path of judgment”: “Aquinas himself distinguishes between a philosophical via inventionis, or way of inquiry, by which the intellect proceeds from initial, self-evident principles to scientific conclusions, and the via judicii, by which the intellect judges in the light of its more ultimate discoveries the initial principles from which it began” (xxix). Although he mentions at one point that both dimensions are part of philosophical Discovering the Given 585 reflection in Aquinas’s conception of the matter,36 he also admits that he focuses almost exclusively on the via inventionis. In fact, he tends to identify the path of discovery with philosophy simply.37 It ought to be clear how the identification of philosophy with this path fits in with Fr. White’s interpretation of the problem of ontotheology: Fr. White wishes to show that reason does not (“aprioristically”) assume God at the outset, but must make its own way on the basis of ordinary experience to come to an (always analogical) understanding of God. It is precisely because the insights acquired, the discoveries made, are due to reason’s own efforts, for Fr. White, that we can call them genuinely philosophical. What was already disclosed to reason, before its labors, is therefore precisely not philosophical. This assumption regarding the nature and operation of reason becomes apparent in Fr. White’s criticism of Maritain: the French Thomist, he explains, misunderstands the place of the transcendentals in Aquinas’s thought, and is thereby led to a form of ontotheology in his natural theology. Maritain believes that metaphysics begins with what he calls an “intuition of being,” an intuition that includes the fundamental properties of being—unity, truth, goodness, and beauty.38 Given the “quasi-immediate” intuition of being,39 and the “resolutio” of this intuition into the transcendental properties, one is able to move directly to a demonstration of the existence of God by way of the analogy of proper proportionality. For Maritain, the transcendentals thus form part of the subject of metaphysics, and it is essentially on their basis that we proceed to natural knowledge of God (147). According to Fr. White, because Maritain bypasses a causal analysis of the beings in ordinary experience, he thinks of the mind’s journey to God 36 See Wisdom, 250. Although he refers to “philosophical thought” here, Fr. White clarifies elsewhere that Aquinas himself did not seek to distill a philosophical discourse about God for believers that is relatively autonomous with respect to a specifically theological discourse. Nevertheless, Fr. White’s argument is that such a distillation can be carried out on principles that Aquinas articulates— which means that the distinction between philosophy and theology is not foreign to his thought, even if it is one that he does not himself make explicitly. 37 See, e.g., Wisdom, 68 and 73. 38 See Wisdom, 139. Jacques Maritain considered beauty a transcendental property, whereas Fr. White does not. In this, he appears to follow Jan Aertsen, according to whom beauty does not add anything that is not already present in goodness precisely as following upon truth in the proper order of the transcendentals. This position is consistent with the “linear” interpretation of reason that we are suggesting Fr. White is advocating in the present book. 39 The reason it is not simply immediate is that Maritain affirms that this intuition is not innate but is achieved through the judgment of existence, and so is preceded by that judgment (see Wisdom, 139). 586 D. C. Schindler as consisting of an unpacking, so to speak, of the original intuition of being in which God is implicitly contained, and so overlooks the role of the ad alterum analogy, which Aquinas thinks is necessary for protecting God’s transcendence. Setting aside the question of the accuracy of Fr.White’s characterization of Maritain, let us consider his assessment from the perspective of what it reveals about his own suppositions regarding the operation of reason. Fr. White affirms, with Maritain, that “resolutio” is an essential part of metaphysics, but he argues that Maritain misunderstands what this term designates in Aquinas. Fr. White makes two judgments in this regard that are decisive with respect to the question of the nature of reason. First, Fr.White explains that “resolutio” is not principally an intuitive act for Aquinas, but is instead essentially reflexive—that is, we are not simply given the simple notions that lie at the foundation of metaphysics, but instead we arrive at them through a process of reasoning (143–44). This process, moreover, takes two forms in Aquinas, namely, a “forward-moving” or “scientific” form, by which reason proceeds from experience to first principles, which allows demonstration, and a “backward-moving” form in which reason analyzes the various definitions it assumes of things, reducing them to their most basic notions (144). According to Fr.White, the transcendentals do not arise through the former of these forms of resolutio, as Maritain seems to think, but through the latter. This leads to the second judgment Fr. White makes: This latter form of resolutio is epistemological, he says, rather than ontological; it concerns our most basic notions rather than causes of being. In fact, he goes on to identify the transcendental properties as in this respect similar to the principles of identity and non-contradiction, laws that regulate our thinking rather than aspects of being (144–45)—an astonishingly Kantian position for one who claims to be responding to modern thought with a classical wisdom. This interpretation entails Fr. White’s judgment that the transcendentals do not represent the subject of metaphysics for Aquinas, a role reserved for the basic parts of causal analysis, namely, substance and accidents, act and potency. The study of these causes, according to Fr. White, involves, indeed, the “resolutio” that founds genuine metaphysical inquiry, but in this case it is specifically the “forward-moving” (that is, a posteriori) form of resolutio, which Fr.White connects with the via inventionis.40 In a word, metaphysics is identified with the path of discovery, 40 See Wisdom, 144: “[T]he latter form of resolutio, meanwhile, ‘goes backward’ from basic experience to see what were the initial starting-points of human knowledge. It is an epistemological study, meant to discern the underlying archeology of all rational reflection, the most basic concepts from which all laws of thought are derived. The discovery of the transcendentals as the genetically primary notions Discovering the Given 587 which is in turn identified with the particular work, the reflexive activity, of reasoning as opposed to the intuitive act of understanding or insight. The classical tradition generally draws a distinction, in our knowing, between the intuitive moment (intellectus), by which the mind directly apprehends its object or perceives its self-evident first principles, and the discursive moment (ratio), by which the mind makes inferences, reasoning from principles to conclusions. According to Aquinas, these are not two separate acts, but rather two distinct aspects of the same act, just as the principle of movement and rest are one and the same. Ratio relates to intellectus, then, as movement to rest.41 Fr.White’s assessment of Maritain, as we have sketched it here, reveals that he tends to reduce philosophy to ratio. That he generally excludes intellectus from what counts as reason in the proper philosophical sense is revealed in the fact that he regularly refers to the “intellective” moment of thought as “fore-theoretical.”42 His distance from the classical tradition becomes unmistakable here: the word “theoretical” comes from , meaning, above all, “contemplation,” which is principally an act of   or intellection rather than  or ratiocination. For Aquinas, as for the classical tradition more broadly, intellection is the more perfect act; ratiocination exists as subordinate to and for the sake of intellection, just as movement is for the sake of rest. Intellectus is not simply a spring board for reason, but governs reasoning as both its origin and end. Thus, in calling the intellectus dimension of reason “pre-theoretical,” Fr. White has it exactly backwards: the via inventionis he elevates and in a certain sense isolates as the essence of reason is in fact “post-theoretical,” or perhaps in another respect it is itself “pre-theoretical” insofar as it aims to make genuine insight possible. It is in either case an instrument of the more fundamentally receptive act that characterizes genuine “theory.” If Josef Pieper is right that the eclipse of intellectus by ratio is one of the defining marks of the modern form of thought,43 then in this respect Fr.White’s conception of reason bears a strong resemblance to that of the very modernity in the face of which he intends to throw ancient wisdom. common to all acts of understanding comes about, for Aquinas, through this latter form of study.We can deduce, upon rational reflection, that there are certain starting points to our thinking, that were always, already there, even if we were not reflexively aware of them. Here we discover the primary notions that are the basis for such axioms as the law of non-contradiction and the principle of identity.” 41 Aquinas, ST I, q. 79, a. 8. 42 E.g., Wisdom, 134, 205, 210–11, 246, and so forth. 43 Josef Pieper, Leisure:The Basis of Culture, trans. Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: Saint Augustine’s Press, 1998), 9–14. 588 D. C. Schindler What are the implications of reducing the operation of the intellect to ratio, that is, reducing reason to the work of reasoning? We get an overshadowing of the two dimensions that, as we noted above, are essential for reason in relation to God. On the one hand, one would be inclined to minimize the significance of the given that precedes one’s reasoning, and on the other hand one would tend to neglect the “downward path” of reason, the “via judicii,” by which reason judges its starting points (that which is first quoad nos) in the light of its ultimate discoveries (that which is first per se). We will consider Fr. White’s minimizing of the “given” in just a moment. As for the second point, we have already observed that Fr. White admits it does not play a significant role in his argument (250).Why would it not? There is a curious similarity between reason’s path of judgment, as Fr. White describes it, and the role that Aquinas ascribes to faith in its distinction from what he calls the philosopher’s use of natural reason in the Summa contra Gentiles: in natural reason, we begin with creatures and end with God, while for faith God comes first and we consider creatures in the light of God, who represents their first principle.44 Now, an interesting dilemma arises here for one who thinks of reason primarily in terms of its discursive work of demonstration. If it is the case that what we know of the first principle is simply what we have inferentially derived from creatures (as we described above according to Fr. White’s “path of discovery”), then there is nothing to be gained by this “return trip” from God to creatures, and there is everything to be lost: for I am either simply acknowledging what it was I took for granted at the outset, or, if I purport to offer a demonstration of some aspect of the creatures on the basis of the conclusions I reached regarding the first principle for which they functioned as premises, then I am trapping myself in a vicious circle that would seem to undermine the philosophical legitimacy of what I had thought I had initially demonstrated. Things appear differently from the perspective of the more ample notion of reason that we are advocating. If one grasps the super-abundant intelligibility of what precedes our reasoning, one can see that the work of ratio would bring to light more than one explicitly understood at the outset of the very principle that enables one’s work. In this case, judging one’s starting points in the light of one’s discoveries would represent a genuine gain. At the same time, and for the same reason, however, it also introduces another paradox, because the development of our insight into our starting points implies, in turn, that we need to re-think our discoveries. And then of course this leads us to the necessity of a new judgment 44 ScG II, ch. 4. Discovering the Given 589 of our starting points. Instead of a simple linear progression, then, by which thought establishes “A” in a definitive way, then proceeds on its basis to an equally definitive “B,” and so on up the line—an itinerary Fr. White traces out in distinct stages in the penultimate chapter of his book—what we have here is rather a never-ending circle, whereby our most ultimate discoveries and our most basic starting assumptions reciprocally illuminate each other, and through this simultaneous ascent and descent reason penetrates ever more profoundly into its object. With this paradoxically progressing circling in mind, let us return to Fr. White’s judgment of Maritain. Fr. White contends that the mind “resolves” its matter in two different directions: the first is epistemological; it is a movement ever more deeply into the mind, as it were, by which reason comes to see what was always already intuitively grasped (intellectus) and thereby presupposed in its thinking. It is here that the transcendentals reveal themselves. The second movement is ontological; it is a movement ever more deeply into being, as it were, by which reason comes to grasp the essential causes of things through analysis (ratio). This is metaphysics proper. According to Fr.White, Maritain confuses these two movements by making the transcendentals the subject of metaphysics. Note that Fr. White is taking for granted, here, the very modern assumption that because the transcendentals are presupposed a priori in all of our thinking, therefore they are epistemological—that is, just “notions” or “definitions”—rather than ontological. An alternative approach would be to take them as presupposed in all of our causal analyses, but not simply as a springboard necessary to get our thinking started, a non-ontological tool that subsequently enables our inquiry into the being that lies “out there” beyond the mind. Rather, in line with Aquinas’s description of the relation between intellectus and ratio, as the most basic features of the being that is the first notion to enter the mind, they stand among the first principles that form the bases of our discoveries, but then in turn they cast a light for the judgment of what we have discovered. More specifically, we presuppose a grasp of the good, the one, and the true, but flesh out their intelligible content through a causal analysis of substance, accidents, act, and potency, and then in turn judge the meaning of these on the basis of the transcendentals. We need to understand actuality in order to know what goodness is, but we also need to know what goodness is to understand actuality properly. Once again, what comes to light a posteriori illuminates what was already present a priori. We noted above that a reduction of reason to ratio leads one to minimize the significance of the given in one’s view of reason.We can see how this occurs by considering Fr. White’s assessment of Gilson, which will D. C. Schindler 590 lead us then to the final theme regarding the implications of all of this for the relationship between philosophy and theology. As Fr. White explains it, Gilson’s great insight into the uniqueness, the perfection, of esse, which Gilson takes to be Aquinas’s principal contribution to philosophy, was at the same time the cause of an intellectual crisis: the notion is so fundamental it seems to be indemonstrable, and so faced with the question of whence reason obtains such a notion, Gilson was forced by his presuppositions ultimately to appeal to revelation (104). But this, Fr. White judges, is fideism, insofar as it makes revelation the foundation of philosophical reflection, and substitutes grace for the work of natural reason. Against Gilson’s reading of Aquinas, Fr.White argues that the real distinction between esse and essence can be developed organically through an analysis of the internal and external causes of being, which means that, even if Aristotle did not affirm the real distinction in Aquinas’s sense, we can nevertheless draw it out of notions he does affirm (104). If we succeed in doing so, it shows that there is no need to turn to revelation to come to an understanding of God as transcendent cause of the world in order to understand the being that forms the subject of metaphysics. Now, the key text that Fr. White cites from Gilson as the basis for his charge of fideism is a passage from Elements of Christian Philosophy in which Gilson asks whence Aquinas obtained his “new notion” of esse, and replies: “[He] may well have first conceived the notion of an act of being [esse] in connection with God and then starting from God, made use of it in his analysis of the metaphysical structure of composite substances.”45 After pointing out that Aquinas himself explains that Moses himself learned “the sublime truth” that God is his own existence, Gilson observes: “This invites us to admit that, according to Thomas himself, the notion of esse can be learned from the very words of God.”46 Fr. White infers, then, from these very words of Gilson: “The intelligence, instructed by revelation, achieves a correct philosophical outlook upon reality.The nature of the intelligence is thus restored by grace to its original metaphysical capacities,” and then offers what he takes to be a summary statement of Gilson’s position: “henceforth it must be admitted that a realistic metaphysical knowledge of being and of God is possible for the human person only in cooperation with revelation. True philosophy must be conducted under the illuminating influence of Christian faith” (118).What a remarkable inference! Gilson states that it is possible for reason to achieve a philosophical insight in the 45 Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 131–32; cited in Wisdom, 117. 46 Gilson, cited in Wisdom, 118. Discovering the Given 591 light of faith, and Fr.White hears him saying that metaphysics has no beginning other than the Nicene Creed. The point in drawing attention to this straw man is, once again, not primarily to dispute Fr. White’s interpretation of Gilson, but to think through the implications more generally of the position he takes with respect to Gilson. Gilson does not think that the possibility that reason may achieve a philosophical insight within the mind’s illumination by faith entails a compromise of reason’s integrity. It is interesting to note that, as Fr. White admits in a footnote, Gilson does not in fact deny that one can discern the real distinction “through general philosophical analysis of beings we experience.”47 Fr. White takes Gilson’s later statement here to be a kind of confusion regarding the origin of this notion, but the more evident interpretation is that Gilson does not see faith and reason as opposed, in the sense that, if faith is at all operative in one’s thinking, then reason precisely to that extent is not. It is worth noting that this is the very same opposition that semipelagianism takes for granted with respect to the order of the will. For Gilson, the possibility that faith might enable philosophical reason to attain its own insight does not exclude the possibility that reason may come to this insight by other means (for example, through demonstration). Fr. White’s assessment of Gilson reveals, by contrast, that he takes these to be necessarily exclusive, which means that, for him, faith and reason are opposed to each other in principle—though this does not mean that they will be opposed de facto. As we will see in a moment, Fr. White avoids opposing faith and reason simply by separating their spheres of sovereignty, so to speak, and believes that an insistence on the necessity of each in their separate spheres suffices as an affirmation of their integration. The key to the difference between Gilson and Fr. White has to do with the rational significance of the given. As we suggested above, reason, for Fr. White, can claim for itself only those notions it has worked out on 47 See Wisdom, 119fn31. Fr. White cites what he calls, with Ralph McInerny, a “logical contradiction” in Gilson, who seems, on the one hand, to make the real distinction something established only at the end of metaphysical reflection and, on the other hand, to posit it at the same time as the “initial proper object” of Aquinas’s metaphysics. In fact, however, Gilson interprets Aquinas as affirming “being qua being” as the initial proper object of metaphysics, the “first sense” of which is substance (see Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd ed. [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952], 157 [emphasis added]), even if this does not remain its only sense. Rather, Aquinas deepens this notion in part in the light of creation and revelation. In this, we have an example of that which is first being “retroactively” transformed by what follows. There is contradiction here only if one reduces reason to a unilateral, linear discursus. 592 D. C. Schindler its own. This is what we have referred to as “epistemological semipelagianism.” For Gilson, by contrast, what is given to reason—and to that extent from “outside” of reason’s deliberate acts—may nevertheless belong to reason as its own. We can thus speak of a reciprocal illumination between the a priori and a posteriori: while it is true, as Fr. White argues, that a causal analysis of being can make the notion of esse (and its real distinction from essence) intelligible, giving it a certain concrete content through the interplay of different sorts of analogies, it is also true that the perfection of esse can never simply be derived from such an analysis; the meaning of ipsum esse has a wholeness, a “once-and-for-allness,” that cannot be pieced together from any number of conceptual parts—substance, accidents, act, and potency. Indeed, it reveals the proper meaning of the very parts from which it would be derived, which means that they depend on it even more than it depends on them.This is behind Gilson’s insistence that Aquinas takes over intact Aristotle’s notion of being, and at the same time radically transforms its meaning in the light of the notion of creation.48 Reason moves simultaneously from above and from below, but no matter which way reason initially proceeds, the former has an absolute priority over the latter. To affirm this is simply to unfold the implications of affirming the primacy of intellectus over ratio. 3 Finally, a reductive concept of reason, such as we have been describing, leads of necessity to an extrinsicist understanding of the relationship between faith and reason, theology and philosophy, no matter how much one insists on their close cooperation. Let us recall the indispensable point Fr. White insists on in this book, namely, that unless reason is capable of attaining knowledge of God, the revelation of faith will remain a foreign imposition, reason will not be intrinsically open to faith. These affirmations imply a unity coincident with an irreducible difference, and 48 Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 160: “The Aristotelian substance remains intact in the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. Yet, the Aristotelian substance cannot enter the world of St. Thomas Aquinas without at the same time entering a Christian world; and this means that it will have to undergo many inner transformations in order to become a created substance.” Fr. White also admits that Aquinas transforms Aristotle, but he gives little indication of what this means other than adding new notions such as the ad alterum analogy or extending Aristotle’s concepts into new areas: see Wisdom, 67. He is explicit that the light of faith cannot effect the sort of “inner transformations” that Gilson describes: see, for example, Wisdom, xxvfn9, in which he says that faith can purify one’s capacity to exercise natural knowledge but that it does not bear in any way on the “structure,” that is, on the inner content, of that knowledge. Discovering the Given 593 moreover indicate an internal connection rather than an external one. As we put it at the very outset of this essay, faith has room for natural reason inside of itself, and we may add now that the movement toward faith must originate from within reason rather than arise after reason has, so to speak, come to a stop. Given these parameters, let us consider Fr. White’s formulation of the relationship that he offers at the end of his book. As we noted at the outset, Fr. White explains the mutual cooperation without interference between faith and reason by saying that philosophy proves that God exists, while theology interprets the revelation of who and what God is. This would seem to harmonize faith and reason by ascribing to each a distinct responsibility in our coming to understand God. But in fact the moment we press below the surface of this formulation, the matter becomes much more complex: does natural reason tell us nothing at all about the essence of God? In his criticism of Denys Turner, Fr. White argues that metaphysics does offer positive, substantial (though of course analogical) knowledge of God’s nature.49 In this case, philosophy does not simply prove that God exists but reveals in its own way something of what God is. To the extent that this is true, we next have to ask: what is the relationship between this natural knowledge, which reason works out on its own, and the knowledge that is given in faith? Does revelation simply add something to what reason already knows of God in philosophy, so that this natural knowledge remains unchanged in the light of faith? There is a dilemma here. If we say that philosophy yields some truth about the nature of God in complete independence of faith, a truth that remains in every respect the same even once it is affirmed again by a believer, it means that what is revealed in faith has no bearing whatsoever on that particular philosophical truth. Now, Fr. White made the important point that we cannot construct a natural theology independently of faith as a 49 There is a curious shift in emphasis in the book: in the early chapters, Fr. White insists that philosophy yields no knowledge at all of God’s essence (see, for example, 97: “The discovery of God’s causality of existence in creatures permits an analogical attribution of perfections to God ad alterum, which implies no apprehension of God’s essence or nature”), but argues in the final chapter that there is some positive knowledge (“our naming of God signifies truly what God is substantially in himself,” 272). These two statements do not necessarily contradict each other; indeed, in the latter text Fr. White explicitly states that this does not entail any “quidditative knowledge.” But it would seem to be more in line with the text that he cites from Aquinas (ST I, q. 13, a. 2) to say that the knowledge gained “falls short of full representation” rather than to deny that it is quidditative. What, after all, could absolutely non-quidditative knowledge be? 594 D. C. Schindler standard by which the contents of faith are subsequently measured (xxiv). But it seems that he cannot avoid doing just this, given his construal of the nature of philosophical reason. Faced with this problem, Fr. White follows what would seem to be the obvious “escape hatch”: one says that natural theology, properly understood, not only obtains certain insights into the nature of God, but at the very same time recognizes its inadequacy, and this, then, opens reason up in a positive way to revelation (274). But this is no escape hatch! In fact, it only leads one deeper into the hole. For if one continues to maintain that what reason, even in its “radical imperfection” (254), comes to know of God is carried over into faith without any transformation, then one is in fact saying not only that faith is measured unilaterally with respect to these particular truths by reason, but now in addition that it is measured by a reason that is selfprofessedly inadequate! Here we have a prime example of the problem of reason simultaneously claiming both too much and too little. It does not do, at this point, to surrender all “positive” yield in philosophy, that is, to become excessively apophatic in one’s philosophizing and say that natural theology tells us only the sheer fact that God is, which is separate from all of the theological insight into what or who God is, for at least two reasons: this formulation would compromise divine simplicity, and it would leave reason and faith altogether external to one another, so that reason is structurally indifferent to God’s essence, and faith has no bearing on what it means to say that God exists. Nor can we content ourselves by saying philosophy tells us only what God is not, for, unless we revisit the basic presupposition we have been discussing, this denial trumps any positive disclosure of faith precisely insofar as reason is concerned. The whole content of theological dogma would in this case become sheer fideistic positivism. We cannot simply separate into two packages our natural theology and our sacred theology, even if we subsequently tie the two together. As Fr. White correctly affirms, there is “significant overlap” in fact between the two realms (255). But in this case, which has ultimate jurisdiction, so to speak, over this common area? We must be able to articulate the relationship between the two in such a way that we compromise neither the integrity of reason nor the ultimate authority of faith. My proposal here is that this can be done only by affirming the paradox of the a priority of the a posteriori, which we described earlier in the workings of reason. Let us take an example. Following the itinerary Fr. White describes in chapter 7, through an analysis of the internal and external causes of being, reason discerns the real distinction between esse and essence in creatures and thereby comes to affirm the non-composition of God’s being. In other words, reason, through its own reflections, achieves Discovering the Given 595 an insight into divine simplicity: God is absolutely one. As it turns out (!), this is also what theology says about God, only theology says at the same time that God is a Trinity of Persons, each of whom is really (not merely conceptually) distinct from the others.50 In other words, theology reveals that the affirmation of divine simplicity does not entail the denial of all real distinction in principle. Note, this revelation is not a rejection of natural theology, insofar as the dogmatic formulation of this mystery continues to affirm absolute simplicity, but at the same time the revelation implies a genuine transformation of the natural knowledge at issue here.We come to see that the affirmation of simplicity does not require the rejection of real distinction altogether, even if we would almost inevitably have assumed it did if we had never been enabled to rise above the insight into simplicity, so to speak, and consider it from a higher perspective. Once we do “rise above” it, however, we see that the notion acquires a new content, but that it does so without changing into some other notion. If one were, by contrast, to reject any transformation in principle, and insist that in all cases of an “overlap” between philosophy and theology, philosophy measures theology precisely as far as reason is concerned, one would have to say that the revelation of the Trinitarian nature of God is a pure datum of faith, that the real distinction among the Persons is strictly speaking irrelevant for how we interpret the meaning of divine simplicity, and, in short, that the Trinity is meaningless for us precisely as rational animals, that is, as human beings.51 The data of faith can be meaningful only if faith speaks to reason, rather than shouting over its head, as it were, and it can speak to reason only if it has something to say about the concepts reason rightfully takes to be its own. In other words, faith has to have rational implications, which means that it must have philosophical implications. Following out this example further, we can see how the transformation we are describing gives more substance to reason’s desire for what lies 50 Aquinas, ST I, q. 28, a. 3. 51 It is well known that Aquinas affirms the doctrine of the Trinity as lying above all reason, but the argument that he gives against Richard of St.Victor on this question is surely not his best: According to Aquinas, Richard of St.Victor’s argument that God is perfect charity, and that perfect charity requires plurality, does not work because sharing—that is, relation to an other—is not necessary if one has perfect goodness already in oneself (!). See ST I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2. It would seem that one could protect what Aquinas wants to protect, without being forced to make such a problematic argument, by saying that the doctrine of the Trinity does indeed lie beyond reason, but it nevertheless speaks to reason in some respect, along the lines we have been tracing. Though Aquinas argues against a rational proof for the doctrine of the Trinity, he also insists that reasons can be given for its “fittingness” after the doctrine is known. In this case, the revelation does indeed speak to reason. 596 D. C. Schindler beyond itself. Although Fr.White affirms this crucial principle, he is led by his presuppositions to interpret it primarily in formal terms: “Because revelation is not derivable from metaphysical knowledge of God, it remains extrinsic to and transcendent of human nature. However, because it responds to the deepest human inclination toward truth, authentic revelation also fulfills gratuitously the deepest intrinsic teleological dimension of the human person” (255).Without further qualification, this may be interpreted as saying that the mind desires truth; the Christian God happens to be true; and so revelation fulfills this desire. It is similar, incidentally, to Fr. White’s interpretation of Aquinas’s affirmation that man implicitly knows God in all that he knows: we desire happiness; God turns out to be what ultimately makes us happy; and so we can in this way say that we have some “presentiment of God.” But notice how question-begging both of these arguments are. How is it specifically God that satisfies our natural desire if it is not in fact a desire for God? How, with respect to the first argument, can the mind recognize the truth of God as the truth that it has been seeking? We face, here, the Meno problem once again, and the problem that Augustine wrestled with in book X of the Confessions, namely, that if we did not already have a memory of God, we would be unable to recognize him once we encountered him. Given a rationalistic reduction of reason, there is no answer to this problem; there is no way we could say that the revelation of the Trinity satisfies the mind’s desire for truth. Indeed, revelation as such would be extraneous—just as it is, in the end, for Kant.52 The only intelligible content that could speak to the mind’s desire would be the “monotheistic natural theology” that Fr.White repeatedly refers to in the book; in other words, if the essence of reason is a posteriori demonstration, as Fr. White suggests, it can be satisfied qua reason only by what it can demonstrate itself, and therefore by definition without any need for revelation. In this case, if it happens to accept revelation, 52 According to Kant, “Though it does indeed sound dangerous, it is in no way reprehensible to say that every man creates a God for himself, nay, must make himself such a God according to moral concepts . . . in order to honor in Him the One who created him. For in whatever manner a being has been made known to him by another and described as God, yea, even if such a being had appeared to him (if this is possible), he must first of all compare this representation with his ideal in order to judge whether he is entitled to regard it and to honor it as a divinity. Hence there can be no religion springing from revelation alone, that is, without first positing that concept, in its purity, as a touchstone. Without this all reverence for God would be idolatry.” Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans.Theodore Greene and Hoyt Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 157n. This seems to be the only alternative to blind obedience to authority if one does not accept Augustine’s position from Confessions X. Discovering the Given 597 it can be of necessity only for extrinsic reasons—that is, for “reasons” that are strictly extra-rational.53 The example we presented above offers an alternative approach to this problem. In determining the truth of divine simplicity, reason desires the truth of that truth, which means it desires the most complete disclosure of that truth. If the Trinity of Persons is irrelevant to the meaning of divine simplicity, reason has no intrinsic interest in it. But if this revelation recasts the meaning of simplicity by revealing a more profound content to it than was initially evident, reason will rejoice in the discovery precisely as reason: it will experience the disclosure as an unanticipated fulfillment, that is, as a genuine novelty (a posteriori) that is what it always wanted (a priori) without knowing it. But this has a further unexpected implication: by virtue of this ultimate discovery, reason now sees that plurality of a certain sort is not inimical to perfection, as it may initially have thought, to the extent that it was led to posit an identity of essence and existence in the first cause, and so reason discovers that it is true but inadequate to say that natural theology is essentially “monotheistic,” at least in the sense that would exclude in principle a plurality of divine Persons. But this means that its search for the first cause is not a search only for absolute simplicity, that is, the perfection of unity, but is also in some sense a search for the perfection of difference.54 The question of what such a search would look like cannot be pursued here, but we may at least see that this complex path would represent a concrete example of the point we made above, namely, that reason is brought by its later insights to reconsider its original assumptions. In his exposition of Aquinas’s natural theology in chapter 3, Fr. White explains that, for Aquinas, following Avicenna and contra Averroes, the proper subject of metaphysics is not separate substance (that is, God), but rather “common being” (78–79). God is not included within common being. But this does not mean that God is simply irrelevant to metaphysics; rather, according to Fr. White, God enters into this field of study precisely inasmuch as he is the cause of its subject. Because reason in its metaphysical dimension desires to understand being as being, it will seek knowledge of whatever bears on this understanding, preeminent among which is the cause of being. If we extend this line of reflection, we would have to say that 53 This is not to say that we ought to accept faith only because of its rationality. Rather, faith is extra-rational, but not only extra-rational: properly understood, it also speaks to reason. 54 We might consider here, for example, Richard of St. Victor’s reflection on the nature of God, as “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” in the light of the notions of goodness, glory, and charity. 598 D. C. Schindler reason, moreover, seeks to understand whatever bears on the nature of the cause of being, again, precisely insofar as it has being qua being as its subject. This leads to a question that cannot be dismissed: granted that revelation discloses to us something of the inner essence of God, which would otherwise be unavailable to reason in its own speculative reflections, does revelation bear on the meaning of God precisely qua the cause of being? Although it is customary to respond to this question that the Persons act as one ad extra, which then is typically taken to mean that such action can be understood simply “monotheistically” and therefore independently of any revelation,55 Aquinas himself affirms that the revelation of the Trinity allows a proper understanding of creation inasmuch as it is precisely the processions of the Persons in God that present the “ratio creationis”56 —which cannot mean anything other than that the content of revelation illuminates the cause of being.To the extent that this is indeed the case, metaphysics cannot be said simply to exclude the revealed God from its purview. The tricky question, of course, is the precise extent to which and the precise manner in which this is the case. A full discussion of the Trinity and creation, which a proper response to this question would require, is not possible here. But we may at least articulate a few general principles about the relationship between reason and revelation. First, if God as cause of being enters metaphysics only indirectly, we might say that revelation in turn bears only indirectly on God’s causing of being (which, we hasten to emphasize, does not in either case imply that God is only accidentally related to the subject matter). In other words, there would seem to be required here a further analogy, beyond even the ad alterum analogy that opens reason to God as transcendent cause, namely, something like an “analogy of faith,” which would reflect on the metaphysical significance of the revealed God.57 This analogy would operate not primarily in an ascent, from creatures to 55 In other words, the truth of the statement that God acts as one ad extra begs the further question whether faith transforms the content of the notion of oneness at issue. 56 ST I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3. Fr. White insists that Aquinas “understands the reason for creation philosophically” in the ScG, but then deepens this reason theologically in the Summa theologiae. The question of course is what sense does “deepen” have here: is it the addition of something simply new (which raises the question in turn of what significance this has with respect to what precedes it) or is it a fuller disclosure of philosophy’s own object? In this case, then, one could speak of faith deepening the specifically philosophical reflection in a way that remains distinct from theology in the strict sense. 57 Here would be a point at which we could affirm Karl Barth’s notion of the analogia fidei, but we would do so in a certain sense against Barth: rather than posit it precisely in the stead of the metaphysical analogia entis, as Barth does, we are proposing it as inclusive of natural theology: not an “either-or” but a “both-and.” Discovering the Given 599 God, as would the analogy ad alterum, but rather primarily in the manner of a descent, from God to creatures, because such a movement would preserve the quality of revelation by beginning specifically with God as given.58 Second, for this very reason, we would be led to affirm both against ontotheology that metaphysics is not necessarily theological, that is, informed by revelation, but also against the critique of ontotheology that metaphysics is not necessarily not theological in this sense. In other words, while we avoid making God a logically necessary dimension of metaphysical thinking (by, for example, including him within the field of common being through an improper use of the ad unum analogy or the analogy of proper proportionality), we are not permitted positively to exclude the illumination of faith or to define metaphysics as non-theological (or more specifically: non-illuminated by faith) in principle and by definition. This leads to two general principles regarding the relation between reason and revelation, the second more forceful than the first, which, in closing, we will consider with reference to concrete examples. We will also see how both have been embraced by the Church in the encyclical Fides et Ratio. The first is that theology may gratuitously inform philosophical thinking, which means that it offers something that is not strictly necessary for reason without being, for all that, irrelevant.59 We saw this in Gilson’s observation that Aquinas, who cites Moses as his authority with respect to his description of God as ipsum esse, “may very well” have come to see the significance of esse as a result of the illumination of revelation. Gilson insists that this nevertheless remains a philosophical insight—it is philosophical, we might observe, since it is after all an insight into the meaning of being qua being, which is the proper subject of metaphysics. Because Gilson makes a positive reference to revelation in philosophy, Fr. White accuses him of substituting grace for nature. But this would be the case only given the assumptions of what we have been calling “epistemological semipelagianism,” which can affirm a natural act of reason only by denying that faith is operating in any intrinsic way in reason, and holding instead that it at best merely clears the ground, so to speak, so that reason can act on its own.60 As Aquinas affirms, however, 58 As Aquinas puts it in the ScG II, ch. 4, faith begins with the truth as God himself knows it (at least insofar as this is knowable to creatures), which is the truth of God, but also the truth of creatures in God. 59 This formulation does not exclude the affirmation that it is necessary in a gratuitous sense, that is, that reason needs precisely something gratuitous, which is simply another way of saying, as Fr. White does, that reason naturally desires something that lies beyond its natural capacity. 60 Consider, again, Fr. White’s explanation at Wisdom, xxvfn9. D. C. Schindler 600 grace does not destroy, but rather elevates and purifies, nature: it opens to nature vistas that may not otherwise have been accessible to it, without their being for all that any less natural. According to Gilson, considered historically, the encounter with Christian revelation broadened the scope of philosophy. This point, which Fr. White objects to in Gilson, has been very clearly affirmed by the Magisterium: Revelation clearly proposes certain truths which might never have been discovered by reason unaided, although they are not of themselves inaccessible to reason. Among these truths is the notion of a free and personal God who is the Creator of the world, a truth which has been so crucial for the development of philosophical thinking, especially the philosophy of being. There is also the reality of sin, as it appears in the light of faith, which helps to shape an adequate philosophical formulation of the problem of evil.The notion of the person as a spiritual being is another of faith’s specific contributions: the Christian proclamation of human dignity, equality and freedom has undoubtedly influenced modern philosophical thought. In more recent times, there has been the discovery that history as event—so central to Christian Revelation—is important for philosophy as well. It is no accident that this has become pivotal for a philosophy of history which stakes its claim as a new chapter in the human search for truth.61 The more one reduces reason to its discursive operations, the more difficult it becomes to accommodate this point, for in that case the data of revelation could be included as having significance for reason only as an essential part of rational demonstration, and this would compromise both the gratuity of faith and the integrity of reason. But we can draw out an even more provocative implication. The reason that metaphysics cannot positively define itself as excluding revelation is that philosophy would thereby make itself essentially theological in an improper way: the possibility that revelation will be irrelevant to the meaning of God as the cause of being cannot be determined prior to revelation. To make that determination, then, presupposes revelation, which means that, if one defines metaphysics as studying being as being in a manner that excludes the illumination of faith, one is building a theological judgment into the essential structure of one’s metaphysics. But acknowledging this point pushes us a step further. It is not enough for us, given this point, simply to insist on reserving judgment regarding the relevance of revelation (which is what Heidegger means by defending an essentially atheistic philosophy as a means of respecting theology). While such a reservation is 61 Fides et Ratio, 76. Discovering the Given 601 possible in principle, a possibility that could no doubt be realized in certain circumstances, the fact of the matter is that revelation has been given. If it is possible for faith to illuminate reason (without compromising its rational character), then, granted that as part of the Western tradition we do our thinking de facto—and whether or not we are believers—within a horizon that has been definitively stamped by Christian revelation, we cannot in principle exclude the possibility that our most basic philosophical concepts have been colored in profound and subtle ways by revelation. Here is the claim, then: To the extent that this is so, as Ferdinand Ulrich has pointed out, it follows that it is in fact only a person philosophizing in faith who is able to philosophize purely naturally, because only such a one is able positively to acknowledge the gratuity of the light that comes “from above” and so avoid appropriating it as a light generated by its own labors.62 According to Ulrich, the most significant philosophies in the modern—that is, post-Christian—era tend to be pseudo-philosophies because they are hiddenly theological, by which he means that they are systems of thought that have coopted profound elements of Christian revelation, which they have falsified in this case precisely by so doing.63 To the extent that this is true, faith is no obstacle to engagement with modern philosophy, as those who insist on “natural reason” as a means of dialogue might fear, but in fact presents a privileged entry into the heart of these philosophies, as well as a clarifying light that enables the liberation of reason in its naturalness. If we accept the principle that grace does not destroy nature, but elevates and perfects it, we must allow that faith can elevate reason without annulling its natural character. Indeed, we would have to affirm that reason therefore becomes more fully reasonable, more truly and authentically natural, under the generous activity of grace. In this case, just as we affirm that the divine Personhood of Christ does not eliminate the natural operations of his human nature, and just as 62 Ferdinand Ulrich, Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der Seinsfrage, 2nd edition (Freiburg i.Br.: Johannes Verlag, 1998), 2. 63 Homo Abyssus, 56. This judgment is not unique to Ulrich, of course. He himself cites Erich Przywara in making the claim. Indeed, it is, from a different perspective, the point of Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology, which would mean that the light of faith would put one in a privileged position to engage with the whole tradition that Heidegger intends by this critique. Heidegger’s critique itself is simply an echo of Nietzsche’s judgment that the German philosophers were all secret theologians. More recently, Jean-Luc Marion has pointed to the specifically Christian notions that lie in the philosophies of Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and others: see “Christian Philosophy: Hermeneutic or Heuristic?” in The Visible and the Revealed (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 66–79, here 67. 602 D. C. Schindler we affirm that there are “infused” natural virtues that are distinct both from acquired natural virtues and from specifically theological virtues, so too must we say that there is a distinction between philosophy carried out in some explicit manner in faith and theology in the strict sense. The work of Ferdinand Ulrich, in fact, provides a striking example of the possibilities of such a philosophy. Hans Urs von Balthasar described Ulrich’s thought as a metaphysics that “stands in intimate contact with the mysteries of revelation, offers an access to them, and yet never abandons the strictly philosophical domain. In this sense it overcomes the baneful dualism between philosophy and theology, and it does so perhaps more successfully than ever before.”64 Although there is no room in the present context to give an account of his philosophy,65 it is worth mentioning a basic feature of his thought, which exemplifies what we have been discussing in this last section. Ulrich seeks to understand being as being, and in this sense his thinking is a work of metaphysics from first to last. Moreover, he works out his understanding in the context of a profound engagement with a host of modern thinkers, Christians and atheists alike: Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and so forth. And yet, following Aquinas’s principle that “omnis agens agit sibi simili,” Ulrich interprets being as the “similitudo divinae bonitatis.”66 But the trinitarian perichoresis and the incarnation of the Son reveal the depths of God’s goodness, of which being is the likeness. Thus, one of Ulrich’s basic aims is to think through the non-subsistence of esse by analogy to the Father’s self-donation in the generation of the Son, and the Son’s kenosis in the incarnation. This leads to an extraordinarily rich understanding of the ontological difference between being and beings (das Sein and das Seiende), and of the meaning of man who allows being to come to fruition in his reason and love. In short, it is an interpretation of being as love, an ontology that Ulrich describes as transcending itself toward anthropology, which in turn transcends itself toward Christology.67 64 This is a quotation from a letter that Balthasar wrote to Ulrich, a passage from which appears as a “blurb” on the cover of Homo Abyssus. 65 For an excellent account of Ulrich’s approach to philosophy and the central themes of his thought, see Stefan Oster, “Thinking Love at the Heart of Things: The Metaphysics of Being as Love in the Work of Ferdinand Ulrich,” Communio 37 (Winter 2010): 660–700. See also Martin Bieler’s introduction to Homo Abyssus, XII–LIV. 66 De veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2. 67 Homo Abyssus, 1: “Im Zug der Sache habe ich daher die Ontologie in die Anthropologie und diese in die Christologie überstiegen.” Note, he does not “impose” the higher perspective, but rather follows the natural “pull” of the matter itself: “im Zug der Sache. . . .” Discovering the Given 603 But the explicit acknowledgment of the data of faith does not mean his philosophy overreaches the natural realm of reason. To the contrary, the very generosity of the goodness revealed in the Christian mysteries liberates nature and natural reason, so that in principle, the closer one gets to the center of those mysteries, the firmer is the foundation of the autonomy of philosophy.68 Thinking inside the Western tradition, one does not best protect the integrity of philosophy by establishing an a priori “no” to faith, but by saying “yes,” like Mary, who represents for Ulrich the authentic meaning of “natura pura.”Though the phrase is used here in a sense completely opposed to the typical connotation, like all things transformed by grace it both surprises and fulfills its initial meaning. John Paul II, in conjunction with the Church Fathers, likewise points to Mary as a sort of Realsymbol of philosophy in Fides et Ratio: And just as in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary “the table at which faith sits in thought”. In her they saw a lucid image of true philosophy and they were convinced of the need to philosophari in Maria.69 In the end, we can affirm, with Fr. White, the indispensable character of natural knowledge of God. And we must affirm everything necessary to preserve its genuinely natural character. One of those necessary things is an intrinsic and positive openness to revelation, an openness that will in fact require the explicit acknowledgment of faith the more this knowledge comes to be within the historical situation of an intellectual tradition informed by Christianity, and the closer this knowledge comes to matters directly implicated in the faith. What we must therefore reject is epistemological semipelagianism, which insists that reason remains natural only to the extent that it remains uninformed by faith. But this means we must also and therefore reject any approach to natural theology that forces us into a false dichotomy: either the data of faith function as a 68 This of course does not mean that any given philosopher who acknowledges faith will necessarily have a purer philosophy than any given non-Christian philosopher. Rather, the principle leaves open the possibility that an ostensibly atheistic philosopher may nevertheless betray an even greater openness, however hidden, to the invitation of grace in his thinking than even the one who explicitly affirms faith. 69 Fides et Ratio, 108. Emphasis added. 604 D. C. Schindler premise within philosophical reasoning, in which case both the integrity of reason and the gratuity of faith are compromised, or faith has no bearing on the meaning of philosophical concepts. We cannot avoid this dilemma if we reduce reason to its discursive operation.To respond to the philosophical problems of modernity requires, indeed, that we recover the ancient , which Aristotle defined as an ordered unity of t~  and ἐπιστήμη. In other words, it requires an embrace of the classical notion of reason, one that affirms the priority of intellectus over ratio, and so one that gives a central place to the given in our thinking and the descent in our reasoning, by which we open our eyes more and more widely in wonder to the mystery of being and the even more luminous mystery of its first cause. This wonder, which is the heart of philosophical reason, is not dulled but is rather doubled when we come to realize that that which we could never have anticipated has always already been present to us all along the path of discovery. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 605–23 605 Engaging the Thomistic Tradition and Contemporary Culture Simultaneously: A Response to Burrell, Healy, and Schindler T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. Thomistic Institute Washington, DC I WOULD like first to thank Fr. Burrell and Drs. Healy and Schindler for their attentive reading and extremely thoughtful responses to my book, a work that does not merit the careful attention that they have given to it. Each of them offers both appreciation and critique, on a subject that is itself important: the nature of philosophical theology. In what follows I will not seek to respond comprehensively to the many and intricate themes elaborated in the previous three essays. Instead, I will take three controversial topics or themes—each of which recurs in more than one of these essays—and respond to them in turn. The idea is not to try to elaborate a final word on the topic under consideration, but to advance the conversation in substantive ways. I will treat briefly then the following: (1) creation and the philosophical order of discovery versus the order of sapiential judgment; (2) Cajetan and the analogical naming of God; and (3) Christian philosophy. I. Creation: Philosophical Order of Discovery and Sapiential Judgment A central argument of the work under consideration is that metaphysical argumentation—especially when treating of God and the idea of “creation”—needs to give careful attention to the distinction between the order of progressive discovery of the principles of metaphysics (via inventionis) and the ultimate order of judgment regarding those principles, in light of what is most ultimate ( judgment in via judicii). For example, it is one 606 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. thing to argue progressively (a) that the human being comes to know conceptually by virtue of the power of the agent intellect, (b) that this power for universal abstraction implies that there is a faculty of the soul (intellect) that is immaterial, (c) that this immateriality of the faculty of the intellect implies also that the soul is in some way itself subsistently immaterial and incorruptible, and then to see (d) in light of metaphysical argumentations for the existence of God as the universal author of created being, that the spiritual soul of the human being must be created immediately by God in the body of the newly conceived human being, without the intermediary of human parents. This is an abbreviated version of a progressive “ascent” toward discovery in via inventionis. It is another thing, however, to see the same principles in light of what is ultimate, in via judicii, in light of the wisdom of God the Creator, as one can best come to know this wisdom through the work of philosophy. So for instance, in light of the creation of the soul by God, who is himself subsistent intellect and wisdom, one can judge that the human soul has intellectual powers as a created imitation of God’s own uncreated light and by a certain form of participation in God’s exemplary act of knowing. One can judge that knowledge in an intellectual human creature is only a “proper accident” or property of the subsistent person, whereas in God intellect and subsistence just are in some unfathomable way identical. (God is his wisdom.) Likewise, we can consider from this perspective that even the very first act of human knowledge (the simplest, most seemingly “banal” abstract knowledge of the medium sized dry goods around us) is already a participation (however faint) in the eternal truth of God, and that the dynamic ordering of the human person toward the search for the truth about things in the world is itself already sustained in being by God in view of the possibility of a yet greater encounter with the truth about God. In other words, the knowledge of God is “prefigured” in a certain sense in every other act of ordinary knowledge, as our human potency for the truth is progressively unveiled and its inner tendency toward God becomes more manifest. Nevertheless, in via inventionis, this ultimate perspective of seeing the intellectual tendency of the mind toward God is not evident.The judgment “from the top down” that sees the work of the mind in light of God cannot be smuggled in from the beginning as a logical premise of philosophical demonstration itself. This would amount to an illicit, artificial hijacking of the integral work of the philosophical endeavor. Rather, this more ultimate perspective comes only at the term of the order of investigation and discovery, and as its most sublime, profound, and even in a sense “mysterious” result. In light of the metaphysical discovery of God, everything that has previously been known has to be reevaluated anew, because God is the transcendent cause of all that is. A Response 607 David Burrell on the one hand and Healy and Schindler on the other differ by extremes when it comes to this general thesis regarding the order of discovery as distinct from the order of final judgment. They differ by extremes, however, because of a common concern that they share: an intellectual discomfort with a certain Aristotelian interpretation of Aquinas. For his part, Burrell has defended a conception of Aquinas’s philosophical theology that leans heavily upon the initial importance of monotheistic faith as a catalyst for medieval thinking about God.1 He alludes in his essay, therefore, to his ambivalence about the idea of a philosophical demonstration of creation that might depend in some real sense upon Aristotelian metaphysical premises. On this reading, creation is not so much something to be demonstrated, for Aquinas, as it is something to be presumed (“prephilosophically” in faith) and then explicated grammatically and metaphysically. Aquinas’s philosophical theology can be seen in one sense, then, as a carefully determined linguistic study in what we can and cannot say regarding the truths of monotheistic faith in the Creator, from the side of mere human reason. The language of metaphysics in Aquinas thus serves to manifest the truth of the Creator and to protect us from betraying the transcendence of the God of revelation. This anti-rationalist vision of human reason intends to underscore where the soul’s authentic source of mystical transformation lies: not in rationalist demonstrations, but through experience of the energies of grace and divine love. Healy and Schindler, meanwhile, are worried that the AristotelianThomistic account I have offered delivers not too much but far too little to human reason philosophically.They claim, especially, that there must be some form of aprioristic knowledge of God that undergirds the rational search for God “from the beginning.” Likewise, both Healy and Schindler underscore that there are elements of Aquinas’s metaphysics of being that we must “always, already” somehow know from the start, or which at any rate cannot be made to fit squarely within an Aristotelian approach to progressive metaphysical discovery. Among these are: the participated character of being, an initial intuitive grasp of the transcendentals, and the “intensive” notion of esse that Aquinas creatively adapted from Neo-platonic sources. Why do they insist so much on aprioristic knowledge? Here in fact they are implicitly appealing, through Balthasar’s re-reading of the history of 1 See the statements to this effect in Burrell’s “Analogy, Creation, and Theological Language” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 77–98, esp. 78, and the argument in David Burrell, C.S.C., Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 3, 12–13, 135–45. 608 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. philosophy, to the importance of Maurice Blondel: all knowledge we gain—even through our initial desire for truth in ordinary life—is always, already an anticipation of the desire for the immediate vision of the truth of God himself.2 So the ultimate term of human knowing (even in its supernatural mode) is in some sense anticipated “pre-theoretically” in the initial impulses of human intellectus (that is, in basic human insights into ordinary reality). Every act of knowing is an anticipation of the fullness of the knowledge of God, and every act of desire for the truth is an un-explicated intimation of the possibility of the beatific vision.3 Evidently, whereas Burrell would like to assign the tasks of human reason a more moderate horizon of exercise, in service of divine revelation, Healy and Schindler seem to wish to assign to reason “from the start” a strong set of pro-theological or proto-supernatural impulses. Both views seek to negotiate the relations of faith and reason in such a way as to demonstrate the integral cooperation of the two, but they do so from somewhat competing angles. What these two viewpoints share, however, is an ambivalence about the role played by an Aristotelian doctrine of gradual discovery, especially as it is applied within a Thomistic metaphysics to the truth of creation. For one side (Burrell) the insistence is upon what must be given from the start by faith, that which Aristotle could not have arrived at himself, and which Aquinas did not come to unaided by revelation. For the other side (Healy, Schindler) the truth of revelation is also genetically primal, but philosophical dimensions of the human person also always, already correspond to and anticipate this gift in the form of aprioristic tendencies toward knowledge of God the Creator. The innate teleological end of nature is the world of grace. What might we say to these two extremes? Briefly, three things. First, it is true that for Aquinas and Aristotle alike, not all knowledge per se is attained to a posteriori. Following Aristotle, Aquinas argues in his commentary on the Posterior Analytics (Book I, lec. 1) that precisely in order to make rational arguments about anything one must first know something else by way of simple apprehensions that precede reasoning.4 In Thomistic terms: intellectus (apprehension/insight) of basic truths gives the epistemological prerequisite 2 See in particular the argument of Maurice Blondel, L’Action: Essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science de la pratique (Paris: Alcan, 1893). Apriorist conceptions of knowledge of God are also espoused in L’Être et les êtres: Essai d’ontologie concrete et intégrale (Paris: Alcan, 1935). 3 The idea that human natural desire tends implicitly toward the aspiration to the grace of the vision of God is of course a core theme of Blondel’s L’Action. 4 See Posterior Analytics I, 1, 71a. Aquinas’s commentary on this text touches immediately upon the issue at hand: “Now Plato maintained that science is not caused A Response 609 for ratio or rational argumentation.Were this not the case, we would fall into the error of thinking we had to prove everything we know demonstratively, which is absurd.5 But what do we know prior to all argumentation? Aquinas himself specifically speaks about the categorial modes of being (substances, with their various essential natures, quantities, qualities, relations, habits, etc.) as the ontological ground from which we take our initial apprehensions of the reality and that we implicitly name in ordinary language.6 This knowledge is imperfect, however, and needs to develop through progressive analysis of reality. It is for this reason that a theoretical and rational study of metaphysical principles and causes must be developed.7 Second, then, if human beings do advance intellectually only through rational consideration, analysis and progressive insight (which is the case) then there has to be a progressive study of the principles of being, running by syllogisms, but by the impression of ideal forms in our souls. He also said that the material forms in natural things flow from these ideal forms, so that these material forms participate in some way in forms separated from matter. From this if follows that natural agents do not cause the forms of inferior things; all they do is prepare matter to participate in separated forms. Similarly, study and practice do not cause science in us; all they do is remove impediments to scientific knowledge, and restore as it were, a remembrance of things that we know naturally by the impression of separated forms. Aristotle held a contrary view on both points. He maintained that natural forms are made actual by forms existing in matter. i.e., by the forms of natural agents, and, similarly, that science is made actual in us through some kind of pre-existing knowledge. This implies that science results from a syllogism of some kind of argument. For when we argue, we proceed from one thing to another.” Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, trans. R. Berquist (South Bend, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 2007). 5 See Post. Anal. I, 3, 72b5–9, and Aquinas’s In Post. Anal. I, 7. 6 In Post. Anal., Prologue. 7 See In Post. Anal. I, 3. Responding to Plato’s problem in the Meno of the slave boy who can infer geometrical truths, Aquinas writes: “Learning, properly speaking, is the coming-to-be of science in us. But that which comes to be, prior to its coming to be, was not being in the full sense. In one sense it was being, and in another sense it was non-being, i.e., it was being in potency and non-being in act. To come to be is to be brought from potency to act. What we learn, therefore, is neither fully known beforehand, as Plato thought, nor is it altogether unknown. . . . What we learn was known potentially or virtually in universal principles which were foreknown. But if we understand knowledge [scientia] in its proper sense as actual knowledge, then what we learn was not foreknown. To learn, therefore, is to be brought from potential or virtual knowledge to knowledge which is proper and actual.” Aquinas goes on in I, 4 to note how Aristotle shows that the progress of scientific understanding takes place through the knowledge of causes and the demonstrative reasoning that accompanies such knowledge.To illustrate the thesis, he gives explicit examples from passages in the Metaphysics of Aristotle, regarding the science of being. 610 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. from such features of reality as substances and their properties, to potentiality for being versus being in actuality, to existence as distinct from essence, and the consideration of more ultimate themes: participated being and how we see the ‘transcendental’ features of being (unity, goodness, truth, beauty) in light of the created character of being. Evidently major Thomistic scholars have argued for decades about the precise order in which these diverse principles might be most coherently and convincingly assembled and presented within a progressive scientific study of being. Some (like Wippel and Norris Clarke) begin with participation. Others (like Gilson, Fabro and Elders) begin with the real distinction between essence and existence or the transcendentals. Others (like McInerny and Ashley) start with form and matter (and the philosophy of nature more generally). Others (GarrigouLagrange and myself) with substance and accidents and the act/potency distinction. Naturally, not everyone can stand in equally stolid company. But regardless of the diversity of views in such a domain (and all joking aside), the truth is that the various practitioners of this discipline do all agree that all of these diverse principles and themes are in fact constitutive dimensions of the science of metaphysics, that they are interrelated and must be shown to be so in any integral presentation of Thomistic ontology.Thus the study of such principles (in whatever precise order that is deemed most adequate) seeks to explicate the initial intellectus regarding the structure of being, allowing it to move out into a deeper rational scientia, or scientific understanding of the structure of the real. It is precisely this deeper scientific form of study that permits in turn a yet-more-ultimate set of considerations regarding the demonstrative knowledge of the existence of God, and the philosophical consideration of creation. Last, whatever one might say as a non-Thomist, the fact of the matter is that Aquinas, pace Bonaventure, does not think the ontological argument (based upon aprioristic knowledge of God) is a viable or realistic option. Blondel and Aquinas part company on this score.8 Meanwhile, Aquinas does think that creation (defined as the understanding of the total ontological dependence of creatures upon the first cause for the reception of their very being) is demonstrable by natural reason.9 He even clearly states 8 Blondel presents a version of the ontological argument for the existence of God in L’Action, 339–50, as a core idea of that work. Aquinas argues in a contrary sense: ST I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1 and 2. On Aquinas’s rejection of Bonventure’s use of the ontological argument, see the recent study by Anna Bonta Moreland, Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2010), 147–48. 9 Aquinas says this in the most evident fashion in ScG I, c. 9, para. 2–4, and the affirmation there is supported in turn by the basic outline and arguments of ScG II. A Response 611 that he thinks philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus, did attain to some form of explicit philosophical awareness of the truth of creation, strictly conceived.10 Aquinas affirms that there is a uniquely a posteriori form of demonstrative philosophical knowledge of creation as such, and he aims to show this in multiple texts, not least in the second book of the Summa contra Gentiles.11 Consequently, it is clear that he does think (a) that there is a distinctly philosophical scientific order of knowledge that leads progressively to the understanding of creation, (b) that this order of discovery does not depend upon faith as such for the reception of its own intrinsic principles as a philosophical argument, and (c) that this form of philosophical discovery does allow us to judge all things sapientially in light of God, seeing him in a more ultimate stage of rational reflection as the author of all that exists, so that we can re-read, as it were, all that exists in the light of God’s creative activity and wisdom. Of course there is such a thing as pre-philosophical or pre-demonstrative natural knowledge of God in human beings. Aquinas argues in Summa contra Gentiles III that all human beings are capable of forming an imperfect metaphysical understanding of the existence of God, based on their ordinary experiences of the created order.12 Children at a very young age can be inducted into a deep sense of the reality of God and his providence. All this, however, is distinct from an aprioristic intuition that precedes (or merely coincides with) the mind’s encounter with sensate realities. And at any rate it is, as has been stated, precisely pre-philosophical. The problem with putting too much of the work of knowledge of God “upfront” as it were, in aprioristic intuitivism, is that this risks to collapse the order of discovery and the order of sapiential judgment into one another, substituting for reasoned argumentation a more poetical, intuitive and associative form of thought.13 Rich and seemingly religious as such thought may 10 For texts of Aquinas on Plato and Aristotle, see Mark Johnson, “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Creation to Aristotle?” New Scholasticism 63 (1989): 129–55, and Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas, Creation and Two Historians,” Laval théologique et philosophique 50 (1994): 363–87. Aquinas discusses the philosophical doctrine of creation in Proclus in In De Causis, commenting on Proposition 4: “The first of created things is being, and no created thing is before it.” See on this point, Jan Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 166–70. 11 Regarding the uniquely a posteriori character of our knowledge of God the Creator, see the very unequivocal claims in ScG I, cc. 10–11. Likewise: ST I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1 and 2. 12 See in particular ScG III, c. 38. 13 Consider in this respect a citation from Blondel, L’Action, 435–36: “There is, then, no object whose reality can be conceived and affirmed without our having 612 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. be, it can have two unfortunate effects: it can block a metaphysical science of being from developing as such (i.e., a disciplined and progressive structure of reflection, instead of intuitions alone) and more importantly, it can obscure the grounds or ultimate reasons for the judgment of wisdom itself. That is to say, by initially trying overly to sacralize ordinary human intuition artificially, we might paradoxically render opaque how the study of ordinary things leads us eventually to the sure demonstrative awareness (in philosophical terms) that even the very initial and ordinary forms of knowledge we have are (from the beginning) a true participation in the knowledge that God has of himself. A progressive order of discovery and an ultimate and more sublime form of ordering judgment in light of God are interrelated forms of knowledge and so the refusal of the former can easily undermine the practice of the latter. The immanent and transcendent poles of God’s presence to reason are not to be opposed to one another, of course, but the grasp of their simultaneous reality occurs for us according to a certain order. II. Cajetan and the Analogical Naming of God A second topic pertains to analogical naming of God. Here again, the essays diverge, along lines in accord with the former topic. David Burrell is concerned that my account of divine names is overly burdened by a simplistic and artificial dualism of “positive” or “affirmative” names (such as goodness, wisdom, etc.) versus “negative” names (simplicity, infinity). Furthermore, he is not convinced that ST I, qq. 3–11 even constitutes a treatment of divine names at all, and that it may be better characterized as an exercise in identifying formal features of our language as it comes to signify what God is, and truth be told, more precisely what God is not. He is worried that my account of analogical naming, then, claims to deliver more than it can by way of a kataphatic aspiration to signify what God is in himself. He is also concerned that it seeks to do this wrongly, embraced in an act of thought the total series, without our actually submitting ourselves to the exigencies of the alternative it imposes on us, in a word, without passing through the point where there shines forth the truth of the Being who illumines every reason and before which every will must take a stand. We have the idea of an objective reality; we affirm the reality of objects. But to do so we must implicitly pose the problem of our destiny and subordinate to an option all that we are and all that is for us. We do not reach being and beings, save by passing through this alternative; depending on the way we decide, the sense of being is inevitably changed. The knowledge of being implicates the necessity of the option; being in knowledge is not before but after the freedom of choice.” Trans. by J. M. Somerville, as cited in Henri Bouillard, S.J., Blondel and Christianity (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1969), 110. A Response 613 or with insufficient attention to the linguistic forms of Aquinas’s discussions of knowledge of God. Schindler, meanwhile, finds the discussion of analogy in the book helpful but wonders if there is enough continuity safeguarded between creaturely significations and those terms taken from creatures that are employed to signify the reality of God.To simplify drastically, while Burrell worries that the account I offer might aspire to too much by way of the practice of naming God, Schindler is worried that it might deliver too little. One is worried about an absence of apophaticism and the other an excess of apophaticism. Or so it seems to me. Rather than attempt to respond to these concerns directly, I would like to present briefly an expansion on the perspective offered in the book, by way of an appeal to analogy theory in Thomas de Vio Cajetan’s reading of Aquinas. Cajetan makes two distinctions regarding analogy that are pertinent to the discussion under question (both of which have been pointed out to me by Joshua Hochschild); I think these distinctions might serve as a kind of indirect but substantive response to the opposed concerns of Burrell and Schindler. First, in his treatise on analogy De Nominum Analogia (from 1498), when speaking about analogy of attribution Cajetan distinguishes between “formal” and “material” considerations of this analogy.14 Formally (in itself per se) the analogy of attribution involves the denomination of secondary analogates by reference to something extrinsic, the primary analogate. So a medicine might be called “healthy” analogically because the medicine is the cause of something extrinsic to it, namely, the health in the animal. Both the medicine and the animal can be called “healthy,” yet health is present formally only in one (the animal) and not formally in the other (the medicine). (We do not inquire into the declining or recovering health of a medicine.) “Materially,” however, it may happen that a secondary analogate may in fact share in the same formality or property that is found in the primary analogate. Cajetan gives the examples of being and goodness: an accident can be called a being on account of its relation to substance, which is a being more properly, just as the cause of the being of the accident is the being of the substance. And yet both the substance and the accident each truly “exist,” albeit in analogically similar ways—accidents do have their own appropriate degree of being, although being is more in the substance than it is in the accident. It is an 14 Cajetan, De Nominum Analogia II, c. 11. See the particularly helpful study of Joshua Hochschild, The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). In what follows, I am greatly indebted to comments from and conversations with Dr. Hochschild. 614 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. open question, then, for Cajetan, given an individual case, whether the formal features of our analogical language are being employed to designate accurately (or to “map onto”) real ontological similitudes in the reality itself. But Aquinas is clear that in the case of our terms used to signify God, this is precisely what we are doing: taking terms derived from creaturely existents and purifying them of all significations that would be trompeuse in order to signify (however imperfectly) something of God that is true in itself.15 Aquinas follows Aristotle in arguing that every grammatical statement we make is either an affirmation (i.e., positive) or a negation, and so when we speak of God, we necessarily speak in affirmations or negations. There are no other options.16 The point here, however, is twofold: first, even if positive and negative terms are lodged formally in our language, “materially” the language of God is meant to denote, well . . . God. And so it is not strange but actually correct to take the exercise of ST I, qq. 3–11 to be precisely about the naming of God, precisely through the complex web of semantic indications to which David Burrell gives such splendid and brilliant attention in his book Aquinas: God and Action. Second, as Aristotle teaches in the Posterior Analytics, and as Aquinas explicitly appeals to in his theory of discourse concerning God: every negative judgment we make implies dependence upon some prior and more fundamental positive judgment.17 To say “John is not here” presupposes some more primal understanding of where “here” is, who “John” is, etc. And likewise, to denote the divine simplicity, infinity, eternity, and so forth negatively is not only to affirm what God is not, but also to presuppose kataphatic, non-apprehensive knowledge of what God is: pure actuality, perfection, subsistent goodness, subsistent wisdom, etc. The negative names therefore not only presuppose but also color or qualify in important ways our use of the affirmative or positive names of God.18 They invite us to consider more truthfully the Creator in his transcendence as utterly differentiated from all creatures, and they allow us to denote his corresponding incomprehensibility. Cajetan makes a second distinction in his commentary on ST I, q. 13, a. 6 that is quite pertinent to this discussion as well.19 There he notes that the four term analogy “of proper proportionality” (A is to B as C is to D) 15 ST I, q. 13, a. 2. 16 In Post. Anal. I, lec. 39. 17 In Post. Anal. I, lec. 39, n. 8 and lec. 40, n. 1. In his De potentia Dei, q. 7, a. 5, Aquinas applies this idea explicitly to the question of divine naming within the context of his discussion of the exaggerated apophaticism of Maimonides. 18 See ScG I, c. 14, para. 3; De potentia Dei, q. 9, a. 7. 19 Sancti Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia. Leonine edition, vol. IV, 151–52. A Response 615 allows one to compare terms or items without necessarily implying a relation of causal dependence between them.20 This is a point Aquinas makes in De veritate, q. 2, a. 11. To employ an example from St. Thomas, sight is to the eye as understanding is to the intellect. But the act of seeing is not the cause of the act of understanding, nor vice versa.21 What is signified, however, by this form of analogy is the intrinsic formal resemblance between two things. So eyes formally do see as actions, and intelligence understands. The intrinsic form or resemblance between two beings as each existing intrinsically in two distinct ways is most carefully safeguarded by this form of analogy.22 Meanwhile, analogy of attribution (B is analogous to A because B is somehow related to A) may more readily denote something that proper proportionality does not, since the relation of B to A may be a causal one, and we know that an effect can be understood as an imitation or participation in the cause.23 The point Cajetan makes here in regard to qq. 13, aa. 5–6 is that Aquinas employs the analogy of attribution to discuss how we can name God from creatures, because he is concerned to show how we can derive names from creaturely effects that can truly designate the transcendent cause, who is the Creator. And yet, in doing so, we are not “assimilating” God conceptually to the prison of our understanding of creaturely modes of being. Why not? Precisely because the attribution of the term is analogical: it respects the absolute differentiation between Creator and creature, and the corresponding incomprehensibility of the mystery of God. This differentiation is safeguarded by our realization that God is ipsum esse subsistens. He is infinitely perfect and therefore has no composition of created, participated esse such that he might be denoted under the auspices of creaturely forms. If we stopped at this point, we might have enough to counter the concerns of Schindler, simply by insisting that the analogy of attribution does allow us adequately to signify something of what God is in himself, from creatures, without recourse on our part to any a priori knowledge of God. Analogy of attribution allows us to signify thus because its correct use is based upon a knowledge of God derived from his created effects, through metaphysical argumentation. 20 Cajetan, Commentary on ST I, q. 13, a. 6, IV. 21 The example is discussed helpfully by Joshua P. Hochschild, “Analogy in Logic, Metaphysics & Theology: Did St. Thomas Change His Mind about Proportionality?” (forthcoming). 22 Commentary on ST I, q. 13, a. 6, IV. See the similar argument in De Nom. Analogia III, 29 on the different significations of analogies of attribution and proportionality. 23 Commentary on ST I, q. 13, a. 6, IX, XII. 616 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. And yet it was a concern of Cajetan (in dialogue with Scotists) to safeguard the fact that the significations of goodness, wisdom, existence, etc. really do in some way carry over analogically into the designation of the hidden, inner life of God. Here he notes, arguably rightly, that the analogy of attribution which Aquinas employs to name God (in the ScG and the ST ) does itself also presuppose in turn a use of the analogy of proper proportionality. For formally the analogy of attribution is employed to signify extrinsic causality and participation, while formally the analogy of proper proportionality is employed to signify how things are both intrinsically alike and unlike (by diverse affirmations qualified with negations). And so here the two “formal features” of analogy can be said to converge on the same matter. Attribution taken individually can be employed to signify a causal relationship between secondary and primary analogates. Proportionality taken individually can be employed to signify the way in which one analogate may resemble another intrinsically. Only if both are employed together, however, can we signify that creatures resemble what God is in himself intrinsically, yet they do so only very imperfectly, through the means of a causal resemblance, as effects reflecting their transcendent source. For God is recognized first and foremost only as a hidden cause of creatures that are his effects, and yet the effects must resemble the cause ontologically in some way. Consequently, we can use both forms of analogy together to emphasize simultaneously both extrinsic causality and intrinsic resemblance, respectively. Attribution is the epistemological ground for the articulation of the creature-Creator analogy, while proportionality brings it to perfection. For example, we may say that God, who is denominated “good” by analogy of attribution as the cause of creaturely goodness, also contains in himself, as cause, an intrinsic superior goodness in which created goodness participates, and so he is also denominated “good” by analogy of proportionality. The two analogies together help to capture the intrinsic likeness of creatures to God ( per viam causalitatis) as well as the radical otherness of divine goodness from all creaturely finite goodness ( per viam remotionis), and so also to maintain that the incomprehensible goodness of God, which remains utterly in darkness to our natural human reason, is super-eminent to that of all creatures ( per viam eminentiae). Because this relationship of causality is formally extrinsic but also implies a relationship of likeness, the use of the analogy of attribution not only lays the groundwork for respecting the transcendent alterity of God; it also invites us to use proper proportionality to consider the likeness-amidst-utter difference that creatures have, even to the unknown God.24 24 For a similar argument, see F. X. Maquart, Elementa Philosphiae (Paris: Andreas Blot, 1938), Vol. II, 35–42. A Response 617 It seems to me that this interpretation of Aquinas offered by Cajetan satisfies, or at least offers substantive responses to, the twin and opposed concerns of Burrell and Schindler. III. Christian Philosophy Healy and Schindler are concerned about my orthodoxy. In citing selected texts from papal writings, they hope to signal that we live in a post–Neoscholastic Church, and that there is the danger in my book of the idea of a philosophy “separated” from the influences of faith. Personally I am skeptical about the claim that the Catholic magisterium or the modern popes would resent the renewal of Aristotelian-Thomistic studies today, nor do I think that one is required (by the canons of a sound hermeneutic of the Second Vatican Council) to believe that a radical break has occurred with regard to the Church’s long-standing recommendation of the study of Thomistic philosophy. But these are topics for another day. The more substantive question to address in this context is Schindler’s claim that the Thomistic approach the book outlines represents a kind of “epistemological Semipelagianism,” a philosophy that would seek to approach God apart from or in purposeful ignorance of key resources of faith and theology as gainsays to the tasks of philosophy.25 What are the influences of theology upon the objects and actions of philosophy? Or more succinctly: what do we mean by “Christian philosophy.” The term “Semipelagianism” has its origins in the late sixteenth century. It was employed in the Lutheran Book of Concord and subsequently by Dominicans and Augustinians, in disputes with the Society of Jesus regarding Luis Molina’s Concordia and throughout the subsequent De Auxiliis controversy. The term was employed then and has been used since that time, in particular, to denote the perceived theological errors of the monastic communities of southern Gaul in the fifth century, with whom Prosper of Aquitaine debated in defense of Augustine’s mature doctrine of grace. Dominicans and others feared that these errors were repeating themselves (in a different but similar form) in the teachings of Molina. Employed in this way, Semipelagianism denotes pejoratively a particular account of the relationship between grace and free will in ethical actions. Whereas Pelagianism denotes the idea that natural human acts of the will can lead to righteousness before God and salvation (apart from grace), Semipelagianism denotes the idea that the human free will can dispose itself either to integral natural righteousness or even to the merit of grace independently 25 This criticism echoes in some respects one that is found among Protestant crit- ics of Thomism. Robert Jenson is known to have employed an almost identical term for Thomistic natural theology: “epistemological works righteousness.” Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 618 of or apart from the prevenient work of grace. On this account, even if salvation is by grace alone (pace Pelagianism), the reparation of nature and its dispositions for grace can occur morally in the human will (to some extent at least) independently of grace (pace Augustinianism). In speaking of epistemological Semipelagianism, then, Schindler is purposefully making an interesting analogical comparison, suggesting that a certain form of Thomistic rational theology would seek to acquire an integral form of wholeness, either as a predisposition to or in autonomous independence from, the world of grace, theology, and faith. It is important to realize that it was not only Dominicans and Augustinians who classically employed the term “Semipelagian” to characterize their theological opponents. The term was also employed by the followers of Michael Baius and Cornelius Jansen to characterize the ideas of Dominicans, as well as Jesuits. And here the term acquired a different meaning. For while it is a fully legitimate concern to insist upon the intimately interrelated domains of grace and nature, reason and faith, it is also an important concern to insist on their real distinction. And it is the absence of a true distinction of grace and nature in the thought of Baius that initially caused him to come under censor from Pope St. Pius V.26 For Baius, like the Jansenists who came after him, in truth thought the distinction between nature and grace to be in a certain respect a result of the fall of man.27 Consequently, the true nature of the human free will of man could be identified only within actions of charity.28 Supernatural and natural converged into one “form” of charity, such that nature and grace were seemingly difficult to distinguish formally. When this idea was condemned by Rome, the response that subsequently was given by the followers of Baius to the scholastics was that they were “Semipelagian” for their insistence on the clear distinction of the realms of nature and grace.29 In truth then we need to avoid two extremes: on the one hand, epistemological Semipelagianism, which would fail to identify the profound ways that philosophy and theology are called upon to interact and mutually affect one another, and, on the other hand, epistemological Baianism, 26 See the condemned propositions from the 1567 bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, in Denzinger, 15th edition, nn. 1001–1080. 27 Denz. 1004, 1007. 28 Denz. 1016, 1020, 1025, 1027. 29 This issue eventually entered into the magisterium, as the Jansenist Augustinians began to reject under this name certain scholastic formulations of the doctrine of grace. See the 4th and 5th condemned propositions drawn from the Augustinus of Jansenius (Denz. 2001–2007): “(4) It is semi-Pelagian to say prevenient grace can be resisted or accepted by the human will. (5) It is semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died for everyone.” A Response 619 which would risk to collapse all philosophy into the world of theology, so that all seeming philosophical and ontological reflection is in some way “always, already” implicitly either Christology (Barth) or theological anthropology (arguably Rahner and the late Przywara as well).30 The First Vatican Council (in Dei Filius) rightly insisted on the distinction of principles and objects of study in the dual orders of natural and supernatural knowledge, against the latter danger of a confusion. The Second Vatican Council (in Gaudium et Spes, for instance) emphasized the historical interrelations of grace and nature, faith and reason, especially in addressing the concrete existential questions of the human condition. Our task is to read Vatican I and Vatican II on this question not in opposition to each other, but within the context of a hermeneutic of profound continuity. In that way the two documents enrich each other. In fact, that is the direction that has been charted out by Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998).31 Whether Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar adequately navigated within the territory between the two problematic extremes is of course disputable, but that they sought to do so is clear. Modern Thomism, however, has most certainly sought out an appropriate theological balance in this domain, and has done so in promising ways. To consider briefly the topic of “Christian philosophy” then, we can make two distinctions, both of which stem from the thinking of Jacques Maritain (in his reading of St. Thomas) and both of which are present in the encyclical Fides et Ratio.32 The first of these is the distinction between the objective mutual influences of theological faith upon philosophical reason (and vice versa) as compared to the mutual subjective influences.The objects of faith influence philosophical reason when a truth of divine revelation and sacred theology invites human reason to the consideration 30 On the later doctrine of Erich Przywara, see Kenneth Oakes, “The Cross and the Analogia Entis in Erich Przywara,” in The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Anti-Christ or the Wisdom of God? ed.Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 147–71; see also, Richard Schenk, O.P., “Analogy as the discrimen naturae et gratiae: Thomism and Ecumenical Learning,” in White, Analogy of Being, 172–91. 31 I am thinking here in particular of Fides et Ratio, 75–79. 32 See in particular the analysis of the concept of “Christian philosophy” by Jacques Maritain in De la philosophie chrétienne (1932), and Science et Sagesse (1935), in his Oeuvres Completes, vols. 5 and 6 (Fribourg and Paris: Éditions Universitaires de Fribourg et Éditions St. Paul, 1982 and 1984).What I will articulate below is highly indebted to him, but also to Georges Cottier, O.P. in his book Les chemins de la raison: Questions d’épistémologie théologique et philosophique (Paris: Parole et Silence, 1997). One cannot help but notice both that the language in Cottier’s book on Christian philosophy is heavily indebted to Maritain, and that it is virtually identical in various places with the language of Fides et Ratio 75–79. 620 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. of a deeper understanding of the structure of reality, and does so in ways that can affect reflection not only theologically as such, but also within the domain, so to speak, of philosophy as such. The process can work in the other direction as well, as when philosophical ideas affect the way we explicate or approach our theological understanding of divinely revealed mysteries. So for example, historically, Christian theological reflection upon the mystery of the divine persons (including the mystery of the hypostatic union) has stimulated a deeper metaphysical and philosophical reflection upon human personhood in general. But also simultaneously, a deeper philosophical reflection on human personhood (as we find, say, in Aquinas) has affected the ways theologians conceive of the mystery of the Triune persons in analogical distinction to created persons. Similar reflections could be offered regarding topics such as the metaphysics of the one God, creation, the natural law, the ethics of marriage, etc. Subjective influences, by contrast, correspond not to the respective objects of philosophy and sacred theology (and their inevitable influence upon each other), but to the broader ways that grace (or its rejection or absence) affects the subject who carries out philosophical study as such. Or the ways that grace (or its rejection or absence) affects philosophical culture over time more generally, within the existential mesh of history. Here the key issue is how the presence of grace conditions the development of the intellect not directly (through the objects of revelation being considered, for example) but indirectly in and through the effects of grace on other faculties, such as the will (principally), as well as the passions. Grace gives the spiritual heart and the emotional and sensate dimensions of the human person a deeper inclination and zeal to study even certain natural topics (such as those pertaining to God, the soul, or the status of objective moral claims). The absence or refusal of grace can incline the will away from whole traditions of philosophy as well as particular philosophical topics. A culture of banalization of the human person through technology, materialism, sensualism, and addiction can form generations of persons in which there occurs a certain typical habituation of the passions and a corresponding secular set of intellectual pursuits and interests. By such a process, the culture itself becomes seemingly impervious to deeper philosophical and moral truths. Therefore, it is the case that there exists in the human person a natural structure objectively capable of potentially discovering profound philosophical truths about the human person. However, subjectively, this structure remains inert or unactualized, thwarted existentially by the cultural and historical as well as personal conditions in which the person or a particular society might try to philosophize. A Response 621 This last idea brings us to a second Thomistic distinction one can make between the order of specification and the concrete exercise of that order. Aquinas introduces this distinction in De Malo, q. 6 and ST I–II, q. 9, a. 1 (as well as other texts) in order to discuss the dual primacy of the will and the intellect. The intellect has a primacy over the will in the order of specification, because what we know formally specifies our act of desiring or willing, and we can love only what we first know. The will, however, has a primacy in the concrete exercise of the life of the mind, because the will moves the intellect to consider this or that object and to focus on this or that discipline or interest. Maritain (and the encyclical Fides et Ratio after him) employ Aquinas’s distinction slightly differently in order to treat the question of Christian philosophy.33 This treatment builds upon and expands the use of the previous distinction (objective and subjective mutual influences). In the order of specification, then, philosophy and theology are both characterized by distinct objects: they are specifically distinct subject matters that give rise to distinguishable disciplines of study and thought.34 The sapiential discipline of sacra doctrina is formally distinct from that of philosophy, and each science has its own first principles and final ends of reflection. (This was the concern of Dei Filius at Vatican I.) Consequently, Fides et Ratio insists on the idea of an “autonomy” of specification when it comes to philosophy, which does not receive its first principles or final ends from supernaturally revealed faith as such.35 Meanwhile, in its concrete exercise, philosophy is subject in a profound way to Christian influences, both objectively (through the consideration of objects of divine revelation, even from a philosophical point of view) and subjectively, through the effects of grace upon human persons and their cultures, within the existential mesh of human history.36 Consequently, we can speak of philosophy being a distinctly natural discipline in the order of specification, wholly 33 See Fides et Ratio, nos. 16, 43, 45, 48, 67, 75, 76, 100. See the study of this aspect of the encyclical by Jean-Miguel Garrigues, O.P., “Autonomie Spécifique et Ouverture Personelle de la Raison à la Foi,” Nova et Vetera (French edition) 73, vol. 4 (1998): 95–106. 34 Fides et Ratio 76. 35 Fides et Ratio 75: “Moreover, the demand for a valid autonomy of thought should be respected even when theological discourse makes use of philosophical concepts and arguments. Indeed, to argue according to rigorous rational criteria is to guarantee that the results attained are universally valid. This also confirms the principle that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it: the assent of faith, engaging the intellect and will, does not destroy but perfects the free will of each believer who deep within welcomes what has been revealed.” 36 Fides et Ratio 76. 622 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. distinguishable from the mystery of divine revelation and from grace as such. To fail to do so is to fall into epistemological Baianism. But we must also insist upon the fact that philosophy is always subject in its concrete exercise to the effects of grace present in a culture or in particular human persons, or to the rejection and absence of such grace. To fail to do so is to fall into epistemological Semipelagianism. Philosophy, then, has a true autonomy of specification vis-à-vis theology, but not an autonomy in its concrete exercise or historical mode of being. We should rightly insist on a distinction of orders, but not a separation or absence of mutual influence. This is true also of natural theology: it is something structurally possible for human nature, but in its concrete exercise it will be highly conditioned by the presence of divine revelation, both with regard to the consideration of certain “objective” dimensions of the study (as, for example, historically in the metaphysical consideration of divine unity, omnipotence, and omniscience) and in the subjective dispositions it meets in those who might pursue its study (or fail to) in any given age, cultural setting, or in the course of one’s own personal history. Schindler and Healy are concerned that the resurgence of a certain kind of Aristotelian Thomism might insist too strongly on the first trait (autonomy) while failing in various ways to allow for and acknowledge the role of grace in the concrete history of human philosophizing. In some circumstances, this problematic tendency might well arise. Let me conclude, however, by noting two counterpoints that need to be kept equally before our eyes when thinking about the renewal of natural theology within the context of “Christian philosophy.” First, the orders of theological faith and human philosophical reason, while distinguishable, are not intended to be separated but tend inherently under grace toward greater and greater mutual interaction and, in a qualified way, toward mutual influence. But it is equally the case that they also tend precisely insofar as they mutually influence each other to become each more themselves, in terms of their own inner tendencies and capacities. The person of faith becomes more aware over time of the primacy and distinctness of the supernatural with respect to the natural, but the philosophical believer also becomes equally aware over time of the integrity or dignity of philosophical argument as such, according to its own inner structure and teleological orientation, in distinction from theological understanding and argumentation. This does not mean one’s philosophy is less dependent upon influences from theology or that it influences less the way theology is conducted. Just the opposite is implied: a greater sense of the dignity and gratuity of divine revelation can make philoso- A Response 623 phy more docile to influences received from faith. And a greater sense of the integrity of genuine philosophical discovery can greatly enrich theology in its rightful assimilation of philosophical concepts and ideas, in view of uniquely theological ends. Second, and last, grace presupposes nature in such a way that a culture of grace (and a forteriori a culture of healthy theology) requires a culture of knowledge of nature and of philosophical learning. It is not absurd that one might be concerned about an excessively rationalistic Neoscholasticism. But it is equally important to avoid a culture of theological fideism that has no sufficient grounding in: the philosophical knowledge of nature, classical virtue theory, natural law, philosophical understanding of modern science and cosmology, or, above all, philosophical ways of speaking truthfully about God. For a theology that can no longer speak of God metaphysically is no theology at all, and will inevitably become (despite whatever kind of Christocentric intentions are present) a mere narrative theology, or in spite of everything, a mere “theological anthropology.” It is precisely to ensure a genuinely Christian philosophy, then (that is to say, a philosophy that is ultimately theocentric in orientation, capable of cooperating with divine revelation) that we need also to be attentive to the integrity of philosophy according to its own inner structure and form of development. This is particularly true with regard to natural theology, which allows human beings to speak rightly and well of God in his incomprehensible transcendence, his immanence to creation, and his sapiential wisdom which governs all creatures. To do this in Catholic theology today, there is a need for renewal of the study of the metaphysics of Aquinas, his treatment of the “names” of the one God, and his profound philosophical reflection about the structure of human persons and of reality more generally.This form of renewed Thomistic thinking need not cut us off from the deepest forms of conversation with our contemporaries. On the contrary: if it is done rightly, it can help facilitate conversation at a level of profundity and effectiveness that few other intellectual resources in the Catholic tradition have the power to do. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2012): 625–44 625 Book Reviews Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Romanus Cessario, O.P., edited by Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), xviii + 409 pp. “R ESSOURCEMENT ” is a dangerous word. In its original twentiethcentury theological use, it referred to the return to theological sources, principally in the early Church. In this is reflected the wisdom of the Church in her regular return to the sources of her doctrinal life for nourishment and sustenance. But for some, it took on other colors. It was a chance to settle scores, against scholasticism in particular and the oppressive accretions of the Middle Ages in general. Even worse, it was an opportunity to use the Fathers of the Church against each other and even against the Church herself in her magisterium. Much mischief came to shelter under the wings of an abused ressourcement. Professors Hütter and Levering have boldly entitled their collection of essays honoring Fr. Romanus Cessario on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday Ressourcement Thomism. Ressourcement purists of a certain stripe may take offense at the term applied to Thomism. For those who thought the whole point of ressourcement was an end run around Thomism, the juxtaposition is surely appalling. Nonetheless, here in the early years of the third millennium, the universal doctor is worthy of just such a return to the sources.We could surely benefit from a renewed study of his thought in his own words, attentive to their intellectual context and frame. But yet one might well worry about dangers lurking in the species of ressourcement Thomism that lurk in the genus of ressourcement itself. St. Thomas might be used against the very traditions of thought that have so organically flowed from him and, even more seriously, used against the magisterium of the Church—and such use is, in fact, afoot. Happily, it is not afoot in this volume, which provides any number of examples of the fruitful return to and reflection upon the thought of St. Thomas that can provide nourishment and sustenance for the Church in the new millennium. 626 Book Reviews Apart from appreciations of Fr. Cessario by J. A. Di Noia, Mary Ann Glendon, Guy Bedouelle, a Postscript by Alasdair MacIntyre, a substantial introduction by the editors, and a bibliography of the works of Fr. Cessario, the volume consists of fourteen essays collected into three parts: part 1, Sapientia Dei: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Doctrine; part 2: Mysterium Fidei: Sacraments and Metaphysics; and part 3: Bonum–Lex–Virtus: Moral Theology. It is a remarkable collection of essays reflecting not only a wide range of topics but also a wide range of ways of returning to St. Thomas. They are models of ressourcement Thomism. The reader will please indulge me if I speak briefly to each in this context. Reinhard Hütter’s opening essay, “Transubstantiation Revisited: Sacra Doctrina, Dogma, and Metaphysics,” directly addresses the theme of the volume. He begins, as many authors in this volume do, with a contemporary problem; Professor Hütter calls it a sense of insecurity. It is an insecurity pertaining to the very task of theology as the intellectus fidei in its relation to sacred Scripture, tradition, and the living magisterium. A second sense of insecurity is also noted, and this one surrounds the teachings of the Church about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, specifically, that Vatican II “had given license to jettison the conceptual apparatus of the definition decreed by the Council of Trent.” How to address this? “In this somewhat precarious theological situation, I regard it as salutary to move forward by first moving backward, ‘upstream, and listening to the sources.’ The particular source overdue to be listened to again intently is Thomas Aquinas.” Professor Hütter’s remarkable essay thus turns to St. Thomas on the nature and task of theology as well as to St. Thomas on Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. This alone would make the essay worth one’s attention. What gives it its particular value is Professor Hütter’s profound insight that “Thomas paradigmatically shows how the nature and task of theology bear immediately upon the mystery of Christ’s Eucharistic presence, and it is in discursively contemplating the mystery of Christ’s Eucharistic presence that the nature and task of theology come to a surpassing fruition.” In the course of this long essay, the longest in this volume, Professor Hütter provides salutary insight into St. Thomas’s understanding of sacra doctrina as the fruitful unity of the reception in faith of what has been revealed and the discursive activity of the intellectus fidei. He carefully presents this specifically in the case of the doctrine of transubstantiation, both in the decrees of Trent and in modern papal teaching as part of the living magisterium. Professor Hütter gives sustained attention to St. Thomas’s metaphysics of substance and quantity as they illumine his teaching on transubstantiation. Here Professor Hütter draws upon the commentatorial tradition, especially Book Reviews 627 John of St. Thomas and Sylvester of Ferrara, in which we not only see more deeply into St. Thomas’s thought but also see the ever deepening penetration of St. Thomas’s insights into the Church’s own understanding of the revelation she proclaims. At the heart of Professor Hütter’s unified consideration of the two insecurities is the understanding of the human intellect as that which is made to know substance. In Professor Hütter’s words, “The intellect beholds the truth of the doctrine of faith by way of its own proper and primordial channel of beholding and understanding reality, that is, by way of the intellect’s own proper object, substance.” The doctrine of transubstantiation is most fittingly an object of the human intellect. In not only articulating St. Thomas on sacra doctrina and on transubstantiation but also showing the deep underlying unity at work, Professor Hütter has provided a substantive answer to two modern insecurities and has at the same time provided an explicit model of ressourcement Thomism. If the other authors are not so explicit, they nonetheless each contribute in various ways to such a project. That St. Thomas can help us in the doctrine of faith is also brought out by Matthew Levering, in his “Ordering Wisdom: Aquinas, the Old Testament, and Sacra Doctrina.” Professor Levering provides a close reading of the understudied principial lectures of St.Thomas on Sacred Scripture. Specifically, he considers the way in which St.Thomas’s understanding of the Old Testament in these unique and sweeping views of Sacred Scripture brings out the divine pedagogy at work in salvation history by which the Old Testament leads to Christ. Professor Levering shows how this in turn illumines the teachings of the Church in both Dei Verbum and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Other authors confront specific contemporary theological challenges by a return to St. Thomas. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.’s “The Precarity of Wisdom: Modern Dominican Theology, Perspectivalism, and the Tasks of Reconstruction” addresses the modern challenge to perennial truth by historical perspectivalism. He sets it up in an illuminating way through the juxtaposition of the two Dominican theologians Marie-Dominique Chenu and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Fr.White moves the conversation beyond simply an intra-conventual slugfest to the essential modern need of what he calls a “sapiential unification.” It is precisely this which St. Thomas himself has to offer and which Fr. White considers in the three areas of science and the classical metaphysics of creation, history and dogma with regard to the incarnate life of God, and the teleological character of the human self in relation to the historical self. 628 Book Reviews The problem of a modern loss of the sapiential in theology is also the concern of Matthew L. Lamb in “Contemplata Tradere: Embodied Interiority in Cessario, Pinckaers, and Lonergan.” Fr. Lamb puts his dear friend, Fr. Romanus Cessario, in conversation with his beloved teacher, Fr. Bernard Lonergan, on the important contemporary task of “integrating science and scholarship with wisdom and holiness.” Beginning with Frs. Pinckears and Cessario on wisdom and interiority in St. Thomas, Fr. Lamb then turns to Lonergan on embodied interiority as a richly complementary understanding of what St. Thomas was doing. Some may be surprised that such a conversation might bear fruit; but then many will no doubt be surprised as well at the intellectual portrait of Lonergan that Fr. Lamb so carefully, and lovingly, sketches. The return to St. Thomas is not always irenic. In some cases, it appears that St. Thomas himself is the problem. Bernard Blankenhorn, O.P.’s “The Place of Romans 6 in Aquinas’s Doctrine of Sacramental Causality: A Balance of History and Metaphysics” addresses critics of St. Thomas who hold that his teaching on sacramental causality is too metaphysical. Through a careful reading of St. Thomas’s commentary on Romans 6 as well as a consideration of its use in the Summa theologiae, Fr. Blankenhorn argues for a complementary and integrated place for salvation history and biblical narrative in St. Thomas’s understanding of sacramental causality. We thus find that St. Thomas is not the problem; indeed, he provides a way of uniting a scriptural narrative understanding with the metaphysical. The dichotomy may be real, but it is not St. Thomas’s. In“Moral Development and Connecting the Virtues: Aquinas, Porter, and the Flawed Saint,” Craig Steven Titus addresses a modern critique of St. Thomas’s moral theology. Professor Jean Porter has raised the question of what she calls the “flawed saint,” that is, a person who is a subject of perfect virtue but also a subject of true and persistent vice. It would seem such a person is not possible for St.Thomas, and thus her conclusion “that Aquinas was wrong to say that the life of charity is inconsistent with serious sin.” Her example is the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Without wading into the debates over King’s moral life, Professor Titus addresses the problem proposed by Professor Porter. Professor Titus’s reading of St. Thomas, especially with regard to continence and incontinence, helps put the situation of Professor Porter’s flawed saint in more rightly Thomistic perspective. His careful delineations of St. Thomas’s moral theology in relation to moral development permit a substantive response to Professor Porter’s critique of St. Thomas. At the same time, through the language of moral development, he is able to place St.Thomas in conversation with contemporary psychology. Book Reviews 629 Sometimes there are serious disputes on how to read St. Thomas among those who would have recourse to him. In “The Human Acts of Christ and the Acts that Are the Sacraments,” Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap., offers an instance of returning to St. Thomas but also articulating an incompleteness in the angelic doctor. We have here an extension, of sorts, of the earlier debate in The Thomist between Fr. Weinandy and Fr. White on the beatific vision in Christ. Fr. Weinandy argues that the categories of conjoined and separated instrumental causality are insufficient to account for the causal efficacy of the sacraments as St. Thomas himself understands them, given the primacy of act in St. Thomas’s sacramental theology and especially the place of the priestly human acts of the divine Son in the Eucharist. Fr.Weinandy posits a third type of instrumental causality, which he calls mystical instrumental efficient causality. Fr. Weinandy thus proposes to develop St. Thomas’s metaphysics to give a fuller account of the priestly activity of Christ. Steven A. Long’s “Natural Law, the Moral Object, and Humanae Vitae” is part of a very important contemporary debate about the reading of St. Thomas’s moral theology. This essay was prompted by the exchange between Professor Janet Smith and Fr. Martin Rhonheimer in the pages of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly over condom use within marriage to prevent the transmission of AIDS. Professor Long directly addresses the question of the debate, specifically Fr. Rhonheimer’s rejection of the distinction of finis operis and finis operantis. Fr. Rhonheimer rejects the distinction as a misguided and misguiding creation of later Thomists, arguing that the language of the distinction is not found in St. Thomas himself. Professor Long concedes that the language of the distinction is not found in St. Thomas, but insists that the idea articulated by the terms is. The substance of the essay is Professor Long’s presentation of the teleological grammar (as he calls it) of the moral object. He presents it and addresses five potent objections to his position in which he carefully attends to the analysis of the per se ordering of acts. In addition to the careful exposition of St. Thomas’s thought in the midst of controversy, we also have in Professor Long a fine example of how to read the commentatorial tradition in relation to St. Thomas himself. Some work on St. Thomas appreciates how his own historical circumstance sheds light on contemporary concerns. Two such essays are present in this volume. In “The Importance of the Definition of Sacraments as Signs,” Fr. Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole, O.P., begins with the historical reality of St. Thomas’s clarifying precision in his definition of a sacrament as a sign and not principally a cause of what is efficacious. He shows how the 630 Book Reviews insights that are at work in this development in St. Thomas have particular implications both for the way in which St. Thomas understands salvation and for our understanding of the modern question of the relation of non-Christian religions to the Church. Richard Schenk, O.P., in his “Verum sacrificium as the Fullness and Limit of Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Sacramental Theology of Thomas Aquinas: Historical Context and Current Significance,” is interested in the sacrifice of Christ and its relation to the sacramental theology of St. Thomas, especially with regard to the Eucharist. With his typically stunning breadth of scope, Fr. Schenk shows how St. Thomas is able to assist the Church in her modern reflections (here he especially considers the work of John Paul II) in relation to ongoing Protestant dialogue (especially the critique of Eberhard Jüngel) as well as the influential theories of sacrifice associated with the thought of René Girard. To do this, Fr. Schenk shows how St. Thomas had already navigated the difficult medieval shoals on sacrifice as represented by the competing views of Richard Fishacre and Robert Kilwardby. It is, in part, from this historical situation of St. Thomas that Fr. Schenk draws out the theological value of St.Thomas for the parallel intra-Catholic division between Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In showing the contemporary value of St. Thomas with regard to the Catholic debates, Fr. Schenk is able to situate him as well with regard to the larger ecumenical and theoretical contexts with which he began the essay. Much good contemporary work entails careful reading of the texts of St. Thomas with an eye to speculative precision in understanding his thought. Such is essential for any sustained Thomistic ressourcement. Again, we find two outstanding examples in this collection. Lawrence Dewan, O.P. speaks of his “St. Thomas and the Divinity of the Common Good” as a meditation, but it has all the rigor and care in reading the texts of St.Thomas that one expects from Fr. Dewan. He here argues for the divine status of the common good as the key to the metaphysical contemplation of the common good. He writes, “My understanding is, then, that Thomas presents the existence of God as naturally known to all, even though naturally reasoned to. . . . I would say that this natural knowledge would fill out the picture of the commandment of love as known by virtue of itself to all. Given that one has knowledge of God as the author of being, one has knowledge of him as lovable by us, indeed as more lovable than ourselves.” The common good is also the central topic of Stephen Brock’s “The Primacy of the Common Good and the Foundations of Natural Law in St. Thomas.” Fr. Brock begins by noting that for St. Thomas one of the essential features of any true law is that it is ordered to the common Book Reviews 631 good. So how then, he asks, is one to understand the natural law as ordered to the common good? More precisely, Fr. Brock sets out to understand how the primacy of the common good is a precept of the natural law in its own right. He undertakes a careful reading of Summa theologiae I, q. 5, a. 4, on whether the good has the ratio of final cause; from this analysis, Fr. Brock proposes an analogical universality of the common good that serves as the first precept of the natural law. Sometimes it is helpful to have a broad historical and speculative view of the landscape in which St. Thomas is located. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. has provided this view in his “A Reading Guide for Natural Law Ethics.” This is far more than a book list or even an annotated reading guide. Fr. Koterski surveys the current state of philosophical and theological debate over natural law ethics and especially the prominent critiques of it. The critiques and the responses to them (cleanly articulated by Fr. Koterski) provide the backbone of the essay and the context for the carefully selected readings proposed. Fr. Koterski gives particular attention to the place of St. Thomas’s natural law ethics within the contemporary development of Catholic social thought. A more narrowly conceived consideration of St. Thomas in relation to Catholic social thought is found in Graham J. McAleer’s “Vanity and Commerce: How De malo Supports Whig Thomism.” Professor McAleer argues that “Catholic social thought can safely adopt the Scottish school’s theory of commercial motivation—vanity.” Noting a number of contemporary reflections upon and magisterial teachings on modern economic life, Professor McAleer wants to argue not just to the fact of vanity as a motive for modern commerce, but for the good of vanity as a motive for modern commerce. He notes, quite simply, that Catholic social thought has given scant attention to the question of commercial motivation, and he would like to begin that conversation. To this end, he brings to bear some remarks of St. Thomas on vanity in the disputed questions De malo. All said and done, this is an outstanding collection of essays. How fitting that this volume is in honor of Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., who has done so much in the past thirty plus years to help the Church understand afresh the essential place of St. Thomas. As Alasdair MacIntyre puts it so pointedly in his Postscript to this volume, “What we are particularly in debt to Cessario for is not primarily that his answers differ from those of that unfortunate generation of Catholic moral theologians who prospered in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, but that he asked different questions.” That he could do so arose not simply from a reading of St. Thomas but from the reading of St. Thomas within a tradition, specifically within the enduring tradition of Dominican Thomism. In this, it seems to me, one appreciates 632 Book Reviews not only his outstanding work in moral theology, noted throughout this volume, but also his little volume of 1999, Le thomisme et les thomistes (subsequently published in English as A Short History of Thomism) in which Fr. Cessario so exquisitely articulates Thomism precisely as a living intellectual tradition at the service of the truth and the Church, bringing out that most vital line that is the Dominican tradition of Thomism. Fr. Cessario’s timing at the beginning of the new millennium was impeccable. But, as is also clear at several points in the volume, this is not merely a tribute to a scholar who has helped shape a new direction in Catholic theology for the new millennium. It is a tribute to a friend, colleague, and guide. So many theologians have experienced the intellectual care of Fr. Cessario. If I may conclude on a personal note, it was more than twenty years ago that Fr. Cessario served as the external reader of my doctoral dissertation on the Christology of St. Thomas. Although we had never met before, he took a remarkable amount of time to speak with me and encourage me in my study of and work in the angelic doctor. He initiated a friendship. It is a story repeated, mutatis mutandis, time and time again. The volume here reviewed testifies to his enormous influence for good not only in his writings, but in his generosity and warmth, in his life as a faithful student of St.Thomas and, like St. Thomas, as a faithful son of St. Dominic. N&V John F. Boyle University of St. Thomas St. Paul, MN The Temple in the Gospel of Mark: A Study in Its Narrative Role by Timothy C. Gray (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010 ), xi + 223 pp. S TUDENTS of the Gospel according to Mark have long noticed that the temple plays a central thematic role from the moment Jesus “cleanses” it until his death. Few, however, have attempted the sustained reflection necessary to tease out the complexities of Mark’s temple theology. This book by Timothy C. Gray is the most significant attempt at this task to date. The book began as Gray’s doctoral dissertation written under Francis Moloney at The Catholic University of America. It was first published in 2008 by Mohr Siebeck, and in 2010 Baker issued this reprint, mercifully making the volume available at a much lower cost. Gray describes his method as narrative criticism, which he defines as an attempt “to discern the plot of a given story by examining the parts of the story in relation to the entire narrative world depicted in the story” (2). To understand the significance of the temple motif, therefore, one must “examine the role of the temple within Mark’s larger plot” (2). Book Reviews 633 This narrative critical approach is a self-conscious corrective to the excesses of redaction critics, who have tended to fixate on how authors shaped their sources to the exclusion of the story itself.The approach pays off: Gray’s careful analysis of chapters 11 to 15 as a whole, including Mark’s use of the Old Testament, illuminates the temple motif which is woven throughout the narrative in ways that frequently elude interpreters who take a more piecemeal approach. Over the course of the book, however, it becomes clear that the difference between Gray’s brand of narrative criticism and redaction criticism is only a difference of emphasis, as Gray frequently appeals to Mark’s editorial activity and Sitz im Leben, and occasionally reads Jesus’ words as if they were addressed not to the characters in the story but to “the [Markan] community” (see his treatment of 11:24 on p. 54). It would not be inaccurate, therefore, to call Gray’s method a chastened redaction criticism. Gray provides a close reading of Mark beginning with the entry into Jerusalem in 11:1 until the death of Jesus. Jesus enters the temple and condemns it as a den of thieves that has failed to summon the Gentiles to worship God (11:17).Yet, this was not only a “cleansing” of a few corrupt elements but a prophetic demonstration enacting the temple’s permanent demise, as the cursing of the fig tree shows (11:12–14, 20–21). Jesus then goes on to describe the community gathered around him as the new locus of faith, prayer, and forgiveness (11:22–25).When the chief priests, scribes, and elders ask Jesus by what authority he is doing these things (11:27–33), he tells them the parable of the wicked tenants (12:1–12), which condemns their leadership and intimates that Jesus himself is the rejected stone that will be the cornerstone of the new temple. The eschatological discourse which follows in chapter 13 is frequently read as a loose collection of traditions, but Gray shows that the language of the discourse is drawn from prophetic oracles against Jerusalem and its temple. The Last Supper and trial narrative present Jesus’ offering of his body and blood as the sacrifice of the new temple. At his trial Jesus is accused of threatening to destroy “this temple made with hands (τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον τὸν χειροποίητον)” and in three days replace it with “another, not made with hands (ἄλλον ἀχειροποίητον)” (14:58).Though Mark describes this accusation as false, Gray argues convincingly that it is false only in that Jesus never said that he would personally destroy the temple. Finally, the destruction of the temple becomes a fait accompli when Jesus dies and the temple veil is torn. The events of A.D. 70 are the “inevitable ‘aftershock’ of the real eschatological event—the death of Jesus” (192–93). Many exegetical insights emerge over the course of the book, but there are at least two major dividends that deserve special consideration. 634 Book Reviews First, Gray’s attention to Mark’s use of the Old Testament reveals the Evangelist to be an expert conductor of a scriptural symphony, drawing on texts with rich thematic affinities with the narrative of the Gospel. Mark weaves the biblical narratives into his own in order to portray Jesus’ judgment of the temple as emerging from deep within Israel’s own prophetic tradition. This point is of no small significance for understanding how the new, eschatological temple embodied in Jesus relates to the faith of Israel. One is reminded of the dictum Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet,Vetus in Novo patet. Though he never reflects on this question explicitly, Gray’s exegesis shows that Jesus’ replacement of the temple is in continuity with the Old Testament, despite the fact that this continuity can only be seen retrospectively, from this side of the cross. (See, however, his treatment of the centurion’s confession, 194–96.) Second, the most richly suggestive point of the book is perhaps Gray’s convincing argument that in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus not only foretells the destruction of the existing temple and cult but institutes a new temple and cult at the Last Supper. This conclusion seems obvious in retrospect but is quite unusual in contemporary biblical scholarship. Mark portrays Jesus hinting that the temple will be destroyed and that a new edifice, of which Jesus is the cornerstone, will be put in its place. Then, on the night he is betrayed Jesus takes bread and wine and gives them to the disciples as his body and blood.The words “this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many” (14:24) are clearly sacrificial, indicating that Jesus’ death is the new locus of atonement. And though Mark lacks the words “do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24), the Eucharistic practice of Mark’s own day is surely presupposed. This raises a host of issues for further reflection, including the question of whether and to what extent the pervasive temple imagery in early Christianity is linked to the belief that the Church was the locus of Jesus’ new sacrifice. It is perhaps inevitable that a monograph characterized by fresh insights would include some arguments that are less persuasive than others. Gray’s treatment of the biblical quotations in Mark 11:17 offers an example. (“Is it not written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples’? But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’ ”) The phrase “house of prayer” comes from Isaiah 56:7 and “den of robbers” appears to come from Jeremiah 7:11. Following Tom Holmén, Gray claims that in Isaiah the words “My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples” is an assertion that Mark has rewritten as a question. Similarly, in Jeremiah the phrase “den of robbers” appears in the midst of a question but Mark makes it an assertion. By changing Isaiah’s assertion to a question and Jeremiah’s question to an assertion, Mark “highlights how Book Reviews 635 the temple establishment has likewise reversed the order of things that God, according to Isaiah 56, has set down . . . and [intensifies] the tone of judgment against the temple” (30–31). In other words, Mark intended for his readers to notice the flip-flop of question and assertion and for this “reversal” to make them think of the “reversal” of the temple leaders’ wicked behavior. This is an extraordinarily subtle line of reasoning. Moreover, it is not clear that Mark does in fact rewrite the quotation from Isaiah as a question. To be sure, Jesus asks a question, but the assertion from Isaiah remains unaltered within it (“Is it not written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples’?”). In sum: Gray’s overarching case is convincing. Moreover, the book raises a number of pressing issues for further consideration and contains a treasure trove of neglected Old Testament intertexts that illuminate the Markan narrative. N&V Nathan Eubank Notre Dame Seminary New Orleans, LA The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria by Hans Van Loon (Leiden: Brill, 2009 ), xvi + 626 pp. T HE provocative title of this study is not accidental.The author, Hans Van Loon, is attempting to shake up a majority consensus regarding Cyril of Alexandria’s own preferred Christological terminology. Van Loon registers his concern that the Eastern Orthodox–Oriental Orthodox dialogue is basing its consensus on a mistaken judgment regarding Cyril’s Christology. In particular, Van Loon challenges the view that the mia physis (“one nature”) language is Cyril’s own preferred terminology, and that Cyril allowed a two-natures formulation only as a concession to the Antiochenes following the 433 reunion. To correct what he believes is an incorrect understanding of Cyril, the author embarks on a study of Cyril’s writings from the opening period of the Nestorian controversy (429–30). This methodological limitation is very much to the point: the claim is often made that Cyril shifted to allow a two-natures approach only as a concession to the sharp critique of the Antiochenes, a critique that was initiated only after Cyril published his Third Letter to Nestorius with the Twelve Anathemas attached. Van Loon, then, proposes to study in depth all the works up to and including the Third Letter in order to determine Cyril’s own preferred terminology. The depth of the analysis of these documents is impressive and the command of secondary scholarship is astonishing. In his first chapter Van 636 Book Reviews Loon maps out the trajectory of Cyril scholarship on this issue from the early twentieth century until today, identifying two main trajectories. The first (and majority) view, initiated by Joseph Lebon, argues that “nature” equals “person” in Cyril’s thought, and considers the mia physis formula the best rendition of what Cyril really thinks. Further, this view holds that Cyril is willing to identify the two natures only abstractly, “in contemplation only,” not in reality. The second view, proposed by M. Jugie, argues that “nature” equals a concrete ousia in Cyril, and that it is not equivalent to “person.” Further, this view holds that “in contemplation only” in Cyril applies not to the distinction of the natures, but only to their separation.Van Loon’s study is one long extended argument in favor of the second (minority) view. To put this more positively,Van Loon argues that Cyril is by no means the staunch defender of the mia physis formula that he is made out to be, but rather that his own preferred terminology much more frequently turns to dyophysite (two-nature) language, compatible with Chalcedon. Second, he attempts to show that Cyril’s phrase, “in contemplation only,” only applies to the act of separating the natures. Cyril does not deny the reality of two real natures in Christ, but only rejects their separation—and precisely the kind of separation that he finds in the writings of Nestorius. Before turning to the early Christological writings,Van Loon undertakes a long and impressive background study on metaphysics and metaphysical terms in Cyril’s anti-Arian writings. He concludes that Cyril is most at home with the logical categories of Aristotle and the neo-Platonists, but that “logic . . . is a set of tools for Cyril,” not the heart of his thought (94). His study of the term physis in Cyril’s pre-Nestorian, anti-Arian writings yields the conclusion that “in the vast majority of cases in Cyril of Alexandria’s trinitarian writings” the term physis has a meaning that approximates “secondary substance,” that is, ousia (and not the individual or person). Recognizing that ambiguity about the use of terms has bedeviled the debate from the fifth century until today,Van Loon attempts to define with significant precision key terms that can be used to make accurate comparisons. He defines eighteen terms in all (found on pp. 200-202), placing them in small caps in order to indicate to the reader the precise and stable meaning of the given term (some examples are: ABSTRACT NATURE, COMMON NATURE, INDIVIDUAL NATURE, COMMON SUBSTANCE, GRAMMATICAL PERSON, ONTOLOGICAL PERSON, METAPHYSICAL PERSON). By mapping out the various and conflicting views on these terms in the scholarly literature,Van Loon sets the stage for his own investigation. In three lengthy chapters, the author offers a close reading and analysis of twenty-three works of Cyril (listed on p. 262). For each work he Book Reviews 637 sums up the meaning of the key terms in play—ousia, hypostasis, physis, prosopon, and idios—and then draws provisional conclusions. In a concluding chapter he presents the main results of his investigation. First, he observes that dyophysite language predominates in these writings: “Thus, Cyril’s two-nature language is his own, and he has not borrowed it from his Antiochene opponents” (531). Second, Van Loon finds only three uses of the mia physis language in these works, two of them embedded in a quotation that Cyril believed to be from Athanasius. He concludes that “in contrast with the many examples of dyophysite language, miaphysite terminology hardly plays a role in Cyril’s Christology before the reunion of 433” and so “is certainly not typical of his own Christological vocabulary” (524). Third, he argues that the phrase “in contemplation only” refers not to the reality of the two natures in Christ, but to their separation into two sons, and he concludes that “Cyril’s dyophysitism is not just notional, but real” (540). Importantly, Van Loon proposes that when Cyril speaks of “one nature” in Christ, he really means something like “separate reality which is the composition of two natures” (390). “Nature” here is not the equivalent of “person,” but rather points to one separate reality that itself is composed of two parts (or natures), the divine and the human. It is no coincidence, Van Loon argues, that in the few instances where Cyril employs the mia physis language, he immediately illustrates this by recourse to the soul-body analogy of the human being. Crucially, the soul and body each retain their own individual natures but come together to express one new nature or separate reality, the human being. While agreeing with the main conclusions of this study, I would offer two minor caveats. First, when Van Loon claims that “by assuming the common human nature, the Word of God became an individual human being” (169) in Cyril’s thought, this could be misleading, as if there were a “common human nature” existing on its own that the Word somehow assumed, and only then became an individual human. Rather, it seems better to say that for Cyril, the Word, by becoming a man in Mary’s womb through the power of the Spirit, assumed as the New Adam our nature such that by his saving work he could affect and transform the whole of our nature. Second,Van Loon helpfully shows that the phrase “united according to hypostasis” was Cyril’s favorite phrase in this early period. He further argues that by “hypostasis” Cyril did not yet reach the meaning of a “metaphysical person,” that is, a person at a distinct metaphysical level from the natures who is the bearer of those natures. He concludes that for Cyril this meaning is “totally absent from the term hypostasis” (484). 638 Book Reviews It can be acknowledged that Cyril did not yet have the finely honed terminology that later obtained, but I find Van Loon making too much of this distinction. Later in the study he actually concedes that Cyril’s view “comes close to a divine bearer of the two natures, a divine and a human nature” (547), and that this idea of a metaphysical person is already present implicitly and “in embryonic form” in Cyril (566). The fact that Cyril consistently refers to the “Word” as the one who acts both “as man” and “as God” indicates this notion of the hypostasis of the Word acting as the bearer and (in a sense) agent of the two natures. Cyril may not have worked out the metaphysics of this, but he clearly has a grip on the hypostasis of the Word as the single person and agent who can act in both of his two natures. Van Loon’s case is impressive, the more so because of the close and thorough analysis he has done of all the relevant texts of this period. Even if readers are not persuaded by every argument he makes, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Cyril was much more at home with a twonature view of Christ than he is made out to be, and that the mia physis formula simply was not at the center of his thought. Cyril scholarship— and contemporary ecumenical dialogues—will have to reckon with the findings of this study. N&V Daniel Keating Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation by Nonna Verna Harrison (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010 ), xi + 207 pp. I N the caricatures of Christian theological anthropology often encountered in popular culture, the Christian perspective on human nature is portrayed as repressive and depressive. “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” (Col 2:21). These words are thought to be at the heart of the Christian message. In the context of Paul’s argument in Colossians 2, of course, these words are used for the opposite purpose—to liberate Christian spiritual formation from the grip of religious worldliness. In God’s Many-Splendored Image, Sister Nonna Verna Harrison endeavors to recover a Christian theological anthropology that rightly describes the nature and shape of the Christian life and serves to motivate its pursuit. Harrison’s expertise in patristic theology and experience in communicating the virtues of the patristic literature facilitate her articulation of a coherent and compelling theological anthropology that is drawn from a wide array Book Reviews 639 of sources. The most prominent sources upon which Harrison draws are the theological reflections of the desert monks and the Cappadocians. Two virtues of Harrison’s book should be noted immediately. First, Harrison’s reading of the patristic literature is doubly generous; it is both thorough and charitable. She draws upon many of the lesser-known works of the theologians whom she engages, demonstrating a patient reading of the patristic corpus. Her interpretations of the patristic literature are always sympathetic and positive. Second—and this is the best aspect of the book—Harrison’s triple emphasis upon “what we are, what we can and should do, and what we are called to become” (5) appropriately binds together ontology, Christian ethics, and teleology. Humanity is directed toward God, and the various aspects of human existence are given integrity by the telos of the visio Dei. This has important political implications, since all humans share the same telos. The book’s chapters are well organized. Each chapter includes an introductory scene from Harrison’s own experience or an observation she has made about humanity which raises the questions addressed by the chapter. These questions are followed by an extended engagement with relevant texts from the Christian tradition. She then draws together the various strands of the chapter, often concluding with a few comments explaining how the thought and piety of the theologians encountered in the chapter can help us answer the questions posed at the beginning. The prose is written clearly and compellingly. These factors make the book usable as a supplementary textbook for undergraduate courses in spiritual formation, theological anthropology, or perhaps historical theology, where it could be used to illustrate the ways in which ancient theology can help us construct answers to contemporary theological questions. But university use does not circumscribe the audience that would benefit from this book. Harrison always has the spiritual formation of her readers in view, and it is an enriching read. Theologically, Harrison eschews the more parochial debates encountered in theological anthropology, focusing rather on the larger issues related to human orientations toward God, oneself, other humans, and non-human creation established by God’s creative and redemptive action. As ressourcement Thomists have shown, the differences between Eastern and Western patristic theological anthropologies have been overemphasized. Thomas Aquinas, at least, freely draws together many of their diverse emphases into a coherent vision. Nevertheless, because of Harrison’s predominant engagement with Eastern theological literature, her book could also be used to complement the traditional questions of theological anthropology in the Western theological tradition. The book 640 Book Reviews introduces readers to important theological emphases in the catholic tradition; her text invites further exploration of the relevant theological issues and more careful reading of the ancient texts. Despite the book’s many virtues, I have a few reservations about aspects of the book’s argument if it is read as an effort to articulate the meaning and implications of humanity’s identity as God’s image or as a theological anthropology more broadly conceived. For example, the first chapter of the book takes up the issue of human freedom. Harrison emphasizes the importance of human choice in the Christian life, explaining that God’s grace and human freedom are complementary. Human willingness to obey God is necessary for successful Christian discipleship, and God’s grace “brings our freedom to fullness of life, creativity, and activity” (26). Harrison’s observations here are useful. However, further analysis of Harrison’s concept of freedom is required. She defines freedom as self-determination; humans become what they choose to become, with God’s help. What is missing from the chapter is careful theological attention to divine freedom as expressed in the divine economy. Freedom belongs first, and perfectly, to God. Human freedom makes sense only in light of, and beneath divine freedom. Therefore, the nature of dependent creaturely freedom is also given short shrift. In other words, Harrison rightly affirms the fact of human freedom and its role in Christian formation, but she does not give due theological consideration to the nature of freedom in light of the ontological distinction between the Creator God and God’s creatures. While Harrison does affirm the metaphysical implications of the Creatorcreature distinction advocated in the patristic literature and recognizes humanity’s dependence upon God for its existence and identity, she does not often consider how our understanding of humanity is informed by God’s particular existence and identity, how the doctrine of God affects theological anthropology. This move is characteristic of a theological instinct found throughout the book. Harrison affirms that knowledge of God leads to clearer knowledge of humanity and that knowledge of humanity leads to clearer knowledge of God. But the force of most of her examples is intended to underscore the latter, and sometimes it appears that it is difficult for Harrison to nail down the explanatory force of the former. Consider another example. On pp. 57–58, Harrison has an important discussion under the title “Seeing People Truly.” She rightly argues that “[o]nce we come to know God, we will perceive his character, that is, his gentleness, patience, generosity, wisdom, justice, and love. Then we will slowly begin to recognize the divine character in people we meet . . . ” (57). Contemplation of God leads to more truthful recognition of God’s image in the Book Reviews 641 world. Harrison does not expand on or explore the nature of this contemplation of God or how one would embark upon it, however. Rather, she immediately turns to a movement in the other direction: “On the other hand, we may perceive gentleness, patience, generosity, wisdom, justice, or love in people first and so find the courage to believe that God is like such people, only even better” (58). This quote is followed by several illustrations that seek to show how God is seen through humanity. Of course, Christian theologians have recognized the value of thinking from God to humanity and from humanity to God. But theological precedence, in both East and West, has been given to contemplating God through the divine economy, and understanding creation in light of God. To put it another way, Harrison advocates the contemplation of God, but she seldom engages in the contemplation of God. To explain this impulse, Harrison might point out that this book is intended to be a theological anthropology; it is focused on humanity. But I wonder if we can contemplate the human creature without extended contemplation of humanity’s Creator. The best chapter in this regard is chapter nine, “Community.” Time and again Harrison returns to the discussion of the Trinity in order to illuminate various aspects of human social relations. She does not collapse the intra-Trinitarian relations into creaturely ones; rather, she explores the analogies suggested by Scripture. The other chapters would have benefited from the use of a similar theological method. I would also like to raise a question about Harrison’s description of grace.Throughout, Harrison recounts stories about the wise counsel given by abbots and monks to people known to be living sinfully. In nearly every case cited, the wisdom of the counselor deflects attention from the sin so that those counseled may be set free from the negative stereotypes others have placed upon them. I believe these accounts do indeed display profound wisdom. But I wonder if Harrison has told only part of the story of Christian formation. At times it seems necessary to address sin directly and to demand repentance, not so that human conceptions of justice or vengeance are satisfied, but because the sinner needs to learn the virtues involved in repentance in order to be properly formed as a person. One final observation: occasionally, it appears that there are dueling purposes for the book. On the one hand, the title and structure of the book seem to point to this being Harrison’s own synthesis of a Christian anthropology. On the other hand, the chapters themselves often give the impression that Harrison is simply reporting what the theologians believed anthropologically. Perhaps the primary intention for the book would have been clearer had the subtitle, “Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation,” been 642 Book Reviews exchanged with what appears to be an alternative subtitle on the back cover: “Early Christian Insights concerning What It Means to Be Human.” This is exactly what this book provides. It is not a stand-alone text that provides a full explanation of Christian anthropology, but it does provide a wonderful set of Christian insights into what it means to be a human being before God and with one another. In this way, Harrison’s book is a helpful addition to the current literature on theological anthropology. She reminds us of the positive Christian vision of human life that overthrows mere religious worldliness and sets us moving toward the visio Dei. N&V Ryan S. Peterson Cedarville University Cedarville, OH Light & Glory: The Transfiguration of Christ in Early Franciscan and Dominican Theology by Aaron Canty (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011 ), xi + 266 pp. I F Benedict XVI is right when he introduces the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth by suggesting that the historical-critical method has “already yielded its essential fruit” and that scriptural exegesis needs to recover itself as a “theological discipline,” then it won’t be long before both scholars and Christians in general find a new appreciation for the depth and reverence with which the scholastic theologians treated the sacred Scriptures as the foundation of their theological enterprise. In this regard we are fortunate to have studies like Aaron Canty’s Light & Glory: The Transfiguration of Christ in Early Franciscan and Dominican Theology, which not only ably treats its particular subject, but illustrates the richness of thirteenth-century theology as a project founded in the Scriptures. The mysterious event of the transfiguration of Jesus, as reported in the synoptic gospels and referenced by 2 Peter, raised an array of questions for the scholastics across several areas of theology. If the transfiguration revealed the heavenly glory of the resurrected Christ, how did the disciples see it with their bodily eyes? Did they only “see” in their minds? Was it really this glory that appeared or just a vision of it? Did this glorious revelation compromise the mortality of the incarnate Son, so necessary for Christian soteriology? The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus presents its own questions. Presumably the disciples had never met either of them, so how did they know the two men were Moses and Elijah? How were they able to appear in the first place? As it turns out, these are themselves different questions, since Moses was dead but Elijah was alive. How does the transfiguration relate to the beatific vision for which Book Reviews 643 Christians hope, or the ascent of the mind to God, which is its foretaste even now? Canty’s study examines the work of seven mendicant theologians writing on these sorts of questions between 1230 and 1280 or so: the Dominicans Hugh of St. Cher, Guerric of St. Quentin, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscans Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, and Bonaventure. Presenting a helpful model for scholarship across scholastic genres, Canty includes postillae, ennarationes, and commentaries on the gospels, as well as sermons, disputed questions, commentaries on the Sentences, summae, and treatises on particular topics, such as Albert’s De Resurrectione. Working through both edited and unedited texts, Canty presents the work of these theologians in a way that reveals the flowering complexity of scholastic theology over the course of the thirteenth century. After a clear introduction and a quick chapter that helpfully rehearses the biblical and theological traditions on the transfiguration to which the thirteenth century was heir, Canty turns to the mendicant theologians. Hugh of St. Cher’s postillae on the synoptic gospels begin the study and exercise a great influence on the theologies of the transfiguration that follow. For Hugh, the transfiguration of Jesus signifies the transfiguration of the Church as his mystical body, and thus reveals the human possibilities of ascent, transformation, and contemplation. For Alexander of Hales, the transfiguration reveals Christian hope; the glorified Christ makes visible the clarity of the glorified body of heavenly destiny. Already in the first two theologians Canty presents, we see the scriptural accounts of the transfiguration developed into rich reflections on ecclesiology and eschatology. With Guerric of St. Quentin, some of the questions at hand become more technical. How was it that Jesus’ human body had the capacity or disposition to express the clarity of his divine nature? Though the chapter on Guerric is brief, the questions he raises, especially with regard to the natures of Christ and their hypostatic union, seem to be an important influence on later discussions. The chapter on John of La Rochelle is the longest in the book. John discusses a variety of questions on the transfiguration, such as whether it was an anticipation or proof of the resurrection, and whether it was only his clothes or Jesus himself who was radiant. Most interesting, as Canty points out, is the way John’s discussions reveal the rapid development of complex theological questions that was accomplished over the 1230s. Indeed, the method of the whole book, proceeding through different figures and across genres of their theological writings, makes Light & Glory a useful study of this remarkable scholastic flowering. 644 Book Reviews The discussion continues with Albert the Great, who sees the transfiguration as an explicit theophany of the Trinity and asks how it was that the transfigured Christ was still mortal and passible. Albert’s treatment also shows advancement in the complexity of the divisio textus of the Scripture on which the exegesis is theologically framed. The chapter on Bonaventure is surprisingly short, but this is hardly a fault of the study; Bonaventure discussed the transfiguration only in sermons and in his commentary on Luke. Touching among Bonaventure’s spiritual reflections is his apology for Peter’s wrongful enthusiasm after the transfiguration; for Bonaventure, Peter spoke only from an ecstasy of desire. Canty reserves his greatest praise for Thomas, whose theology of the transfiguration develops through sustained treatment over the course of his career, beginning with his commentary on the Sentences, continuing through the Catena aurea and the commentary on Matthew, and finding its fullest and most mature discussion in the Summa theologiae. For Canty, Thomas’s accomplishment is a comprehensive view of the transfiguration and its place within “the whole economy of salvation.” The transfiguration is not only a revelation of a future glory to come, but is a living exhortation and encouragement for Christian disciples of all times. Thomas makes fruitful use of arguments from fittingness to account for the simple and comprehensive purpose of the transfiguration: that Christ “could show His glory to men, and arouse them to desire it.” Light & Glory succeeds in its expressed purpose of making a contribution to the study of medieval Christology. The book is also a valuable scholarly example of how issues and topics in scholastic theology can be examined across the great variety of genres in which the medieval authors wrote. Finally, Light & Glory is a fine illustration of the remarkable flowering of exegesis and theological reflection produced by the mendicant schools of the thirteenth century. N&V Charles Sammons, O.F.M. Cap. Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA