THE TRINITY GILLES EMERY, O.P. Translated by Matthew Levering Thomistic Ressourcement Series, Volume 1 Representing the highest quality of scholarship, Emery offers a much-anticipated introduction to Catholic doctrine on the Trinity. Emery’s extensive research combined with lucid prose provides readers a resource to better understand the foundations of Trinitarian reflection. Paperback 978-0-8132-1864-9 $24.95 VOL . 10, N O. 4 The C Catholic atholic University University of America America Press Press Nova et Vetera Fall 2012 • Volume 10, Number 4 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal C OMMENTARY After Virtue, Thirty Years After JEAN-PIERRE TORRELL, O.P. Translated by Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P. Thomistic Ressourcement Series, Volume 2 This volume investigates themes of particular spiritual relevance in Aquinas’s theology: friendship, charity, prayer, configuration to Christ, priesthood, preaching. They also reveal his entire approach to theology to be guided by the desire to grow spiritually. Paperback 978-0-8132-1878-6 $24.95 BIOMEDICINE AND BEATITUDE An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics NICANOR PIER GIORGIO AUSTRIACO, O.P. Catholic Moral Thought Series, Volume 4 This introductory text narrates a bioethics that emphasizes the pursuit of beatitude in the lives of those who are confronted by moral questions raised by biomedicine and the other life sciences. Paperback 978-0-8132-1882-3 $24.95 ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. Nova et Vetera FALL 2012 CHRIST AND SPIRITUALITY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Pornography and Acedia R EINHARD H ÜTTER The Health Insurance Mandate E LLIOTT L OUIS B EDFORD A RTICLE Elizabeth Johnson’s Theological Method J OHN M. M C D ERMOTT, S.J. S YMPOSIUM ON P OPE B ENEDICT XVI’ S J ESUS OF N AZARETH , VOLUME 2 History and Faith H ANS B OERSMA The “New Worship” G EOFFREY WAINWRIGHT Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation W ILLIAM M. W RIGHT IV J UST WAR S YMPOSIUM Just War and the Common Good J OSEPH W. KOTERSKI , S.J. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force ROBERT J OHN A RAUJO, S.J. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? G REGORY M. R EICHBERG Holy War Ȁ Ȁ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘’‹• ’‹• — —Žϐ‹ŽŽ‡–‡”˜‹ Žϐ‹‹ŽŽ‡–‡”˜‹ ‡ ‡ǡ‘šͷͲ͵͹ͲǡƒŽ–‹‘”‡ǡʹͳʹͳͳ ǡ‘šͷͲ͵͹ͲǡƒŽ–‹‘”‡ǡʹͳʹͳͳ J AMES T URNER J OHNSON — —ƒ’”‡••Ǥ ƒ’”‡••Ǥ — —ƒǤ‡†—ͳǦͺͲͲǦͷ͵͹ǦͷͶͺ͹ ƒǤ‡†—ͳǦͺͲͲǦͷ͵͹ǦͷͶͺ͹ A Just Peace Critique of Just War VALERIE O. M ORKEVICIUS Is Just War Spirituality Possible? M ARTIN L. C OOK Just War and the Theology of Evil C HARLES M ATHEWES A Jewish Ethics of War A DAM A FTERMAN & G EDALIAH A FTERMAN Augustine Institute B OOK R EVIEWS E ARL F ERNANDES, J EFFREY L. M ORROW, C HARLES R AITH II, J ACOB S HATZER Nova et Vetera Fall 2012 • Volume 10, Number 4 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 Chad Pecknold, Catholic University of America Michael Sherwin, O.P., University of Fribourg Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Dominican House of Studies B OARD OF A DVISORS Anthony Akinwale, O.P., Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria Khaled Anatolios, Boston College Robert Barron, Mundelein Seminary John Betz, University of Notre Dame Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., Angelicum Steven Boguslawski, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Peter Casarella, DePaul University Romanus Cessario, O.P., St. John’s Seminary Boyd Taylor Coolman, Boston College Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Dominican University College Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” Douglas Farrow, McGill University Anthony Fisher, O.P., Bishop of Parramatta, Australia Paul J. Griffiths, Duke University Divinity School Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa Paige Hochschild, Mount St. Mary’s University Matthew L. Lamb, Ave Maria University Joseph Lienhard, S.J., Fordham University Steven A. Long, Ave Maria University Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Saint Meinrad School of Theology Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame Thomas Osborne, University of St. Thomas (Houston) Trent Pomplun, Loyola University Maryland R. R. Reno, First Things Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Eichstätt Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., United States Conference of Catholic Bishops William Wright, Duquesne University 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. 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NOVA ET VETERA The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Fall 2012 Vol. 10, No. 4 C OMMENTARY After Virtue, Thirty Years After: Laudatio for Alasdair MacIntyre ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 895 Pornography and Acedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R EINHARD H ÜTTER 901 Catholic Social Teaching and the Health Insurance Mandate E LLIOTT L OUIS B EDFORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909 A RTICLE Elizabeth Johnson on Revelation, Faith, Theology, Analogy, and God’s Fatherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J OHN M. M C D ERMOTT, S.J. 923 S YMPOSIUM ON P OPE B ENEDICT XVI’ S J ESUS OF N AZARETH , VOLUME 2 History and Faith in Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth . . . . H ANS B OERSMA 985 The “New Worship” in Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth G EOFFREY WAINWRIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993 Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation in Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth: Volume 2. . . . . . W ILLIAM M. W RIGHT IV 1015 J UST WAR S YMPOSIUM Editors’ Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1029 Just War and the Common Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J OSEPH W. KOTERSKI , S.J. 1031 Roman Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force: Assessing Rights and Wrongs from World War I to Iraq . . . . . . . . . . ROBERT J OHN A RAUJO, S.J. 1049 Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? From Aquinas to the Contemporary Popes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G REGORY M. R EICHBERG 1073 Holy War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMES T URNER J OHNSON 1099 Changing the Rules of the Game: A Just Peace Critique of Just War Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VALERIE O. M ORKEVICIUS 1115 Is Just War Spirituality Possible?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M ARTIN L. C OOK 1141 Just War and the Theology of Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C HARLES M ATHEWES 1157 “Rise Up and Kill Him First”: On Modern Attempts to Create a Jewish Ethics of War . . . . . . . . . . . A DAM A FTERMAN & G EDALIAH A FTERMAN 1183 B OOK R EVIEWS Resting on the Heart of Christ: The Vocation and Spirituality of the Seminary Theologian by Deacon James Keating, Ph.D., and Seminary Theology: Teaching in a Contemplative Way, edited by Deacon James Keating, Ph.D.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E ARL F ERNANDES 1215 The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig S. Keener. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J EFFREY L. M ORROW 1220 Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham by Russell L. Friedman .................................................C HARLES R AITH II 1227 The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion by Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JACOB S HATZER 1231 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. 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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. 4 (2012): 895–900 895 After Virtue, Thirty Years After: Laudatio for Alasdair MacIntyre ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. St. John’s Seminary Brighton, Massachusetts B ENEVOLENT READER , allow me to start with a personal reminiscence. Shortly after the publication in 1991 of the first edition of The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics,1 I was sitting in my office, and the phone rang. On the line was Professor MacIntyre. He had received the book, and he wanted to express an appreciation for it. His formal review appeared the next year in The Thomist.2 Professor MacIntyre’s telephone call did more than encourage me. At that moment, the author of After Virtue generated a confidence within me that still sustains my work in moral theology. So I would like to take this occasion to express gratitude to Professor MacIntyre. The generative encouragement that he gives to me and other Catholic moral theologians merits a more eloquent recognition than these few remarks indicate.3 What follows provides, in very broad terms, some future directions that, in my view, Professor MacIntyre’s work offers to moral theologians. While many richly suggestive intuitions emerge from the MacIntyrian corpus, there are three that moral theologians should heed, especially during a period when many people fail properly to evaluate moral conduct. One also may take these directions as encouragements, really; encouragements that, as I see it, Professor MacIntyre’s books and essays offer to moral theologians who wish to remain faithful to Catholic teaching, especially as it finds expression in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and his commentators. • • • 1 Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991). 2 The Thomist 56 (1992): 339–44. 3 These remarks were delivered during a three-member panel discussion sponsored by the Ethics and Catholic Theology Interest Group and entitled “After Virtue,Thirty Years After: The Importance of Alasdair MacIntyre for Moral Theology,” at the Society of Christian Ethics Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, on 7 January 2012. Romanus Cessario, O.P. 896 First, I would point to the place that sound philosophy holds in moral theology.The work of Alasdair MacIntyre reminds moral theologians that moral philosophy enjoys its own integrity, even though the moral theologian elevates the arguments of moral philosophy to illuminate a world that only the eyes of faith can behold.This reminder comes with a certain urgency. Not a few moral theologians have understood the Second Vatican Council’s instruction to moral theologians as one that authorized a practical rupture with all that had gone before, especially the realist metaphysics that stands at the heart of Thomism.4 For example, consider the way that certain moral theologians have tried to construct, almost exclusively, their moral theologies based on the findings of scriptural studies. It is true, Optatam totius, the conciliar “Decree on Priestly Training,” called for a biblical renewal of moral theology.5 Number 16 of this Vatican II Decree specifically instructs: “Special care must be given to the perfecting of moral theology. Its scientific exposition, nourished more on the teaching of the Bible, should shed light on the loftiness of the calling of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world.”6 The authors of this midtwentieth-century document—it is interesting to recall within the context of continuity and tradition—borrowed from the 18 November 1893 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, which had stipulated that the study of sacred Scripture “ought to be the soul of all theology,” including moral theology.7 Pope Leo XIII is the Roman pontiff who also bears the responsibility for launching the renewal of Thomism that began fourteen years before the encyclical was issued. Under the impetus of the conciliar directive, efforts at doing biblical moral theology have continued over the past four decades or so.The results are difficult to assess. Recently, however, the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a document entitled “The Bible and Morality: Biblical Roots of Christian Conduct.”8 The preface alerts us to what should come as no surprise to a Thomist, namely, that this Commision document “stresses the 4 I refer especially to those positions that were corrected by the 1993 Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor. 5 Decree on Priestly Training, Optatam Totius, proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on 28 October 1965. cura impendatur Theologiae morali perficiendae, cuius scientifica expositio, doctrina S. Scripturae magis nutrita, celsitudinem vocationis fidelium in Christo illustret eorumque obligationem in caritate pro mundi vita fructum ferendi” (Optatam Totius 16). 7 Optatam Totius 16. The reference to Leo XIII is given from AAS 26 (1893–94): 283. 8 Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Bible and Morality: Biblical Roots of Christian Conduct (Vatican City State: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2008). 6 “Specialis After Virtue, Thirty Years After 897 fact that direct solutions to the numerous outstanding problems cannot be found in Sacred Scripture.”9 Where can one turn? Alasdair MacIntyre, I aver, would point to the words of Pope John Paul II in the 1995 encyclical Fides et Ratio: “Moral theology requires a sound philosophical vision of human nature and society, as well as of the general principles of ethical decision-making.”10 Professor MacIntyre reminds moral theologians that moral philosophy rightly developed remains indispensable to the “scientific exposition” of moral theology. He does not advocate compromising the integrity of “constrained disagreement” carried on after the fashion of Saint Thomas Aquinas to meet confessional goals.11 • • • The second encouragement that the writings of Professor MacIntyre provide for a new generation of moral theologians concerns Pope John Paul II’s “sound vision of human nature.” One area where the purveyors of the hermeneutics of discontinuity have imposed themselves with a special virulence is post-Vatican II discussions of the relationship between human nature and divine grace. Many moral theorists today regard human nature as oddly peripheral to moral inquiry. Not all of them, however. In his endorsement for Professor Steven A. Long’s Natura Pura, Professor MacIntyre writes: “No one is more insightfully aware of the issues that arise where philosophy and theology interact than Steven Long. No set of such issues is more important than those concerning the natural end of human beings and our knowledge of that end.”12 Steven A. Long, of course, criticizes those theologians who seem to regard human nature as a “vacuole for grace.”13 In a short First Things review, an otherwise benevolent reviewer of Long’s book mistook “vacuole” for “vehicle.”14 This substitution suggests how little is understood about a theme that dominates Catholic thought: gratia perficit naturam.15 I think it fair to observe that many moral theologians must recover a sound philosophical vision of human nature. This recovery must lead also 9 The Bible and Morality, 8. 10 Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship Between Faith and Reason, no. 68. 11 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Encyclopedia, Genealogy and Tradition (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1990), 233. 12 Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), back jacket cover. 13 Long, Natura, chap. 2. 14 Review of Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace in First Things ( January 2012), 62. 15 For example, see Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2: “Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.” Romanus Cessario, O.P. 898 to an appreciation among moral theologians of the “stuff,” if you will, of human nature and of the teleological ordering of that nature. In a word, they need to determine what enables the person to love. While there are several ways to approach this discovery or rediscovery of human nature, some fairly basic indications of what an adequate anthropology looks like appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Without presuming to provide an exhaustive account of the philosophy, including the anthropology, contained in the Catechism, let me suggest some very basic tenets about the structure of the human being that this authoritative expression of Catholic teaching contains. For instance, moral theologians can learn about the substantial unity of the human person. “The unity of soul and body,” affirms the Catechism, citing the Council of Vienne (1312) [DS 902], “is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body.”16 Or again, “the passions are natural components of the human psyche.”17 Again, “Conscience is a judgment of reason.”18 Still again, “The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers.”19 In other words, basic Catholic doctrine indicates the essential elements of what one may call a Christian anthropology. A sound vision of human nature must include both a soul, which enjoys spiritual or rational powers and sensory powers, and a body. Furthermore, a sound vision of human nature must explain how the powers of the soul, including the sensory powers, work together so that an individual can pursue conscientiously the truth about the good of the human person and embrace it. Professor MacIntyre at least indirectly encourages moral theologians to discover the complete implications of a grace-uplifted human nature, even though he would insist, I should think, that the moral theologian can make this discovery without draining the natural of its own distinctive finality and intelligibility. • • • The third encouragement that Professor MacIntyre’s work gives to moral theologians involves the place that virtue holds in contemporary moral theology. Last year marked the thirtieth anniversary of Professor MacIntyre’s After Virtue.20 Moral theologians need to learn how to treat all the virtues of the Christian life. All seven of them. They also must learn how 16 CCC, 365. 17 CCC, 1764. 18 CCC, 1796 19 CCC, 1803. 20 Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). A second edition was published in 1984, and a third in 2007. After Virtue, Thirty Years After 899 to discuss their parts, integral, subjective, and potential. In the words that he kindly included in Ressourcement Thomism, Professor MacIntyre comments on the way that one moral theologian has presented the relationship of the acquired and the infused virtues.21 Students of the virtues recognize that there exists a history of diverse views about how acquired and infused virtues work together to shape the character of a person who merits eternal life. It is my conviction that the salvation of souls and the well-being of the human community require that Catholic moral theologians possess an understanding of the acquired and infused virtues that enables those drawn to a life of holiness to sustain the virtuous life in the face of whatever difficulties our morally adrift culture throws up against them. This Catholic understanding must allow for the normal development of the acquired moral virtues so that moral theologians may account for why, for example, a person can still walk down a street without fearing that the first stranger—or friend—he meets may arbitrarily decide to kill him. A proper understanding of the acquired virtues also explains why not even moral theologians ask for the Baptismal certificates or inquire about the Church-going practices, still less the spiritual lives, of the pilots who fly the planes that they board. Without the view of human virtues that MacIntyre has restored to a broad-ranging discussion and a widespread acceptance, it would be difficult to explain why some forms of moral order still appear in the world. Why, that is, we expect to find in civilized communities honest police and fair judges, everyday people who practice continence and perseverance, and people or institutions, such as societies for ethical culture, to whom one may turn for moral counsel.The human virtues are not fictions of the theologian’s imagination. They explain everyday life. For example, we come to expect that the local butcher will remain just and friendly and that the neighborhood bartender will exhibit moderation and, at times, liberality. Justice, friendliness, moderation, and liberality express qualities of a person’s character. These broad generalizations of course raise questions that a new generation of moral theologians will need to ponder rightly. Professor MacIntyre has shown us why men and women living together in whatever form of human community require the acquired virtues. He is right, of course. Thirty years after the publication of After Virtue one does not find much evidence to support the view that purely 21 Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘There Is Only One Sadness . . . Not to Be Saints.’ An Expres- sion of Gratitude to Father Romanus Cessario, O.P.,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sound Doctrine, the Sacraments, & the Moral Life, ed. R. Hütter and M. Levering (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 365–71. 900 Romanus Cessario, O.P. deontological rules suffice to curb the burgeoning spread, for example, of internet pornography. Some contemporary authors, however, seem to have forgotten important features of the human or acquired virtues. Why are the acquired virtues important? For one reason, only these virtues create the psychological structures in the human person that are necessary for the Christian virtues to operate promptly, joyfully, and easily. Other benefits for virtuous living come with the infused or Christian virtues, although only the theologian can discuss with clarity these distinct gifts of grace. In short, through the mystery of the Incarnation, God introduces into the world another order and power of moral action. The Catholic tradition refers to these powers as the infused virtues. They are real habitus of action, whose psychology depends not on the rhythms of moral exercise and practice but on the strength of one’s adherence to the Savior of the world. The sooner moral theologians learn how to explain the manner in which the two sets—acquired and infused—of operative powers work together and, at times, apart, the sooner the next generation will discover the resources to resist the disintegration of human flourishing that institutionalizes itself in our societal and political structures with a rapidity that should give everybody moment for long pause. Professor MacIntyre does not take up the discussion of grace-given habitus. He does, however, remind us of the one real tragedy for the creature created in the image of God: “There is only one sadness . . . Not to be saints.”22 N&V 22 MacIntyre, “There Is,” in Ressourcement, 370–71. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 901–7 901 Pornography and Acedia* R EINHARD H ÜTTER Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina A UNIQUELY toxic combination of the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh has become a widespread, almost normal component of everyday life: the perturbingly pervasive perusal of pornography in general, and internet pornography in particular, with its dangerous addictiveness and its lethal effect on the Christian spiritual life.To comprehend the spiritual roots of this crisis, we need to recall an all-too-forgotten vice, acedia, usually called sloth but better rendered as “spiritual apathy”: the very foregoing of the friendship with God—which is the fulfillment of the transcendent dignity and calling of the human person—and the embrace of the self-indulgent deception that there never was and there never will be friendship with God, that there never was and that there never will be a transcendent calling and dignity of the human person. Nothing matters much, because the one thing that really matters, God’s love and friendship, does not exist and therefore cannot be attained. Acedia creates a void to be filled with transient rushes of pleasure— primarily sexual pleasure—to ward off the ennui of life bereft of its very center. But the simulacra that promise such rushes of pleasure betray. They cannot fill the void created by the loss of one’s transcendent calling to the love and friendship of God. Rather, they only increase the craving to fill the void, they breed compulsion, intensify spiritual apathy, and thus encourage acedia’s most dangerous shoot to spring forth: despair. For complex but tangible spiritual and existential reasons, this vice is concomitant with the loss of hope and charity and with a profound weakening if not loss of faith. Its post-Christian secular offshoot, an unthematic despair masquerading as boredom, covers—not at all unlike a * An earlier version of this essay was published in First Things (April) 2012. 902 Reinhard Hütter fungus—the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional life of many, if not most, who inhabit the affluent segments of the Western secular world. Nothing but the old vice acedia, spiritual apathy, is the root cause of the typically bourgeois ennui, boredom. Christian spiritual wisdom has always regarded acedia as a vice that, unchecked, will eventually prove deadly to the Christian life. For spiritual apathy first leads to despairing of God’s love and mercy and eventually issues in a sadness that cannot remain without consequences. For, as Thomas Aquinas observes in On Evil, “No human being can long remain pleasureless and sad.” People engulfed by the sadness to which their indulgence in spiritual apathy has led them tend to avoid such sadness first by shirking and then by resenting and scorning God’s love and mercy. Eventually—and this is the very story of modern secularism—the collective ideological, cultural, social, and political aversion to the divine good previously received and embraced will issue in a collective spiritual state of acedia, a spiritual apathy that arises from the loss of transcendence and eventually turns against any remnant of or witness to the transcendent dignity of human persons and to their calling to friendship with God. The flight from sadness that begins with avoiding and resisting spiritual goods and ends with attacking them describes with uncanny accuracy the specific ressentiment and aggression typical of a secular age. In a seminal phenomenological study, originally published two years before the outbreak of World War I, the German philosopher Max Scheler offered an astute analysis of this distinctly modern negative spiritual attitude. Ressentiment, he claims, arises from the weakness of the will and issues in contempt for those moral values one despairs of achieving oneself. This ressentiment characterizes not only the modern secular individual but also the most influential strand of modern secular moral theory. Scheler makes a convincing case that ressentiment motivates the whole modern subjective theory of moral values, an approach to ethics currently best known as emotivism. If moral values amount to nothing but subjective phenomena of the human mind without independent meaning and existence—a position held by a variety of naturalist, positivist, and pragmatist philosophers—one can never be found lacking in light of an objective standard of moral values. As a subtle form of ressentiment, the emotivist theory of moral values fails to understand the profoundly problematic nature of pornography. Unable to name an objective standard of moral values, emotivism will in the end find a way to exculpate the production and consumption of pornography. Scheler helps us to understand ressentiment as the distinctively modern practice of the vice of acedia. The typically modern secular condition of Pornography and Acedia 903 ressentiment carries the inner logic of spiritual apathy further—to the complacent contempt, even under the guise of moral theory, for what imposes itself as truly and objectively good. Ours is, arguably, not a culture of tolerance but a culture of deep-seated ressentiment that makes possible the amorphous yet broad social and political acceptance of pornography. The vast numbers of persons, who unbeknownst to themselves are indulging in acedia, despair of and eventually come to resent the very dignity of the human person that pornography treats with contempt. This spiritual apathy breeds other vices. In his Moralia in Job, Pope Gregory the Great famously assigns six daughters to the vice of acedia or spiritual apathy: malice, spite, faint-heartedness, despair, sluggishness in regard to the commandments, and—most importantly for our concern— “the roaming unrest of the spirit,” as the Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper aptly renders it. This roaming unrest of the spirit takes initial shape in another vice, one hardly anymore recognized as such, because modernity all too often confuses it with intellecual inquisitiveness: vain curiosity, or the lust of the eyes. Fueled by ennui and ressentiment and elicited by the roaming unrest of the spirit, vain curiosity takes the first allegedly innocent step that all too soon leads to the regular, then habituated, and eventually compulsive practice of pornographic voyeurism. When considering the vice of vain curiosity,Thomas Aquinas offers in the Summa theologiae a brief but profoundly pertinent remark: “Sight-seeing [inspectio spectaculorum] becomes sinful, when it renders [one] prone to the vices of lust and cruelty on account of things [one] sees represented.” Christian spiritual wisdom has long taught that the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh feed each other. The concupiscence of the eyes inflames the concupiscence of the flesh—and vice versa. Augustine offers a first step toward understanding why the consumption of internet pornography can easily lead to the slow destruction of moral self-possession. Augustine’s analysis in the Confessions acquires a fresh, pertinent ring: “The truth is that disordered lust springs from a perverted will; when lust is pandered to, a habit is formed; when habit is not checked, it hardens into compulsion. These were like interlinking rings forming what I have described as a chain, and my harsh servitude used it to keep me under duress.” Concupiscence indulged and habituated gathers such strength that it takes on the nature of a certain kind of necessity which compels the will in such a way that the attribute “free” becomes increasingly vacuous. What seems most characteristic of the compulsive consumption of pornography is that the consumer no longer finds any pleasure in looking at the simulacra. All he has left, when the act is completed, is a craving to 904 Reinhard Hütter stimulate a desire that will always remain unsatisfied.What is to be learned from the testimonies of pornography’s users is the important fact that, contrary to prevalent cultural assumptions, the lust of the eyes is not a “hot” but rather a “cold” vice. The lust of the eyes arises from the roaming unrest of the spirit, which has its root in a spiritual apathy that despairs of and eventually comes to resent the very transcendence in which the dignity of the human person has its root.The lust of the eyes that feeds on internet pornography does not inflame but rather freezes the soul and the heart in a cold indifference to the human dignity of others and of oneself. The consumption of internet pornography harms the one who does the consuming, the ones whose dignity, health, and often lives are consumed in the production of pornography, and the ones who have to suffer from the dissolution of conjugal and familial bonds of fidelity, intimacy, and trust. Into that night of moral errancy, the Catechism of the Catholic Church sheds salutary light by reminding all persons of good will of a truth that to right reason is self-evident—pornography offends against chastity: Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials. (CCC 2354) The Catholic Church’s teaching on the evil of pornography anchors normatively in the dignity of the human person and in the intimately conjoined virtue of chastity. Far from being prudishness—a fearful contempt of sexuality as a “necessary evil,” unavoidable but ultimately subhuman—chastity preserves the dignity of what is a genuine and surpassing good—the dignity of the human person in sexual matters. In order to understand chastity rightly, its indispensability for proper human flourishing, and the enjoyment of true freedom in all relationships, it is crucial to see how this often ridiculed and misunderstood virtue is intimately related to another virtue in need of recovery: temperance, one of the so-called cardinal virtues, which are four habits of excellence that enable the realization of the human good. The first, prudence, identifies and commands the appropriate specific act; the second, justice, attends to the good of others and hence gives them their due; the third, courage, overcomes fear pertaining to whatever threatens our bodily Pornography and Acedia 905 integrity and existence; finally, temperance protects our inner order from the ever-present power of our internal sense appetites. Temperance—or better “selfless self-preservation,” as Josef Pieper felicitously renders this virtue—has nothing whatsoever in common with some bourgeois, lukewarm moderation in matters of food and drink. Rather, temperantia is the virtue that preserves the inner order of the human being pertaining to the most elementary forces of human selfpreservation, self-assertion, and self-fulfillment: “The discipline of temperance defends [the human being] against all selfish perversion of the inner order, through which alone the moral person exists and lives effectively.” Chastity is nothing but the realization of selfless self-preservation in human sexuality. Let me use an image. Prudence is the helmsman who directs the ship of our moral agency through the treacherous waters of moral quandaries and spiritual temptations. The proper operation of our helmsman, prudence, presupposes our proper formation in justice, courage, and temperance. Hence, inordinate desire for sensual pleasure—brought about by the absence or failure of temperance—weakens and obstructs the virtues of courage, justice, and most detrimentally, of prudence. Selfless self-preservation protects the inner order of the person against the encroachments of this powerful sensual desire. Without selfless selfpreservation, there simply is no true and perfect prudence. And consequently, in sexual matters, without chastity, there is no true and perfect prudence either. Without chastity, the helmsman, prudence, is gravely impaired in steering the ship safely through the treacherous waters of the sexual life to its proper destination. Impaired prudence severely hampers the moral life and consequently greatly diminishes human flourishing. Thus chastity is a virtue not only indispensable for the realization of the virtue of prudence in sexual matters, but also for the undisturbed proper operation of prudence in general. In other words, where the virtue of chastity is feeble and frail, the virtue of prudence will be encumbered and possibly corrupted. If we want to protect human dignity in sexual matters, we must exercise true and perfect prudence. If we want to exercise true and perfect prudence, we must seek chastity. But before chastity in its proper sense can be restored, we need to practice a more general virtue of chastity, a spiritual chastity. For it is this virtue that addresses the spiritual root of the problem—acedia, spiritual apathy. What is spiritual chastity? “If the human mind,” writes St.Thomas in the Summa, “delights in the spiritual union with that to which it behooves it to be united, namely God, and refrains from delighting in union with other things against the requirements of the order established by God, this may be called a spiri- 906 Reinhard Hütter tual chastity. . . . Taking chastity in this sense, it is a general virtue, because every virtue withdraws the human mind from delighting in a union with unlawful things.” This spiritual chastity arises directly from faith, hope, and charity, which unite the human mind to God. Spiritual chastity preserves the union with God and thereby offers the most salient protection against acedia, spiritual apathy. The single most important practice that fortifies spiritual chastity and simultaneously protects from acedia is an active and persistent discipline of prayer.Yet because of the unique and distinctly modern attack on the moral integrity of the human person by way of subtle, omnipresent temptations to indulge in the lust of the eyes, the restoration and protection of chastity requires more pointed and radical practices than the individual practice of prayer alone. In conclusion therefore, I propose one such communal practice and discipline. Nota bene, I understand this practice of prayer to be a spiritual discipline categorically different from and not a substitute for the counseling or therapy advisable for those experiencing what clinicians increasingly diagnose as gravely compulsive behavior, or addiction. Because the root of the problem is a spiritual one, the healing from the addictive behavior will ultimately be overcome only when the negative spiritual root, acedia, is eradicated. It is the latter that the practice of prayer addresses. A highly pertinent spiritual initiative that most directly addresses the pressing contemporary problem of internet pornography—not at its shiny electronic surface but at its hidden spiritual root—is the Angelic Warfare Confraternity promoted by the Dominican Order. This confraternity, Brian T. Mullady explains, “seeks to foster the connection between chastity and the other acquired and infused virtues, especially charity, which enables one to love and reverence [one’s] own body as well as the bodies of others.” The members of the confraternity engage in a disciplined practice of daily prayer, and support each other in prayer while drawing upon the intercessions of the Seat of Wisdom, the Mother of God, and of St. Thomas Aquinas, the confraternity’s patron saint. Far from being an outlet for pious and prudish impulses, the confraternity’s practice of prayer reflects a pertinent theological truth about the efficaciousness of prayer. As Thomas Aquinas states: “Since prayers offered for others proceed from charity. . . the greater the charity of the saints in heaven, the more they pray for wayfarers, since the latter can be helped by prayers: and the more closely they are united with God, the more are their prayers efficacious.”The prayer that the members of the confraternity pray daily is directed to the one who has the power to protect and to liberate from spiritual apathy, ennui, ressentiment, and the lust of the eyes: Pornography and Acedia 907 Dear Jesus, I know that every perfect gift and especially that of chastity depends on the power of your Providence. Without you, a mere creature can do nothing. Therefore, I beg you to defend by your grace the chastity and purity of my body and soul. And if I have ever imagined or felt anything that can stain my chastity and purity, blot it out, Supreme Lord of my powers, that I may advance with a pure heart in your love and service, offering myself on the most pure altar of your divinity all the days of my life. The discipline of prayer sustains the spiritual union of the mind and heart with God, and with everything that is consonant with the will of God. By exercising spiritual chastity and thereby sustaining the spiritual union with God, the discipline of prayer protects most effectively from falling into spiritual apathy and its secular offspring, ennui and ressentiment. For the one who prays—truly prays—is never either bored or resentful. The practice of prayer might commend itself as the apposite, grace-initiated preparation for welcoming the virtue of chastity into the human mind and will. Such welcome is gravely important. For the virtue of chastity is the prime protector of human dignity. In the order of action, conjugal chastity realizes one’s own human dignity and acknowledges the dignity of one’s spouse. More comprehensively, it is the chaste person whose gaze can genuinely behold and affirm the dignity of the other. It is the chaste person who is free from the lure of the enticing, the titillating, the demeaning, the base, and who consequently can exercise true and perfect prudence in utilizing the internet. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 909–22 909 Catholic Social Teaching and the Women’s Preventive Health Services Mandate E LLIOTT L OUIS B EDFORD Saint Louis University St. Louis, Missouri Introduction I N AN EFFORT to reform the inadequacies of the health care delivery system in the United States, congressional leadership and the presidential administration of Barack Obama enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010 and its amendment, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (collectively, the Affordable Care Act) on March 30, 2010. Section 2713, paragraph four, of this legislation stipulates: A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall, at a minimum provide coverage for and shall not impose any cost sharing requirements for—. . . (4) with respect to women, such additional preventive care and screenings not described in paragraph (1) as provided for in comprehensive guidelines supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration for purposes of this paragraph.1 Directed under this paragraph, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the administrative body authorized to implement the I would like to thank Sr. Jean deBlois, C.S.J., at the Aquinas Institute of Theology for her invaluable insights and comments on the early drafts of this article, as well as the editorial staff at Nova et Vetera for their guidance. 1 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, L. No. 111–148, § 2713 (a), (4). Paragraph (1), which paragraph (4) references, states that coverage shall be provided without any cost-sharing requirements for “evidence-based items or services that have in effect a rating of ‘A’ or ‘B’ in the current recommendations of the United States Preventive Services Task Force.” Ibid. (1) 910 Elliott Louis Bedford regulations established in the bill, collaborated with a committee of medical and research professionals at the Institute of Medicine, which describes itself as “an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public,” to develop recommendations for “closing the gaps” in coverage of “preventive health services” for women.2 The Institute crafted recommendations and submitted them to the secretary of HHS for review and commentary. After a period of open public commentary on the interim guidelines, which were posted on August 1, 2011, secretary Kathleen Sebelius, announced on January 20, 2012, that HHS would adopt the recommendations from the Institute of Medicine as part of the mandatory comprehensive guidelines for all health insurance plans.3 Under these guidelines, this mandate required all health insurance plans, including those provided by Catholic employers such as hospitals, universities, and charity organizations, to cover sterilizations and contraceptives, including some abortifacients, at no cost to the insured.4 This essay will argue, from within the tradition of Catholic social teaching, 2 Institute of Medicine, “About the IOM,” available online at www.iom.edu/ About-IOM.aspx (accessed August 19, 2012); IOM, “Clinical Preventive Services for Women: Closing the Gaps” (2011): 1. This “Clinical Health Services for Women” report was submitted by the Institute as a recommendation to HHS. In addition to the objectionable recommendations that all FDA approved contraceptives and sterilization procedures be covered free of charge, the report also contains several recommendations regarding insurance coverage of procedures that are not inconsistent with Church teaching, e.g., well-woman exams. Preventive health services were defined by the Institute report as “measures—including medications, procedures, devices, tests, education and counseling—shown to improve wellbeing, and/or decrease the likelihood or delay the onset of a targeted disease or condition.” Ibid. Given this definition, some might argue that, by including contraceptives and sterilization as preventative services, pregnancy, especially those that are unintended, is seemingly considered a disease or something like a disease. Indeed, the Guttmacher Institute, a research institute with strong ties to Planned Parenthood that seeks to advance a strongly pro-abortion, pro-contraceptive agenda, offered an argument that would support the HHS mandate because it would increase access to “highly effective” methods of contraceptives and thereby aid females “at risk for unintended pregnancy.” R. K. Jones and J. Dreweke, Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use (New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2011), 3, 8. 3 Kathleen Sebelius, “A Statement by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius,” (2012), www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/ 01/20120120a.html (accessed April 23, 2012). 4 Department of Health and Human Services, “Women’s Preventive Services: Required Health Plan Coverage Guidelines” (2011), www.hrsa.gov/womens guidelines/ (accessed April 23, 2012). For further reading about the abortifacient mechanism of action of two of these contraceptives, see K. McKeage and The Women’s Preventive Services Mandate 911 ithat the mandate undermines respect for two of the foundational pillars of a just society: the basic rights of conscience and religious freedom. Section I introduces the problem posed by the women’s preventive services mandate to Catholic employers and insurance providers. Section II discusses key arguments both in support of and in opposition to the mandate. Section III draws upon Catholic social teaching to, first, refute the claim that Catholic institutions discriminate against women by not covering sterilization and contraceptives and, second, to demonstrate that by contravening the rights of conscience and religious freedom, the mandate thwarts the common good. This mandate, because it requires employers and insurers to fund behaviors they consider immoral and threatens the Church’s self-governing authority to define both itself and its own free exercise of religion, violates the basic tenets of a just society. I. The Mandate The Health and Human Services women’s preventive services mandate announced on January 20 required employers to cover the costs of contraceptives and sterilization but included an exemption for entities that meet the definition of religious employer.5 The narrow definition, however, excluded most Catholic universities, charitable organizations and health J. D. Croxtall, “Ulipristal Acetate: A Review of Its Use in Emergency Contraception,” Drugs 71, no. 7 (2011); Paul Fine et al., “Ulipristal Acetate Taken 48–120 Hours after Intercourse for Emergency Contraception,” Obstetrics & Gynecology 115, no. 2, Part 1 (2010); María Elena Ortiz and Horacio B. Croxatto, “Copper-T Intrauterine Device and Levonorgestrel Intrauterine System: Biological Bases of Their Mechanism of Action,” Contraception 75, no. 6 (2007). 5 The definition of religious employer for exemption purposes was originally released by HHS on Aug. 1, 2011, with the interim guidelines that were open for public commentary. The exemption stipulates: “Group health plans sponsored by certain religious employers, and group health insurance coverage in connection with such plans, are exempt from the requirement to cover contraceptive services. A religious employer is one that: (1) has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets; and (4) is a non-profit organization under Internal Revenue Code section 6033(a)(1) and section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) or (iii). 45 C.F.R. §147.130(a)(1)(iv)(B).” Services., “Guidelines.” (accessed April 23, 2012). Among the many problems raised by this definition of religious employer, one might note a latent hostility toward that essential element of the Christian religion, evangelization. According to the HHS definition, an institution is religious only if it employs believers for inculcating religious values in persons who already adhere to the faith. Hence, the HHS definition evinces a particular vision of what constitutes a religion that contrasts strongly with the essence of Christianity. Following her Lord, the Catholic Church has always lived under “the missionary mandate. Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be 912 Elliott Louis Bedford care institutions. American Catholics and Catholic organizations, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), appealed to the presidential administration to rescind the HHS mandate, arguing it violated well-established rights of conscience (by forcing people to cooperate in the immorality of abortion, sterilization and contraception through funding them) and religious freedom (by its narrow definition of religious employer).6 In reaction to the sustained outcry, President Obama announced on February 10 that insurance companies, not employers, would be required to cover contraceptives and sterilizations. He did not, however, alter the narrow definition of religious employer.7 To accommodate those employer institutions with religious objections that did not qualify under the narrow definition of religious employer, the administration offered in the final regulations a “temporary enforcement safe harbor.”8 This extended by a year the compliance date for the mandate for not-for-profit entities that did not already provide coverage for contraceptives and sterilizations. The Obama administration lauded the mandate as a justified effort to expand respect for women’s health. The administration also claimed that the mandate managed to strike an appropriate balance with those who would morally object, since they were not “directly providing insurance that covers contraceptive services for their employees.”9 After examining the revised regulation, the USCCB expressed that the mandate’s revised the ‘universal sacrament of salvation,’ the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, 849, quoting Ad gentes (emphasis in the original). Likewise, “Because she believes in God’s universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary.” CCC, 851 (emphasis mine). 6 For voices across the spectrum see, Michael Sean Winters, “Updated: White House Refuses to Expand Conscience Exemption,” National Catholic Reporter (2012), ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/updated-white-house-refusesexpand-conscience-exemption (accessed April 23, 2012); Catholic Health Association, “Catholic Health Association Disappointed with Decision Regarding Women’s Preventive Services Regulations”(2012), www.chausa.org/Pages/ Newsroom/Releases/2012/Catholic_Health_Association_Disappointed_with_ Decision_Regarding_Womens_Preventive_Services_Regulations/ (accessed April 23, 2012); and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “U.S. Bishops Vow to Fight HHS Edict,” (2012), usccb.org/news/2012/12-012.cfm (accessed April 23, 2012). 7 Federal Register, “Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Issuers Relating to Coverage of Preventive Services under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Final Rules,” 77, no. 31 (February 15, 2012), 8726. 8 Ibid., 8727. 9 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Preventive Care” (2012), www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/02/10/remarks-president-preventive- The Women’s Preventive Services Mandate 913 administrative design did not address the concerns they expressed originally regarding respect for the rights of conscience and religious freedom.10 Accordingly, they reaffirmed their judgment that total rescission of the mandate was the only satisfactory solution. II. Arguments The USCCB has consistently based their opposition to the mandate on efforts to safeguard the rights of conscience and, in particular, religious freedom. For one, the USCCB maintains that the mandate breaks with longstanding precedent by requiring persons who have moral objections to pay for abortifacient drugs.11 The bishops hold that the mandate also breaks with precedent and coerces persons to violate their right of conscience by paying to support behaviors such as contraception and sterilization that they consider immoral. Finally, the bishops hold that the government has inserted itself into the internal life of the Church and thereby violated the Church’s right of religious freedom. Cardinal Timothy Dolan summarized the USCCB’s position: “This is not just about sterilization, abortifacients, and chemical contraception. It’s about religious freedom, the sacred right of any Church to define its own teaching and ministry.”12 The bishops emphasize the mandate’s threat to the right of religious freedom for two reasons. First, through the compulsory weight of the mandate and the narrow definition of religious employer, the government has effectively decreed which institutions do (e.g. parish churches) or do not (e.g. hospitals, universities, charities) constitute ministries of the care/ (accessed April 23, 2012). For the response of supporters of the mandate see, NARAL Pro-Choice America, “Obama Administration Ensures Access to Contraceptive Coverage for Millions of Women” (2012), www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/press-releases/2012/pr01202012-bcrefusal.html (accessed April 23, 2012); National Women’s Law Center, “HHS Decision on Contraceptive Coverage an Important Milestone: HHS Reaffirms Contraceptive Coverage without Co-Pays and Leaves Religious Employer Exemption in Place” (2012), www.nwlc.org/press-release/hhs-decision-contraceptive-coverage-importantmilestone (accessed April 23, 2012); and Planned Parenthood, “Planned Parenthood Applauds HHS for Ensuring Access to Affordable Birth Control” (2012), www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/plannedparenthood-applauds-hhs-ensuring-access-affordable-birth-control-38582.htm (accessed April 23, 2012). 10 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Recission of Contraception Mandate Is the Only Complete Solution,” Origins 41, no. 37 (2012): 593–97. 11 Ibid. 12 Cardinal Timothy Dolan, “From the Office of the President” (2012): 2. Available online at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/upload/Dolan-toall-bishops-HHS.pdf (accessed August 19, 2012). 914 Elliott Louis Bedford Catholic Church. This power of internal self-governance to define an institution as a part of the institutional Church is a power the Church reserves to herself alone.13 Given their distinctive role in the internal selfgovernance of the Church, the bishops are uniquely sensitive to the government’s intrusion in this regard and are therefore particularly concerned with turning back this assault on religious freedom. Secondly, the administration has effectively decreed that providing valuable services to the public—such as health care, education, and charitable services— does not qualify as the type of free exercise of religion that is protected by the first amendment. In stark contrast, the Church holds: Included in the right to religious freedom is the right of religious groups not to be prevented from freely demonstrating the special value of their teaching for the organizations of society and the inspiration of all human activity. . . . Rooted in the social nature of man and in the very nature of religion is the right of men, prompted by their own religious sense, to hold meetings or establish educational, cultural, charitable and social organizations.14 Thus, because the government has effectively dictated to the Church what constitutes authentic practice of the faith and also saw fit to determine which institutions are or are not part of the institutional Church, the bishops have stressed that the mandate is a serious affront to the right of religious freedom. The social teaching of the Catholic Church, natural law reasoning, and the American political tradition all influence the bishops’ position. According to Pope John XXIII, Catholic social teaching holds that, this too must be listed among the rights of a human being, to honor God according to the sincere dictates of his own conscience, and therefore the right to practice his religion privately and publically.15 13 Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition, New English trans. Canon Law Society of America (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1998), n. 216; Second Vatican Council, “Apostolicam Actuositatem,” in Vatican Council II. Vol. 1, the Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (New York: Costello, 1996), n. 24. 14 Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae, in Vatican Council II. Vol. 1, the Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (New York: Costello, 1996), no. 4. Moreover, the Church teaches that the practice of the faith cannot be circumscribed to one’s private life: “faith should show its fruitfulness by penetrating the whole life, even the worldly activities, of those who believe”; and the “impact which the Church can have on modern society amounts to an effective living of the faith and love.” Council, Gaudium et Spes, nn. 21, 42. Also, see for example the Council’s Gravissimum Educationis, n. 1. 15 Pope John John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, n. 14. The Women’s Preventive Services Mandate 915 The state, the Church teaches, is responsible for fostering the common good by protecting these rights that the pope mentions.16 However, both Church teaching and natural law reasoning recognize that, while these moral rights are unalienable, “in exercising their rights individual men and social groups are bound by the moral law to have regard for the rights of others, their own duties to others and the common good of all.”17 As John Courtney Murray, S.J. illustrates, in a pluralistic society like America, the respect that Catholics attribute to the practice of their own faith implies respect for the rights of conscience and religious freedoms of others in society.18 However, this need for balance, which is also recognized in the American political tradition, applies to all members of the political community and not just Catholics. Indeed, since the passage of Roe v.Wade in 1973, a strong precedent has been set that protects not just Catholics but all people with moral objections from being coerced to pay for or cooperate in the performance of acts such as abortion and sterilization.19 On this basis, the bishops have consistently called upon America’s political tradition to argue in defense of respect for rights of conscience and religious freedom.20 Based on their vision of rights, the bishops see the mandate as undermining the necessary conditions for a just society that are expressed in the rights of conscience and religious freedom. 16 Cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004), nn.152–59, 68–70. 17 Dignitatis Humanae, no. 7. See also, Johannes Messner, Social Ethics: Natural Law in the Western World (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1965), 326–27. 18 Cf. David Hollenbach, “Religious Freedom, Morality and Law: John Courtney Murray Today,” Journal of Moral Theology 1, no. 1 (2012): 90; John Courtney Murray, “Freedom of Religion: The Ethical Problem,” Theological Studies 6, no. 2 (1945): 273–76. For a larger view of Murray’s influential thought regarding the interface between the Catholic faith and the modern American state see, John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1988). 19 Leonard J. Nelson, Diagnosis Critical:The Urgent Threats Confronting Catholic Health Care (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2009), 131–33. 20 For instance, the significant place that respect for conscience holds in the American tradition is represented in the words of Thomas Jefferson: “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of civil authority.” Letter to the Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New London, Connecticut, February 4, 1809. Available online at www.au.org/files/images/page_photos/with-sovereign-reverence.pdf (accessed April 23, 2011). For further discussion regarding the relationship between religious freedom, rights of conscience, and conscience protections under the law in the American tradition, see S. D. Smith, “What Does Religion Have to Do with Freedom of Conscience?” University of Colorado Law Review 76, no. 4 (2005); Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall, The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009). Elliott Louis Bedford 916 The Obama administration approached the controversy from a perspective different from that of the USCCB. For the administration, the mandate addressed a concern for the health of women and ensured “that every woman has access to the care that she needs.”21 This included contraceptives and sterilization. That is, the portion of the mandate pertaining to contraceptives and sterilization was seen, in the eyes of the administration, as a so-called women’s health issue.The preventive services mandate and its narrow exemption clause for providing coverage were therefore intended to limit what the administration saw as restrictions on access to contraceptives and sterilizations, thereby “closing the gaps” as the Institute of Medicine suggested.22 The policies of certain employers like Catholic health care institutions were seen as limiting access and keeping open the gaps. “No woman’s health should depend on who she is or where she works or how much money she makes,” President Obama argued in condemnation of these alleged gaps, “Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health. Period.”23 The alleged limitation was seen as discriminatory against women working for religious employers. In the administration’s view, the HHS mandate stood as “a law that requires free preventive care,” that would “not discriminate against women.”24 The president stressed the revised mandate would counteract discrimination by ensuring equality of access: “Women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services, just like other women, and they’ll no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars a year that could go towards paying the rent or buying groceries.”25 “Under the rule, women [would] still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services—no matter where they work.”26 In such statements, the legal protections of an institution’s right of conscience and religious freedom are seen, by the Obama administration and those that share this viewpoint, as impediments to the rights of individual women to have to access contraceptives and sterilization, because they enable Catholic institutions not to cover contraceptives and sterilizations in their health plans.27 For instance, bioethicist Art Caplan echoed the administration’s sentiments that Catholic employers were discriminating 21 Obama, “Remarks by the President on Preventive Care” (accessed Feb. 10, 2012). 22 Institute of Medicine, “Closing the Gaps.” 23 Obama, “Remarks by the President on Preventive Care”(emphasis mine). 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. (emphasis mine). 26 Ibid. (emphasis mine). 27 For instance, see www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/fact-sheets/abortionrefusal-clauses-dangerous.pdf (accessed April 23, 2012). The Women’s Preventive Services Mandate 917 against women because they lacked access to contraceptives and sterilization procedures through the specific avenue of the health insurance offered by their employers. “Don’t those who do not follow the teachings of the Catholic Church but work in companies, hospitals, nursing homes or hospices have any rights?” he asked rhetorically.28 For Caplan, Catholic employers were guilty of more than just imposing their beliefs on employees. “By fighting back against the coverage of contraception,” Caplan charged, “the Bishops have declared war—on everyone else’s moral and religious views who happen to work for them.”29 The “war” was not contained to the view of the employees but those of the public. In Caplan’s opinion, once a company operates in the public sphere, it forfeits its ability to act according to the tenets of its religious faith or even the convictions of its own institutional conscience. Hence, he asks, “How did the imposition of an insurance mandate on companies operating in the public sphere become an act of religious intolerance?”30 On these grounds, Caplan, the Obama administration and other supporters of the mandate attempt to argue that Catholic institutions that do not cover sterilizations and contraceptives are guilty of imposing their moral values upon their employees, discriminating against women and denying them their rights.31 28 Art Caplan, “Catholic Bishops’ Birth Control Stance Harms Employees, Bioethi- cist Says,” Vitals (2012), vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/09/10365844catholic-bishops-birth-control-stance-harms-employees-bioethicist-says (accessed April 23, 2012) (emphasis mine). For similar arguments that claim a religious institution cannot maintain its religious protections if it services the public, see www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/fact-sheets/abortion-refusalclauses-dangerous.pdf (accessed April 23, 2012). 29 Ibid. Caplan argued further that Catholic insurance providers should not be exempt, based on an analogy that most people would not be willing to exempt Jehovah’s Witnesses from covering blood transfusions in insurance plans provided by their organizations. 30 The idea that an institution can have a conscience is highly disputed, especially among those who hold that conscience is by definition limited to autonomous moral agents. For instance, see the argument of Spencer Durland in “The Case against Institutional Conscience,” Notre Dame Law Review 86, no. 4 (2011). Bernard Dickens argues against the concept of institutional conscience, with explicit reference to Catholic hospitals; see B. Dickens, “Conscientious Objection and Professionalism,” Expert Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology 4, no. 2 (2009): 97–100, at 99. 31 The argument that not providing coverage of contraceptives is discrimination against women is not new. For instance, “In 2000, the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] issued an opinion stating that the refusal to cover contraceptives in an employee prescription health plan constituted gender discrimination in violation of the PDA. Although this opinion is not binding 918 Elliott Louis Bedford III. The Roots of a Just Society In order to argue that the mandate unjustly impinges upon Catholics’ rights of conscience and religious freedom, it is first necessary to refute the main philosophical claim advanced by the Obama administration against Catholic institutions. That claim can be stated: not providing coverage for sterilizations and contraceptives is discriminatory toward women and therefore unjust. It is this discrimination that the administration seeks to rectify by ensuring that women are treated equally (i.e. receive unimpeded access to sterilizations and contraceptives) “no matter where they work.”32 This charge of unjust discrimination is one that the Church takes very seriously. Catholic social teaching considers unjust discrimination against women based on their sex a very serious affront to human dignity.33 Likewise, the tradition teaches that the imposition of personal beliefs and values of one person or group upon another person or group is contrary to the authentic good of human beings and undermines the common good of all.34 Nevertheless, contrary to the allegations of the Obama administration and others, Catholic institutions do not discriminate against women by not covering sterilizations and contraceptives, either through self-administered health insurance plans or through third party providers. Their refusal to pay for sterilization and contraceptives is based on Church teaching, which holds that both are contrary to the human dignity of all men and women.35 Therefore, Catholic employers are morally opposed on federal courts, it is influential, since the EEOC is the government body charged with enforcing Title VII. This opinion led to many lawsuits against non-religious employers who refused to cover prescription contraceptives.The first federal court decision in one of these cases—Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co.—came less than a year after the EEOC opinion, and agreed that employers with prescription drug plans have “a legal obligation to make sure that the resulting plan does not discriminate based on sex-based characteristics and that it provides equally comprehensive coverage for both sexes.” The Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue of contraceptive coverage. But, since Erickson, new Title VII claims have been brought against Catholic institutions.” The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, “Implications of Mandatory Insurance Coverage of Contraceptives for Catholic Colleges and Universities,” Studies in Catholic Higher Education (October 2009): 4–5. For further reading about the EEOC’s decision, see U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Decision on Coverage of Contraception (Dec. 14, 2000) www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/decision-contraception.html (accessed April 23, 2012). 32 Obama, “Remarks by the President on Preventive Care.” 33 Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), n. 12. 34 Dignitatis Humanae, n. 7. 35 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, 5th Edition” (Washington, DC, 2009), no. 53; CCC, 2370, 2399. The Women’s Preventive Services Mandate 919 to covering sterilizations and contraceptives for both men and women, and they are opposed to them for exactly the same reason. While the HHS guidelines address only coverage for women (they fail to account for why they mandate coverage for contraceptives and sterilization only for women) Catholic employers cover contraceptives and sterilizations for neither men nor women.36 Thus, Catholic employers do not fail to offer coverage based on sex but rather because the Church and Catholic institutions are opposed to funding the behaviors of sterilization and contraception in all cases. That is, they refuse based on moral principle, not on the person’s sex. The Church teaches that direct sterilizations and acts of contraception are contradictory to human dignity and the authentic human flourishing of all human beings, men and women alike.37 Apart from being predicated on an erroneous claim of discrimination, the mandate actively infringes upon the right of conscience of both individuals and institutions. Even if the payment could be classified within the Catholic moral tradition as remote mediate material cooperation (and therefore potentially permissible), the mandate still compels individuals and institutions to contribute funding to these behaviors against the judgment and directions of their consciences.38 The mandate thereby seriously undermines respect for the right of persons and institutions to behave in accord with their conscience and religious faith. Respect for these rights is a fundamental element of a just society. For instance, Pope John Paul II explicates the importance of respect for conscience as grounds for a just society: “To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a moral duty; it is also a basic human right . . . an essential right which, precisely as such, should be acknowledged and protected by civil law.”39 While this right is not absolute, the 36 Indeed, one could argue that, insofar as HHS is promoting contraceptives and sterilizations only for women but not for men, women are actually being discriminated against by having to bear a disproportionate and unjust degree of responsibility for ensuring that unintended pregnancy is avoided. 37 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, no. 14; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, n. 51. 38 Fr. Kevin O’Rourke, O.P., explains the Catholic moral tradition’s understanding of material cooperation with evil as follows: “Immediate material cooperation implies that the cooperator contributes something essential for the performance of the evil action. Mediate material cooperation implies that the cooperator contributes something antecedent or consequent to the performance of the evil action.” Kevin D. O’Rourke, O.P., “Catholic Health Care and Sterilization: The ‘Principle of Cooperation’ Provides the Necessary Ethical Guidelines,” Health Progress 83, n. 6 (2002): 45. 39 Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae: The Gospel of Life (New York: Random House, 1995), n. 74. Elliott Louis Bedford 920 Holy Father follows Dignitatis Humanae and offers a balanced vision of how respect for conscience is constitutive of a just society: The State is obliged not only to recognize the basic freedom of conscience, but also to foster it, always with a view to the natural moral law and the requirements of the common good, and with respect for the dignity of every human being. It should be noted that freedom of conscience does not confer a right to indiscriminate recourse to conscientious objection. When an asserted freedom turns into licence or becomes an excuse for limiting the rights of others, the State is obliged to protect, also by legal means, the inalienable rights of its citizens against such abuses.40 In the Catholic tradition, “the attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.”41 The common good consists of “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment.”42 Since the judgments of conscience are the means by which persons seek their own individual good and contribute to the common good, protecting and not violating the (limited) freedom to behave according to the judgments of conscience is a primary concern for governmental authority. However, government can limit the freedom to behave according to judgments of conscience only if the reason for doing so is actually just. Therefore, “representatives of the State have no power to bind men in conscience, unless their own authority is tied to God’s authority, and is a participation in it.”43 The promotion of sterilizations and contraceptives that include abortifacients—which either are or contribute directly to acts that are intrinsically unjust—by way of funds coerced from citizens who morally object to these acts is not just. The mandate is therefore unjust both in its means and in its end. It undermines the social conditions necessary for human flourishing by unjustly coercing citizens to act in a way that they know to be morally harmful to their moral character.Thus, because of the gravity of the right at stake, and because the reason for promulgating the rule is unjust, the Obama administration’s mandate that requires persons to violate their conscience undermines the common good. 40 Pope John Paul II, “Respect for Conscience: Foundation for Peace,” Journal of Church and State 33, n. 2 (1991): 421–22. 41 John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, n. 54. 42 Gaudium et Spes, n. 26. 43 Pacem in Terris, n. 49. The Women’s Preventive Services Mandate 921 Most significantly, in addition to undermining respect for the right of conscience and the common good, the mandate also undermines respect for the right of religious freedom by inserting itself into the internal life of the Church, claiming to define which institutions are part of the Church and which are not. Murray summarized the severity of any such situation: I take it that every church claims this freedom to define itself, and claims the consequent right to reject definition at the hands of any secular authority. To resign this freedom or to abdicate this right would be at once the betrayal of religion and the corruption of politics.44 Following Murray’s position, the bishops’ adamant resistance to the mandate is a struggle against the “betrayal of religion and the corruption of politics.” However, conspicuously absent from the Obama administration’s line of argumentation is its justification for the narrow definition of religious employer—the primary source of the bishops’ claim to unjustifiable intrusion into the life of the Church—which the administration did not alter in the February 10 administrative readjustment.45 Hence, the definition will remain a key source of contention as long as it is in place. This battle over the definition of religious employer is not a trivial matter for either the Church or the American political community. The conflict strikes at the very heart of the founding proposition of the American political community enshrined in the first amendment.46 Hence, the debate over the HHS mandate ultimately has implications for American society as a whole concerning the legitimate limitations on the government’s posture toward citizens’ rights of conscience and religious freedom. 44 Murray, We Hold These Truths, xi. 45 For instance, the final regulations published by the Federal Register make no note of complaints about the definition of religious employer more specific than “a number of comments asserted that the religious employer exemption is too narrow,” Register, “Final Rules,” 8727. This point, which touches on the deepest concerns about religious freedom is a point that is noted in the bishops’ response to the Feb. 10 announcement. See Bishops, “Recission.” This point is also recognized in a public letter signed by prominent professors and leaders opposing the mandate entitled “Unacceptable.” In opposing the Feb. 10 announcement, the letter states: “It bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches, auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy (like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty. The administration still fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.” www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Garvey-Glendon-George-SneadLevin-stmt-Feb-11-2012.pdf (accessed April 23, 2012). 46 Murray, We Hold These Truths, vii–xii. 922 Elliott Louis Bedford Respect for these natural, moral, pre-political rights ensures the ability of persons to use their freedom to contribute to the common good and work toward a just society. Therefore, governmental actions like the HHS mandate that actively corrode respect for these rights undermine the basis for a truly free and just society. Conclusion To summarize, the dispute over the HHS mandate concerns the conditions necessary for a just society. On the one hand, the Obama administration holds that unimpeded access to contraceptives and sterilization is a necessary condition for authentically respecting the rights of women to reproductive autonomy and health. On the other hand, the voices of the Catholic Church affirm two necessary conditions of justice. First, within reasonable and respectful limits, persons and institutions must remain free from being coerced to pay for behaviors they know to be immoral. Second, the Church should remain free from governmental intrusion into its internal governance and its ability to express its religious faith in ways that serve the common good. These are very different views of the conditions necessary for a just society. According to the long tradition of Catholic social teaching, the Obama administration mandate violates several central elements of a just society. Specifically, it coerces persons and groups of persons to finance acts that they know to be immoral. Thus, the mandate violates the central purpose of government, which is to foster and protect the common good and the good of the individual citizenry. Moreover, the mandate infringes upon the legitimate separation between internal governance of the Church and the authority of the State. This infringement violates the right of persons to freedom of religion, a right that is recognized as a central element of a just society from both Catholic and secular viewpoints. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 923–83 923 Elizabeth Johnson on Revelation, Faith, Theology, Analogy, and God’s Fatherhood J OHN M. M C D ERMOTT, S.J. Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, Michigan ON MARCH 31, 2011, the USCCB Doctrine Committee issued a warning about Elizabeth Johnson’s book The Quest for the Living God, because it “contains misrepresentations, ambiguities, and errors that bear upon the faith of the Catholic Church as found in Sacred Scripture and as it is authentically taught by the Church’s universal Magisterium.” In her response Prof. Johnson basically repeated more briefly the positions laid out in Quest.1 Only one point did she concede: that her language might have more clearly stressed that creation is God’s free gift, not a necessary act. Even then she rejected the Committee’s accusation that she had made the world “ontologically constitutive of God’s own being.” Throughout her response, however, she repeatedly questioned the Committee’s judgment and its underlying presuppositions. Indeed, a vast difference seemingly exists between the methodological presuppositions employed by the Committee and those used by Johnson. The Doctrine Committee was concerned primarily to lay out the points of divergence between Johnson’s presentation of the faith and traditional Catholic doctrine. It refrained from examining in detail her underlying philosophical and theological presuppositions. 1 E. Johnson’s response to the Doctrine Committee, “To Speak Rightly of the Living God” can be found on www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/wp-content/ upload/2011/06/EJohnson.response.CommDoct.pdf or www.ncronline.org/news/ faith/Johnson-letter-us-bishops-doctrine-committee. Numbers given in parentheses in the main text refer to the section numbers which Johnson introduced into her response. References to Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (New York: Continuum, 2007) and other books will be noted in the footnotes. 924 John M. McDermott, S.J. The present essay attempts such an examination in the hope of revealing why Johnson’s method is flawed and why it leads to conclusions which the Doctrine Committee judged contrary to the Catholic faith. The basic problem concerns the natural-supernatural relation and analogy. The former has been employed in Catholic theology since the thirteenth century. In the twentieth century, transcendental Thomists— such thinkers as Rousselot, Maréchal, Rahner, de Lubac, von Balthasar, and Lonergan—appealed to St. Thomas’s neo-Platonic heritage, specifically his doctrine about man’s natural desire to see God in Himself, in order to bridge what they considered the excessive separation of nature and grace that conceptualist theologians had introduced into Thomistic theology. Conceptualist theology presupposes an analogous concept of being at the basis of its ontology. If being can be conceptualized, then all of reality can be grasped in concepts, which supply clear distinctions among essences and between God and man. This, in turn, grounds a clear distinction between natural and supernatural orders. Natural reason can know certain truths about the world and God which are available to all, whereas supernatural faith accepts a revelation from beyond the natural world on the basis of God’s authority as mediated through Christ and the Church. Faith itself is understood as the assent to revealed propositions. For not only is faith distinct from charity, the will’s act, but also revelation is accepted in the way in which the human intellect normally knows, viz., in conceptual propositions. In contrast, transcendental Thomism stresses the existential judgment as the principal means of access to being, that is, reality. Truth is in judgment. Whereas a concept is received in the passive intellect, a judgment is a synthetic, reflective act unifying subject and predicate, essence and existence, knower and known. It unifies even while postulating differences. Thus a transcendental Thomist can introduce great flexibility in his philosophy and theology, emphasizing, according to need, unity or diversity. By appealing to the natural desire to see God, the term implicitly affirmed in the dynamic judgment, he might bridge the natural-supernatural distinction even while paradoxically affirming it.2 This change of perspective introduces also a different understanding of analogy, which grounds the possibility of making intelligible statements about God. 2 For the contrast in method and presuppositions cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The Methodological Shift in Twentieth Century Thomism,” Seminarium 31 (1991): 245–66; for the insistence upon paradox in Rousselot, Maréchal, Rahner, Lonergan, de Lubac, von Balthasar, Alfaro, and Mouroux, cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The Theology of John Paul II: A Response,” in The Thought of John Paul II, ed. John McDermott, S.J. (Rome: Gregorian University, 1993), 63–64, n. 36. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 925 Although, as far as I know, Johnson never elaborated the philosophical presuppositions of her position, she can be located within the broad spectrum of transcendental Thomism, as her frequent appeals to Rahner testify. Unfortunately her position lacks the full subtlety and depth of this tradition. As a result her theology conflates realities that should be distinguished. From this conflation results the consequent conflict with the episcopal Magisterium. Precisely because Quest is a popular book and does not lay out systematically its philosophical and theological presuppositions, the best way of examining the difficulties in her position may be to follow the order of Johnson’s response to the bishops.This essay will examine in turn how she understands faith and revelation, faith and theology, and then analogy, before reflecting on the meaning of God’s fatherhood, arriving at a conclusion, and issuing a challenge. I. On Faith and Revelation (1, 2) In the first two sections of her response Johnson denies the charge that she is not in accord with the Church’s faith. Thus she treats faith and its objective correlative, revelation, while challenging the bishops to explain what they mean by those terms. She fears that the bishops started from a model of faith and revelation different from hers and have not recognized the legitimate plurality permitted to theologians within the Church. For “theology throughout history has articulated faith in different thought forms, images, and linguistic expressions.” For her part she claims to start and end with the faith of the Church, understood in accord with Vatican II as the people of God, that is, “the whole community of believers,” and to rely upon Scripture in her theology. She is “listening to theologies emerging within distinct contexts in the church. Quest presents ideas and images of God surfacing, being tested, spiritually prayed, and ethically lived out in eight different conversations” (Introduction). For Johnson, faith, which is a grace, “arises in response to God’s own loving self-disclosure.”This revelation “happens through historical events and persons together with their interpretations, culminating in the whole event of Jesus Christ.” Faith enables believers “to entrust themselves wholly to God and to assent to the saving truth which God has revealed.” The reference to “saving truth” is not by happenstance; for her salvation “functions as a formal hermeneutical principle for the interpretation of scripture.” To support her adoption of this principle Johnson cites DV 11:“The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writing for the sake of our salvation,” and adds that “the official footnote quotes a text from Aquinas arguing that things which do not affect salvation do not belong to revelation.” 926 John M. McDermott, S.J. Textual Misinterpretations Underlying Johnson’s position are several presuppositions, ambiguities, partial truths, and mistakes. First of all, the Thomistic text referred to by Dei Verbum, De Veritate q. 12, a. 2, does not corroborate Johnson’s claim. Thomas is treating prophecy, which is only a part of revelation; he declares that “the gift of prophecy is given for the profit (utilitatem) of the Church”; it pertains to the salvation of souls. So prophecy can be concerned with things past, future, eternal, necessary, or contingent. He cites the Glossa to indicate that the Holy Spirit will teach every truth necessary for salvation. “And I say that the things necessary for salvation would be what are necessary either to instruct faith or to inform morals.” He lists among them truths demonstrable by science, such as the incorruptible intellect and whatever leads creatures to admire God’s wisdom and power. He adds supernatural truths, like the Trinity, which are beyond human cognition. Clearly, revelation is seen to consist of truths which are given by God for human salvation. Johnson’s exclusion from revelation of truths that do not pragmatically effect salvation exceeds Thomas’s text. The position of Thomas and Vatican II accords perfectly with 2 Timothy 3:16–17: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work,” which DV 11 cites. Human salvation does not supply the norm or the hermeneutical grid for interpreting Scripture; rather, the proper interpretation and actualization of all Scripture in human life will bring about salvation. By contracting the significance of revelation to human salvation and excluding all else, Johnson may be reducing theology to anthropology.3 One instance of that contraction surfaces clearly in She Who Is, where Johnson is representing feminist theologians: Feminist theology repudiates an interpretation of the death of Jesus as required by God in repayment for sin. Such a view today is virtually inseparable from an underlying image of God as an angry bloodthirsty, violent and sadistic father, reflecting the very worst kind of male behavior. Rather, 3 Johnson’s argument was given originally in She Who Is (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 78. Although Karl Rahner, S.J.,“Theologie und Anthropologie,” Schriften zur Theologie (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1954–84), 8:43, wrote: “Dogmatic theology must today be theological anthropology”—a dangerous sentence which could be interpreted as a surrender to Feuerbach—he understood his transcendental anthropology as built upon a potentia obedientialis, implying a “remainder concept,” and as involving a necessary reference to a definitive history. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 927 Jesus’ death was an act of violence brought about by threatened human men, as sin, and therefore against the will of a gracious God.4 Jesus clearly predicted His death as a “ransom for many” (Mk 10:45), and the message was repeated constantly in the early Church (Rom 3:24–25; 1 Cor 6:19–20; 7:23; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14, 20; 2 Tm 2:6; 1 Pt 1:18–19; 1 Jn 2:1–2; 4:10, 14; Acts 20:28; Rv 5:9; etc.). This death at the hands of sinners was willed by the Father; in the Garden, when Jesus could easily have escaped His fate by walking over the hill and losing Himself in the Judean desert, He accepted the Father’s will instead of His own (Mk 14:36). He drank the chalice which the Father gave Him (Mk 10:38; Jn 18:11). This divine “necessity” Jesus foresaw in His life and obeyed (Mk 8:31; Lk 17:25; 24:7, 25–26; Acts 17:3).5 In accord with Isaiah’s prophecy (53:6, 10), He was “handed over” (divine passive) by the Father (Mk 9:31; 10:33; 14:41; Rom 4:25). Jesus and His disciples recognized that the Father sent the Son to His death (Mk 12:6; Jn 3:16–20; 1 Jn 4:9–14). In fact the Father “predestined” Him to the cross (Acts 2:23; 4:25–28). That He did not spare His own Son is the surest proof of His love for us, from which nothing can separate us (Rom 8:32–39). He is the lamb sacrificed (slaughtered as victim) from the world’s creation (Rv 13:8). At the Last Supper He understood His own death as a sacrifice in His “blood poured out for the many” (Mk 14:24; Lk 22:20). If the Eucharist is a propitiatory sacrifice, a point of defined Catholic doctrine (DS 802, 1740–43, 1751, 1753), to whom is it offered if not to the Father (cf. DS 1744, 1753; Eph 4 Johnson, She, 158. The notion that a symbol “functions” is also found in this work: e.g., 36, 38, 40. In Consider Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 123–24, Johnson attributes to Schillebeeckx the view that the Father does not hand the Son over to suffering. Yet she writes, “Jesus was not crucified by accident but because of the kind of ministry he persisted in carrying out” (60, 76, 91–92). If His ministry was the Father’s will, did not the Father foresee the cross? She apparently fears having any suffering attributed to God’s will, even His permissive will (89; She, 249). It is strange that she would have God suffer with us (92; She, 249–54, 265–68; Quest, 56–68) but not have God will suffering. Does not God want us to be like Him? We exist apparently because “God too needs comfort, and human beings are called to assuage divine grief ” (She, 260). 5 In Consider Jesus, 45, Johnson writes, “Toward the end of his life Jesus had a sense of death approaching, for threats were made on his life.” Actually the New Testament witnesses Jesus’ much earlier consciousness of His violent death (Mk 2:19; 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34, 38–39, 45). Johnson relies too much on the “critical wizardry” of some exegetes (73). Consider Jesus and She Who Is refer often to James Dunn, who denies Jesus’ divinity. So the divine is reduced to the human. For the authenticity of the Son of Man Passion predictions cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Luc XII, 8–9: Pierre angulaire,” Revue Biblique 85 (1978): 381–401. 928 John M. McDermott, S.J. 5:2; Heb 10:10)? Further, Jesus’ death, though caused by sinners into whose hands He was handed over (Mk 14:41; Acts 2:23), was not brought about by “human men” alone. Rather He died for us while we were yet sinners (Rom 5:6–10). “All sinned and lack the glory of God” (Rom 3:9–12, 23; 5:12, 19). If Johnson does not accept the doctrine of original sin and recognize Jesus as the sole Savior of all men (females included) ( Jn 4:42; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim 2:4–6; Heb 12:2, 24), she runs the risk of selfjustification. How can Johnson reject the imposing testimony of Scripture, which formed Tradition? St. Anselm’s satisfaction theory offers but one of many possible interpretations of that Tradition. Is it not possible that the optic through which she views revelation is too narrow? Would it not be more prudent to rethink one’s philosophical theology than to reject the overwhelming testimony of divinely inspired Scripture? While Vatican II undoubtedly refers to the Church as the people of God, stressing thereby the continuity between Old and New Testaments and, in an ecumenical gesture, employing a designation dear to separated brethren, it is nonetheless clear that the council’s primary image for the Church in Lumen Gentium is the Body of Christ. The Theological Committee, which composed the final text, noted: because it agreed with many council Fathers that the Mystical Body “is more than an image and leads more deeply into the mystery of the Church,” the paragraph on the Body of Christ was placed in the text after the other images (LG 7). One Father, Karol Wojty¬a, representing the Polish episcopacy, emphasized that the Body of Christ “is more than an image; for it determines the very nature of the Church under a Christological aspect and simultaneously under the aspect of the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption.”6 In the New Testament “Body of Christ” identifies the Church much more frequently than does “People of God,” even allowing for all OT citations and their usual reference to Israel. Although in Vatican II documents “People of God” is employed equally with “Body of Christ,” the latter certainly brings out clearly the salvific novelty introduced by Christ. Moreover Vatican II emphasized that the Body of Christ is visibly and hierarchically organized (LG 7–8).The visible, hierarchical mediation of revelation preserves continuity with Christ’s historical revelation, a link threatened by Johnson’s theology (cf. below). To interpret the Church merely as “People of God” is to ignore the central aspect, even the essence of her reality. 6 Cf. Relatio, in Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II (Vatican: Vaticana, 1970–99), 3/1: 173; K. Wojty¬a in Acta, 2/3: 857. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 929 The Truth of Faith The main difficulty in the understanding of faith which separates Johnson from the bishops concerns the notion of truth affirmed. In Catholic theology “truth” can be understood in a Hebrew or a Greek sense. Hebrew truth refers mainly to personal fidelity; God is said to be true because He guarantees His word and keeps His promise (Deut 7:9; 2 Sam 7:28; 1 Kg 17:24; Ps 89; 132:11; Is 66:16; Jn 3:33; Rom 3:4) and men are called to be true (Ex 18:21; Is 48:1; Jn 3:21; 17:17). Undoubtedly in this sense Jesus Christ is the Truth ( Jn 14:6); not only does He faithfully represent God to men ( Jn 1:18; 14:9; 12:45) but also He remains faithful to His Father, doing His Father’s will and making known His name (Mk 14:36; Jn 4:34; 5:30, 36; 6:38; 17:4, 6–8, 26). By comparison the Greek notion of truth stresses the correspondence of mind and reality in such a way that verbal propositions express the truth. This meaning does not contradict the notion of fidelity but is easily compatible with it. The faithful one speaks the truth. So in Jewish tradition “truth” comes to designate a doctrine revealed by God, especially the Law (Ps 25:5; 86:11; Mal 2:6: Dan 8:12; 9:13; 10:21). Likewise the gospel has “the word of truth,” being itself the gospel of truth calling for conversion (Gal 2:5, 14; Col 1:5; Eph 1:13; 2 Tim 2:15, 25). Hence the gospel has to be preached in order that conversion and faith occur (Mk 1:15; Rom 10:14–17). Not only does Jesus reveal Himself and His Father through words (Mt 11:25–27; Jn 3:11–12; 17:8) but also from the very beginning the early Church formulates creeds as articles of belief; they serve as norms distinguishing faith from unbelief (1 Cor 12:3; 15:3–4; Rom 1:3–4; 10:9–10). Faith adheres to “the sound doctrine” opposed to myths and lies (1 Tim 1:4, 10; 4:1–2, 6–7; 2 Tim 4:3–4;Tim 1:9, 14; 2:1); such doctrine is taught in the Church, “the column and bulwark of truth” (1 Tim 3:15).7 Faith involves an intellectual act, since it is possible to call upon the Lord and not do His works (Mt 7:21–23; 21:28–31; Lk 6:46; Jas 1:22–27; 2:14–26; Ps 50; Amos 5:21–24; Is 1:10–17; Jer 6:16–21). There can be faith without works ( Jas 2:17–28), and even believers shall be judged according to their works (Mt 16:27; 25:31–46; Rom 2:6, 13–15; Jn 1:22–27; 2:14–17; Rv 22:12). For salvation, faith must work through charity (Gal 5:6). Johnson’s notion of faith seems to be primarily, if not exclusively, of the Hebrew type: a personal entrusting of oneself to God, an assent to saving truth. It does not necessarily involve an assent to propositions as 7 Cf. Ignace de la Potterie, S.J., “Verité,” in Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique, ed. X. Léon-Dufour et alii (Paris: Cerf, 1964), 1092–98; John McKenzie, S.J., “Truth,” in Dictionary of the Bible (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1965), 901–2; Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, trans. J. Moreau (New York: Norton, 1970), 201–2. 930 John M. McDermott, S.J. true and binding. Following Rahner’s notion that there is only one Christian mystery, the object of faith, she writes: “Rather than being propositional it [the one mystery in Christian faith] does not reside in doctrinal statements but in the reality of God’s own being as self-giving love.” This mystery is identified as “the ineffable God” who is “infinite, incomprehensible, inexpressible.”8 Thus she can accuse the Committee of conflating faith with theology (4). Indeed she does later accuse the bishops of adhering to predetermined neo-scholastic formulas with an insistence that “the truth must be expressed in an explicitly determined set of words, words assumed to have a certain a-historical, unchanging meaning” (10). Of course, human words can never be a-historical inasmuch as they are spoken in time by material mouths. But the reverse question can be put to Prof. Johnson: can there be any propositions about God which correspond definitively with God’s reality? If not, the content of faith cannot be intellectually expressed, and then believers cannot express to themselves or others what they really believe. Words become permanently relativizable. When one cannot express to oneself what one believes, how is the position of the believer different from the unbeliever? The unbeliever does not believe; the believer does not know what he believes. Must there not be some permanent intellectual content in human words in order that human intellectual communication occur over the ages? How else might the twenty-first-century Christian recognize that he believes what Peter and Paul believed, viz., what Jesus Christ preached and who He is? If Paul felt compelled to put himself in accord with Peter lest he “run or had run in vain” (Gal 2:2), should not latterday Christians recognize the same compulsion for intellectual and moral integrity and for unity in the faith? There is only “one faith” and “no other gospel” than the one Paul preached (Gal 1:6–7; Eph 4:5). This question is not new. In 1970 Hans Küng questioned papal infallibility precisely because the human mind, according to him, cannot make a definitive judgment about God and divine things. Karl Rahner attacked Küng not only because he rejected a defined truth of Vatican I and Vatican II, the infallibility of the pope, but also because he denied that propositions can provide lasting truths. Rahner opined that he has to treat Küng as a liberal Protestant, who acknowledges as a binding authority neither Scripture nor council. However limited and capable of improvement dogmatic and other propositions may be, it is impossible without them to distinguish truth from falsehood and, without that distinction, continuity with Jesus’ truth is lost. Faith as a basic human decision cannot 8 Johnson, Quest, 43. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 931 be demanded unless intellectual truth is definitively proposed to men.9 Before Küng, Leslie Dewart, facing the problems of dogmatic development, had questioned the possibility of permanent dogmatic statements, inasmuch as such statements have to be reconceptualized repeatedly in order to adapt them to the understanding of new historical epochs. Truth is allegedly valuable only insofar as it contributes to human self-transcendence and self-possession. Bernard Lonergan criticized him for relativizing dogma and ignoring the whole notion of judgment in which truth is said to abide.10 “Truth is in the intellect composing and dividing.” That is Thomas’s opinion (ST I, q. 16, a. 2), which repeats the view of Aristotle (Metaphysics VI 4, 1027b17–29; IX 10, 1051b1–1052a3). Development of Dogma The question of dogmatic development seeks a resolution. How can there be growth in understanding as well as adaptation to new Weltanschauungen without changing the content that previous propositions affirmed? Reconceptualization entails endless problems. Different words or concepts obviously have different meanings, and their meanings signify within wider systems of thought. It is not easy to find the same meaning in two systems of thought when their parameters have shifted. Indeed, were it possible to attain an overview linking the old formulations and the new reformulations within their accompanying worldview, one would have to ask why the new formulation cannot be proposed within the wider systematic perspective. But of course, even the overview is different from the original statement, and the dilemma of Plato’s third man returns.11 Unfortunately an ambiguity resides at the foundation of Rahner’s and Lonergan’s thought.Their appeal to judgment as foundational, on the one 9 Hans Küng, Infallible? An Enquiry, trans. E. Mosbacher (London: Collins, 1971); Karl Rahner, S.J., “Kritik an Hans Küng: Zur Frage der Unfehlbarkeit theologischer Sätze,” Stimmen der Zeit 186 (1970): 361–77; idem, “Replik auf Hans Küng,” Stimmen der Zeit 187 (1971):145–60; cf. also his earlier “Zum Begriff der Unfehlbarkeit in der katholischen Theologie,” Stimmen der Zeit 186 (1970): 18–31. 10 Leslie Dewart, The Future of Belief (London: Burns & Oates, 1967), esp. 90–118; Bernard Lonergan, S.J., “The Dehellenization of Dogma,” in A Second Collection, ed. W. Ryan and B. Tyrrell (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), 11–32. 11 Cf. Plato, Parmenides 132a–133a; the designation “third man” stems from Aristotle, Metaphysics I 9, 990b15–991a8; VII 1, 1038b34–1039a14; XIII 4, 1079a11–13. On the question of dogmatic development, I think that the basis for an answer has been laid in my articles: “Faith, Reason, and Freedom,” Irish Theological Quarterly 67 (2002): 307–32 (reprinted in Faith and Reason, ed. A. Fisher and H. Ramsay [Adelaide: ATF, 2004], 215–47), and “The Sacramental Structure of Reality,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 17/1 (2010): 57–79 (updated and reprinted from La Scuola Cattolica 128 [2000]: 273–99). 932 John M. McDermott, S.J. hand, allows them to insist on the validity of concepts. No judgment can occur without a subject which is identified by a concept or of which a concept is predicated. In Rahner’s words, “An ‘it’ alone without a ‘something’ about it can in no way be imagined in thought.” For “the judgment [conversio ad phantasma] is exactly the referral of the universal to a material singular (Dies da).” Similarly, Lonergan insists that knowledge consists in the response to two questions posed by the mind: quid sit, identifying an essence, and an sit, asking whether the essence exists.12 So the judgment necessarily presupposes as its condition of possibility a validly abstracted universal concept. On the other hand, precisely because a judgment is a synthetic movement of the mind, the problem of conceptual relativism continually reemerges. While a judgment presupposes a concept for the subject of a proposition, conscious truth is attained only when the mind transcends the concept to affirm its relation to existence (reality). The concept is thereby acknowledged as insufficient per se to bring the mind to reality. It is only an abstraction, and concrete reality is submitted to an infinite number of possible abstractions which do not exhaust it. Not surprisingly, Küng claims that he is only developing further Rahner’s insights, and a later student of Rahner’s thought, Mary Himes, contends that dogma is open to repeated reformulations and “formulations of faith are necessary and helpful but only insofar as their connection to the experience of that mystery which grounds religious life is recognized and thematized.” For “faith is not ultimately grounded in obedience to propositions but in free and loving contact with that mystery to which all propositions of faith, however inadequately, refer.” Similarly David Power employs an allegedly Lonerganian method so to reformulate Trent’s position on the Mass’s sacrifice that he can deny that the Mass’s sacrificial character binds faith’s confession. Admittedly, Lonergan’s revision of his thought in Method in Theology, where he postulated an infused divine love as the basis for human cognition, makes it harder to maintain the primacy of intellectual judgment. Nonetheless, neither Rahner nor Lonergan ever abandoned the validity of judgmental truth 12 Karl Rahner, S.J., Geist in Welt (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1939), 82, 288–89; Bernard Lonergan, S.J., Verbum, ed. D. Burrell (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), 1–66, 94–95. Although Rahner starts, like Heidegger, with a question, his question, unlike Heidegger’s, is articulated and thus presupposes knowledge, a judgment. The two thinkers at the origin of transcendental Thomism, P. Rousselot and J. Maréchal, were very concerned with saving conceptual validity within the transcendental spiritual dynamism: cf. John McDermott, S.J., Love and Understanding (Rome: Gregorian University, 1983), 25–42, 51–86, 154–66; and Daniele Moretto, Il Dinamismo intellettuale davanti al Mistero (Milan: Glossa, 2001), 104–32, 152–82, 235–44, 301–37. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 933 and, consequently, the possibility of valid conceptual abstractions. Unless concepts somehow grasp reality, no judgment can affirm reality over them. So a valid judgment of truth presupposes valid abstractions. Without them it is impossible to think coherently and distinguish truth from falsehood.13 Rahner himself writes that what prevents his transcendental theology from devolving into “classical Modernism,” the Catholic version of Protestant liberalism, is his insistence that the conceptually expressed reflection in the human spirit’s original self-possession is not supplementary or superfluous; instead, as a universal, it belongs to the original self-possession. Precisely because he upholds the validity of concepts, he never denies any defined dogma, however novel his reinterpretation of it might be.14 That a relativizing view of dogma underlies Johnson’s explicit propositions may be seen both in her understanding of theology as emerging from believers’ lived experience in the Church and especially in her reference to revelation as “culminating in the whole event of Jesus Christ.” An “event” is a happening or a becoming. Since becoming participates in both being and non-being, its intelligibility cannot be grasped, as Plato (Timaeus 28a) and Aristotle (De Interpretatione 9, 19a35–b3) realized long ago. Insofar as becoming implies potency, it escapes the principle of contradiction (Metaphysics IX 8, 1050b8–13, 30–34). For that reason many Protestant theologians prefer to speak of revelation as an event: an event is not subject to the laws of human ontology but leaves God free to intervene where and when He wishes.15 Because an event escapes ontology’s 13 H. Küng, “Im Interesse der Sache,” Stimmen der Zeit 187 (1971): 43–45, 105–14; Mary Himes, The Transformation of Dogma: An Introduction to Karl Rahner on Doctrine (New York: Paulist, 1989), esp. 153–58; David Power, O.M.I., The Sacrifice We Offer (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 138–54. For a more balanced and nuanced view of Rahner and Lonergan on dogma, cf. Patrick Burke, Reinterpreting Rahner (New York: Fordham, 2002), and John McDermott, S.J., “Tensions in Lonergan’s Theory of Conversion,” Gregorianum 74 (1993): 101–40. 14 Karl Rahner, S.J., Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 26–27. Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Karl Rahner in Tradition: The One and the Many,” Fides Quaerens Intellectum 3 (2004–2007), esp. 10–20, 52–60. 15 Cf., e.g., Rudolf Bultmann, “The Idea of God and Modern Man,” in Translating Theology into the Modern Age, ed. R. Funk (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 89: “The Christian faith speaks of a revelation which it understands to mean God’s act as an event which is not visible to the objectivizing thought of reason, an event which as revelation does not communicate doctrines, but concerns the existence of man and teaches him, or better, authorizes him to understand himself as sustained by the transcendent power of God.” Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Jesus: Parable or Sacrament of God?” Gregorianum 78 (1997): 484–90; 79 (1998): 545–51, for reflections on Bultmann, Barth, and Schweizer and revelation as an event. Eberhard 934 John M. McDermott, S.J. necessary laws, faith’s response to it cannot be based on reason; thus faith remains God’s free gift. Unfortunately this option separates faith from reason and results in the almost uncontrollable pluralism of doctrinal expressions in Protestant theology.16 In Johnson’s response, moreover, it is unclear how revelation culminates in the Christ-event. Did Christ “once for all” accomplish salvation and revelation in the past (Heb 7:27; 9:26; 10:10), or is His event ongoing so that revelation continues into the present? Johnson seems to prefer the latter interpretation: The fundamental nature of Christian identity as life in Christ makes it clear that the biblical symbol Christ, the one anointed in the Spirit, cannot be restricted to the historical person Jesus nor to certain select members of the community but signifies all those who by drinking of the Spirit participate in the community of disciples. Christ is a pneumatological reality, a creation of the Spirit who is not limited by whether one is Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. This “symbol Christ” allows her to follow Sandra Schneiders in separating Christ from Jesus: “This means that Christ, in contrast to Jesus, is not male, or more exactly not exclusively male. . . . Christ is inclusively all the Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1977), 209–10, 221–23, 309–10, 338, 394–400, 406, 415, 465, 497, 499, 510, 513, 517 n. 3, 530–31, so emphasizes revelation and faith as an event of speech that possibility is previous to being (291–95, 398), the principle of contradiction does not apply (294), and God takes non-being into Himself (297–98, 304–5, 522), into His eternal becoming (526–27); for God is not subject to metaphysics (49). Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. G. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–98), 2:285, 319, 344–46, 350–51, 354, 360–68, emphasizes the resurrection event as the foundation of Christian faith. There the event of the Incarnation became complete (383–86) and Jesus attained “to the dignity of the Kyrios” (2:283; 1:264). For God’s self-revelation occurs in action (1:243, 368). Before the eschaton, which the resurrection anticipates, all dogmas are only provisional hypotheses and Scripture itself is distinguished from divine truth (1:16, 25, 54–56, 207–11, 250, 340). 16 In She, 207, Johnson interprets the cross as “a trinitarian event opening up a path for the suffering of the world to enter the very being of God.” The resultant lack of distinction results in the identity of the immanent and economic Trinity (199, 227) and the “reciprocal relation,” “mutual immanence,” and “mutual indwelling” of God and the world (181, 228, 234–36) in the womb of Holy Wisdom (179–81). In quoting Rahner’s axiom, “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice-versa,” Johnson overlooks that the two names “immanent” and “economic,” to which correspond “modes of subsistence” and “modes of presence,” imply a difference, not a simple identity. Moreover, Rahner does not hold consistently to his own axiom: cf. Burke, 73–90, esp. 88–90, and John McDermott, S.J., “Rahner in Tradition,” 30–34, esp. nn. 50–51. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 935 baptized.”17 Christ seems to be an ongoing event, not limited to any particular time and place. How then can Jesus Christ’s temporal mission be definitive? Is Christianity losing its historical moorings? Why has the Church said that revelation was completed with the apostles (DS 3020, 3421)? Is Jesus only an “historical person,” that is, a human person? Was Paul mistaken in preaching “Christ crucified” and not Jesus crucified (1 Cor 1:23; 2:2; Gal 3:1; 6:14)? Foreshortened Christology The distinction of Christ from Jesus apparently lies in Johnson’s truncated version of Rahner’s descending Christology. Although she admits that descending and ascending Christologies are not mutually exclusive, she develops the latter at greater length. Whereas man is a mystery, “a thirst for the infinite,” whose “nature as a concept cannot be totally grasped,” God is a greater mystery, “utterly incomprehensible.” From Rahner’s suggestion that “person” in the Trinity be replaced by “distinct manner of subsistence or self-subsistence” or “a mode of being” so that “God’s own self has three different ways of being, or exists in three distinct manners of subsistence,” Johnson applies the designation “Father” to God’s self, “Son” to God’s self-uttering, and “Holy Spirit” to “the power of unifying love, always bringing the divine self–expression back into the primordial unity.”18 Unfortunately, neither Johnson nor Rahner explains what “a manner of subsistence” or a “way of being” or a “mode of being” actually is or does. It fits no metaphysical category. The divine nature seemingly remains the one goal of human thirsting and one agent (nature) or self vis-à-vis the world.19 “The Christological question arises when we inquire after what happens when these two [the mystery of human nature and the mystery of divine nature] enter into union in the incarnation.” Johnson upholds Jesus’ full humanity in His union with God. On the basis of Rahner’s neoPlatonic axiom that autonomy increases in proportion to ever greater unity with God, Jesus “is genuinely human and in fact more human, more free, more alive, more his own person than any of us, because his union with 17 Johnson, She, 162; cf. also 98 for the juxtaposition of “the risen and exalted Christ” and “the historical Jesus of the ministry.” The citation is from Sandra Schneiders, IHM, Women and the Word (New York: Paulist, 1986), 54. 18 Johnson, Consider Jesus, 24–27, 68; idem, She, 215; idem, Quest, 204, 212–13. Cf. below n. 27 for the resulting confusion. 19 For Rahner’s detailed position cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The Christologies of Karl Rahner,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 87–123, 297–327, and “Rahner in Tradition,” 1–60, esp. 36–45, 55–60. John M. McDermott, S.J. 936 God is more profound.” This occurs because at the Incarnation “God who is love eternally self-expressing within the divine being as the eternal Word, self-expresses outwardly into the history of this earth. God’s own inner Word is spoken into the medium of human flesh, bringing Jesus into existence.”20 If it sounds strange that Jesus should come into existence and be “his own person” due to His union with God, that is because Johnson considers “Jesus” the name of the human subjectivity involved in the “incarnation.” Jesus has “normal limited human knowledge.” His ignorance about the future (Mk 13:32) need not imply imperfection, since our ideal of perfection is no longer knowledge but freedom, and “full, clear knowledge of the future” would remove the condition for freedom’s operation. “For real freedom to operate we must take a risk.” Despite this limitation of freedom, Jesus possesses “pre-thematic consciousness” of being the Word made flesh. This personal intuition of the person who He is needs, however, a whole lifetime to be spelled out in clear terms. “As with all of us, the mystery of his person was never totally expressed in concrete terms until the time of his death, when he transcends this world and is raised from the dead.”21 Johnson’s insistence on risk and ignorance as a condition of freedom seems to be contradictory. Not only would she apparently deny freedom to the omnipotent God but also she contradicts her understanding of Jesus’ union with God. If freedom grows in proportion to union, Jesus is most free in the beatific vision. In it there is no risk of sin. Rahner insists on Jesus’ possession of the beatific vision throughout His human life; only thus can He be the full reflection of God in a human nature. If Jesus were peccable, He cannot be God and the salvation which He worked in history would be dependent upon a human freedom, which cannot communicate definitive salvation. That is why Athanasius and Cyril insist that the central actor in the historical drama of salvation be divine, and why Maximus Confessor places freedom in Jesus’ person, not in His finite will.22 Johnson may refrain from attributing the beatific vision to Jesus inasmuch as its possession terminates all human desire, and that termination is hardly compatible with a growth in explicit knowledge: if the goal 20 Johnson, Consider Jesus, 27–30. 21 Ibid., 40–42. 22 Athanasius, Contra Arianos II:67–71, 76–77; III:38 (PG 26, 289A–300A, 308B–312B, 404C–405B); Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannem, I:1; V:2 (PG 73, 205A–208B; 753C–756A); idem, In II Cor. 5:5–6:2 (PG 74, 946A); for Maximus cf. Guido Bausenhart, “In allem uns gleich außer der Sünde” (Mainz: Grünewald, 1992), 148–67, and John McDermott, S.J., “How Did Jesus Know He Was God? The Ontological Psychology of Mark 10:17–22,” Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009): 273–83. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 937 is possessed, why is there need of partial conceptual knowledge? Yet if Johnson holds that Jesus falls short of explicit knowledge of God and Himself, how can He be the full revelation of God before Easter? (Rahner allows that Jesus “erred” about an imminent arrival of God’s kingdom. His position leaves unexplained why anyone should follow a fallible “savior” who errs about the central theme of his preaching.) If Jesus’ full knowledge arrived only with the resurrection, why did the Church accept as revelation the gospels about Jesus’ pre-paschal ministry? They would not comprise trustworthy divine revelation. One sees why for Johnson the “Jesus-event” has to be continuous revelation on earth: all conceptual knowledge falls short of the “pre-thematic” knowledge of God.23 In Quest, Christology comes to the fore briefly when Johnson considers the notion of a sacrament; she cites this text from Quest in her response (8): Originating in God’s loving desire to communicate with people in a saving way, specific things such as persons, events, texts and rituals become bearers of the power of this desire in history. Through them God approaches; through them people become conscious of divine presence and make their response. In Christian faith, Jesus is the sacrament of this two-way encounter.Wishing to unite with the human race in its joys, sinfulness, and terrible suffering in order to save, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us as a human being. Through his life, death, and resurrection God has forged a saving bond with the human race that cannot be broken. The cross brings God’s love into the depths of our death; Christ’s risen humanity is the pledge of life for all into the eternal future. God thereby posits the incarnate Word in history in order to signal a broader economy, the presence of God’s saving will coextensive with the history of humankind.24 Johnson may have italicized the before “sacrament” since Roger Haight’s Jesus Symbol of God had earned a rebuke from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because he allowed other saving symbols alongside Jesus. Haight had drawn erroneous conclusions from Rahner’s theology of the symbol. Rahner had understood a symbol as the visible expression of a grace already received, equivalently a sacrament, and had applied his insight to Christ, the Church, and the seven sacraments, so that there was 23 A basic difficulty underlies Rahner’s and Johnson’s positions: “pre-thematic” knowledge is non-conceptual knowledge. But Thomism recognizes as intuitive only sensation and the beatific vision. “Pre-thematic” knowledge seems to imply the beatific vision. This holds true of everyone’s alleged experience of grace. But we do not enjoy the beatific vision: cf. McDermott, “Rahner in Tradition,” 27–36. 24 Johnson, Quest, 176. 938 John M. McDermott, S.J. a unity in diversity of God with the finite symbol. Extending that insight, Haight recognized that Jesus’ humanity was only a finite human symbol and therefore could not be absolute. He did not pre-exist His humanity and Nicaea should be reinterpreted to mean that “not less than God was present to and operative in Jesus.” Wherever grace, that is, God in His presence, is accepted, a symbol comes to expression, and, given God’s universal salvific will, other figures can mediate grace in other religions just as Jesus’ humanity serves as a symbol-sacrament for Christians. Other religions can be recognized as “mediators of God’s salvation on a par with Christianity.” God is normatively revealed both in Jesus and in other religions. Hence “Jesus is not constitutive of salvation universally . . . and it is not necessary to think that God as Spirit can be incarnated only once in history.”25 By the italicized the Johnson stresses the uniqueness of Christ. One notes, however, that there is a two-way encounter, that is, from God and from Jesus’ human subjectivity.That still leaves unanswered the problem exploited by Haight: how can a finite symbol claim absolute adherence from all men? Moreover Johnson’s affirmations need not affirm more than what Haight affirmed. Jesus is the symbol “in Christian faith,” which could mean “only for Christians.” The Word becoming flesh, a fine Scriptural phrase, has previously been interpreted only as God’s presence to Jesus. The saving bond cannot be broken, because Jesus has been resurrected—God does not change that—and He serves as a sign for all who can or wish to perceive it. Jesus’ historical act does not necessarily effect salvation; He only “signals” it.26 25 Roger Haight, S.J., Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), 404–17, 436–45, 446–65, 485–89; quotes from 415, 456, 460. 26 Johnson’s response (8), synthesizing Quest, 155–58, claims that Vatican II (AG 9) “affirms ‘elements of truth and grace’ in the religions ‘as a sort of secret presence of God.’ ” Actually she interjects “the religions.” The text reads: “Whatever elements of truth and grace, being as it were God’s hidden presence, were being found among the nations, those elements [missionary activity] liberates from malign infections and restores to Christ, its author, who overturns the devil’s empire and impedes multifarious criminal wickedness.” Cf. Quest, 156, for the same error. Quest, 157–58, misconstrues Redemptoris Missio by equating the “Spirit’s presence and activity” with a sanctifying activity realized in other religions; that equation lies in her Rahnerian theology, but not in the encyclical’s theology. For her, God is everywhere self-giving presence, or grace (41–44, 162); she cites the Indian episcopal conference, which attributes a salvific role to other religions (157–59, 162–63, 171–74, 178). Yet Redemptoris Missio states, “Jesus Christ is the one savior of all, the only one able to reveal God and lead to God” (5), and insists on “the necessity of the Church for salvation” (9). At issue is not whether God’s grace is given beyond the Church’s visible bounds but whether sanctifying or uncreated grace, as opposed to actual grace, is given and accepted Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 939 While Rahner’s early Christology is a descending Christology, whereby all that Jesus did, His deeds as well as His words, is considered divine revelation, its Monophysite tendency is balanced by his later ascending Christology whereby Jesus’ hypostatic union is explained in terms of the beatific vision. This more Nestorian cast of thought, which allows in Jesus a free, self-conscious center of activity vis-à-vis the divine free, self-conscious center of activity, is more preferred by Rahner as time progresses and he enters into dialogue with modern exegesis. He explains the hypostatic union and soteriology as inner moments within the more fundamental divinization of the world and muses: “Perhaps it is possible to be an orthodox Nestorian or an orthodox Monophysite. If this were the case, then I would prefer to be an orthodox Nestorian.”27 In any case, this Nestorian tendency explains how Johnson can write, “The divine quality of the Compassion of God became incarnate in [Jesus].” Here not a person, but a quality becomes incarnate. Similarly, after identifying Sophia as “a female personification of God in outreach to the world” who “creates” and there and whether non-Christian religions mediate that grace qua religions. Only God, who reads hearts, can answer the first question, and Dominus Jesus answered the second question negatively, thus preventing intellectual chaos. (Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Did That Really Happen at Vatican II?” Nova et Vetera 8 [2010]: 452–55.) Johnson, Quest, 160–62, finds Dominus Jesus inadequate for ecumenical discourse: “To put it simply, the living God is not a Christian.” Though not cited by Johnson, Redemptoris Missio 10 states: “Christ’s salvation is open to [non-Christians prevented from hearing the gospel] through a grace, which, despite a secret bond (necessitas) with the Church, does not lead them formally into her, but illuminates in a way befitting their interior condition and the collateral circumstances of events (res) and times.” An illuminating grace is usually an actual grace; how Christ’s salvation reaches individuals is left sapiently vague. The insistence on the bond with the Church underlines the necessity for salvation’s mediation through her. 27 Karl Rahner, S.J., Karl Rahner in Dialogue, ed. P. Imhof and H. Biallowons, English ed. H. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 126–27; idem, Grundkurs, 200–201. In this latter work, Rahner reverses the perspective of Scripture and Thomas (ST III, q. 2, a. 10; q. 6, a. 6c et ad 2; q. 7, a. 13c et ad 2–3).Yet Rahner, “Jesus Christus,” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. K. Rahner et alii (Freiburg: Herder, 1968), 2:923, also claims that Jesus is the primary datum of faith and is not just subsumed under an abstract, possible schema for interpreting reality. He also insists on the continuing mediation of Christ’s humanity for our salvation, even in the beatific vision; but it is not clear why participation in Christ’s humanity is necessary if grace is a participation in God’s nature (cf. McDermott, “Christologies,” 107–8; this article originally identified the Monophysite and Nestorian tendencies openly, but the journal editor insisted on the removal of those judgments. Nonetheless the perceptive reader easily catches the implications of the article. If all that Jesus did reveals God, His visits to a gabinetto imply God’s fearsome wrath. 940 John M. McDermott, S.J. redeems,” Johnson follows Paul in seeing Jesus as the wisdom of God and Sophia incarnate. “As Sophia incarnate Jesus can be discerned as a coincidence of opposites in every respect: . . . a man yet the prophet and very presence of Sophia herself.” “Jesus is identified as the human being Sophia became.” In another work Johnson refers to a hyphenated “Jesus-Sophia” and identifies Jesus as Sophia as well as “the prophet and son of Sophia.” This would be pure contradiction unless there were two subjects in Jesus. So Johnson’s distinction of Jesus and Sophia parallels the distinction of Jesus and Christ already noted. If Christ and Sophia are just other terms for God, then one sees why Johnson can hold that “each of us is a little word of God.”28 All who receive God in grace become His self-expression in the flesh. But how do two free, self-conscious subjects (natures) in Jesus avoid Nestorianism or Arianism? Johnson’s reformulation of dogma for modern or post-modern readers does not quite resolve all problems for anyone who is seeking the ultimate unity of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, insofar as Johnson would follow Rahner in interpreting the hypostatic union in terms of the beatific vision, there is no reason why other humans cannot enjoy a hypostatic union. Christ’s salvific uniqueness is lost. Theological Pluralism Catholic theology and the Magisterium have long recognized a legitimate pluralism. But a substantial difference exists between the traditional 28 Johnson, Consider Jesus, 33, 104–5, 111–12, 126; idem, She, 91–99, 157, 154, 157–58, 160–61, 213, 217; cp. Quest, 176, 189, 191. Johnson’s use of hyphenation can be confusing. While “Jesus-Sophia” apparently reflects a Nestorian double subjectivity, such expression as “Sophia-God” (157–60, 213, 218) and “SpiritSophia” (157, 213) apparently intend an identity. Wisdom is also identified with the Word (99, 214). All this happens because these are various “personifications” of God. So “God is God as Spirit-Sophia” (213). Despite the identity of Wisdom and the Logos (99, 214), Wisdom is not a second Trinitarian person but is simply identified with God.Thus arise the “triune mystery of Sophia” and “the metaphor of Sophia-God as a Trinity of friendship” (213, 221–22). For Wisdom is lively “in three distinct movements, shapes, manners of subsistence, hypostases, modes of being, persons” (215). Sophia is “a personification of God’s own being” (91) or “of God’s own self ” (93). Since the Trinitarian “manners of subsistence” have no function, there is obviously only one self in God and that self, designated by various names, expresses itself in various human beings. Cf. also Elizabeth Johnson, Women, Earth and Creator Spirit (New York: Paulist, 1993), 53: “All life is a gift and Woman Wisdom, a personification of the Creator Spirit, gives that gift.” Benedict Spinoza’s Wisdom-Christology, A Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. R. Elwes (1883; New York: Dover, 1951), 14–15, 18–19, is amazingly similar to Johnson’s, but where she relativizes Scripture before experience, he subordinates Scripture to reason (14–15, 27–28, 33–36, 40–42, 61–68, etc.). Reason is concerned with truth and wisdom while Scripture teaches piety and obedience (190, 194–95). Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 941 understanding of pluralism and that proposed more recently by transcendental theologians. Traditionally theologians accepted as the irrefutable foundation of their theologies the clear affirmations of Scripture and the dogmas defined by the Magisterium; pluralism resulted from the various interpretations given to those statements and dogmas. Transcendental theologians, in contrast, extend the notion of pluralism to the ongoing, polymorphic reformulation of the dogmas themselves. Certainly the insistence on the permanence of dogma cannot be ascribed to neo-scholastic thinkers alone. So to ascribe it betrays a lamentable ignorance of history. Already at the second ecumenical council, Constantinople I, the Fathers stood on the defined faith of Nicaea, considering it “authoritative” or “decisive” (kuria: DS 151), and at the Council of Chalcedon the Fathers not only reaffirmed the Nicean creed as “immobile” (asaleuton) and “unassailable” or “irrefutable” (aparencheireton) but also proclaimed their own unity in understanding with Nicaea, Constantinople I, and Ephesus. Later councils made explicit what was contained in Nicaea’s faith (DS 300–302; cf. also Aquinas, ST I, q. 36, a. 2, ad 2).29 Perhaps the dogmatic development which those councils, the recent Magisterium, and Johnson desire might be better attained by a more profound study of such basic terms as nature, substance, person, and being than by attempting to recast the entirety of theology and dogma into new molds. From Nicaea to Constantinople III, the greatest theological minds did not reject those terms but sought to penetrate ever more profoundly their meaning. Indeed, all theologians who considered themselves bound to an ecclesial dogmatic tradition have sought to explicate those terms. Does Johnson consider it possible to do theology or even to think coherently without the employment of such terms? If she wishes to recast theology, she owes the Church, both the people of God and the Body of Christ, a more exact consideration of basic terms. She explicitly recognizes the councils as authoritative (10), but she does not employ the language of the councils. In what sense do the councils enjoy authority for her theology? How can they serve as a “touchstone for centuries of theological interpretation” if they do not provide intelligible standards for understanding the faith? If their language is ignored, what service do they provide? 29 Beyond Lampe’s dictionary, Liddell, Scott, Jones, Greek-English Lexicon lists for the verb form parencheiro the meaning “interpret symbolically.” Given the alpha-privative in the adjectival form aparencheireton, this would mean that the creed is not to be interpreted symbolically. That may be stretching a point, but the Fathers certainly intended to insist that their decisions and definitions be accepted. 942 John M. McDermott, S.J. II. On Faith and Theology A further confirmation of Johnson’s understanding of faith and revelation is offered in her treatment of the faith-theology relation (3–4). Quoting CCC 66 on revelation as “already complete,” but not yet “completely explicit,” she projects theology’s role as bringing “out faith’s meaning afresh.” She sees theology as the praxis of faith seeking understanding in various ways throughout history. As a disciplined reflection it is “rooted in different imaginations: analogical, dialectical, liberationist” and it has employed “different philosophies: Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, process, analytic, while not being tied to any one.” She judges theologies on their ability to “sustain the inquiring minds and committed praxis of the people of the church” as well as to “influence official church teaching.” Quest, she holds, rests on the conviction that “the symbol of God functions” in ethical practice, and she wished to identify the ethical practice flowing from each theology of God “in order to ascertain if justice, peace, and right order really are the result.” This accords with the pragmatic norm expounded in She Who Is: In the course of this program [feminist theology] one criterion recurs as a touchstone for testing the truth and falsity, the adequacy and inadequacy, the coherence and incoherence of theological statements and religious structures. This criterion, variously enunciated, is the emancipation of women toward human flourishing. As a gauge it is applied in a practical way, the adequacy of a religious symbol or custom being assessed according to its effects.30 However vague the “flourishing of women” may sound—it encompasses “embodiment, sexuality, passion, the erotic” as potential goods to be reclaimed for the “erotic power . . . which alone can heal the brokenheartedness that is patriarchy’s legacy”—Johnson and feminists choose it as the ultimate standard, “an a priori option” not further justified by reason, Scripture, or Tradition. Not that Johnson rejects outright Scripture and Tradition, but she considers them “historically ambiguous monuments to patriarchy’s view of its own rightness.” Hence she relativizes them, placing alongside these traditional sources of faith “present faith experience.” If God is worshiped as the guiding reality, the source and goal of all, then the truth is tested by the extent to which the idea of God 30 E. Johnson, She, 30; Johnson apparently borrows the norm of flourishing from R. R. Ruether: cf. Consider Jesus, 103; she uses it also in Women, 25. The primacy of praxis over thought is affirmed in liberation theology: Quest, 83, 86–87. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 943 currently available takes account of accessible reality and integrates the complexity of present experience into itself.31 The norm for judging a theology’s value is clearly not its intellectual conformity with reality but its pragmatic effects, however they are defined. Right order, justice, and peace are relatively ambiguous terms, depending on the meanings attributed to them by each person. Certainly the traditional notion of justice bifurcates into commutative and distributive justice.The former demands that all be treated equally, the latter demands that the particular conditions of each individual be assessed and handled proportionately. That leaves much room for dispute, as do the notions of peace and order to which Fascists and Communists alike appealed. Even apart from such difficulties, does not the proper judgment of successful praxis depend not on praxis itself, which is concrete, dynamic, voluntary, and transitory, but upon intellectually established pragmatic norms? Truth is deeper than and adjudicative of all human praxis. If the “symbol of God” employed in theology has to be judged as adequate or inadequate in practice, the symbol must be grounded in truth perceptible to the human mind. A symbol that is not true cannot correctly guide conduct. One might also fear that such a position leads to atheism. If God’s truth is judged by practice and women have been long oppressed by a patriarchal religion, as Johnson maintains, where has God been for the past two millennia? What reason is there for belief in a God so impotent according to feminist standards? Misinterpretations and Exaggerations Johnson rejects the bishops’ statement that Quest “begins with a critique of the Church’s faith, or, rather of what she terms traditional theology” for a double reason. First, she claims that the bishops conflate faith with theology. Second, she claims that she rejects not traditional faith but “modern theism,” that is, an Enlightenment view of God which separates God from Christ; indeed “the Christian God is defined without Christ.” To back her position she cites two theologians. Michael Buckley held that the theologians during the Enlightenment “bracketed religion in order to defend religion” and thus transmuted Christianity into theism. Karl Rahner “observed, if one were to remove the Trinity from theological treatises of this era, it would barely make a difference.” Johnson’s criticism unfortunately falls into the same error of which she accuses the bishops. Their statement makes clear that Quest at times distinguishes modern theism from Catholic theology but at other times 31 Johnson, She, 17, 7, 15, 69, 270; idem, Women, 60. 944 John M. McDermott, S.J. seemingly equates the two since she accuses “traditional Christian doctrine” and “traditional preaching and theology” of the same deficiencies that encumber modern theism.32 Moreover, she identifies with the repudiated modern theism various characteristics of God, such as immutability, transcendence, and immanence, which traditional Catholic theology and ecumenical councils consistently have predicated of God (DS 800, 3001).33 The bishops were much more nuanced and accurate in characterizing her position than she theirs. She is also somewhat careless in appealing to the authority of theologians without checking the accuracy of their accounts. Even good theologians can sometimes wildly exaggerate opponents’ positions or commit egregious blunders. Rahner did publish that ridiculous statement about the Trinity’s alleged irrelevance. But he also accused neo-Scholastic theology of supporting a Monophysite Christology under orthodox terminology.34 How can the same theology which allegedly proclaimed the second person of the Trinity as God in the flesh be guilty of overlooking the Trinity? Since Rahner likewise contended that the mystery of the Trinity is open to us only through the Incarnation,35 it seems that his polemic against conceptualist Thomism led to a propagandistic exaggeration. Similarly, Buckley’s clever quip plays on a double entendre regarding “religion.”36 The Baroque Scholastics and their successors understood religion in two senses. There is a natural religion, available to all men by creation and reason, and there is supernatural religion revealed historically in Jesus Christ. This distinction was not uncritically adopted by Catholic theologians at the time of the Enlightenment. With Thomas Aquinas they presupposed a natural knowledge of God, which is insufficient for salvation, but is required at least for the coherent use of reason in theology. If it is not possible for men to know of God’s existence and something of His characteristics, how might they understand either Jesus’ words about His Father or the 32 Cf. Johnson, Quest, 73, 80; idem, Women, 17–18. 33 Johnson, Quest, 15, 52, 54, 56–64. Johnson’s response (6) quotes theologians with regard to a suffering God and says that she is “inclined toward a both-and position on this question rather than an either-or.” Distressing, however, is the appeal to human experience instead of addressing the underlying metaphysical question. All apophatic theologians should hesitate long before supporting statements about God just based on human experience when conciliar documents apparently say the opposite. 34 Karl Rahner, S.J., “Probleme der Christologie von heute,” Schriften, 4:176–82. 35 Ibid., “Zur Theologie der Inkarnation,” Schriften, 4:137. 36 Michael Buckley, S.J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1987), 345–46. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 945 Church’s proclamation of the gospel? Did not St. Paul presuppose a natural knowledge of the unseen God from the visible realities of creation (Rom 1:19–21)? And did not Vatican I follow him in defining solemnly the possibility of natural knowledge of God (DS 3004, 3026)? Without a “pre-understanding” of at least revelation’s presuppositions, man could not freely affirm revelation; for freedom requires some understanding of what is chosen. Buckley conflated the two understandings of “religion” to support his polemic. His and Rahner’s quips judge their opponents polemically, that is, negatively from the presuppositions of their own positions without seeking to enter into a real dialogue. Doubtless Buckley wrote a whole book detailing his position, and Rahner spilled rivers of ink in explaining the natural-supernatural relation. To make one’s point pointedly, polemical propaganda might be excusable, and theologians, like other human beings, like to confound opponents by emitting bons mots. But when a theologian’s proper understanding of the faith is questioned by bishops, the time for propaganda is past. Admittedly there are problems with reconciling Paul’s natural knowledge of God with his insistence on creation in Christ, the one through, for, and in whom all things were created (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15–17; also Jn 1:3, 10). A good theologian is conscious of those difficulties and does not excuse herself by implying that she and the bishops are just working with different theological models. The late Cardinal Dulles employed “models” in the chaotic pluralism after Vatican II, but, as Johnson herself admits, he at least sought to synthesize the models—more so, it seems, in Models of Revelation than in Models of the Church. In a catholic Church, whose founder gave His life with the prayer that all be one ( Jn 17:20–23) and whose greatest preacher insisted on “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:5), there has to be unity of faith, and that faith must somehow be expressible in intelligible words. Otherwise, not only will contrary practices arise and divergent creeds emerge but also the very intelligibility of the created order is undermined. Faith becomes an irrational leap into darkness. As noted above, Johnson’s “faith” seems to be fundamentally an experiential praxis of believers culminating in the Christ-event. Though it may be communicated through words, the praxis is primary and serves as the norm for judging a religion’s validity. It seems that when she accuses the bishops of conflating theology and faith, she opposes faith and theology as praxis to theory. Abstract theory always falls short of concrete practice and hence is subject, like sociological theories, to perpetual reformulation. J. B. Benestad has rightly remarked that Johnson’s paradigms of praxis encompass a rather limited constituency, ignoring the 946 John M. McDermott, S.J. broad majority of Catholic faithful.37 How does anyone know that she or any other theologian claiming to speak for certain groups authentically represents those groups? Have they been elected or are they selfappointed? On a deeper level Johnson’s insistence on the primacy of practice, which human beings experience, forces her to veer very close to Schleiermacher, who made religious experience the existential core of Christianity; such experience is only subsequently (ontologically) expressed in theological and dogmatic propositions, which consequently (logically) are capable of constant reinterpretation and revision. The fundamental question remains: what truth value do intellectual formulations of faith possess or can they possess? Are they just “theology”? Or are they statements of religious truth to which an intellectual assent must be demanded? Johnson owes the bishops a clearer reflection on her own understanding of the relation between faith and theology or between “faith” as lived experience and “faith” as intellectual truth.38 Johnson appeals to theologians like Dulles, Rahner, and Buckley, but the appeal to authority is the weakest of arguments unless that authority be divine. Although Dulles’s contribution was recognized by his elevation to the cardinalate, neither he nor Rahner nor Buckley has been officially recognized as a normative Catholic teacher. The bishops, however, have been promised Christ’s continuing presence and the Holy Spirit’s assistance in the transmission of the faith until the consummation of the age (Mt 28:19–20; Jn 14:26; 16:13–15). The bishops would seem, therefore, to require an answer that is more than an appeal to an authority less than theirs. Perhaps Johnson is not aware of the underlying tensions which Catholic theologians must confront and balance. Her own theology seems very one-sided, and she should not be surprised when it is placed into question. Since it has been questioned by bishops, who bear responsibility for the unity of the faith, the time of polemics should be past. III. Analogy (5) That Johnson is sincere in her protestations about remaining faithful to Catholic doctrine need not be questioned. Indeed, her understanding of 37 J. Brian Benestad, “Review of Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, Quest for the Living God,” Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly 34–35 (2011): 52–53. 38 Johnson, She, 7, 15, proposes “present faith experience” alongside Scripture and tradition as a source for proper language about God. As the book develops, experience or hoped for experience, the flourishing of women, becomes the dominating source and criterion of religious language. “In and through women’s conversion experience and its many articulations new language about God is arising, one that takes female reality in all its concreteness as a legitimate finite starting point for speaking about the mystery of God” (75). Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 947 the basic intellectual problem, that of analogy, reveals that her basic difficulty is not obstinacy or disloyalty but superficiality. In her response, in Quest, and in She Who Is, her God-language is described frequently with such terms as “images” and “thought forms” and “symbols.” What truth value do they possess? An answer to that basic question should be expected in her treatment of analogy. After saying that the theologies traced out in Quest are “attempting new articulations of the belief that ‘God is Love’ (1 Jn 4:8)” (4), Johnson spells out her understanding of analogy, “the theory guiding my work.” She summarizes Quest’s “ground rules for language about God” as “norms synthesized mainly from Aquinas’ writings but with backing in scripture”: “first, God is infinite holy Mystery who can never be fully comprehended by our human minds; second, no human language is adequate to express this divine reality; and third, there need to be many names for God, each one opening up a different angle of vision.” Articulating that further with a general reference to the thought of David Burrell, William Hill., Erich Przywara, and Herbert McCabe, she writes: Aquinas positions analogy between univocity, where words have the exact same meaning for creatures and God, and equivocity, where they have no meaning at all in common. Since the creaturely world reflects something of its Creator, there is similarity but not identity in the same words used of creatures and God. Honoring this relationship of Creator and creation, Aquinas describes a supple movement of mind in which we first affirm a creaturely perfection of God; then negate the finite way we know that quality; and then reaffirm the creaturely perfection as belonging to God in a supereminent or excellent way. Relying on the distinction between the res significata (the reality signified) and the finite modus significandi or “the limited way of knowing commensurate with our earthly experience,” she continues: Our mode of representing what we are talking about, our concept of the perfection, does not match its mode of being in the reality of God. The concept is inadequate. And yet having used it, our minds arrive at insight via a judgment that this perfection is true of God superlatively. It is a judgment that breaks out of the finite mode of apprehension endemic to our creaturely way of knowing. Thus analogical knowing is “a dynamic kind of relational knowing, pervaded with religious awareness. It intuits an unspeakably rich and vivifying reality opened up by the intelligible content of the concept, even though at the same time God remains in essence conceptually inapprehensible.” 948 John M. McDermott, S.J. This explanation of analogy in Johnson’s response to the bishops is more thorough and precise than what was offered in Quest. It is especially clearer in portraying the role of judgment in analogy. She Who Is also based analogy upon an ontology of participation whereby “every creature in some way shares in divine perfection, although in no way does God resemble creatures.”39 But by emphasizing the apophatic second step of analogy, the negating of the finite mode of the predicated perfection, Johnson falls back into the agnosticism for which the bishops rightly criticized Quest. For, insofar as, in Johnson’s theory, “no human language is adequate to express this divine reality” and “the concept is inadequate,” it is hard to see what meaning is conveyed to the human mind. Judgment indicates a movement of mind toward God’s infinite reality, which it apparently has not reached, while the concept conveys an intelligible content. However much the concept must be stretched beyond its normal usage, some continuity must be maintained between its intelligible content and God’s infinite reality. Human knowledge has to be more than an “imaginative construct” functioning as a symbol that can “bear divine presence and power” and give “an occasion for thinking.”40 Otherwise all finite knowing about God is destroyed. In writing “[analogical knowing] intuits an unspeakably rich and vivifying reality opened up by the intelligible content of the concept, even though at the same time God remains in essence conceptually inapprehensible,” Johnson avoids the basic question concerning the valid application of concepts to God. Certainly no concept or judgment can comprehend God or exhaust His reality; He is infinite, our minds are finite. But an intuition is not a concept. Similarly, while God is conceptually incomprehensible inasmuch as no concept can circumscribe Him, He has to be apprehensible and somehow known in and through concepts. If the concept is completely inadequate, all thought breaks down and judgments about God and His perfections are rendered meaningless. Unfortunately Johnson never explains how conceptual content is predicated meaningfully of God; instead she constantly emphasizes the apophatic aspect of all knowledge of God. She quotes Thomas: “We cannot know of God what He is [quid est ], and thus we are united to Him as to one unknown” (ST I, q. 12, a. 13, ad 1), but she neglects to note that Thomas is referring to knowledge “in this life through grace’s revelation.” Quidditative knowledge of God is reserved for the beatific vision. Of course Thomas recognizes that certain mysteries, like the Trinity, are supernatural and cannot in principle be known by man’s natural intellect 39 Johnson, She, 114. 40 Ibid., 46–47. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 949 (q. 32, a. 1; cf. q. 1, aa. 7–8). Nonetheless, through faith we are joined to the Trinity, since the creed conveys knowledge of God: “The act of the believer ends not at propositions but at the reality [non terminatur ad enuntiabilia, sed ad rem]. For we form propositions only in order to have knowledge of the realities through them both in science and in faith” (II–II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2).41 In analogy the via affirmationis is not abandoned or rejected by the via negationis; otherwise analogy’s foundation would be destroyed and the whole structure would come tumbling down. The affirmation is retained in order that the via eminentiae might reaffirm it beyond the negation, purging its limitations. Unless some similarity subsists between Creator and creature, it is impossible to argue to His existence from created effects. Rather than to imagine three sequential steps, it is more suitable to think of analogy as a constant referral between the created analogue and God, the ultimate term of reference. Human words and concepts about God convey truth about God, even if they do not comprehend or exhaust His reality. Hence statements about God can be judged true or false. But philosophers and theologians have offered various understandings of analogy. A look at the debate will help to illumine the points at issue between Johnson and the Doctrine Committee. Thomistic Analogy The notion of analogy, central as it is to all theology and to all human thinking, is not easy to grasp.42 God is infinitely beyond us, yet language about Him presupposes knowledge about Him from created effects. 41 Johnson’s response (5) quotes CCC 170, which cites this Thomistic text, but whereas Thomas’s context makes it clear that the creedal proposition gives knowledge of the reality known through the creed, Johnson would have the proposition serve merely as a temporary support for a transcendental negation. In She, 240, one finds: “Insofar as this constant negation invalidates nothing except the limits of the affirmations we make about being, it actually can give off a little light. For the not-knowing that comes at the end of thought pursued to its limits is actually a deeply religious form of knowing.” Nothing comes per se from a negation or denial of limits—darkness “emits” only darkness—and insofar as there is any light, it must come from the original affirmation of a conceptual content; but a conceptual content must have some limits, if it is to be humanly intelligible. Cf. St. Thomas, In XII Libros Metaphysicorum IV, lectio 8 (644): “A negative truth always depends upon the truth of some affirmation; hence no negative conclusion is drawn unless there is something affirmative in the premises.” 42 Joseph Owens, “Aquinas on Knowing Existence,” in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God, ed. J. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), 30: “To mention analogy in a Thomistic context is to stir up a vipers’ nest.” 950 John M. McDermott, S.J. Hence to go from effect to cause, creatures have to be like God; but, if God’s transcendence is to be preserved, God cannot be like creatures (ST I q. 4, a. 3c et ad 4; ScG I, q. 29). That paradoxical relation provides the grist for theological mills. Conceptualist theologians distinguish analogy of proportion, or attribution, from analogy of (proper) proportionality. The analogy of proportion refers other terms to a prime analogate which alone realizes intrinsically a formal notion, or perfection, and upon which the other terms somehow depend. An extrinsic causal relation joins the terms, or secondary analogates, which manifest degrees of likeness, to the prime analogate. The perfection in question need not be intrinsic to all the analogates.43 Aristotle’s classic example points to bodily health, by which one might designate healthy its analogates such as medicine, food, climate, complexion, and urine.44 These latter realities may cause or manifest health in the body, yet need not be healthy in themselves; e.g., the cow is dead, but because it contributes to a human body’s health roast beef can, by extrinsic denomination, be designated “healthy.” Appealing to the intentional realm, Maurilio Penido discovers “an ideal case” of the analogy of proportion in the doctrine of ontologists who hold that “the creatures can be known only in function of the Creator.”45 But this analogy fails to supply conceptualist theologians the requisite means for proper discourse about God. Because an infinite distance separates God and His perfections from creatures, conceptualist theologians argue that no community of nature and no direct proportion between God and creature can be established. Nonetheless the infinite gap can be suppressed to a degree by the analogy of proportionality.46 Penido cites Thomas’s De Veritate q. 23, a.7, ad 9, to make his point: 43 Gerald Phelan, St. Thomas and Analogy (Milwaukee: Marquette, 1941), 19, 28, 35–37; Reginald Garrrigou-Lagrange, O.P., De Revelatione (Rome: Ferrari, 1945), 1:284–85. 44 Phelan, St. Thomas and Analogy, 19; Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., Le Donné révélé et la théologie, 2nd ed. ( Juvisy: Cerf, 1932), 207; idem, “La Réforme de la théologie catholique,” Revue Thomiste 12 (1904): 71; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., God: His Existence and Nature, trans. B. Rose (St. Louis: Herder, 1934–36), 2:207; idem, The One God, trans. B. Rose (St. Louis: Herder, 1943), 396–97, 399. 45 Maurilio Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie en théologie dogmatique (Paris: Vrin, 1931), 36–40; Phelan, St. Thomas and Analogy, 29. 46 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 178–79; Garrigou-Lagrange, God, 2:209–10; idem, The One God, 397, 400–401; idem, De Revelatione, 1:285–86, 294; Louis Billot, S.J., De Deo Uno et Trino, 7th ed. (Rome: Gregorian University, 1935), 88–89, 97–98, 105–7; Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. G. Phelan (New York: Scribner’s, 1959), 229. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 951 Although finite and infinite cannot be put in proportion ( proportionata), they are nonetheless capable of being proportional ( proportionabilia), for as the infinite is equal to the infinite, so the finite is equal to the finite; and through this mode there is a likeness between the creature and God because as God is related to what belongs to Him, so the creature is related to what is his own.47 Thus a proportion is established among relations, each of which realizes a perfection intrinsically and diversely. By discovering a proportion between a known reality and its particular quality, or perfection, it is possible to postulate a similar proportion in another reality, specifically in God.48 Though each realizes the perfection in a mode proper to itself, the creature finitely, God infinitely, the analogy of proportionality permits the predication of a pure, or simple, perfection of God.49 “Pure perfections” are “infinite,” each in its own line; that is, the concepts need contain no intrinsic limitation.50 Whereas corporeality, for example, involves intrinsic limitation, knowledge, or wisdom, involves nothing in its idea which necessarily limits it to the finite. So knowledge, or wisdom, is predicated of God by the following analogy: as knowledge (wisdom) is to a being in becoming, so knowledge (wisdom) is to the Being without becoming.51 A threefold difficulty undermines the conceptualist interpretation of analogy. First, whereas wisdom is an accident really distinct from a rational creature, God is His Wisdom; hence there are only three terms, not four, in the analogy. Second, although the finite and infinite realities compared contain their perfection intrinsically, the analogy of proportionality does not exclude, but presupposes an analogy of proportion.52 47 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 144, 178; Billot, De Deo Uno, 178; Garrigou- Lagrange, One God, 400. 48 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 42; Garrigou-Lagrange, God, 2:210. 49 Penido, ibid. 50 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 114–15; Garrigou-Lagrange, God, 2:203–4; Mari- tain, Degrees, 226–27, 236; Billot, De Deo Uno, 96, 178–79, 185; Phelan, St.Thomas and Analogy, 8, 23, 41; Gardeil, Donné révélé, 124, 132. 51 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 24; Garrigou-Lagrange, One God, 399, 406. 52 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 57; Garrigou-Lagrange, God, 2:207, 216–17 n. 19; idem, One God, 398; Billot, De Deo Uno, 183. James Anderson, Reflections on the Analogy of Being (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967), 52–54, reverses the relation, making analogy of attribution depend on analogy of proper proportionality. His difficulty comes when he tries to define cause in a way applicable to God and creatures: 18, 27–28, 52, 54, 57. For a notion of cause applicable to God and creature would seem to involve analogy of attribution. Anderson, 55–57, allows ultimately for a “virtual analogy of attribution” to account for a causal analogy. This position seems closer to Cajetan’s position than does Penido’s expansion of Cajetan: Cf. Bernard Montagnes, O.P., The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas 952 John M. McDermott, S.J. Were God’s existence not known, the use of proportionality would be only a hypothetical exercise. Only after God’s existence is known can analogous perfections be truly predicated of Him and the analogy of proportionality find proper employment. But Thomas’s five ways argue from this world’s insufficiencies to a First Cause. Clearly a dependence of creatures upon God is established, the relation basic to the analogy of proportion. Indeed, this analogy is implicit in all the proofs, for it is contained in the laws of being and metaphysics. Since God created finite beings, their perfection must pre-exist either virtually or formally eminently in Him; these perfections belong intrinsically to His very being. Thus the task of intelligence changes from proving that God exists to accurately describing God’s nature, who or what He is.53 Third, Bernard Montagnes’s research indicates that Thomas developed his full theory of analogy gradually. De Veritate’s analogy of proportionality was only a provisional statement of his position, which he soon left behind. Alongside the predicamental analogy of being between substance and accidents, Thomas was continually seeking to ground a vertical or “transcendental” hierarchy of substances understood as a gradation of the common perfection of being, which God possesses in plenitude. At first he tried participation by deficient likeness or by imitation, which, though rooted in creation, stresses exemplarity: though God is creation’s efficient cause, He operates as an extrinsic formal cause. Thomas apparently leaves this position because he suspects that the community of relation between God and the creature does not respect the divine transcendence. That transcendence can apparently be preserved only with the analogy of proportionality. Only with the Contra Gentes does the primacy of the actus essendi replace formal causality as the basis of an intrinsic participation in God’s perfection. The relation of act to potency grounds the distinction between Creator and creature, yet the axiom, omne ens agit sibi simile, guarantees a basic similarity. This allows the unification of predicamental analogy with transcendental analogy inasmuch as the same act of creation gives the creature his existence and, through his essence (substance), his distinct determination or degree of participating in God’s esse. Creatures are understood in relation to God (unius ad alterum), without need of recourse to a third reality, being, common to God and creaAquinas, trans. E. Macierowski (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2004), 126–34. This juncture of analogies obviously marks a difficulty in the conceptualist theory of analogy. 53 Penido, Le Rôle de l’analogie, 57, 85–86, 88–90, 122, 131–34, 138, 140–41, 146, 180, 225; Phelan, St. Thomas and Analogy, 37–38, 41; Gardeil, “Réforme,” 62, 64; Billot, De Deo Uno, 88–89, 95–97; Garrigou-Lagrange, One God, 405, 409. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 953 ture (duorum ad unum). For they participate in His esse. This participation preserves both similarity, based on the relation between cause and effect, and diversity, which follows from the full actuality of God’s esse as efficient cause. He possesses the perfection of esse in an eminent way. Since creatures are known first by us, the distinction between res significata, the ratio of the perfection, and the modus significandi is attained through a judgment which discerns “within the reality that we immediately grasp that which belongs to the perfection as such and could be found again elsewhere, from that which depends upon the particular conditions under which we attain it.” For in the creature composed of essence and esse, the essence “determines esse by limiting it and it limits it by receiving it.”54 Without doubt Montagnes upholds a clear, essential order with finite intelligibility alongside an existential order manifested in judgment. He affirms a concept of being as the basis of conceptual unity.55 Therefore, if essences come from God and participate in His reality, there are valid conceptual abstractions whose perfections can be applied to God. On a point not explicitly stated by Montagnes, two eminent Thomists following in his wake, Joseph de Finance and W. Norris Clarke, affirm that analogy is dependent upon the existential judgment, which grounds the concept of being, and maintain the necessary complementarity of the analogy of proportion and the analogy of proportionality.56 Before Montagnes, Étienne Gilson and Joseph Owens were promoting an existential Thomism that has access to being through judgment yet allows for a concept of being; hence they insist on positive predications about God. “What St. 54 Montagnes, Doctrine of the Analogy of Being, 23–111; citations from 84 and 88. Montagnes’s language can be a bit confusing, since he calls the traditional analogy of proportion an analogy of relation and the traditional analogy of proportionality an analogy of proportion (16, 69, 159, 96–97 n. 23). John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 73–93, 501–75, basically follows Montagnes, though in more ponderous detail. He diverges from Montagnes insofar as he has being participate not in God’s esse but in esse commune (94–131), a term which appears only once in the Summa theologiae (I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 1), apparently as a holdover from In Dionysii de nominibus divinis. He interprets Thomas as maintaining positive knowledge of the divine perfections beyond all negation: e.g., “As regards what they signify, such names are properly applied to God; but as regards the way in which they signify, they are not properly said of God” (539). “While Thomas continues to deny that we can ever reach quidditative knowledge of God in this life, he defends our ability to predicate certain names of him in positive fashion” (543). 55 Montagnes, Doctrine of the Analogy of Being, 81, 84–88. 56 Joseph de Finance, S.J., Connaissance de l’être (Paris: Desclée, 1966), 55–75; W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 43–57. 954 John M. McDermott, S.J. Thomas calls our knowledge of God consists ultimately in our capacity to form affirmative propositions in His regard.” Though we do not know how God’s attributes are one with His essence, “the conceptual content of these terms [perfections] does not change when we apply them to God.”57 In a recent retrieval of Montagnes’s thesis Victor Salas argues persuasively that Thomas never rejects the analogy of proportionality, since God acts as efficient cause in both essential and existential orders and the form of creatures refers back to Him also as exemplary cause: “Even with his later emphasis upon efficient causality, Aquinas still holds fast to ‘form’ since it is an essential facet of created being.”58 Johnson’s Authorities? In the justification of her apophatic interpretation of Thomistic analogy, Johnson appeals in She Who Is to Maimonides’s presentation of analogy whereby knowledge of God is by negation.59 Unfortunately she overlooks the fact that on the question of analogy Thomas explicitly considers “Rabbi Moses” his adversary and rejects his view in Summa theologiae I, q. 13, a. 2, and De Potentia q. 7, aa. 5 and 7. She similarly appeals to Burrell, Przywara, McCabe, and Hill. Despite divergences among themselves, all seem to disagree with her. Burrell, Hill, and McCabe contrast Maimonides’s agnosticism or mere symbolism with Thomas’s valid analogy.60 Moreover, all affirm some positive knowledge of God in and through concepts. While acknowledging Thomas’s profession of not knowing what God is, Burrell notes his balancing statement: “Knowing that God is entails knowing ‘what 57 Étienne Gilson, Le Thomisme, 5th ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1948), 153–59 (citing 157 and 159); Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1963), 85–97. In Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: PIMS, 1949), 3, 190–93, 196, 202, 204–5, 209, 214–15, Gilson held that “existence cannot be conceived” and “existence lies beyond abstract representation.” But he accepted correction on the basis of Thomas’s texts produced by L.-M. Regis, O.P., “Gilson’s Being and Some Philosophers,” The Modern Schoolman 28 (1950–51): 121–27; cf. Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd ed. (1952), 216–32. 58 Victor Salas, “The Twofold Character of Thomas Aquinas’s Analogy of Being,” International Philosophical Quarterly 49 (2009): 295–315; citation from 314. 59 Johnson, She, 115. 60 David Burrell, C.S.C., Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 132; William Hill, O.P., Knowing the Unknown God (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 31–34; Herbert McCabe, O.P., (ed.) of vol. 3 in the Blackfriars’ translation of the Summa Theologiae, Knowing and Naming God (1a 12–13) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 53, 64–65; and cf. Thomas Gilby, O.P., ibid., xxxii–xxxiv. In “The Right Way to Speak about God? Pannenberg on Analogy,” Theological Studies 43 (1982): 673 n. 2, Johnson recognizes the vast difference between Burrell’s and Hill’s retrievals of Thomas. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 955 necessarily befits Him as first cause of all and beyond all causes’ (I 12 12).” “We will never be able to settle for the mere fact that he [God] exists.” Although analogy rejects univocity and distinguishes the thing signified from the mode of signifying, “some residual core of meaning seems to result from a straightforward use of the res/modus distinction. So Aquinas must insist that the names we use to attribute something to God signify in the manner we understand them.”61 Przywara’s ontology does not readily accord with the other three thinkers cited by Johnson. For him analogy stands in a whole series of polar tensions both within the world’s finite structure and between the world and God, who is both in and over the world. This enables him to affirm and unite both analogies, of proportion and of proportionality. From below, there is an upward movement to God’s “Is” as principle and goal of the creature’s striving, which can never be completed on its own due to the infinite gap separating God and creature. Beyond an initial affirmation, a negation must be expressed. The analogy of proportion, the direct reference to God, is insufficient. But the negation cannot be final lest it limit God. De Veritate’s analogy of proportionality, an “oscillating analogy,” must be introduced to maintain a structure of coherence between inner-worldly proportions and God. This in turn allows for a new analogy of proportion established from on high, so that there both the creature’s relative independence and the similarity between creature and God are preserved.62 Finite intelligibility is preserved under God’s infinite providence; otherwise the affirmation in the via affirmativa would have been rendered sterile and contradictory. McCabe holds that “words can point beyond their ordinary meanings. . . . We can use words to mean more than we can understand.” But this does not evacuate their meaning. Analogy is more than metaphor. Though metaphor is at the heart of religious language, it needs to be underpinned by such non-metaphorical, literal, yet analogous assertions as “God exists and is good.” Calling God good does not just mean that He is the cause of goodness; rather, “there is something we can only call goodness in God—goodness is the best word available for signifying this although it does so imperfectly.” The imperfection is clear when we 61 Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, 124–41; quotes from 128, 131, 138. 62 Erich Przywara, S.J., Analogia Entis, 2nd ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1962), 135–41, 199–210. If Johnson took Przywara’s thought seriously, she would not have professed sexual egalitarianism. The male-female relation as imago Dei is a basic inner-world polarity whose tension has to be maintained and is the presupposition for redemption in the Christ-Mary (Church) relation: cf. ibid., 482–86, 492–93, and Deus Semper Major (Freiburg: Herder, 1938), 1:54–61, 70. 956 John M. McDermott, S.J. attribute various perfections to God. There is no plurality of aspects in God. “What these words mean in God is entirely one, nevertheless they have different meanings. This because the meaning of the words—what controls our use of them—is their meaning in application to creatures. When we use them of God we are trying to mean more than this.”63 Hill deserves greater consideration inasmuch as he taught at Catholic University when Johnson was accomplishing her doctoral work there, and at one time she identified her position with his.64 From the beginning of his book on analogy, he rejects Cajetan’s “limited conceptualism” with its analogy of proportionality and emphasizes the role of existential judgment in providing an analogous concept of being and attaining knowledge of God. The stress on judgment lets some statements taken out of context appear to deny conceptual knowledge of God. The act of existence is said to “resist conceptualization.” Analogous knowing happens “through the concept” of a divine attribute, which judgment refers to God. The concept’s content, its ratio, is first taken from created realities and applied to God. Because the mode of a created perfection’s existence differs from God’s existence, “the concept in no way represents the manner in which God is this perfection, so the judgment is not one of identifying God with the ratio in its modelessness but rather of understanding him as lying in the direction of the pure perfections it bespeaks.” As a result, he writes, “The knowing itself is accomplished in a judgment which affirms God as an infinitely removed and unconceptualizable term, but within a perspective opened up by the intelligible contents of a concept.” The analogous character of the concepts employed “means that while signifying God they necessarily fail to represent him; with them we know God relationally, i.e., in virtue of that relationship whereby God super-exceeds in an unknown way the participated creaturely perfection that we do know directly.” Hence, “God lies beyond what is thought and said.”65 Simultaneously Hill composes parallel texts upholding the value of analogous concepts as necessary and proper for speaking about God. The analogous concept of being can “represent” God: “the ‘representing’ of course is only that of an analogical extrapolation but it does convey and express something of what God is formally.” The concepts of divine perfections are “deriving from, imitating and thus revealing God; the ratio within the concept does have a real rapport to the Divine ratio, a rapport that (in the case of the transcendentals) is formal. . . . Our concepts retain a modality of 63 McCabe, Commentary on Summa Theologiae 1a12–13, 104–7; idem, God Still Matters (London: Continuum, 2002), 27–28; cf. also Gilby, xxx, xxxiii, xxxv–xxxvii, xl. 64 Johnson, “Right Way,” 690, n. 51. 65 Hill, Knowing the Unknown God, 116, 122–24, 138, 142–43, 151–52. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 957 finiteness that must be explicitly denied to God when the ratio significata is projected onto Him.” Exemplary causality lies within efficient causality, which establishes a relation of participation whereby every being participates in God’s being. “If there be one supreme Exemplar, then each being communes with every other being in a resemblance that lies at the deepest core of its being.”Thus is established an analogy of proportion, and through the dynamism of intellection “the original concept is enabled to undergo a process of expansion and projection onto other subjects.” For “every effect precisely as such must be somehow like its cause.” This holds for natural concepts as well as revealed concepts in human words. Analogous names therefore “signify substantialiter, i.e., naming directly what God is in himself.” They are more than metaphors. In the dynamic relational knowing that is analogy “the ratio that remains is not then a proper concept of the divine prerogative it designates because it leaves unexpressed the incomprehensible divine modus essendi. What is signified is a divine attribute that remains beyond conceptualization, yet knowable in a partial though authentic way in terms of a proportion to the objective contents of a creaturely concept.” In brief, this relational way of knowing does not allow any grasp of God’s proper ratio, but the concepts employed naturally and in faith “render possible an authentic knowledge of God” and provide “an authentic point de départ, an objective perspective out of which to designate God.”Their meaning, though inadequate, is “proper and literal rather than metaphorical and symbolic.” Thus judgments of truth are possible; in dogmatic statements the concepts employed, however open-ended and capable of being “expanded, enriched, and surpassed,” are “irreversible.”66 Hill is balancing our inability in this life to know God in Himself, His own infinite ratio of perfection, against our present ability to talk truly and coherently about Him. Although “we do not have proper concepts of God, and our concepts as such lack actual existential reference, . . . the very substance of the Deity is cognitively attained . . . in virtue of concepts whose intelligible contents are directly representative of the creaturely.”The perfection is predicated of God intrinsically and formally. “A formal convenience is being acknowledged between a finite and an infinite perfection, but a convenience that while formal is only by analogy understood as a proportion, and radicated in the causal derivation of one from the other.” Basically “the idea retains its positive value, functioning as the objective focal point of a judgmental affirmation of God.” After Hill establishes an ontological analogy of proportion between God and the world, he introduces an analogy of proportionality: 66 Ibid., iii, 123–25, 133–36, 138–39, 141–44, 149, 151, 155, 169. John M. McDermott, S.J. 958 Once it is understood that the relationship of God to man is one of an unreciprocal imitation, a proportion of the Uncreated to the created, then the unmeasurable character of the proportion can be more clearly articulated and formulated in the form of a proportionality. But the proportionality here is one that lives within and is sustained by a prior analogy of attribution. Hence, thanks to Thomas’s “subtle balance,” “through our own distinct ideas we are obscurely oriented towards the God of Reality, known in an unknowing.”67 By choosing to acknowledge only one aspect of the balance inherent in analogy, Johnson fundamentally misunderstands Hill and the other Thomistic authorities to whom she appeals. All try to maintain analogy of proportionality alongside or within analogy of proportion, or at least to preserve the meaning of concepts. One may wish that the theory of analogy be elaborated more clearly with less disagreement among Thomists, but, like Thomas, all seek to preserve the meaning of human words predicated of God. Without the equilibrium between infinite and finite, mode and signification, existence and essence, judgment and concept, all theology collapses into meaningless babble or rationalist anthropomorphism. Johnson also relies on Karl Rahner, but without proper comprehension. In Geist he holds that “the analogous is the basis (Grund) of the univocal”—the opposite of conceptualist Thomists—and he repeats the same position in Grundkurs, which Johnson quotes.68 If that alone were Rahner’s position, Johnson might rightly call on him as an ally. All finite reality would be referred for its intelligibility to an infinite Ground which is itself unintelligible to finite intellects. Thus all finite intelligibility would be absorbed into unintelligibility. Concepts would be deprived of an inherent meaning. But Rahner also insists on a basic, analogous concept of being. This concept is paradoxical inasmuch as it has to contain everything from which it abstracts, a plurality within its unity. Rahner’s concept is particularly paradoxical inasmuch as it is an “oscillating concept,” whose essential content cannot be pinned down (wesentliche Infixierbarkeit). It oscillates from the non-being of matter to the infinite horizon of being.69 It manifests the same structure as judgment. This allows all being as affirmed in judgment, God included, to be designated in and through a concept. This in turn permits “ontic” language, the traditional conceptu67 Ibid., 182–88. 68 Karl Rahner, S.J., Geist in Welt (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1939), 292; idem, Grundkurs, 79–81; Johnson, She, 116. 69 Rahner, Geist, 292, 113–14, 123–27, 142; idem, Hörer des Wortes, 2nd ed., ed. J. Metz (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), 67. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 959 alist theology, to be translated into Rahner’s more dynamic, existential “ontological” language, and vice versa. So Rahner abides by the Church’s traditional dogmatic formulations even while interpreting them in a novel way. He does not abandon concepts as incompatible with the “holy Mystery” but thinks that the Mystery is revealed through them without being exhaustively comprehended.70 Analogy in Faith? Basic to Catholic theology has been the distinction between nature and grace, the natural and supernatural orders. The distinction is necessary to preserve the salvific novelty of historical revelation, the justice and freedom of God with regard to redemption, and man’s freedom in response to revelation. If the natural order makes no sense in itself, man has no reason for accepting revelation, which is unintelligible. Without a reason for choice, a rational animal cannot be free but must be subject to subhuman impulses. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Thomistic interpreters to whom Johnson appeals all make reference to a natural analogy of being and a natural theology as presuppositions for grace and revelation. For “through grace we possess a more perfect knowledge of God than through natural reason” (ST I, q. 12, a. 13). Some even allow for a supernatural analogy of faith.71 Johnson never acknowledges such distinctions. In her response (5), as we saw above, she applies what Thomas wrote about faith to the possibility of natural knowledge. In Quest she first writes that in speaking of God’s goodness “we literally do not understand what we are saying. Human comprehension of the meaning of ‘good’ is lost, for we have no direct earthly experience of anything that is the Source of all 70 For this “dialectical-analogous” structure cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The Anal- ogy of Knowing in Karl Rahner,” International Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1996): 201–16, and “Dialectical Analogy:The Oscillating Center of Rahner’s Theology,” Gregorianum 75 (1994): 675–703. (The order of publication reverses the order of composition.) Cf. also “Rahner in Tradition” to illustrate the working out of dialectical analogy in Rahner’s theology. 71 Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, 144–47; Przywara, Analogia, 72–96, 138, 173–74, 181, 207–9; Herbert McCabe, God Matters (Springfield, IL:Templegate, 1987), 42; Hill, Knowing the Unknown God, 136–44, 148–49, 150–53. On faith’s “superanalogy,” cf. Charles Journet, Introduction à la théologie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1947), 35–50; Maritain, Degrees, 243, 251–52; Gardeil, Donné révélé, 60–69, 139–45, 150; Hill, Knowing the Unknown God, 142–43. But how can any revealed reality be beyond being and the analogy of being? Although Rahner, as far as I know, does not elaborate the relation between the analogies of proportion and proportionality, he defended the natural-supernatural distinction in various works, esp. “Über das Verhältnis von Natur und Gnade,” Schriften, 1:323–45, and “Natur und Gnade,” ibid., 4:209–36. 960 John M. McDermott, S.J. goodness.” Thereafter she treats “theology done with the dialectical imagination of Protestantism,” which “more typically explains God-language by the working of metaphor,” whose “working is in the active tension between similarity and dissimilarity, between the ‘is’ and the ‘is not’ of the two terms.” She finds helpful Tillich’s theory of symbol, where “God” is “the symbol of our ultimate concern.” Despite Hill’s telling criticism of Tillich, nowhere does Johnson discriminate among Catholic and Protestant theories of analogy, dialectic, and symbol. Rather they are conflated: “Whatever theory is used, whether analogy, metaphor, symbol, or some combination thereof, the wisdom of this second ground rule is that we are always naming toward God, using good, true, and beautiful fragments experienced in the world to point to the infinite mystery who dwells within and embraces the world but always exceeds our grasp.”72 Basic to modern Protestant theology is the denial of the natural analogy of being to make room for the analogy of faith alone. Finite words and symbols have no inherent meaning, lest God’s freedom be circumscribed. As Johnson writes of Tillich’s theory: “We cannot create symbols at will: they emerge from a deep level of consciousness. Finally symbols can grow old and die, losing their affective power in changing cultural situations.” Actually Tillich places symbols in the realm of the mythical and affirms that existential fallen man has lost contact with the depth of his own consciousness. This equivalently renders his depth an unconscious out of which symbols rise without his free cooperation: thus “the symbol has necessity” and its intelligibility is lost in infinite mystery. For Tillich, God is “ultimate, unlimited power”; He is “entirely other,” and “there is no finite way of reaching the infinite.” He “can never become an object for man’s knowledge or action.” Throughout his writings Tillich stresses “the inadequacy of the finite . . . to express what is of ultimate concern.”73 In her response (5) Johnson writes that she claims neither analogy nor the Protestant, metaphorical position as her own in Quest. “The point was not to argue one theory of religious language over against another, but to 72 Johnson, Quest, 19–20; idem, She, 37, 46–47, 117:“Whether expressed by metaphor- ical, symbolic, or analogical theology, there is basic agreement that the mystery of God is fundamentally unlike anything else we know of, and so is beyond the grasp of all our naming.” For the criticism of Tillich cf. Hill, Knowing the Unknown God, 49–55 and passim, and Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, 132. 73 Paul Tillich, Religiöse Verwirklichung (Berlin: Furche, 1930), 89, 101–2; idem, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1:64, 79–81, 84–85, 110, 271–74; idem, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 14, 44–45, 48, 59; idem, Theology of Culture, ed. R. Kimball (1959; rpt. London: Oxford, 1972), 7–9, 25–26, 32, 155–56. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 961 explain how all theories converge in affirming the limited nature of human language about God.” Actually, all theories do not converge. Catholics have long maintained that the metaphorical theory, whether of Maimonides or of modern Protestant theology, disagrees fundamentally with Catholic analogy. The Protestant position allows no formal intellectual content to human language about God, whereas Catholics insist that concepts convey authentic knowledge of God and His perfections. Catholics realize that a merely metaphorical usage is contradictory since metaphorical use presupposes proper usage. Hence they balance an analogy of proportion and an analogy of proportionality. Protestants emphasize the infinite abyss between God and man that prevents any natural commonality. They do not worry about rational contradictions, because fallen human reason is incapable of grasping God; they only seek to make God’s word somehow relevant to man through dialectical or paradoxical reasoning.74 Some Catholics, as we saw, in their recent reaction against the Cajetanian analogy of proportionality which long dominated Catholic thought, make the analogy of proportion primary while affirming, however, the truth of concepts predicated of God. Unfortunately Johnson overlooks the difficulty inherent in the analogy of proportion, a difficulty that doubtless moved St. Thomas to preserve the analogy of proportionality. If he distanced himself in De Veritate from his original understanding of analogy because it failed to do justice to God’s transcendence, he would hardly abandon proportionality to fall into the opposite extreme, whereby finite intelligibility is absorbed into infinite unintelligibility. Neither explanation of analogy alone suffices; they balance each other. Without a basic similarity or proportion between God and the world due to God’s causality, which Thomas constantly upholds in his late works (ScG I, c. 29; De Pot. q. 7, aa. 5 et 7; ST I, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4; q. 13, a. 5 et ad 1; q. 19, a. 4), no analogy at all is possible. But the basic similarity allows positive perfections, for example, goodness and wisdom, to be predicted of God (ScG I, cc. 43–44; De Pot. q. 7, a. 4 ad 2 et 9, a. 5; ST I, qq. 4 et 14). The theological implications of Johnson’s assimilation of Catholic analogy to Protestant “symbolism” are immense, and it is surprising that she should have ignored them.75 For the thesis of Quest rests on the amalgamation of analogy and metaphor, as does her argument for female divine images in She Who Is. Insofar as Johnson’s interpretation has Thomas agree with Tillich, she prepares the way for her recasting of God. 74 Cf. McDermott, “Jesus: Parable,” 545–51, for Barth, Bultmann, and Schweizer. 75 In “Right Use,” 683–85, 687–88, Johnson recognized the limitations of Pannen- berg’s Protestant criticism of Catholic analogy; he held that it compromises God’s transcendence and freedom by insisting on a common logos between God and 962 John M. McDermott, S.J. IV. God’s Fatherhood and Female Images (7) The Case for Female Images Given God’s utterly transcendent mystery—He is “totally other”—and the inadequacy of all human concepts, Johnson considers herself free to apply female images to God; inasmuch as human beings are created in God’s image, male or female images seem equally appropriate. Actually they are, according to her, equally inappropriate, since God is “beyond all human comprehension.” As she writes in She Who Is, “The referent of the word God [is] utterly incomprehensible.” Indeed, “God’s unlikeness to the corporal and spiritual finite world is total. Hence human beings simply cannot understand God. No human concept, word, or image, all of which originate in experience of created reality, can circumscribe divine reality, nor can any human construct express with any measure of adequacy the mystery of God who is ineffable.” That has consequences for language about God. “The mystery of God is properly understood as neither male nor female but transcends both in an unimaginable way.” From such a perspective it is equally coherent or incoherent to write, “The incomprehensibility of God makes it entirely appropriate, at times even preferable, to speak about God in nonpersonal or suprapersonal terms . . . [also] at times even preferable, to speak about God in personal symbols.”76 Words so break down in “attempting to express the inexpressible fullness of Holy Wisdom’s [God’s] nature, pointing to eternal mystery so profound and absolute that some mystics can even name being eternal Nothingness. Being itself does not define divine being, which is always and everywhere beyond definition.” Clearly, for Johnson it seems indifferent to truth whether God is referred to as He, She, or It.77 Who is to say that sincere Buddhists or idol-worshipping Hindus are incorrect?78 For Johnson, creation.Yet she later rejects any common logos between the inconceivable God and the world. 76 Johnson, She, 33, 45, 55, 105. 77 Ibid., 240. In Quest, 45, Johnson refers to theologians who call God the holy mystery, the ground of being, power of the future, matrix surrounding and sustaining all life. But these neuters are theological abstractions. Jesus did not so refer to His Father, and the Church wisely never prays to such impersonal human concoctions. Even Rahner, Grundkurs, 69, despite all his distinctions about the meaning of “God,” admits that “Father” was the “word in which Jesus dared to express His ultimate understanding of God and His ultimate relation to God” (cf. also “Theos im Neuen Testament,” Schriften, 1:130). Johnson apparently takes speculation more seriously than the biblical witness to the real God in whom the Church believes. Do Christians prefer theologians to Jesus? 78 Cf. Johnson, Quest, 169–72, where she approves Hindu experience of God as God’s way of adapting to them. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 963 much more important is how the symbol of God functions, whether or not it is liberating according to her pragmatic standards. In all of this, Johnson’s theology is not completely consistent. She uses the biblical text to affirm that both men and women are created in God’s image and interprets that image in terms of late twentieth-century egalitarianism.79 Actually the Bible never proclaims the Enlightenment dogma that all men are equal. It refutes egalitarianism. The one who was equal to the Father “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped at but emptied Himself, taking on the form of a slave” (Phil 2:6–7). Indeed He was “humble of heart” (Mt 11:29), always obeying His Father (Phil 2:8; Mk 14:36; Jn 5:30; 6:38; Heb 5:8; 10:7–10), whom He confessed as greater than Himself ( Jn 14:28). Love does not insist on rights but is selfsacrificing. Having created so many different human beings in His image, God is just too intelligent to consider them all the same (equal). He loves and treats everyone differently according to his or her individual talents and needs. His infinite love for each allows Him to treat everyone as an individual in community (cf. 1 Cor 12:12–31). But, on a more fundamental level, if God is really beyond all likeness with human beings, how can man be created in His (Her, Its) image? The image of the Incomprehensible can only be incomprehensible.80 How then can men be judged equal or possessed of a common nature, if human nature is incomprehensible? Man is as much inconceivable as is God. Hence, it is inconsistent to see in God a “model for human interaction, pointing to a community without supremacy or subjection where differences flourish in the matrix of a relationship of equals.”81 Such a God is Feuerbach’s God, a human projection into infinite perfection, an unreal god, a false god. In seeking to justify female images for God, Johnson not only appeals to certain New Testament metaphors comparing God to women (Lk 15:8–10; Is 49:15; Mt 23:37) or “acting womanish” (Lk 13:18; Ps. 17:8; 139:15; Song of Songs) but also refers principally to the Old Testament figures of Spirit (ruah) and Wisdom, which allegedly “represent” God. While she considers this use of Scripture a proof of fidelity to biblical revelation, it actually reveals her liberal presuppositions. Instead of letting the Church’s creed, its regula 79 Johnson, She, 54–55, 70–75, 158, 242–43. 80 Johnson, She, 36, says that she realizes that the image of God is only a metaphor. But if knowledge about God is mediated by “imaginative constructs,” so too is knowledge about the world (46). “Human nature as a definable concept cannot be totally grasped. Our own mystery goes deeper than that. We are a question more than we are an answer” (Consider Jesus, 25). There is no proper usage on which metaphors may build. Language is a house of cards come tumbling down. 81 Johnson, She, 209, 223. John M. McDermott, S.J. 964 fidei, and Scripture guide her thought, she employs the Bible as a type of grab bag out of which various proof texts are pulled to support theories founded on present experience. Liberal theology is recognized by its starting point, the employment of experience to excogitate the revealed God. Throughout the Bible, God is regularly and consistently referred to as masculine. Even the OT plural form for God, Elohim, merits a masculine pronoun. To overcome that obvious contradiction of her thesis, Johnson relies on Wisdom and Spirit, seeing them as two female symbols of God. When she writes that “Sophia represents Israel’s robust God in active, redeeming engagement with the world,”82 the word “represents” entails ambiguity. According to her own epistemology, no term is adequate for representing God. Hence no argument about God can be made from the gender of any words used to express God. Moreover, it is clear from the Old Testament that Wisdom, characterized by feminine gender in both Hebrew and Greek, is a creature: “The Lord created me at the beginning of His way, the first of His acts of old” (Pr 8:22). The Book of Wisdom also manifests her difference from God. “She is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of His goodness. . . . She glorifies her noble birth by living with God, and the Lord of all loves her” (7:26; 8:3). Although God’s Spirit, or Breath, or Wind— ruah (feminine gender in Hebrew) designates all three realities—manifests various creative and illuminating aspects of God in the Old Testament, it is distinct from Him. God’s breath is given to men and animals as their own life (Gn 2:7; 6:17; 7:15, 22; Ps 104:29–39; Eccl 12:7), yet it is differentiated from God in Ezekiel’s great vision of the Lord’s Breath revivifying dead bones: “Then [God] said to me, ‘Prophesy to the Breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the Breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.’ So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host” (37:9–10; cf. also Is 48:16). Johnson readily acknowledges Wisdom’s creaturely status: “She is a beneficent, right-ordering power in whom God delights and by whom God creates.”83 A creature cannot in the full sense represent God unless the hypostatic union has made the creature God the Son’s own self-revelation. 82 Johnson, Quest, 104. 83 Johnson, She, 88. Johnson also claims that in the Bible, Sophia at times “tran- scends created limitations and exercises divine power in creative and saving deeds” (90). Who can blame the Bible for slipping a bit from monotheism when everything is in metaphors? In Quest, 104–5, 109, Sophia has grown to be Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 965 The God of the Bible One would expect the force of Johnson’s feminist argument to come from the reality of New Testament revelation in which God’s Spirit is divine and Jesus, God’s Son, is identified with God’s Wisdom (1 Cor 1:30).Yet, as we saw, Johnson does not follow St. Paul in identifying Jesus simply with Wisdom. Rather Sophia is “a personification of God’s own self ” and Jesus is “the prophet and child of Sophia”; He is designated “Jesus-Sophia” to indicate that God is acting in Him.84 Though Sophia was a creature in the Old Testament, somehow Sophia has become God, and then brings forth a child. Johnson’s reading of Scripture seemingly recognizes no development in God’s revelation from Old Testament to New Testament. Paul considered the Law, Old Testament revelation, a pedagogue leading to Christ (Gal 3:24–25), and Jesus Himself changed O. T. revelation (Mt 5:21–48; 19:3–11; Jn 2:13–22; 4:20–24). Since the Old Testament is preparation for Christ, it cannot be revelation’s perfection. Jesus Christ is the fullness of revelation, of God’s grace and truth, come in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4: Col 1:19; 2:9; Eph 1:10, 23; 3:19; 4:13; Jn 1:16–17); in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3). Consequently Christians read the Old Testament from the fullness of the New. In the New Testament, even though pneuma, the Greek word for spirit, wind, and breath, is neuter in gender, the divine Spirit is clearly referred to with the masculine demonstrative pronoun, ekeinos ( Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:8, 13)—a point which John Paul II made in Dominum et Vivificantem 8 to indicate that the Spirit is personal, indeed, a Person. Hence, if any argument regarding the gender of the Holy Spirit is to be allowed on the basis of linguistic gender, He is decidedly masculine. Linguistic data must always be interpreted in their proper context. Even though wisdom is clearly feminine in Hebrew and Greek, Jesus Christ is obviously masculine. Human beings must be of one sex or the other, and of His gender there can be no question. The Wisdom of God must be interpreted from Him. Inasmuch as He is the second person of the Blessed Trinity become incarnate and His assumed nature reflects His person—some modern theologians would even call His nature a sacrament of His person—must not His human maleness reflect His personal masculinity? It would be a schizophrenic person who has to consider his person of different gender than his body. If Jesus’ humanity reveals His personality, perhaps masculinity characterizes His eternal person. Johnson attempts to avoid that conclusion by claiming that God could “have 84 Johnson, She, 91–95, 154, 157, 160–61, 213, 217. 966 John M. McDermott, S.J. become a human being as a woman.” That is an ungrounded abstraction; ignoring apophatic theology, she judges as if she knows God apart from and contrary to His revelation.85 Whereas Christian theologians start from the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ, Johnson, as we saw, starts from her own experience and highlights whatever advances her theory. Admittedly she is not clear on the meaning of person and understands Jesus’ person not as preexistent but as the historical “sacrament” mediating divine and human natures. Thus Sophia, a “female personification of God,” is said to be incarnate in Jesus: “As Sophia incarnate Jesus can be discerned as a coincidence of opposites in every respect: . . . a man yet the prophet and very presence of Sophia herself.” It is thus possible “to confess Jesus the Christ as the incarnation of God imaged in female symbol.”86 Perhaps Johnson thinks to avoid Jesus’ schizophrenia or confused sexual identity by neutering God. She quotes John Paul II to the effect that “God is spirit and possesses no property typical of the body, neither feminine or masculine”; so the eternal generation can be said to “have neither masculine nor feminine qualities” (5). How then would a neutered God identify Itself with a sexual “person”? Or is “God” androgynous? But then Jesus’ human nature would not be a full revelation of God and would mislead those who do perceive His-Her femininity. Why did He-She fear to come out of the closet? There must be an exit from Johnson’s theological impasse. God has no body, but the contrast between spirit and body should not be read as the opposition found in human beings, who are composed of spirit and matter. We contrast spirit and matter as abstract form and concrete individuality—such is the limitation of our knowing—but God does not think in abstractions.87 As He knows individuals directly, so He creates spirit and matter from His own plenitude. Must there not be something corresponding to matter, or corporality, in God who is beyond the 85 Johnson, Consider Jesus, 107. Karl Rahner, S.J., “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzen- denter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte,” in Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1965–76), 2:330–36, criticizes conceptualist theologians for abstractness in their thesis that any divine person could have become incarnate; that would contradict his axiom of the identity of the immanent and the economic Trinity, which Johnson elsewhere accepts without question (e.g., She, 199–201, 227; Quest, 210). 86 Johnson, Consider Jesus, 111–12; idem, She, 99. 87 In Rahner’s dynamic view the unity between matter and spirit is deeper than the distinction. He considers matter “frozen spirit”: “Die Einheit von Geist und Materie im christlichen Glauben,” Schriften, 6:185–214, esp. 213–14; Grundkurs, 182–85, 187–88; Karl Rahner and Paul Overhage, S.J., Das Problem der Hominisation (Freiburg: Herder, 1961), 49–52, 78. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 967 matter-spirit distinction in a way that does not destroy but preserves the distinction? He is the fullness of spirit and matter. Is it not possible that masculinity and femininity are also spiritual qualities that find an expression in the body? Will not the saints, even though they shall be like angels in not reproducing (Mk 12:25), remain masculine and feminine for eternity? How would they otherwise recognize themselves as individuals in continuity with their previous earthly existence? Perhaps Johnson might reflect more deeply upon the mystery of masculinity and femininity.88 Maybe the “myth” of Genesis 2, where Eve is taken from Adam’s rib, might illuminate the theological darkness. But first the analysis of sexuality in terms of power and opposition might have to be jettisoned. The Primacy of Revelation The role of gender in religion has become a theme in recent decades as feminists reject “androcentrism” in religion because “in societies in which males dominate and women are relegated to a subordinate role in both sacred and secular domains, there is emphasis on a male godhead.”89 Johnson shares the feminist critique of patriarchy that oppresses women and blames it on the maleness of God.90 But despite myths of Amazons and other viragoes, no research has instantiated a case of a dominant female deity producing or reflecting a society dominated by women. Life and religion are more complex than ideologies. Nonetheless Theodore Ludwig seemingly utters a truism that “the symbolic order and institutional structure created by religions have deeply affected and inspired human existence over millennia.” Sexuality doubtless influences and is influenced by religion. Characteristics of female deities influence their cults, distinguishing them from the cults of male deities.91 Some symbolism seems strongly 88 Johnson quotes John Paul I: “God is our father. Even more God is our mother.” One might wish that the pontiff had expressed himself more carefully. Perhaps he just wished to indicate the transcendent quality of God’s love for His creatures, surpassing a human mother’s as well as a human father’s love (cf. Lk 11:13). More probably, like Honorius I, he was not aware of the discussion in which his language would embroil him. In any case, he expressed himself in neither an infallible declaration nor an encyclical nor an apostolic letter but only in a talk on a political issue; even popes can err on such matters. 89 Fiona Bowie, “Gender Roles,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. L. Jones (Detroit: Thomson-Gale, 2005), 5:3421, reporting the views of Peggy Sanday with whom she agrees. Cf. also Ursula King, “Gender and Religion: An Overview,” in ibid., 5:3296–305, and Rosemary Ruether, “Androcentrism,” in ibid., 1:334–36. 90 Johnson, She, 33–41. 91 Theodore Ludwig, “God and Goddesses,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 6:3616–23 (citation: 3617); James Preston, “Goddess Worship,” in ibid., 6:3588–91, 3611–15. 968 John M. McDermott, S.J. rooted in nature. Almost everywhere, the sky and the sun have been identified with male deities, and the earth with a female deity.92 But the current nominalist fad in academe that elevates history over nature, uniqueness over universality, and culture over nature encourages the reinterpretation and reformation of religion.93 So much of “religious studies” presupposes that religion is a human construct, not based on divine revelation, that all is revisable. In any case, given the emotion unleashed by the current debates, Johnson should hardly be surprised if theologians may take umbrage at her indiscriminating use of “images,” indifferently male or female, for conveying somehow something of God.94 Christian theologians, who consider Jesus the definitive revelation of God, are all the more upset when, despite Jesus’ language, Johnson insists on calling God “mother.”The mental confusion is manifested in her affirmation about Jesus’ use of Abba, the Aramaic charitative used by Jesus of His Father. After assimilating God to Wisdom (Sophia), she writes of Jesus: “He addresses her, in all trust, as Abba.”95 Actually, as various studies have shown, Jesus’ use of Abba was ground-breaking for Jewish piety. These less androphobic articles were reprinted from the first edition edited by M. Eliade. 92 Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958), 30–33, 38–151, 239–62. Cf. G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J. Turner (1938; rpt. New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 1:91–100, 177–87 (esp. 178–79), 206–8, 253–54. Of course the realm of religious studies is replete with speculation and ungrounded a prioris: cf. John McDermott, S.J. “The Twentieth Century’s Quest of the Holy,” to be published in Divinitas. Even in the references cited above, in identifying basic patterns in religion Eliade distinguishes Earth-Mother from Demeter, whereas van der Leeux equates them. If more recent students of religion eschew wide-ranging, speculative hypotheses, this does not guarantee that their collection and explanation of “facts” are objective. The posing of questions presupposes a worldview and its presuppositions. Such “objectivity” is really based on unspecified speculative presuppositions. 93 E.g., Lucien Malson, Wolf Children, trans. E. Fawcett (London: New Left Books 1972), 9: “The idea that man has no nature is beyond dispute. He has or rather is a history.”Yet the rest of his book seeks to show that environment is responsible for the development of intelligence in wolf children. If the capacity to think were not natural, how could it later be developed in children who had been isolated in the wild? The arrogance of intellectuals would be boundless if it were not so myopic. 94 Given that God, à la Johnson, is entirely incomprehensible, there is no basis in reality for preferring male or female images. Thus they are employed “indiscriminately.” But the very fact that she insists on employing female images in order to further the flourishing of women indicates that the gender of the divinity must somehow matter. If God wants us to respond to Him properly, it matters that He is Father. 95 Johnson, She, 157. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 969 Although the Old Testament designated God the Father of angels, of Israel, of the king, and of just individuals, by Jesus’ time emphasis on divine transcendence had prohibited pronouncing the revealed Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Jesus dared to call God Abba, that is, Dad or Daddy, the word employed by small children or even grown sons to show filial respect and love to their father. As far as the evidence goes, no Palestinian Jew ever addressed God in prayer as “Father.” Diaspora Jews, doubtless influenced by Hellenistic culture, sometimes addressed God as “Father.” No Jew anywhere dared call Him “Dad.” Such intimacy was Jesus’ novelty, and, though He always distinguished “my Father” from “your Father,” He introduced His disciples into His filial relation to the Father by teaching them to pray “Our Father.” In His wake, His disciples, moved by His Spirit, employed Abba in their prayers (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15).96 Since divine sonship entails sharing in Jesus’ own life, which is salvation, at least prudence recommends that believers stay as close to His mind and heart as possible. To separate oneself from the Lord’s usage in the Lord’s Prayer seems tantamount to no longer following in Jesus’ steps as a disciple. For we are sons only in the Son, receiving adoptive sonship through Him (Eph 1:3–7; Gal 4:4–6; Rom 8:15–17, 29–30; Jn 1:12). Mistaken Principles Most probably Johnson falls into the error of characterizing the Father as feminine on account of a deficient epistemology tied to her inadequate notion of analogy, which reduces to metaphor. She calls God the Father “an overliteralized metaphor.” The name is not to be taken “in a literal or ontological sense, as if fatherhood constituted the divine essence.”97 She assumes that God’s fatherhood is a perfection predicated of Him in the way that other abstract characteristics, like good, just, wise, are. But “Father” is not an analogous perfection, much less a metaphor. The word indicates a concrete person. In fact it is what Germans call an Urwort, a 96 Witold Marchal, Abba, Père! 2nd ed. (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute Press, 1971); Joachim Jeremias, “Abba,” in Abba (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 15–67; Joseph Fitzmyer, S.J., “Abba and Jesus’ Relation to God,” in According to Paul: Studies in the Theology of the Apostle (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 47–63; John McDermott, S.J., “Jesus and the Son of God Title,” Gregorianum 62 (1981): 277–318. 97 Johnson, She, 173. Actually Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together constitute the divine essence. But this is not so for Johnson, Quest, 208: the identity of economic and immanent Trinity results in the denial of the latter as “a literal description of a self-contained Trinity of three divine persons knowing and loving each other” (also 206–7, 215). After all, Father, Son, and Spirit are just “manners of self-subsistence” (212–13), one God experienced “in a threefold way” (204). 970 John M. McDermott, S.J. primordial word which orients a person profoundly in life. No child calls his or her father “daddy” or “father” because he or she has abstracted the word while observing the behavior and language of other fathers and children. Rather, like “mother” or “mama,” “daddy” is a primary sound giving a child a basic orientation in life. A sense of meaning is mediated in the perception of a mother’s and a father’s love. Precisely because the words “daddy” and “mama” become associated with definite persons, the child’s world becomes intellectually distinguished and other sounds repeated can be linked to material objects. Such a basic insight resolves a basic conundrum in Aristotelian realism: how and why does the intellect abstract precisely those aspects of a reality that are essential instead of accidental? Bergson formulated the paradox: “To generalize, it is first of all necessary to abstract, but to abstract to any purpose we must already know how to generalize.” The self-referential circle is broken by primordial language. Daddy refers not to an abstract universal, but to the person primordially encountered as one’s male parent. Only later does the universal “father” emerge from the comparisons with other male parentchild relations.98 Besides these oversights, Johnson mistakenly adopts as her own Piet Schonenberg’s erroneous theological principle, “All our thinking moves from the world to God, and can never move in the opposite direction.” By applying that to theology, she implicitly excludes revelation from above.99 By forbidding God to communicate directly with men, she would also reduce prayer to psychological self-manipulation. How would Jesus have recognized God as Abba if all thinking starts from the material world? How could He have recognized His true Father if He were limited to earthly experience? Would He not have been confusing Joseph with God the Father unless He had a unique access to the Father? Must there not have been a perception of His invisible Father in the depths of His personal being? St. Paul explicitly contradicts Schonenberg and John98 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N. Paul and W. Palmer (1912; rpt. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004), 202. Bergson’s own answer, 30–49, 202–25, relies on preconscious tendencies in human nature whose patterns are repeated and thus subject to recognition and abstraction as the mind oscillates between past and present experience, memory and action. This view is easily reconcilable with the primordial verbal recognition of parents. Cf. Katherine Nelson, Structure and Strategy in Learning to Talk, in Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, n. 149, vol. 38, nos. 1–2 (February-April, 1973): 14 and n. 1, 16 n. 2, 20–21, 25. 99 Johnson, She, 199; idem, Quest, 191–92; the citation is from Piet Schonenberg, S.J., “Trinity: the Consummated Covenant: Theses on the Doctrine of the Trinitarian God,” Studies in Religion 5 (1975–76): 111. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 971 son: “I bow my knees to the Father ( pater) from whom all patria in the heavens and on earth is named” (Eph 3:14–15). Obviously Paul thinks from above, from revelation, not vice versa. Revelation illumines all earthly realities. How might men know of God’s love in a fallen, concupiscent world without revelation from above, without God’s new initiative that ends in the cross and resurrection? Without revelation we reduce God to our measure. Revelation demands that we stretch out minds beyond ourselves, to put on the mind of Jesus Christ in order to perceive “what eye has not seen nor has ear heard” (1 Cor 2:9–16; Phil 2:5). Precisely because human experience is so concupiscible and men are perpetually seeking to creates gods of their own fashioning, it is necessary to have an access to God that is not encumbered by sinful distortions. Jesus, the sinless one (Heb 4:15; 1 Pt 2:22; 1 Jn 3:5), indeed the Father’s eternal Son, alone is capable of supplying accurate knowledge of God. He, the summit of revelation, reveals God to be Father. Implications of Fatherhood God’s Fatherhood is not an arbitrary construct. The name has profound repercussions. Unless “Father” really names God, the Church’s faith cannot be Trinitarian. In the great Arian crisis, both Athanasius’s and Hilary’s central argument depended upon the divine Father-Son relation. Precisely because God is Father, He has a Son. Sonship implies being born of a Father. Since the notion of nature in both Greek and Latin derives from the basic root “to be born”—physis from phyesthai and natura from nasci —the Son must have the same nature as the Father. This insistence is all the more impressive in St. Hilary since it was he who first introduced the notion of divine infinity into Catholic theology. That insight served to refute the Arians: precisely because God’s infinity surpasses man’s ability to comprehend it, man must listen to God to discover who He is; revelation assures us that He is Father.100 Precisely by accepting Scripture as God’s revelation, the great orthodox Fathers refuted the Arian heresy, which relied too much on the current philosophy. Thereby they opened new vistas to Catholic theology. A strong Platonic influence had entered Catholic theology almost 100 Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos I:14–15, 27–29, 33–34; III:4–5, 9, 20, 62, 66–67; De Synodis, 34–36, 41–42, 45, 48, 50–51; Hilary, De Trinitate VI: 9–14, 16; VII:11–16; cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Hilary of Poitiers: The Infinite Nature of God,” Vigiliae Christianae 27 (1973): 172–202. Hilary argues from God’s infinity to the necessity of revelation for men to know who God is: De Trinitate, I:13–15, 18–19; II:10–13; II:1–2; IV:14; VI:8, 23–26; X:53–54, 67–70; XI:45–49; XII:25–28, 52–57. Mark Weedman, “The Polemical Context of Gregory of 972 John M. McDermott, S.J. from the beginning. Clement of Rome interpreted God’s Fatherhood in terms of creation, a notion universally accessible since Plato’s Timaeus 28c.101 Many early writers followed him. They also tended to adopt Theophilus’s distinction between the immanent logos endiathetos and the uttered logos prophorikos. Many attributed the Logos’s emergence at the time of creation to the Father’s will. Hence the facile restriction of the Logos-Son to the work of creation offered itself. He seemed to fit readily into the niche Platonists had reserved for the Logos, the place of the ideas and the cosmic mediator between the One and the material universe. When the pious Arius insisted on God’s perfect oneness and judged Jesus’ sufferings contrary to divine immutability, the denial of the Logos’s divinity lay ready to hand for those relying on philosophies that both reflected and formed the human experience of the times. So Nicaea and Constantinople, preferring biblical witness, affirmed the superiority of God’s wisdom over human wisdom and broke through the limitations of classical philosophy in the defense of God’s truth and for the enrichment of philosophy.102 By contrast, Johnson explicitly relies primarily on human experience and, because she rejects any real knowledge of God mediated through words, she refuses to accept the Father-Son language as revelatory of Nyssa’s Doctrine of Divine Infinity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010): 92–96, maintains that in De Trinitate XII “Hilary begins to distance himself from the Father-Son analogy” and to argue only from the mystery of God’s infinity. Weedman ignores the unified argument of Books IV–XII, the anticipations of the infinity argument in the early books, and especially Hilary’s later De Synodis, which relies more strongly on the Father-Son natura-nativitas argument than on divine infinity. For example, nativitas omnis, quaecumque est, in naturam suam ex natura gignante consistit (17); nativitas perfecta non habeat dissidentem originalis substantiae diversitatem (20); natura Filii nisi ex nativitate non exstat (37). 101 Gottlob Schrenk, “pater,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 5:951–59. 102 God is identified as Father of the universe by Clement, Justin,Theophilus, Irenaeus, Novatian, Dionysius of Rome, and Origin; the Son’s emission by the Father’s will was affirmed by Justin, Tatian, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Novatian, and Eusebius of Caesarea (apparently to avoid having the Son forced upon the Father): references can be found in Luis Ladaria, S.J., The Living and True God, rev. translation, trans. M. Reyna and L. Kelly, ed. R. Luciani (Miami: Continuum, 2010), 157–219. Cf. also idem, “La Fede in Dio Padre nella Tradizione Cattolica,” Lateranum 64 (2000): 107–20; Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origin to Athanasius (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), esp. 63–92, 119–20, 128–222, 250–61; Friedo Ricken, S.J., “Das Homousios von Nikaia als Krisis des altchristlischen Platonismus,” in Zur Frühgeschichte der Christologie, ed. Bernard Welte (Freiburg: Herder, 1970), 74–99. In Christ in Christian Tradition: I. From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon, 2nd ed., trans. J. Bowden (Knox: Atlanta, 1975), 555–57, Alois Grillmeier, S.J., stresses the Fathers’ continuity, explicitly intended, with the biblical picture of Christ. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 973 God’s reality: “This language is not a literal description of the inner being of God who is in any event beyond human understanding.” Father, Son, and Spirit are only “metaphors.” Consequently, belief in the Trinity depends upon one’s subjective “option”: At its most basic the symbol of the Trinity evokes a livingness in God, a dynamic coming and going with the world that points to an inner divine circling around in unimaginable relation. God’s relatedness to the world in creating, redeeming, and renewing activity suggests to the Christian mind that God’s own being is somehow similarly differentiated. Not an isolated, static ruling monarch but a relational, dynamic, tripersonal mystery of love—who would not opt for the latter?103 It hardly needs to be mentioned that “God,” like “Father,” is not a word humanly constructed as an abstract concept.There is only one God, who is implied in all thinking and willing, in all human experience. Strictly speaking, “God” cannot be an abstraction, inasmuch as there is only one God (cf. ST I, q. 13, a. 10). “God” can only point to a mystery that is knowable as mystery. Paul prays that the Ephesians “be strengthened to grasp with all the saints what is the width and breath and height and depth, to know Christ’s love which surpasses all knowledge” in order that they “be filled unto the fullness of God” (Eph 3:18–19). God is a mystery not least because human beings are mysteries. As we can fully understand neither why we should exist at all, a pure gift of beneficence, nor why we were redeemed, pure mercy in addition, knowledge of this world can never banish mystery from God. His infinite Love surpasses our grasp. Yet He has freely made Himself known in His own Son (Mt 11:25–27; Jn 1:18; 17:3, 24–26; etc.) So “God” must have a name distinguishing Him from all false gods, wretched imitations, which human beings construct. The Jewish Law proscribed all idolatry because God’s free, transcendent reality cannot be circumscribed. Yet at the burning bush He gave a name to Moses to reveal Himself and distinguish Himself from all counterfeits. However mysterious that name may be, inasmuch as He bears a personal name, men can enter into a living, loving relationship with Him.104 With Jesus Christ, the mysteriousness of the name 103 Johnson, She, 192, 200, 212. 104 Cf. Bernard Anderson, “God, Names of,” in The Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible, ed. G. Buttrick (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 2:408–11; Martin Rose, “Names of God in the OT,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:102–4, 106–7; David Freedman and M. P. O’Connor, “YHWH,” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 5:513–17; Boman, Hebrew Thought, 46–49; William Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd ed. (Garden 974 John M. McDermott, S.J. gives way to the more mysterious Father, the reality whose mercy knows no bounds and has been revealed to us. V. Conclusion and Challenge A number of times in her response Johnson asks the bishops on the Doctrine Committee if they are employing a theology or theological method other than her own. It seems obvious that they are. They seem convinced that words about God really mean something, that they have an ontological content. Consequently, they read Scripture according to the Church’s tradition, especially as expressed in her creeds, and disapprove of divergences from that tradition. Their primary responsibility is for the defense and propagation of the Church’s faith. Since Christ Himself imposed that office on them, it would seem that any theologian verbally deviating from that tradition bears the burden of proving how his or her reinterpretation of the Christian mystery is in accord with the Church’s ancient belief. The mere appeal to a different method does not suffice. Karl Rahner once wrote that any theologian worth his or her salt must have the courage to do metaphysics.105 Certainly not every theologian has to equal Thomas Aquinas in constructing a new synthesis or even emulate Rahner in retrieving hidden aspects of Thomas’s thought. Nonetheless, the theologian has to stand by a metaphysics. If there are disputes about the meaning of divine revelation, the fault cannot be with God. He is a God of peace, not of confusion (1 Cor 14:33). The fault must lie with the human thought employed to expound revelation. Insofar as thought seeks to be consistent, it must presuppose a metaphysics and must answer metaphysical questions. As far as I know, Johnson has not produced a free-standing ontology or epistemology. She claims to borrow from such speculative theologians as Rahner, Hill, McCabe, Burrell, and Przywara. As they recognized, the notion of analogy is central to metaphysics. In her borrowing she also emphasizes the role of judgment in pointing to the infinite God.There is a basis for that in St.Thomas as well as in Rahner, Hill, McCabe, and Burrell.106 Starting from judgment, one can unify the various themes in this essay. A judgment is a dynamic movement of the mind synthesizing subject and predicate. As an intellectual action it seeks the truth, which will fulfill its quest. Since whatever satisfies a desire is considered a good, the judgment City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), 258–61; Gerhard von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments (Munich: Kaiser, 1960), 1:193–200. 105 Karl Rahner, S.J., “Bemerkungen zur Gotteslehre der katholischen Dogmatik,” Schriften, 8:178–79. 106 I do not find much emphasis on existential judgment in Przywara. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 975 goes to the true as its good. Insofar as the intellect and will are characterized by their formal objects, the true and the good, intellect and will coincide. The good has to be done if the true is to be perceived. This is the basis for liberationist theologies and undergirds Johnson’s pragmatic norm of truth. Furthermore, since the judgment joins sensibility to abstraction and affirmation, the sensible emotions are involved in the quest for the true and the good. This explains Johnson’s emphasis on flourishing in this world as a pragmatic norm. When one asks about the term of this material-spiritual dynamism, the answer cannot be any finite reality. The infinite God alone, not a finite concept of God, can satisfy the demand implicit in every judgment and voluntary act. This means that the direct possession of God in the beatific vision is implied with every intellectual and voluntary act of human nature. Here theologians generally appeal to St. Thomas’s doctrine of the natural desire for the beatific vision, a supernatural gift (ST I, q. 12, a. 1; etc.). This explains why Johnson does not develop any clear distinction between natural and supernatural orders; all natural distinctions, which depend upon concepts, are surpassed by the dynamic judgment on its way to the supernatural vision. Since the term of any dynamism already affects, indeed effects as final cause, whatever is oriented to it, human nature is proleptically supernaturalized. Already perceiving “pre-thematically” its supernatural goal, the dynamic nature must have access to supernatural knowledge, that is, revelation. Precisely because knowledge transcends concepts, which are only a part of judgment, supernatural knowledge cannot be limited to concepts; indeed, concepts are inadequate to the infinite mystery that lies beyond their finitude. Hence dogmatic formulae and even the words of Scripture can be reformulated in view of a broader supernatural experience. A theological pluralism results which in principle cannot be reduced to formulaic unity. Indeed, since the will influences the intellectual judgment and people will see things differently according to their diverse voluntary choices, there is no objectivity in itself apart from the knowing subject. So Johnson appeals to theological pluralism to reformulate the Church’s multiple creeds which confess belief in God, the Father almighty. Finally, since by nature all human beings are oriented to the supernatural vision, grace must be given to all with their nature. Jesus Christ is unique only insofar as He represents the highest acceptance of grace in history. But since Jesus, the historical person, is limited, whereas grace is offered to all, the distinction between Christ and Jesus is drawn in order that Christ may be the event that encompasses all those believing in God. His death and resurrection do not provide any new access to God, since that access is already given to all along with a graced nature. 976 John M. McDermott, S.J. Before challenging the American bishops’ interpretation of the Church’s faith, Johnson should be very sure of her theology. Unfortunately, there are many internal contradictions within her philosophical-theological system. First, a judgment of truth has to contain a valid concept in order to come about; some finite intelligibility must be affirmed. If concepts are perpetually relativizable, a firm point de départ is denied to the judgmental dynamism. Second, the judgment’s goal is unattainable, since the finite can never reach the infinite, no matter how long or hard one may try. This is why Heidegger refused to make a definitive judgment about meaning and Sartre denied all meaning, declaring man a useless passion. Third, if God is really infinite, why would the judgment seek Him at the end of a quest? Is He not everywhere present and therefore capable of being found? Indeed, since a judgment is a reflexive act which consciously affirms the synthesis of subject and predicate, the knowing subject is immediately self-conscious as well as aware of the sensible object affirmed. If God is everywhere, even in the self-conscious human subject, should not the conscious subject perceive Him in a “pre-thematic” manner? But such pre-thematic, that is, intuitive, knowledge of God is what constitutes the beatific vision. That seems to contradict everyone’s experience, especially that of theologians who suffer from being misunderstood by the Magisterium.107 Fourth, it is very hard to see how any serious sin could be committed. Sin involves a refusal of God and His will. But in every act of the will as well as in every judgment, God is implicitly affirmed and chosen. What then is the challenge to freedom? Jesus called all to conversion and belief in the gospel which He was preaching (Mk 1:14–15), and St. Paul wrote that all have sinned and lack God’s glory (Rom 3:10–12, 22; 5:12, 19). Fifth, the role of Jesus is relativized. By imagining Jesus as the finite culmination of a universal openness to grace, is He not reduced to the mere instantiation of a general law of being or grace? Despite Scripture, He no longer functions as the sole Savior of humanity (Acts 4:12), the sole mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5–6). Although Johnson calls Him the sacrament of God “in Christian faith,” she has difficulty explaining how any finite nature can be God’s definitive revelation. Sixth, the Church likewise loses her special position as “column and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). Instead, a Protestant view of the Church as congregatio fidelium results. Believers, acting under the impulse of a grace already interiorly received, come together to form the Body of Christ. Finally, the basic problem concerns the natural desire for the beatific vision. Without careful and complex distinctions it allows two contrary 107 The Scholastic interpretation of the beatific vision involves certain rational conundrums: cf. McDermott, “How Did Jesus,” 283–94. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 977 interpretations, both Protestant. Either pure nature cannot attain the vision, its goal, without grace; or there is a continuity between nature and its terminal, supernatural vision. The first alternative means that nature is frustrated in itself and cannot find meaning without grace, which overcomes a corrupt nature; faith becomes a leap contrary to reason. The second alternative posits a continuity between one’s natural internal experience and God, thus repeating classical liberalism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”108 Unless Johnson can provide metaphysical answers to fundamental questions underlying her theological position, her defense of her position must be judged insufficient. One sees also why, following St. Thomas’s lead, Hill, Burrell, McCabe, Przywara, Rahner, and all the leading Thomists uphold the value of concepts. Concepts ground finite intelligibility and thus permit distinctions between God and world, nature and grace, form and matter, essence and existence, intellect and will, finite and infinite, etc. Certainly they do not suffice; judgment is needed to reflect reality’s dynamic unities. It is not easy to find the philosophical justification for the balance that preserves in vital tension both unity and diversity. This is the reason for philosophical and theological pluralism even within Thomism. But losing the equilibrium issues in speculative insanity. It also destroys human freedom. For freedom presupposes deliberation of reasons for a choice; it necessarily involves finite intelligibility. But the reasons cannot be strictly determining; the infinite, be it prime matter or God, prevents reality from being reduced to a rational system. This tension between finite intelligibility and infinite mystery is reflected in the whole sacramental structure of Catholicism: finite realities have enough meaning to serve as signs, or symbols, of God, but they remain open to His free intervention in the world in and through them.109 Christian truth does not need a speculative grounding. Jesus died and rose once for all in history, and witness was given at the proper time (1 Tm 2:6; Acts 2:14–40; etc.) and throughout history. All types of philosophies 108 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (1937; rpt. New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 193. As noted above in n. 2, the better transcendental Thomists postulate a paradox in the natural-supernatural relation. Unfortunately they fail to explain why the apparent contradiction is only apparent. Moreover, the notion of paradox is central to many modern Protestant thinkers; while this confluence of thought may foster ecumenical dialogue, it can also lead to immense confusion in Catholic thought. 109 The understanding of freedom is complex: cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The Mystery of Freedom,” Lateranum 74 (2008): 493–542, and “Nature, Freedom, and Person in Aquinas and Beyond,” Nova et Vetera 9 (2011): 791–824. 978 John M. McDermott, S.J. can be employed to explain that fact and further its acceptance, but the fact itself cannot be denied by philosophies too narrow to grasp it. The fact is singular, and therefore its reality can never be completely subsumed under any rational system, especially if God is actively present in the fact. Yet simultaneously the fact contains a meaning; otherwise it would have been forgotten. And the meaning was announced with the fact: Jesus died and rose to save sinners (Rom 4:25; 1 Tm 1:15; etc.). Scripture and tradition unanimously testify to that. That is why the Church maintains continuity in belief with her Tradition and demands that believers acknowledge that Tradition. Jesus Christ is not subordinate to any system of thought. He is the truth ( Jn 14:6) and the light of the world ( Jn 1:4; 3:19; 8:12; 9:5; 12:46). He is the judge of the cosmos (Mt 25:31–46; Jn 5:22–30; 8:16; 9:39; 12:31; 19:13), and there is nothing outside His dominion ( Jn 1:3; 1 Cor 15:24–28; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2; Rv 1:17–18). He provides the standard by which philosophies and theologies are judged. Surely His standard is the cross, which overcomes the world’s wisdom, that is, any philosophy that would presume to judge Him. As John Paul II noted in Fides et Ratio 23, before the fact and scandal of evil, exemplified in the cross, “every attempt to reduce the Father’s saving plan to purely human logic is doomed to failure.” The foolishness of the cross is “the authentic critique of those who delude themselves that they possess the truth, when in fact they run it aground on the shoals of a system of their own devising.” Evil, however real, cannot be explained by reason, much less overcome by finite creatures. “The mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thes 2:7) can be vanquished only by the greater mystery of love. Christian faith proclaims that an infinite love manifested itself in a finite human nature in order that men might perceive in the flesh and grasp a mystery infinitely beyond them, yet infinitely close. Such faith demands obedience (Rom 1:5), but it is not blind since it preserves an intelligible structure in the tension between God and man that is necessary for freedom and love.Thereby finite reason surrenders its arrogant claim to absolute jurisdiction and finds its rightful place within faith’s greater mystery.110 The Challenge After the Doctrine Committee’s judgment was delivered, Prof. Johnson became a cause célèbre. The Catholic Theological Society of America, the College Theology Society, and various theologians weighed in, protesting against the decision. The reason for the protest universally lay in the process employed by the Committee in reaching its decision, or rather in 110 That structure is expounded in “Faith, Reason, and Freedom,” cited above in n. 11. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 979 its alleged lack of process. Appeal was made to Doctrinal Responsibilities, the suggested guidelines worked out in 1989 among the American bishops, the CTSA, and the Canon Law Society of America as a help in resolving disputes between a theologian and his local ordinary through a process of dialogue.111 Those were times of dissent, when the CTSA regularly passed motions condemning actions of various Roman congregations, while the bishops, somewhat confused about theological changes, were more involved in composing pastoral letters about nuclear war and the national economy. It was a rare bishop who, educated before Vatican II, would take on a theologian claiming to represent the new theology supported by the council. In the days before the council, theologians were expected only to defend and explain what the Magisterium had defined and to prepare material for new definitions, not to question decisions or reformulate dogmas. Their new role of adapting dogma to the needs of the time was perplexing many bishops, whose governance in tumultuous times did not leave them much leisure for reading and proper updating on the theological changes. But situations change. Since that time pluralism in theology has proliferated, whereas bishops and a younger generation of priests seek a clear, stable presentation of the faith for the sake of properly catechizing believers. When one bishop, worried about the doctrinal import of Quest, a widely used college text, wrote to the Doctrine Committee for its opinion, he was trusting its expertise more than his own. He was not Prof. Johnson’s ordinary, and she was a renowned theologian. The Doctrine Committee responded to his request and made its judgment public in order to assist other bishops, who are the ultimate authority in union with the pope on doctrinal questions. The issue far exceeded the local parameters intended by Doctrinal Responsibilities. At first it seemed to me ironic that the protesting theologians should appeal to procedural issues. The conceptualist theology, which ruled before Vatican II, was usually criticized for being too juridical. Now here were the new theologians appealing to procedures. Certainly when one is not pleased with the product but cannot directly attack it, one attacks the process. There has been, as far as I know, no theological defense of Johnson’s position offered by the protesters.The appeal to juridical norms often signals the proximate demise of a class or ideological position, inasmuch as only entrenched law supports it.Yet the appeal is weak on two counts: first, Doctrinal Responsibilities was never promulgated as law; second, it does not cover a decision of the Doctrine Committee. Nonetheless the appeal 111 Doctrinal Responsibilities can be found in Origins 19 (1989): 97–110. 980 John M. McDermott, S.J. to legal technicalities reflects the condition of Catholic theology in the United States today. If any theologians refuse to acknowledge intellectual standards of truth by which propositions may be recognized as orthodox or heretical, they must, of course, interpret all theological disputes in terms of power.Therein they succumb to the intellectual climate of most American universities, where post-modernism reigns. But Christ’s Church is not subject to transient academic fads. Post-modernism revives medieval nominalism in a new guise. Both exhibit a strong distrust of abstractions, concepts as well as ideological superstructures.The main difference between them lies in the fact that the latter was more pious than the former. Medieval nominalism accepted God’s existence and recognized His word as objective truth. Indeed, precisely because it adhered to an infinite God, it relativized conceptual abstractions: God knows individuals directly and His mind is the norm of reality, while humans are forced to abstract from material instances. Post-modernism has put everything in question, God included, and it analyzes all structures and their justifying ideologies in terms of power. The only thing not questioned is post-modernism. It absolutizes its own critical position, and from there it judges the rest of reality. All positions are perspectival and no objective truth can be claimed. Of course it finds the Catholic Church totalitarian in its claim to know truth, the ultimate meaning of reality. That is to be expected from the wisdom of the world.What is distressing is that so much of post-modernism has corroded Catholic theology in America.112 Five years after Vatican II, Rahner was lamenting the lack of criticism necessary for theology’s well-being. Nine years later he noted the “the interdisciplinary decadence of theology” as it stood before the pluralism of philosophies and the multitude of other discordant natural and humanistic sciences.113 Needless to say, neither academe nor theology has yet reached agreement about truth. The Church should not hope for consensus by spontaneous generation. But the Church has to proclaim the same gospel that was committed to writing by the inspired New Testament writers. She does so relying on Scripture and the Holy Spirit 112 Johnson welcomes post-modernism in the Church and religious life in “Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God,” Review for Religious 53 ( Jan.–Feb., 1994): 16–24. 113 K. Rahner, S.J., “Kirchliches Lehramt und Theologie nach dem Konzil,” Schriften, 8:125; idem, Grundkurs, 19. Grundkurs attempts to create some unity, but its starting point, transcendental experience, vitiates the endeavor. From unthematic experience of the Holy Mystery, Rahner explicates Catholic doctrine. He knows and accepts Catholic Tradition. But unthematic experience lets itself be explicated in myriad ways, and his “disciples” employ his starting point to deduce whatever they wish. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 981 who guided the Church through history and who finds voice in magisterial definitions and documents. I remember Rahner in the early 1970s announcing at the beginning of his course on grace that he presumed that his audience knew their Ott, since it contained the Church’s faith which all believe, whereas he was only concerned with attempting to make it more intelligible to his hearers.114 He accepted Tradition as divinely given and never contradicted any magisterial pronouncement. Unfortunately, Johnson and others consider themselves empowered to rethink and reformulate Catholic theology, putting in question basic teachings. For that they employ a philosophy poorly masticated and digested, and they merely adapt “theology” to current academic fads. Appealing to one aspect of transcendental Thomism, they postulate a universal, democratic bestowal of grace calling all to the same fulfilling goal.The call for self-fulfillment, or “flourishing,” appeals to everyone, but no one ever finds perfect satisfaction on this earth. Moreover, the Catholic Church knows that concupiscence still survives after baptism (DS 1515; Rom 7:14–25). All desires cannot and should not be fulfilled. The Church rightly imposes a discipline upon concupiscence. It takes a good while before individuals attain full conversion to Christ. Hence it is misleading to propose self-fulfillment as the goal of Christian life before a profound conversion has taken place. Otherwise, needs derived from worldly standards will surreptitiously infiltrate themselves into the consciousness of Christians. Then wounded, frustrated subjectivities will proliferate, inasmuch as they expect from the Church fulfillment of their needs. They will be tempted to twist Tradition to reformulate the faith and justify their plaints. But the Church is not intended to fulfill all human needs on earth. Jesus Christ founded the Church to continue offering salvation, that is, Himself, to all mankind.That involves conformity to the crucified Christ (Mk 8:34–35; Phil 3:10–11; 2 Tim 3:12; 1 Pt 4:13). Salvation is a gift that we sinners do not deserve. The Church herself is a gift, because she makes Christ present for us in the Eucharist. Believers who know the great gift that the Church is readily accept the cross and therein find joy, since they are being conformed to Christ. By their self-emptying they open themselves to God’s grace and anticipate in a small way the joys of heaven. Let Johnson and her advocates set up clear standards of belief if dialogue between them and the bishops is to occur. The amorphous post-modern philosophy underlying Johnson’s theology renders dialogue impossible, 114 “Ott” is shorthand for the outline of Church teaching presented in neo-Scholas- tic form by Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, ed. in English by J. Bastible, trans. P. Lynch (St. Louis: Herder, 1952). 982 John M. McDermott, S.J. since it acknowledges no objective standards of judgment. A vague “faith” is always in danger of reformulating itself, like Proteus, to an ever-changing world in the search for relevance, and it is usually one mutation behind the times. Why should anyone heed the new formulations of religion concocted by post-modern theologians? They are only human. Besides, their relativistic presuppositions would demythologize the Christian gospel. They fail to realize that Rudolf Bultmann, the master of demythologization, employs a myth to evacuate the gospel of historical content. Following the “wizardry” of Heidegger, he refuses to admit God’s incarnation in history—the self-conscious subject is the measure of truth and grace is a purely interior event on the occasion of the kerygma—yet he insists that human reason cannot grasp reality, lest a natural theology develop and man be free to choose before the offer of grace. On what basis can Bultmann’s fragmentary reason exclude natural knowledge of God and God’s intervention? In truth, all philosophies and theologies are “myths,” that is, human inventions circumventing God’s freedom, unless they start from and end with Jesus Christ as believed in the Church.115 For “He is before all things and in Him all things have their consistency” (Col 1:17). In Him, who is the Infinite in the finite, the finite world finds its ultimate consistency and intelligibility. Hence Catholic theology demands first a conversion to a standard beyond man. One has to accept an historical revelation from above and obey in faith a divinely established authority preserving and interpreting that revelation. Authority should not be misunderstood—à la Kantian, modern, and post-modern philosophies—as an imposition restricting freedom and frustrating autonomy. Authentic authority means that power stands at the service of love. Auctoritas derives from the Latin root augere (perfect passive participle auctus), which means “to increase, augment, strengthen; to enrich, endow, bless; to grow, increase.” Parents have auctoritas over their children because they give and nourish their children’s life. Laws also possess authority because they bring nurturing order to a state. Scripture, Tradition, and bishops have authority because they mediate God’s supernatural life to believers.116 115 McDermott, “Jesus: Parable,” 543–51, 558–60; idem, “What Went Wrong with Catholic (NT) Exegesis and Christology?” Angelicum 86 (2009): 795–833. Cf. Karl Prümm, S.J., Gnosis an der Wurzel des Christentums (Salzburg: Müller, 1972) for the gnostic tendency of Bultmann’s thought. 116 H. Wagenvoort and G. Tellenbach, “Auctoritas,” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, ed. T. Klausner (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950), 1:902–9; Christian Gizewski and Reinhard Willvonseder, “Auctoritas,” in Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike, ed. H. Cancik and H. Schneider (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997), 2:266–67. Elizabeth Johnson's Theological Method 983 Bishops have a responsibility to Christ for the little ones who believe in Him, those who have too often been confused by a vague, shifting catechesis more intent on adaptation to the world than in presenting the gospel’s authentic demands (cp. Rom 12:2). Simple people recognize that unless God challenges them to become more than themselves, He cannot be truly God. The bishops uphold the challenge and apply the challenge also to theologians, who are merely human. “Knowledge puffs up, charity builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). Theologians should stand at the service of the hierarchical Church, because the Church, Christ’s Body, makes the gospel’s demands concrete. Unless they stand with the bishops on the rock of Peter, their words are writ on water and shall be flushed away with the next tide of academic faddism.117 So, if they would dialogue with the bishops, let them justify the meaning of words and establish standards of orthodoxy. Let them not deny what Christ and His Church teach. For theologians, like all men, must have their works pass through fire and themselves stand before Christ’s judgment seat (1 Cor 3:12–25; 2 Cor 5:10; Jas 3:1). Christ, have mercy on us all. N&V 117 This is not to deny theology’s critical role within the Church vis-à-vis author- ity, but it should always be exercised with charity and avoid giving scandal to believers and to those seeking Christ. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 985–91 985 History and Faith in Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth H ANS B OERSMA Regent College Vancouver, Canada O N P OPE Benedict’s understanding, history and faith ought not to be separated. As a result, he wants to keep together historical exegesis and spiritual understanding. In the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, discussing events from Jesus’ baptism until the Transfiguration, he insisted that “the historical-critical method—specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith—is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work.”1 The Pope wanted to “portray the Jesus of the Gospels as the real,‘historical’ Jesus in the strict sense of the word” (xxii). At the same time, he made quite clear that the historical-critical method has its limits: “[B]y its very nature it has to leave the biblical word in the past,” and since it looks at the human word of Scripture only as human, it is unable to recognize the unity of the various writings of the Bible (xvii). As a result, the Pope presented a plea for a Christological hermeneutic, which takes Christ as the key to the whole (xix), and he wanted to take seriously the traditional four senses of Scripture, which he maintained were “dimensions of the one word that reaches beyond the moment” (xx). In short, the Pope’s attempt was “to offer a properly theological interpretation of the Bible” (xxiii). The second volume attempts much the same.2 Dealing with Holy Week, this volume again begins by insisting that scholarly exegesis must 1 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Trans- figuration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xv. Page numbers hereafter in parentheses in the text. 2 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011). Page numbers are in parentheses in the text. 986 Hans Boersma “see itself once again as a theological discipline, without abandoning its historical character” (xiv), recognizing “that a properly developed faithhermeneutic is appropriate to the text and can be combined with a historical hermeneutic, aware of its limits, so as to form a methodological whole” (xv). Perhaps even more strongly than in his first volume, Benedict focuses on the limitations of a quest for the “historical Jesus,” which he insists “lacks sufficient content to exert any significant historical impact. It is focused too much on the past for it to make possible a personal relationship with Jesus” (xvi). The Pope repeats that historical research “can at most establish high probability” (104), while at the same time he insists that it is important to “ascertain whether the basic convictions of the faith are historically plausible and credible” (105). To my mind, this mutual interpenetration of reason and faith—of historical and spiritual interpretation—is exactly what is required. In this essay, I want to look at various aspects of Pope Benedict’s second volume in order to analyze how he works out this combination of history and faith. Specifically, I will look at how he himself actually embarks on the task of exegesis and how he deals with the relationship between truth and power. We will see that, for the most part, Pope Benedict is deeply concerned to keep together the realities of history and of faith in a sacramental relationship. This sacramental relationship between this-worldly realities and the realities of faith comes to the fore when the Pope discusses the purification obtained through the Old Testament rituals. He comments: Just as the old sacrifices pointed toward the future that was awaited, receiving light and dignity from that eagerly anticipated future, so too the whole question of ritual purity associated with this worship was likewise—as the Fathers would say—“sacramentum futuri ”: a stage in the history of God with men, and of men with God, straining forward to the future, but obliged to step aside once the hour of the new had actually come. (61) In 1950, the expression sacramentum futuri was the title of one of Jean Daniélou’s most well known books, translated ten years later into English as From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers. Two aspects of Daniélou’s work come through clearly in Benedict’s statement. First, the relationship between Old and New Testament does not concern two completely separate realities. Instead, the old sacrifices receive light and dignity from the anticipated future. The light of the old sacrifices is not their own, but is borrowed light, we could say. The Old Testament sacrifices are merely the sacramental anticipations (sacramenta) that receive History and Faith 987 whatever reality they have from the reality (res) of the Christ event. As Daniélou put it: “In the liturgical and catechetical tradition of the early Church the Law is a text charged with mysteries, sacramenta, which figuratively reveal to us the whole plan of the Gospel and the future Kingdom.”3 Second, because the Old Testament events are only sacramental anticipations of a future reality, they have to be let go once the reality comes. Or, as Benedict himself puts it, they are “obliged to step aside once the hour of the new had actually come.” Also here, the Pope’s remark is close to the view advocated by Daniélou, who appeals to Romano Guardini (a theologian who has influenced Joseph Ratzinger, as well) to argue that in Scripture a “forerunner” (such as Melchizedek) is a sacramental type who must disappear once the antitypical reality has come: “A forerunner is a man sent by God to lay down the road for someone else. When that someone himself appears, then the forerunner’s mission is done and he must give way.”4 Whether or not the Pope has Daniélou in mind at this point, I am not sure. What is clear, of course, is that he has been deeply influenced by Henri de Lubac, Daniélou’s teacher, and by other theologians representing the approach of the mid-twentieth-century nouvelle théologie.5 Each of these theologians—most notably de Lubac—argued for a sacramental relationship between the realities of history and of faith, and therefore also between historical exegesis and spiritual interpretation.6 It seems to me that we see something quite similar in the work of Pope Benedict. A clear example is the way in which he speaks of the end of the Temple. The Pope indicates that with the destruction of the Temple, only two ways of reading the Old Testament remained possible: “the reading in the light of Christ, based on the Prophets, and the rabbinical reading” (33). The Temple and its sacrifices were clearly abolished, according to the early Church. The Pope emphatically points out that while there were various issues that the early Christians had to struggle through, “strangely there is not a hint to be found anywhere of a dispute over the Temple and the necessity of its sacrifices” (38). Precisely because the risen Lord 3 Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers, trans. Wulstan Hibberd (London: Burns & Oates, 1960), 11. 4 Jean Daniélou, The Advent of Salvation: A Comparative Study of Non-Christian Reli- gions and Christianity, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Paulist Press, 1962), 62. 5 See especially Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (London: Routledge, 2003); idem, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 6 See Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 149–90. 988 Hans Boersma was the new Temple, in whom God and man met one another, it was clear to all Christians that the Temple building no longer functioned.7 The same sacramental understanding of reality comes to the fore when Benedict discusses Jesus’ high-priestly prayer, and along with it, the Feast of Atonement. Using sacramental language, he comments: “The ritual of the feast, with its rich theological content, is realized in Jesus’ prayer— ‘realized’ in the literal sense: the rite is translated into the reality that it signifies” (77). Similarly, when discussing the missionary character of Jesus’ sending of the disciples, the Pope briefly alludes to the early Church’s acceptance of apostolic succession and adds: “The continuation of the mission is ‘sacramental’, that is to say, it is not self-generating, nor is it something man-made, but it is a matter of being incorporated into the ‘Word that existed from the beginning’ (cf. 1 Jn 1:1)” (98). Apostolic succession, for Pope Benedict, is the sacramental unfolding of the reality of Christ himself. Finally, such sacramental “presence” of course requires an understanding of time that is more than the merely chronological succession of historically distinct moments. Through the words of consecration at the Eucharist, insists the Pope, “our ‘now’ is taken up into the hour of Jesus” (139). The hour of Jesus is the reality of faith in which our historical existence gets taken up through the celebration of the Eucharist. Pope Benedict’s sacramental understanding of reality shapes his actual exegesis. He repeatedly appeals to the Church Fathers’ insight into certain passages, reflecting on the deeper spiritual meaning of the text. For example, Jesus’ tunic over which the soldiers cast the lot becomes for Benedict an expression of the unity of the Church (217). In the outpouring of blood and water from Jesus’ side, the Pope sees a reference to Eucharist and Baptism, as well as a reference to the creation of Eve and thus to the birth of the Church (226). And the boat in which Jesus joins his disciples during the storm becomes the boat of the Church that “travels against the headwind of history through the turbulent ocean of time” (285). Furthermore, the Pope presents at several well-chosen moments beautiful theological exposés on themes derived from the text. Various expositions on atonement, a lengthy analysis of the relationship between truth and power, 7 In this light, it seems to me that the Pope’s approach to Judaism seems somewhat oddly out of place. He appears convinced that the Church should not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews (45) and that Israel “retains its own mission. Israel is in the hands of God, who will save it ‘as a whole’ at the proper time, when the number of the Gentiles is complete” (46). The Pope’s insistence that we need the Christian and Jewish ways of reading the biblical texts “into dialogue with one another” (33–34) strikes me as oddly vague, considering his own strong understanding of the ending of the Temple and its sacrifices. History and Faith 989 a discussion of the twofold will of Christ, and the question of the historical character of the resurrection event are among them. This book presents more than just history. There are, however, places in which the German care for detail and precision—Deutsche Gründlichkeit—shines through in fairly lengthy analyses of historical questions. The question of the dating of the Last Supper (106–15) is perhaps the clearest example of such historical precision. Even here, however, Benedict points out the theological implications of the chronology of the Last Supper. The Pope’s caution with regard to historical criticism’s ability to ferret out the details of the past is reflected in his understanding of truth itself. While not rejecting the classical definition of correspondence between mind and reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei), the Pontiff makes clear that human beings do not have a full grasp of the reality.We grasp “only a small fragment of reality—not truth in its grandeur and integrity,” claims Pope Benedict (192). The reason for this is that God himself is the ultimate and first truth, so that truth in this world is “true” only “to the extent that it reflects God” (192). Furthermore, the Pope goes on to say, the world “becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God’s likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility” (192). These reflections on truth seem to me profoundly important. The question of whether or not truth should be understood as adaequatio intellectus et rei has a controversial history in twentieth-century Catholic thought, particularly through Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s accusations of relativism in the direction of Maurice Blondel because of the latter’s denial of truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei. While Benedict retains the definition, he clearly reverts to a more patristic (and perhaps more authentically Thomist) participatory understanding of truth. For Benedict, it is only by participation in God’s being and truth that we ourselves have being and truth. Human statements of truth, we could say, are sacraments of which the eternal Word is the mysterious reality itself. Also in this regard, Benedict appears to stand in the tradition of Blondel, de Lubac, and the tradition of nouvelle théologie. This is not to say that for Benedict truth becomes completely subject to the whims of history.While we may not have a full grasp of truth itself (that is, God himself), we do genuinely participate in it. It is this sharing in God’s truth that allows us to remain free from Pontius Pilate’s pragmatism and power play—and from his obvious inability to discern truth at all. “Let us say plainly,” insists Pope Benedict, “the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, 990 Hans Boersma by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world” (193). These reflections would seem to be quite relevant today, as many wish to immerse the question of truth so radically in history itself, and thereby to unmoor it so completely from God, that it becomes impossible to discern moral truth—except through the arbitrary imposition of dominant secular agendas. It is for this reason somewhat puzzling that Pope Benedict advocates a strict separation between politics and faith. He does not merely suggest a separation between Church and state—something that in itself would already seem to require careful delineation before it can be accepted— but he seems to suggest that religion as such should stay out of politics. In fact, he argues that this “separation of the religious from the political” is “what truly marks the essence of his [i.e., Jesus’] new path” (169). The Pope argues that this separation of politics from faith is possible precisely through the Cross, which implies the loss of all external power (171). It appears that Benedict’s motivation is to keep Church and faith free from all domination and power, so that the truth can speak for itself. Jesus’ kingship is the rule of truth, not the rule of dominion or power (190–91). While I appreciate the fear of truth being warped by pragmatic power plays, it seems to me that a strict separation between faith and politics is nonetheless a serious problem, a problem introduced not by Jesus but by the Enlightenment. The problem with such a separation is at least twofold. It means that politics would go its own way, apart from considerations of faith. That is to say, we would surrender politics to ideologies alien to the Christian faith; and questions of religion and morality would, at best, be relegated to the private sphere. Furthermore, such a separation does not seem to do justice to the intimate relationship between history and faith, something which Pope Benedict himself rightly advocates. If also in politics there is a provisional participation in the truth of God, then politics and faith would seem to go together— although I would by no means refuse to acknowledge a clear distinction (rather than separation) between the two. Despite this criticism, it remains clear that throughout the book, Pope Benedict is concerned to keep history and faith together, in a sacramental relationship. The main message of the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth does not, however, concern the sacramental connection between history and faith—important though the connection may be. What Benedict wants to do in this book is what any good theologian wants to do: point people to Jesus. “I have attempted to develop a way of observing and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels,” writes the Pope, “that can indeed lead to a personal encounter, and that, through collective listening with Jesus’ History and Faith 991 disciples across the ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus” (xvii). The aim of all theology is the mystagogical purpose of a personal relationship. That is to say, readers of this book are privileged to sit at the feet of a catechist who leads his audience into the presence of Jesus, who is at the same time the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the faith of the Church. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 993–1013 993 The “New Worship” in Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth G EOFFREY WAINWRIGHT Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina ACCORDING TO the second volume of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth, the most striking feature introduced by Christ into the world and human history was—in an oft-repeated phrase—“a new worship,” “ein neuer Kult.” The phrase occurs already in the first chapter in connection with Jesus’ cleansing of the Jerusalem Temple. In response to the Jewish officials’ demand for a sign to demonstrate his authority for acting as he did, Jesus offers the “sign” of his Cross and Resurrection:“The Cross and Resurrection give him authority as the one who ushers in true worship. Jesus justifies himself through his Passion—the sign of Jonah that he gives to Israel and to the world. . . .The era of the Temple is over. A new worship (ein neuer Kult) is being introduced, in a Temple not built by human hands. This Temple is his body, the Risen One, who gathers the peoples and unites them in the sacrament of his body and blood. He himself is the new Temple of humanity.The crucifixion of Jesus is at the same time the destruction of the old Temple. With his Resurrection, a new way of worshipping God begins (beginnt eine neue Weise, Gott zu verehren), no longer on this or that mountain, but ‘in spirit and truth’ ( Jn 4:23).”1 This approach to Jesus and the Gospels 1 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Part Two, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 21–22, cf. 148; Joseph Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI., Jesus von Nazareth: Zweiter Teil—Vom Einzug in Jerusalem bis zur Auferstehung (Freiburg: Herder, 2011), 35–36, cf. 168. In the future I will usually give parenthetical page references in my main text, according to the English pagination; I will add the German page numbers only when necessary. Given the ambiguity attaching to the word “cult”—to which the English translator is clearly sensitive—one might perhaps have expected that already the German original would have read “ein neuer Gottesdienst.” 994 Geoffrey Wainwright by way of worship should come as no surprise when one recalls the amount of attention given by Pope Benedict to the Christian liturgy in his earlier writings as Joseph Ratzinger.2 The English version of the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth bears, in fact, the subtitle Holy Week:From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. It seems appropriate, therefore, to see the “mysteries” of Jesus—whether calendrically or sacramentally celebrated in the Church or both—as shaping the “encounters” with the divine Word or Lord which our author is hoping to induce for his readers and the readers of the Gospels. Already in his foreword he denies attempting a “christology”: “Closer to my intention is the comparison with the theological treatise on the mysteries of the life of Jesus, presented in its classic form by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologiae (ST III, qq. 27–59).While my book has many points of contact with this treatise, it is nevertheless situated in a different historical and spiritual context, and in that sense it also has a different inner objective that determines the structure of the text in essential ways” (xvi). Joseph Ratzinger is attempting to combine—in a way foreshadowed in a famous New York lecture of his from January 1988—“a historical hermeneutic” with “a properly developed faith-hermeneutic” in such a way as to exemplify “a way of observing and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels that can indeed lead to personal encounter and that, through collective listening with Jesus’ disciples across the ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus” (xiv–xv, xvii).3 As we work through the author’s presentation of the “mysteries” of Jesus, we shall meet time and time again the phrase “a new worship,” which will thus gain the rich meaning he intends it to convey. Put most briefly, Ratzinger’s thesis is that Jesus fulfills the worship respectively commanded and promised by the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament and thereby surpasses them, so 2 Joseph Ratzinger, Das Fest des Glaubens: Versuche zur Theologie des Gottesdienstes (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1981) = The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986); Ein neues Lied für den Herrn: Christusglaube und Liturgie in der Gegenwart (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1995) = A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today, trans. Martha M. Matesich (New York: Crossroad, 1996); Der Geist der Liturgie: Eine Einführung (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2000) = The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000). 3 The New York lecture was “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today”; see Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 1–23. As to the attempted “combination of the two hermeneutics,” the Pope declares at the start of the present book that “fundamentally, this is a matter of finally putting into practice the methodological principles formulated for exegesis by the Second Vatican Council (in Dei Verbum 12), a task that unfortunately has scarcely been attempted thus far” (xv). The "New Worship" 995 that his own revelatory and redemptive work constitutes the basis of a new way of worship that is first enjoyed by the Christian Church while being potentially or eschatologically universal in exercise and scope, such as underlay the divine Creator’s project from the very beginning. To begin with, we may perhaps cheat a little by reverting to the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, which named two of the “mysteries of Jesus” in its subtitle: his Baptism and his Transfiguration.4 Calendrically, the Baptism of Jesus belongs with Epiphany, either on January 6th itself (as in the East) or (for many centuries in the West) on the octave day, the 13th (in recent years, many in the West have shifted the commemoration to an adjacent Sunday). Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan was a “manifestation” (epiphaneia) of his identity as “the Beloved Son” who lives face-to-face with the Father in a way that surpasses Moses of old (4–6; 19; 23) and is about to figure as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (20–22).5 As Ratzinger expounds it, Jesus’ baptism “anticipated his death on the Cross”: it was “an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity,” and the heavenly voice at his ascent from the cleansing waters “proclaimed an anticipation of the Resurrection” (17–18). Given the comprehensive range of Christ’s salvific work, “to accept the invitation to be baptized now means to go to the place of Jesus’ Baptism. It is to go where he identifies himself with us and to receive there our identification with him.The point where he anticipates death has now become the point where we anticipate rising again with him” (18). Moreover, at the Baptism of Jesus, “the mystery of the Trinitarian God is beginning to emerge even though its depths can be fully revealed only when Jesus’ journey is complete. . . . [T]here is an arc joining this beginning of Jesus’ journey and the words with which he sends his disciples into the world after his Resurrection: ‘Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Mt 28:19). The Baptism that Jesus’ disciples have been administering since he spoke those words is an entrance into the Master’s own Baptism—into the reality that he anticipated by means of it. That is the way to become a Christian” (23).6 4 Jesus von Nazareth: Von der Taufe im Jordan bis zur Verklärung (Freiburg: Herder, 2007) = Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Random House–Doubleday, 2007). 5 In the phraseology of John the Baptist’s testimony at John 1:29 Ratzinger finds allusions both to the Song of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:7 and to the Paschal Lamb (cf. Jn 19:36; 1 Cor 5:7; 1 Pt 1:19; Rv 5:6, etc.). 6 On Pope Benedict’s interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, which belongs here in the first volume, see my “Gospel Hermeneutics in Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth” in Nova et Vetera 7, no. 1 (2009): 7–17. 996 Geoffrey Wainwright The Baptism of Jesus finds a matching companion in his Transfiguration, which constitutes the Gospel now read in many churches on the last Sunday of the Epiphany season (as in the Revised Common Lectionary). Given Peter’s reference in the story to “tents,” and helped by Jean Daniélou’s Bible et Liturgie, Joseph Ratzinger finds in the episode the “three-dimensional structure . . . typical of major Jewish feasts generally” and here exemplified in the Feast of Tabernacles: “a celebration originally borrowed from nature religion [and hence giving a sense of the Creator] becomes at the same time a feast in remembrance of God’s saving deeds in history, and remembrance in turn becomes hope for definitive redemption. Creation, history, and hope become interlinked” (314; cf. 309). In particular, it is the conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah about “the exodus which Jesus was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Lk 9:31)—overheard by Peter, James and John on the mountain—and the divine voice from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son: listen to him” (Lk 9:35), which give the interpretive clue to what Jesus said on the descent: “There are some . . . who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power” (Mk 9:1): Helped this time by Rudolf Pesch’s Markusevangelium, Ratzinger writes: “On the mountain the three [disciples] see the glory of God shining out of Jesus. . . . On the mountain— in the conversation of Jesus with the Law and the Prophets—they realize that the true Feast of Tabernacles has come. On the mountain they learn that Jesus himself is the living Torah, the complete Word of God. On the mountain they see the “power” (dynamis) of the Kingdom that is coming in Christ. Yet equally, through the awe-inspiring encounter with God’s glory in Jesus, they must learn what Paul says to the disciples of all ages in the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power (dynamis) of God and the wisdom of God’ (1 Cor 1:23–24). . . . They personally experience the anticipation of the Parousia, and that is how they are slowly initiated into the full depth of the mystery of Jesus” (317–18). With that we may now return to Benedict’s second volume, which is in some way governed by Jesus’ cleansing of the Jerusalem Temple and its replacement by the Temple of his own Body. Palm Sunday: The Entrance into Jerusalem At the head of “Holy Week” stands “Palm Sunday” and Jesus’ “Entrance into Jerusalem”: “The pilgrims who came to Jerusalem with Jesus . . . now spread their garments on the street along which Jesus passes. They pluck branches from the trees and cry out verses from Psalm 118, words of The "New Worship" 997 blessing from Israel’s pilgrim liturgy, which on their lips become a Messianic proclamation: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!’ (Mk 11:9–10; cf. Ps 118:26). . . . In the Hosanna acclamation, we find an expression of the complex emotions of the pilgrims accompanying Jesus and of his disciples: joyful praise of God at the moment of the processional entry, hope that the hour of the Messiah had arrived, and at the same time a prayer that the Davidic kingship and hence God’s kingship over Israel would be reestablished” (6–7). Writing for Gentile Christians, Luke broadens the scope: “he omits the Hosanna and the reference to David, and in its place he gives an exclamation reminiscent of Christmas: ‘Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ (19:38, cf. 2:14).” In John’s Gospel, “the universalist vision of the Prophet Isaiah (56:7) of a future in which all peoples come together to worship the Lord as the one God” is brought—by the episode of the Greeks who “wish to see Jesus” and the teaching of Jesus concerning the manner of his impending glorification (12:20–36)—“into the light of the Cross: from the Cross, the one God becomes visible to the nations; in the Son they will recognize the Father, that is to say, the one God, who revealed himself in the burning bush”; indeed, “in the crucified Jesus they [the Greeks] will find the true God, the one they were seeking in their myths and their philosophy” (18–20). Here now is how Joseph Ratzinger sees the words and events of the Entrance into Jerusalem shaping “the new worship”: The early Church was right to read this scene as an anticipation of what she does in her liturgy. Even in the earliest post-Easter liturgical text that we possess—the Didachê (ca. 100)—before the distribution of the holy gifts the Hosanna appears, together with the Maranatha: “Let his grace draw near, and let this present world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. Whoever is holy, let him approach; whoever is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen” (10:6). The Benedictus also entered the liturgy at a very early stage. For the infant Church,“Palm Sunday” was not a thing of the past. Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey, so too the Church saw him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine.7 The Church greets the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as the one who is coming now, the one who has entered into her midst. At the same time, she greets him as the one who continues to come, the one who leads us toward his coming. As pilgrims, we go up to him; as a pilgrim, he comes 7 In an almost incidental remark Ratzinger will later (228) see significance also in the fact that “Jesus availed himself of a donkey on which no one had yet ridden (Mk 11:2)”—another case of “novelty.” 998 Geoffrey Wainwright to us and takes us up with him in his “ascent”: to the Cross and Resurrection, to the definitive Jerusalem that is already growing in the midst of this world in the communion that unites us with his body. (10–11) In the earliest days after Easter and Pentecost, the infant Church still meets in the Temple for preaching and prayer; but it is “the breaking of bread”—celebrated in their homes—that has become “the new ‘cultic’ center (die neue “kultische” Mitte) of the lives of the faithful”: the place of the sacrifices under the Law yielded to “the legacy of the Last Supper, to fellowship in the Lord’s body, to his death and Resurrection” (35–36; German 51). Correspondingly, it will lie at the very heart of St. Paul’s teaching (epitomized in Romans 3:23–25) that “all sacrifices are fulfilled in the Cross of Christ, that in him the underlying intention of all sacrifices is accomplished, that Jesus in this way has taken the place of the temple, that he himself is the new Temple” (38). In him “the entire Old Testament theology of worship (and with it all the theologies of worship in the history of religions) is ‘preserved and surpassed’ [aufgehoben] and raised to a completely new level. Jesus himself is the presence of the living God. God and man, God and the world, touch one another in him. The meaning of the ritual of the Day of Atonement is accomplished in him. In his self-offering on the Cross, Jesus, as it were, brings all the sin of the world deep within the love of God and wipes it away. Accepting the Cross, entering into fellowship with Christ, means entering the realm of transformation and expiation” (39–40; German 55). That is the Gospel that is now to be preached also to the nations of the Gentiles (Mt 24:14; Mk 13:10; Rom 11:25–26), and then “the end will come.” The message is intended “to lead us toward the essential: toward life built upon the word of God that Jesus gives us; toward an encounter with him, the living Word; toward responsibility before the Judge of the living and the dead” (52). Maundy Thursday: The Last Supper To the events of Maundy Thursday associated with the Last Supper—which he dates to the evening before the Jewish Passover—Ratzinger devotes no fewer than four chapters in the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth. First comes “The Washing of the Feet,” where Jesus gives to his disciples precisely the new “mandatum” that they are to love one another, following the example of their Lord and Master who, in his case, stoops to their feet in order to perform the menial ablution as an enactment of his loving them “to the end” ( Jn 13:1–20): “Jesus represents the whole of his saving ministry in one symbolic act. He divests himself of his divine splendor; he, as it were, kneels down before us; he washes and dries our soiled feet, in The "New Worship" 999 order to make us fit to sit at table for God’s wedding feast. . . . [I]t is the servant-love of Jesus that draws us out of our pride and makes us fit for God, makes us ‘clean’ ” (57). Cleanliness is, of course, “a fundamental concept of the Old Testament and of world religions in general,” and they have therefore “created systems of ‘purification’, intended to make it possible for man to approach God” (57). According to Saint John’s Gospel, and Jesus himself, “being incorporated into his body, being pervaded by his presence is what matters” (60). Benedict borrows the patristic pairing of sacramentum and exemplum to capture the dual nature of “the new commandment” as both gift and task: “the entire mystery of Christ—his life and death—in which he draws close to us, enters us through his Spirit, and transforms us” is what “truly ‘cleanses’ us, renewing us from within” and so “also unleashes a dynamic of new life” (62): “only by letting ourselves be repeatedly cleansed, ‘made pure’, by the Lord himself can we learn to act as he did, in union with him” (64). Talk of our “growing immersion in him” (65) prepares the way for a brief discussion of Baptism (and Confession) in connection with the conversation between Jesus and Peter about “the complete bath” and “the washing of the feet” ( Jn 13:6–10). “Over and above its fundamental symbolism,” the washing of the feet “acquires another more concrete meaning . . . that points to the practicalities of life in the early Church”: “The complete bath that was taken for granted can only mean Baptism, by which man is immersed into Christ once and for all, acquiring his new identity as one who dwells in Christ. This fundamental event, by which we become Christians not through our own doing but through the action of the Lord in his Church, cannot be repeated.Yet in the life of Christians—for table fellowship with the Lord— it constantly requires completion: ‘washing of feet’.” Benedict finds in 1 John 1:8–10, James 5:16, and in Didachê 4:14 and 14:1 a foreshadowing of the sacrament of Confession. “The point is this: guilt must not be allowed to fester in the silence of the soul, poisoning it from within. It needs to be confessed.Through confession, we bring it into the light, we place it within Christ’s purifying love (cf. Jn 3:20–21). In confession, the Lord washes our soiled feet over and over again and prepares us for table fellowship with him” (73–74). Next in Joseph Ratzinger’s treatment of Holy Thursday comes “Jesus’ High-Priestly Prayer” of John 17. It “can be understood only against the background of the Jewish Feast of Atonement (Yom ha-Kippurim)”: “Just as the high priest makes atonement for himself, for the priestly clan, and for the whole community of Israel, so Jesus prays for himself, for the Apostles, and finally for all who will come to believe in him through their word—for the Church of all times (cf. Jn 17:20). He sanctifies 1000 Geoffrey Wainwright ‘himself ’, and he obtains the sanctification of those who are his. . . . His Cross and his exaltation is the Day of Atonement for the world, in which the whole of world history—in the face of all human sin and its destructive consequences—finds its meaning and is aligned with its true purpose and destiny” (78–79).8 The place of sacrificial animals has been taken by “what the Greek Fathers called thysía logikê ” (cf. the logikê latreía of Romans 12:1). Only this “word” is “no mere human speech, but rather the word of him who is ‘the Word’, and so it draws all human words into God’s inner dialogue, into his reason and his love.” For this eternal Word, “a body has been prepared” (Heb 10:5): “With the institution of the Eucharist”—to which Benedict will more directly come—“Jesus transforms his cruel death into ‘word’, into the radical expression of his love, his self-giving to the point of death. So he himself becomes the ‘Temple’. Insofar as the high-priestly prayer forms the consummation of Jesus’ selfgift, it represents the new worship and has a deep inner connection with the Eucharist” (80); the Eucharist is, in fact, “the new atonement liturgy of Jesus Christ, the liturgy of the New Covenant, in its entire grandeur and purity” (88). In connection with another theme of John 17—that of the name of God (vv. 6, 26)—Ratzinger invokes the Burning Bush and sees in Jesus “the new Moses”: “The revelation of the name is a new mode of God’s presence among men, a radically new way in which God makes his home with them. In Jesus, God gives himself entirely into the world of mankind: whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). . . .The Incarnation, through which God’s new being as man was effected, becomes through [Jesus’] sacrifice an event for the whole of mankind. As the Risen One, he comes once more in order to make all people into his body, the new Temple. The ‘manifestation of the name’ is meant to ensure that ‘the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (17:26). It is aimed at the transformation of the whole of creation, so that it may become in a completely new way God’s true dwelling place in union with Christ” (91–92). Then comes the Last Supper itself, and particularly Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist. The historicity of that institution is vital: “If Jesus did not give his disciples bread and wine as his body and blood, then the Church’s Eucharistic celebration is empty” (104). As to the nature of the 8 Referring to John 17:17–19, Ratzinger writes: “If the disciples’ sanctification in the truth is ultimately about sharing in Jesus’ priestly mission, then we may recognize in those words of John’s Gospel the institution of the priesthood of the Apostles, the institution of the New Testament priesthood, which at the deepest level is service to the truth” (90; cf. 98–99 for “apostolic succession” as the “sacramental” capacitation for the continuation of the mission). The "New Worship" 1001 Last Supper: knowing that he was about to die, “Jesus invited his disciples to a Last Supper of a very special kind, one that followed no specific Jewish ritual but, rather, constituted his farewell; during the meal he gave them something new: he gave them himself as the true Lamb and thereby instituted his Passover. . . . The old was not abolished; it was simply brought to its full meaning” (113–14). The Death and Resurrection of Christ having become the Passover that endures (cf. 1 Cor 5:7–8), one can understand how it was that “very early on, Jesus’ Last Supper—which includes not only a prophecy, but a real anticipation of the Cross and Resurrection in the eucharistic gifts—was regarded as a Passover: as his Passover. And so it was” (114–15). As to sayings over the cup—“my blood of the covenant” (Mk 14:24; Mt 26:28), “the new covenant in my blood” (Lk 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25)—“the New Testament writers heard echoes of both Exodus 24:8 [the Mosaic covenant] and Jeremiah 31:31 [the promise of a new covenant] in Jesus’ words and could choose to place the accent more on the one or on the other, without thereby being unfaithful to the Lord’s words, which in barely audible yet unmistakable ways gathered within themselves the Law and the Prophets” (126–27). In line with 1 Timothy 4:4–5, the Church has from her earliest days understood the words of consecration “as part of her praying in and with Jesus, as a central part of the praise and thanksgiving through which God’s earthly gift is given to us anew in the form of Jesus’ body and blood, as God’s gift of himself in his Son’s self-emptying love” (128). As to the acts of breaking and distributing, “this archetypally human gesture of giving, sharing, and uniting acquires an entirely new depth in Jesus’ Last Supper through his gift of himself. God’s bountiful distribution of gifts takes on a radical quality when the Son communicates and distributes himself in the form of bread. . . . In this sacrament we enjoy the hospitality of God, who gives himself to us in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen” (129). In the “dual action of praise/thanksgiving and breaking/distributing that is recounted at the beginning of the institution narrative, the essence of the new worship established by Christ through the Last Supper, Cross, and Resurrection is made manifest: here the old Temple worship is abolished and at the same time brought to its fulfillment” (130): “This is the new worship, which he establishes at the Last Supper, drawing mankind into his vicarious obedience. Our participation in Christ’s body and blood indicates that his action is ‘for many’, for us, and that we are drawn into the ‘many’ through the sacrament” (134). The “instruction to repeat” (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24–26) “refers simply to what was new in Jesus’ actions that evening: the breaking of bread, the prayer of blessing and thanksgiving accompanied by the words of consecration of 1002 Geoffrey Wainwright bread and wine. We might say that through these words our ‘now’ is taken up into the hour of Jesus. What Jesus had proclaimed in John 12:32 [always a favorite text of Ratzinger’s] is here fulfilled: from the Cross he draws all men to himself, into himself. Through Jesus’ words and actions, then, the essentials of the new ‘worship’ was given, but no definitive liturgical form had yet been established” (139). In the early life of the Church, “we see the new thanksgiving prayer, the eucharistia, gradually emerging as the definitive form, the liturgical shape that gives the words of institution their meaning. Here the new worship is established that brings the Temple sacrifices to an end: God is glorified in word, but in a Word that took flesh in Jesus, a Word that, by means of this body which has now passed through death, is able to draw in the whole man, the whole of mankind—thus heralding the beginning of the new creation” (141). Ratzinger follows up the literary hints that show how quickly Sunday morning—as the time of the first encounter with the risen Lord—became “the fixed time for the Christian liturgy” (142–43): “The Day of Resurrection is the exterior and interior locus of Christian worship, and the thanksgiving prayer as Jesus’ creative anticipation of the Resurrection is the Lord’s way of uniting us with his thanksgiving, blessing us in the gift and drawing us into the process of transformation that starts with the gifts, moves on to include us, and then spreads out to the world ‘until he comes’ (1 Cor 11:26)” (144). The last events of the Thursday evening take place on the Mount of Olives, in Gethsemane: “When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives” (Mt 26:30; Mk 14:26): “We may suppose that, in keeping with the Passover that he had celebrated in his own way, Jesus may have sung some of the Hallel Psalms (113–18 and 136)” (145). Ratzinger takes the opportunity to expand on Jesus’ use of the Psalter and its place in the “new worship” and hence in the Christian liturgy: Jesus prays the Psalms of Israel with his disciples: this element is fundamental for understanding the figure of Jesus, but also for understanding the Psalms themselves, which in him could be said to acquire a new subject, a new mode of presence, and an extension beyond Israel into universality. We also see a new vision of the figure of David emerging here: in the canonical Psalter, David is regarded as the principal author of the Psalms. He thus appears as the one who leads and inspires the prayer of Israel, who sums up all Israel’s sufferings and hopes, carries them within himself, and expresses them in prayer. So Israel can continue praying with David, expressing itself in the Psalms, which constantly offer new hope, however deep the surrounding darkness. In the early Church, Jesus was immediately hailed as the new David, the real David, and so the Psalms could be The "New Worship" 1003 recited in a new way—yet without discontinuity—as prayer in communion with Jesus Christ. Augustine offered a perfect explanation of this Christian way of praying the Psalms—a way that evolved very early on— when he said: it is always Christ who is speaking in the Psalms—now as the head, now as the body (cf. En. in Ps. 60:1–2; 61:4; 85:1, 5). Yet through him—through Jesus Christ—all of us now form a single subject, and so, in union with him, we can truly speak to God. The process of appropriation and reinterpretation, which begins with Jesus’ praying of the Psalms, is a typical illustration of the unity of the two Testaments, as taught to us by Jesus. When he prays, he is completely in union with Israel, and yet he is Israel in a new way: the old Passover now appears as a great foreshadowing. The new Passover, though, is Jesus himself, and the true “liberation” is taking place now, through his love that embraces all mankind. (146–47)9 Across the brook Kedron was “a garden” ( Jn 18:1)—“an unmistakable reference to the story of Paradise and the Fall”: “It is in the ‘garden’ that Jesus is betrayed,” having already in his prayers “fully accepted the Father’s will, made it his own, and thus changed the course of history” (149–50). In that place of prayer by Gethsemane (Mt 26:36–46; Mk 14:32–42; Lk 22:39–46), Ratzinger notes the “magnificent church” known to the pilgrim Egeria in the late fourth century, reduced to ruins by the turmoil of the times but rediscovered by the Franciscans in the twentieth century: “Completed in 1924, the present-day Church of Jesus’ Agony not only encompasses the site of the ‘ecclesia elegans’ [Egeria’s church]: it once more surrounds the rock on which tradition tells us that Jesus prayed” (148–49, quoting Gerhard Kroll, Auf den Spuren Jesu, 410). This, says Pope Benedict, is one of the most venerable sites of Christendom: Anyone who spends time here is confronted with one of the most dramatic moments in the mystery of our Savior: it was here that Jesus experienced the final loneliness, the whole anguish of the human condition. Here the abyss of sin and evil penetrated deep within his soul. Here he was to quake with foreboding of his imminent death. Here he was kissed by the betrayer. Here he was abandoned by all the disciples. Here he wrestled with his destiny for my sake. (149) 9 Ratzinger has already noted (67–68; 140) the subtle connection of Psalm 41:9 and 55:13 with the Eucharist at John 13:18 (cf. 6:54–58), and Psalm 22:25–26 as likely in connection with communion (140–41). Psalm 43:5 will be quoted during Jesus’ agony in the garden (152–53). And Psalm 22, “the great Passion Psalm,” will, of course, recur with the Cross. On the Christian use of the Psalms I may perhaps invoke my own study of Psalm 33 in my Embracing Purpose: Essays on God, the World and the Church (Peterborough, U.K.: Epworth, 2007), 105–25, 326–31 (notes). 1004 Geoffrey Wainwright The prayer positions of Jesus on the Mount of Olives allow Ratzinger to make comments on Christian liturgical postures that thereby become more than narrow matters of ritual (153–54); they have their place in the new worship. “Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus falls on his face—the prayer posture of extreme submission to the will of God, of radical selfoffering to him. In the Western liturgy, this posture is still adopted on Good Friday, at monastic professions, and at ordinations.” Luke, rather, has Jesus kneeling to pray and thereby “draws Jesus’ night of anguish into the history of Christian prayer: Stephen sinks to his knees in prayer before he is stoned (Acts 7:60); Peter kneels before he wakes Tabitha from death (Acts 9:40); Paul kneels to bid farewell to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:36) and again when the disciples tell him not to go up to Jerusalem (Acts 21:5).” Alois Stöger’s commentary on Luke is quoted for this observation: “when they were confronted with the power of death, they all prayed kneeling down. Martyrdom can only be overcome by prayer. Jesus is the model of martyrs.” Dogmatic history comes into play when Joseph Ratzinger treats the prayer of Jesus here as “the confrontation between two wills”: “Father, save me from this hour . . . Father, glorify your name” ( Jn 12:27–28). “There is the ‘natural will’ of the man Jesus, which resists the appalling destructiveness of what is happening and wants to plead that this chalice pass from him; and there is the ‘filial will’ that abandons itself totally to the Father’s will” (156). It took several centuries for the Church to arrive at an understanding of the figure of Jesus that took its “final shape as a result of faithfilled reflection on the Mount of Olives” (157). “The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon continues to indicate, to the Church of all ages, the necessary pathway into the mystery of Jesus Christ” (159). The Byzantine Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) is invoked for the christological and salvific clarification that Pope Benedict formulates as follows: “The drama of the Mount of Olives lies in the fact that Jesus draws man’s natural will away from opposition and back toward synergy, and in so doing he restores man’s true greatness. In Jesus’ natural human will, the sum total of human nature’s resistance to God is, as it were, present within Jesus himself. The obstinacy of us all, the whole of our opposition to God is present, and in his struggle, Jesus elevates our recalcitrant nature to become its true self ” (160–61, where Christoph Schönborn is also quoted, from God’s Human Face, 126–27). Our author reverts directly to Scripture with final thoughts on “Jesus’ Prayer on the Mount of Olives in the Letter to the Hebrews” (162–66). Reading Hebrews 5:7–10 as referring to “the whole of Jesus’ via dolorosa right up to the crucifixion,” Ratzinger concludes: “From the Cross, new life comes to us. On the Cross, Jesus becomes the source of life for himself and for all. On the Cross death is conquered.The granting of Jesus’ The "New Worship" 1005 prayer concerns all mankind: his obedience becomes life for all. This conclusion is spelled out for us in the closing words of the passage we have been studying: ‘He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek’ ” (166).With that we stretch forward to Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension—or Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and (yes) Ascension Day. Good Friday: The Cross In his “trial” before the Sanhedrin, Jesus had declared that his present apparent abasement would be succeeded by his visible exaltation. “ ‘Hereafter you will see . . .’, Jesus had said in Matthew’s account (26:64), in a striking paradox. Hereafter—something new is happening. All through history, people look upon the disfigured face of Jesus, and there they recognize the glory of God” (182). Remarkable about the accounts in all four Gospels of Jesus’ suffering and dying on the Cross is “the multitude of Old Testament allusions and quotations they contain: word of God and event are deeply interwoven. The facts are, so to speak, permeated with the word—with meaning; and the converse is also true: what previously had been merely word—often beyond our capacity to understand—now becomes reality, its meaning unlocked. . . . It is not the words of Scripture that prompted the narration of facts: rather, it was the facts themselves, at first unintelligible, that paved the way toward a fresh understanding of Scripture” (202–3). In particular, “Psalm 22 pervades the whole Passion story and points beyond it” (214). Benedict lights on verses 25–27 as anticipating the “new worship” inaugurated by Jesus: The cry of anguish [in the first third of the Psalm] then changes into a profession of trust, for in the space of three verses a resounding answer to prayer is anticipated and celebrated. First: “From you comes my praise in the great congregation: my vows I will pay before those who fear [God]” (v. 25). The early Church recognized herself in that great assembly which celebrates the granting of the suppliant’s prayer, his rescue, the Resurrection! Two further surprising elements now follow. Not only does salvation come to the psalmist, but it leads to the “afflicted [eating] and [being] satisfied” (v. 26). There is more: “All the ends of the earth shall . . . turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him” (v. 27). In these last two verses, how could the early Church fail to recognize, in the first place, “the afflicted [eating] and [being] satisfied as a sign of the mysterious new meal that the Lord had given them in the Eucharist? And secondly how could she fail to see there the unexpected development that the peoples of the earth were converted to the God 1006 Geoffrey Wainwright of Israel, to the God of Jesus Christ—that the Church of Christ was gathered together from all peoples? Eucharist (praise and thanksgiving: v. 25; eating and being satisfied: v. 26) and universal salvation (v. 27) appear as God’s great answer to prayer in response to Jesus’ cry. It is important always to keep in mind the vast span of events portrayed in this psalm, if we are to understand why it occupies such a central place in the story of the crucifixion. (205) Not unexpectedly, Benedict then turns to the blood and water flowing from the pierced side of Christ on the Cross ( John 19:34). Beginning with 1 John 5:6–8, and “true to Zechariah’s prophecy [12:10 and 13:1], the Church in every century has looked upon this pierced heart and recognized therein the source of the blessings that are symbolized in blood and water. . . . In this double outpouring of blood and water, the Fathers saw an image of the two fundamental sacraments—Eucharist and Baptism—which sprang forth from the Lord’s pierced side, from his heart. This is the new outpouring that creates the Church and renews mankind. Moreover, the opened side of the Lord asleep on the Cross prompted the Fathers to point to the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, and so in the outpouring of the sacraments they also recognized the birth of the Church: the creation of the new woman from the side of the new Adam” (225–26). Or take the climactic “It is finished” of John 19:30: In this final word, the great mystery of the Cross shines forth. The new cosmic liturgy is accomplished.The Cross of Jesus replaces all other acts of worship as the one true glorification of God, in which God glorifies himself through him in whom he grants us his love, thereby drawing us to himself. The Synoptic Gospels explicitly portray Jesus’ death on the Cross as a cosmic and liturgical event: the sun is darkened, the veil of the Temple is torn in two, the dead rise again. Even more important than the cosmic sign is an act of faith: the Roman centurion—the commander of the execution squad—in his consternation over all that he sees taking place, acknowledges Jesus as God’s Son: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). At the foot of the Cross, the Church of the Gentiles comes into being. Through the Cross, the Lord gathers people together to form the new community of the worldwide Church. Through the suffering Son, they recognize the true God. (223–24) Ratzinger places the death of Jesus—with John’s Gospel—at the time of the slaying of the Jewish Passover lambs. Now “the Temple sacrifices, the cultic heart of the Torah, were a thing of the past. Christ had taken The "New Worship" 1007 their place. In the New Testament literature there are various attempts to explain Christ’s Cross as the new worship, the true atonement, the true purification of this corrupted world” (230–31). First Ratzinger again invokes briefly Romans 3:25 and its hilasterion. Then for the theological and indeed existential implications of “the new worship” in more detail, Ratzinger turns again to Hebrews and once more to Romans. First (232–35), he examines Hebrews 10:1–10, finding in the passage “the conclusion of a threefold development in the theology of worship” (233). The New Testament author describes Old Testament worship as a “shadow” (v. 1), and not only because “it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (v. 4) but also because even the God-given “open ear” in the original of the quoted Psalm 40:6–8 as the door to “living within and on the basis of God’s word” and thus to obedience as “the right way to worship God” had now been overtaken by the gift of the Incarnation of the Word: “a body you have prepared for me” is how the writer of Hebrews modifies the psalmic text. Certainly, “prayer, the self-opening of the human spirit to God, is true worship. The more man becomes ‘word’—or rather: the more his whole existence is directed toward God—the more he accomplishes true worship.” However, “again and again our obedience proves patchy. . . . The deep sense of the inadequacy of all human obedience to God’s word causes the urgent desire for atonement to break out again and again, yet it is not something we can accomplish by ourselves or on the basis of ‘rendering our obedience’.” Finally, “the Logos himself, the Son, becomes flesh; he takes on a human body. In this way a new obedience becomes possible, an obedience that surpasses all human fulfillment of the commandments. The Son becomes man and in his body bears the whole of humanity back to God. Only the incarnate Word, whose love is fulfilled on the Cross, is perfect obedience. In him not only does the critique of the Temple sacrifices become definitive, but whatever longing still remains is also fulfilled: his incarnate obedience draws us all with him and at the same time wipes away all our disobedience through his love. . . . Central to the Christian life, then, are both the sacrament of Baptism, by which we are taken up into Christ’s obedience, and also the Eucharist, in which the Lord’s obedience on the Cross embraces us all, purifies us, and draws us into the perfect worship offered by Jesus Christ” (235). This “existential aspect of the new concept of worship and sacrifice” is then expounded by Benedict (236–38) on the basis of Romans 12:1–2 (the logikê latreía) and 15:15–16. Taking up the latter passage, where Paul “interprets his apostolate in terms of priesthood and describes the Gentiles who have become believers as the living sacrifice that is pleasing to God,” Benedict can declare that “true priesthood is 1008 Geoffrey Wainwright therefore the ministry of word and sacrament that transforms people into an offering to God and makes the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer.” And yet one more vista opens up on the basis of Philippians 2:17 and 2 Timothy 4:6: “Paul views his expected martyrdom as liturgy and as sacrificial event. . . . [I]n martyrdom he is fully drawn into the obedience of Christ, into the liturgy of the Cross, and hence into true worship” (239). In the next century, Ignatius of Antioch described himself as “Christ’s grain of wheat, ground through martyrdom in order to become the bread of Christ (cf. Ad Rom. 4:1).” And at the martyrdom of Polycarp, the fire “formed a wall around the martyr’s figure, and there was he in the center of it, not like burning flesh, but like a loaf baking in the oven,” and it spread “a delicious fragrance, like the odor of incense” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 15). And Benedict concludes: “We can, as it were, become bread, to the extent that the mystery of Christ is communicated through our life and our suffering, and to the extent that his love makes us an offering to God and to our fellow men” (240). Easter Sunday: Jesus’ Resurrection from the Dead “None of the evangelists recounts Jesus’ Resurrection itself. It is an event taking place within the mystery of God between Jesus and the Father, which for us defies description: by its very nature it lies outside human experience” (261). Yet its significance is paramount. Benedict begins with 1 Corinthians 15:14–15, where “Saint Paul explains quite drastically what faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ means for the Christian message overall: it is its very foundation. The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead” (241). In Benedict’s own formulation: “only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then he becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself ” (242). Again: “In Jesus’ Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind. . . . Only if we understand it as a universal event, as the opening up of a new dimension of human existence, are we on the way to any kind of correct understanding of the New Testament Resurrection testimony” (244). Historically, it was Jesus’ having been accredited through the Resurrection as the one sent by God that made “a new reading of Scripture” necessary: “Now people had to search Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to understand them in a new way and thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God” (245)—a process epitomized in the story of the risen Lord and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus The "New Worship" 1009 (252; cf. 269–70). In view of the theme of “the new worship,” special interest attaches to what Benedict says about “the third day,” the day of the first encounters with the risen Lord: The first day of the week—the third after Friday—is attested in the New Testament from a very early stage as a day when the Christian community assembled for worship (cf. 1 Cor 16:2; Acts 20:7; Rev 1:10). Ignatius of Antioch (late first century, early second century) provides evidence that for Christians Sunday had already supplanted the Jewish Sabbath culture: “We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the Sabbath and now order their lives by the Lord’s day instead (the day when life first dawned for us, thanks to him and his death)” (Ad Magn., 9:1). If we bear in mind the immense importance attached to the Sabbath in the Old Testament tradition on the basis of the Creation account and the Decalogue, then it is clear that only an event of extraordinary impact could have led to the abandonment of the Sabbath and its replacement by the first day of the week. Only an event that marked souls indelibly could bring about such a profound realignment in the religious culture of the week. Mere theological speculations could not have achieved this. For me, the celebration of the Lord’s day, which was a characteristic part of the Christian community from the outset, is one of the most convincing proofs that something extraordinary happened that day—the discovery of the empty tomb and the encounter with the risen Lord. (258–59) And there is one more observation, which almost carries us to our next chapter. Ratzinger calls attention to Acts 1:4, where the risen Lord is reported as having “eaten [salt]” (synalizómenos) with the apostles during the first forty days after the Resurrection: “Salt [als] is regarded as a guarantee of durability. It is a remedy against putrefaction. To eat is always to hold death at bay—it is a way of preserving life. The ‘eating of salt’ by Jesus after the Resurrection, which we therefore encounter as a sign of new and everlasting life, points to the risen Lord’s new banquet with his followers. It is a covenant-event, and in this sense it has an inner association with the Last Supper, when the Lord established the New Covenant. So the mysterious cipher of eating salt expresses an inner bond between the meal on the eve of Jesus’ Passion and the risen Lord’s new table fellowship: he gives himself to his followers as food and thus makes them sharers in his life, in life itself ” (271–72). In sum (274–77), in the Resurrection of Jesus “an ontological leap occurred, one that touches being as such, opening up a dimension that 1010 Geoffrey Wainwright affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God. . . . [I]t is of the essence of the Resurrection precisely to burst open history and usher in a new dimension commonly described as eschatological. . . . Yet the Resurrection does not simply stand outside or above history. As something that breaks out of history and transcends it, the Resurrection nevertheless has its origin within history and up to a certain point still belongs there. Perhaps we could put it this way: Jesus’ Resurrection points beyond history but has left a footprint within history. . . . It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he only gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind; that he becomes man and so can be overlooked by his contemporaries and by the decisive forces within history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals himself; that he continues to knock so gently at the doors of our hearts and slowly opens our eyes if we open our doors to him. And yet—is not this the truly divine way? Not to overwhelm with external power, but to give freedom, to offer and elicit love. . . . Let us entrust ourselves to him, knowing that we are on the right path.With Thomas let us place our hands into Jesus’ pierced side and confess: ‘My Lord and my God!’ ( Jn 20:28).” Ascension Day: Session at the Father’s Right Hand The traditional date for celebrating Christ’s Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father is, of course, “Ascension Day,” coming forty days after the Sunday of the Resurrection (cf. Acts 1:1–11; 2:32–36).10 Pope Benedict takes “the cloud” that received him up as a way of “presenting Jesus’ departure, not as a journey to the stars, but as his entry into the mystery of God. It evokes an entirely different order of magnitude, a different dimension of being”: “God stands in relation to all spaces as Lord and Creator. His presence is not spatial, but divine. ‘Sitting at God’s right hand’ means participating in the divine dominion over space” (282–83). The disciples are “convinced of a new presence of Jesus. They are certain (as the risen Lord said in St. Matthew’s account [cf. Mt 28:18–20]) that he is now present to them in a new and powerful way. They know that ‘the right hand of God’ to which he ‘has been exalted’ includes a new manner of his presence; they know that he is now permanently among them, in the way that only God can be close to us” (281). What does that mean for “the new worship”? 10 If some have more recently taken to postponing the feast of the Ascension to the following Sunday, one may perhaps suppose that the shift depends on some as yet undiscovered manuscripts that read “forty-three” rather than “forty” at Acts 1:3. The "New Worship" 1011 The “new accessibility of Jesus presupposes a newness on our part as well. Through Baptism, our life is already hidden with Christ in God— in our current existence we are already ‘raised’ with him to the Father’s right hand (cf. Col 3:1–3). If we enter fully into the essence of our Christian life, then we really do touch the risen Lord, then we really do become fully ourselves. Touching Christ and ascending belong together. And let us not forget that for John[’s Gospel] the place of Christ’s ‘exaltation’ is his Cross and that our own ever-necessary ‘ascension’, our ‘going up on high’ in order to touch him, has to be travelled in company with the crucified Jesus” (286). This calls for “vigilance” (to pick up a theme from Jesus’ eschatological teaching): “Vigilance means first of all openness to the good, to the truth, to God, in the midst of an often meaningless world and in the midst of the power of evil. It means that man tries with all his strength and with great sobriety to do what is right; it means that he lives, not according to his own wishes, but according to the signpost of faith” (288). “The Book of Revelation,” Ratzinger notes (288), “concludes with promise of the Lord’s return and with a prayer for it: ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (22:20).” He points to the same prayer at the end of the First Letter to the Corinthians, which allows a twofold interpretation: Marana tha (Lord, come!), or Maran atha (the Lord has come): “This twofold reading brings out clearly the peculiar nature of the Christian expectation of Jesus’ coming. It is the invocation ‘Come!’ and at the same time the grateful certainty that ‘he has come’ ”(289). The testimony of the Didachê has already been noted for the presence of the Maranatha in the early liturgy. Ratzinger now comments: “Christian prayer for the Lord’s return always includes the experience of his presence. It is never purely focused on the future.The words of the risen Lord make the point ‘I am with you always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28:20). He is with us now, and especially close in the Eucharistic presence. Yet, conversely, the Christian experience of the Lord’s presence does include a certain tension toward the future, toward the moment when that presence will be definitively fulfilled: the presence is not yet complete. It pushes beyond itself. It sets us in motion toward the definitive” (289–90). Pope Benedict turns to the Roman breviary in the First Week of Advent for a passage from Bernard of Clairvaux that speaks of a threefold coming of the Lord: “his first coming was in the flesh and in weakness, the intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power, the last coming will be in glory and majesty.” For Benedict, the “adventus medius” takes place “in a great variety of ways. The Lord comes through his word; he comes in the sacraments, especially in the most Holy Eucharist; he comes into my life through 1012 Geoffrey Wainwright words or events.Yet he also comes in ways that change the world”—and the Pope instances the contributions of the great saints (291–92). The final coming “in glory and majesty” signals the moment when the Son will “hand over to the Father the whole world that is gathered together in him (cf. 1 Cor 15:20–28). Herein is contained the certainty of hope that God will wipe away every tear, that nothing meaningless will remain, that every injustice will be remedied and justice restored. The triumph of love will be the last word of world history” (287). For the conclusion to this second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth Joseph Ratzinger returns to the ending of Luke’s Gospel: Jesus led his followers into the vicinity of Bethany, we are told. “Lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven” (24:50–51). Jesus departs in the act of blessing. He goes while blessing, and he remains in that gesture of blessing. His hands remain stretched out over this world. The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. But at the same time, they are a gesture of opening up, tearing the world open so that heaven may enter in, may become “present” within it. The gesture of hands outstretched in blessing expresses Jesus’ continuing relationship to his disciples, to the world. In departing, he comes to us, in order to raise us up above ourselves and to open up the world to God. That is why the disciples could return home from Bethany rejoicing. In faith we know that Jesus holds his hands stretched out in blessing over us. That is the lasting motive of Christian joy. (292–93) It is under those auspices that we must (actively) await in this world one more Christological event about which we are given to know neither the day nor the hour: “And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.” Here we may suitably go back to what Professor Ratzinger of Regensburg wrote in 1977 in his Eschatologie about the connection between the Christian liturgy—now designated by him “the new worship”—and that promised and expected final coming of Christ into the world: The cosmic imagery of the New Testament cannot be used as a source for the description of a future chain of cosmic events. . . . Instead, these texts form part of a description of the mystery of the Parousia in the language of liturgical tradition. The New Testament conceals and reveals the unspeakable coming of Christ, using language borrowed from that sphere which is graciously enabled to express in this world the point of contact with God. The Parousia is the highest intensification and fulfillment of the Liturgy. And the Liturgy is Parousia, a “parousial” event taking place in our midst. . . . Every Eucharist is The "New Worship" 1013 Parousia, the Lord’s coming, and yet the Eucharist is even more truly the tensed yearning that he would reveal his hidden glory. . . . In touching the risen Jesus, the Church makes contact with the Parousia of the Lord. She prays and lives, so to speak, into that Parousia whose disclosure will be the definitive revelation and fulfillment of the mystery of Easter. . . . The motif of the Parousia becomes the obligation to live the Liturgy as a feast of hope-filled presence directed towards Christ, the universal ruler. In this way, it must become the origin and focus of the love in which the Lord can take up his dwelling. In his Cross, the Lord has preceded us so as to prepare for us a place in the house of the Father. In the Liturgy the Church should, as it were, in following him, prepare for him a dwelling in the world. The theme of watchfulness thus penetrates to the point where it takes on the character of a mission: to let the Liturgy be real, until that time when the Lord himself gives to it that final reality which meanwhile can be sought N&V only in image.11 11 Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein and Aidan Nichols (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press of America; 2nd English-language ed., 2007[?]), 202–4; cf. Eschatologie:Tod und ewiges Leben (Regensburg: Pustet, 6th, expanded, impression, 1990), 166–68. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1015–28 1015 Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation in Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth: Volume 2 W ILLIAM M. W RIGHT IV Duquesne University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania T HE PUBLICATION of volume 2 of Jesus of Nazareth continues Pope Benedict’s theological and spiritual meditation on the figure of Jesus given in the Gospels.1 Benedict makes clear that his objective in Jesus of Nazareth is to produce neither a historical Jesus study, nor a critical exegesis of the Gospels, nor a work of Christology proper.2 Rather, he approaches the Gospels theologically as a means to encounter in the present the living reality of Jesus Christ.3 He seeks “to present the figure and the message of Jesus . . . and so to help foster the growth of a living relationship with him.”4 Benedict’s interaction with the Gospels, therefore, primarily serves a spiritually transformative end. 1 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007); trans. of Jesus von Nazareth (Cittá del Vaticano and Milan: Libreria Editrice Vaticana and RCS Libri S.p.A., 2007); ibid., Jesus of Nazareth Part Two: Holy Week— From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011); trans. of Jesus von Nazareth: Zweiter Teil: Vom Einzug in Jerusalem bis zur Auferstehung (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011). Benedict makes clear (1.xxiii–xxiv) that these volumes are his writings as a theologian and do not comprise part of his papal Magisterium. 2 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1.xxiv; 2.xv, 295. 3 This should not be taken to imply that projects of critical exegesis or Christology prohibit a scholar from approaching Scripture with similar goals in mind. I make this observation in order to categorize Benedict’s work properly and point out his interpretive goals. 4 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1.xxiv; cf. 2.xvii. 1016 William M. Wright IV For this end, Benedict declares that his work “presupposes historicalcritical exegesis and makes use of its findings, but it seeks to transcend this method and to arrive at a genuinely theological interpretation of the scriptural texts.”5 This, Benedict argues, is the very program for Catholic biblical interpretation set forth in Dei Verbum §12.6 The conciliar text prescribes two sets of principles which should inform Catholic biblical interpretation. The first set, given in the first two paragraphs of §12, can be categorized as historical and literary. The Council directs the biblical interpreter to “look for that meaning which the sacred writer, in a determined situation and given the circumstances of his time and culture, intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of a contemporary literary form.”7 Accordingly, the interpreter should seek to understand the communication of the biblical authors by situating their writings in their historical, literary, and cultural contexts of origin. The Council then prescribes a second set of interpretive principles in the third paragraph of Dei Verbum §12 which command “no less attention” than the first: the theological and ecclesial.8 The full text reads: “no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entire Church and the analogy of faith, if we are to derive their true meaning from the sacred texts.”9 These three factors—the canon, the Church’s Tradition, and analogy of faith—all arise from the beliefs and practices of the Church as a historically continuous community of interpretation.10 While Dei Verbum prescribes these two sets of principles for Catholic biblical interpretation, it does not offer much direction as to how they are to be integrated or what a successful integration would look like in practice. Writing in 1982, Joseph Ratzinger observed that the “peaceful juxtaposition” of both sets of principles in the conciliar text “conceals the antagonism of two basic attitudes that are diametrically opposed to one 5 Ibid., 2.295. 6 See ibid., 2.xiv–xv. For further discussion of Benedict’s theological approach to Scripture, see William M.Wright IV, “ ‘A New Synthesis’: Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth,” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 35–51. 7 “The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation—Dei Verbum” in Vatican Council II:The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, New Revised Edition 1992, gen ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1992), §12 (p. 757). 8 Dei Verbum, §12 (Flannery, 758). 9 Ibid. 10 Benedict’s case for the role of the Church as the subject of biblical interpretation is discussed in Francis Martin, “Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, on Biblical Interpretation: Two Leading Principles,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 285–99. Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation 1017 another in both origin and purpose.”11 The theological and ecclesial principles, with their emphasis on the canonical whole and the harmony of Scripture with the Church’s Tradition and faith, articulate “the fundamental concept of patristic exegesis . . . [which] was unity—the unity that is Christ himself.”12 By contrast, the goal of modern historical-critical analysis “is not first of all to unite but to distinguish: not to seek for a pneuma that faith knows is actively present in the whole Bible, but to ask about the many individuals who, each in his own way, have worked on this many-faceted composition.”13 Nevertheless, the Council affirms that, despite fundamental differences in their contexts of origin, presuppositions, reading practices, and goals, both modern biblical criticism and premodern interpretation have positive and abiding value for Catholic biblical exegesis today. The task for Catholic exegetes, as Luke Johnson reminds us, is not to settle for either the historical/literary or the theological/ecclesial, but to integrate both the one and the other.14 Consistent with the first set of historical and literary principles, Benedict wants his theological work in Jesus of Nazareth to be grounded in historical reality and responsible to historical reason. Accordingly, he conducts his own examination of Gospel episodes and draws on the work of specialists in biblical studies. But at the same time, Benedict consciously pushes beyond the methodological limits of modern historical criticism and explicitly involves the Church’s faith and Tradition—the second set of principles—as significant hermeneutical factors in his reading of the Gospels. In this respect, Benedict’s approach to Scripture can be legitimately categorized as “post-critical”: there is, to use Denis Farkasfalvy’s description of the category, “a genuine transcendence of the historical-critical method—a transcendence gained not by discarding or rejecting the method, but by going beyond the limits of its horizon while fully retaining those features which proved themselves valid and valuable during the ‘critical’ period.”15 Benedict does not claim to have exhaustively worked 11 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987 [1982]), 135 (both quotations are from this page). 12 Ibid., 136. 13 Ibid. 14 Cf. Luke Timothy Johnson, “What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship? An Opening Statement,” in Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, S.J., The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 5–8. 15 Denis Farkasfalvy, “In Search of a ‘Post-Critical’ Method of Biblical Interpretation for Catholic Theology,” Communio 13 (1986): 288–307, here 288. Cf. Peter Ochs, “An Introduction to Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation,” in The Return 1018 William M. Wright IV out the integration of these interpretive principles called for by Dei Verbum §12 either in theory or in practice. Instead, he offers Jesus of Nazareth only as a “significant step” towards this goal, with the understanding that much theological work remains to be done.16 A particularly interesting case in Jesus of Nazareth: Volume 2, which displays the intersection of historical and theological interpretation and provides substance for further thinking about this topic, is Benedict’s treatment of the development of Jesus traditions in New Testament Christianity. Throughout both volumes, Benedict incorporates into his interpretation the commonplace of critical New Testament scholarship that the Gospel presentations of Jesus have been shaped by the postresurrection faith and practices of New Testament Christians. Put differently, the words and deeds of Jesus have been mediated through early Christian teaching and tradition before being reported in the Gospels. This basic point was affirmed in the 1964 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, “On the Historicity of the Gospels” (Sancta Mater Ecclesia), and was subsequently incorporated into magisterial teaching in Dei Verbum §19. For Benedict, the reception and interpretation of the realities in Jesus’ life by New Testament Christian communities is not simply a feature of the composition history of the Gospels but a reality of great theological significance. Rather than being an impediment, this ecclesial reception and interpretation is, according to Benedict, essential for knowing the revelation of Jesus.To illustrate, I will focus on Benedict’s treatment of the institution of the Eucharist. The Importance of Historical Reality and the Limits of Historical Knowing The introductory comments in the chapter on the Last Supper contain some of the most methodologically significant comments in all of volume 2.17 Benedict is very explicit about the fundamental importance of historical reality for Christian faith and theology. He writes: “[E]ssential to [the New Testament message] is the fact that these events actually occurred in to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation, ed. Peter Ochs (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 3–51. 16 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.xv. In his famous 1988 Erasmus Lecture, Ratzinger suggests that this project may require the work of an entire generation. See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the Itinerary of Exegesis Today” in Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, ed. José Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008 [2003]), 8. 17 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.103–6. Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation 1019 the history of this world.”18 Foundational to Christianity are certain concrete, historical realities, such as the life of Christ, which have really taken place within the course of human events and in which God has been present and active. Put negatively, Benedict continues, “biblical faith does not recount stories as symbols of meta-historical truths; rather, it bases itself upon history that unfolded upon this earth.”19 For Benedict, a strong affirmation of the historical basis for Christian faith provides inoculation against gnosticizing interpretation, which would disregard historical reality in favor of speculation and abstraction.20 With regard to the institution of the Eucharist, Benedict is unambiguous about the importance for the Church’s faith and practice of this event having really occurred in Jesus’ life: “If Jesus did not give his disciples bread and wine as his body and blood, then the Church’s eucharistic celebration is empty—a pious fiction and not a reality at the foundation of communion with God and among men.”21 While Benedict is very clear about the importance of concrete, historical realities for Christianity, he is also very careful to define the scope of what modern historical research can and cannot know about realities of the past. He rightfully observes that modern historical study can yield knowledge about the past only in degrees of probability and not in absolute certitude.22 Some historical arguments and conclusions are surely better than others, but the tentative results of historical research can never be the foundation for Christian faith—they are hypothetical and subject to continuous correction and emendation.23 Historical research can provide neither certainty nor an adequate basis for Christian life, but revealed faith can provide both. Benedict writes, “[F]aith . . . gives us the ultimate certainty upon which we base our whole lives. . . . On this basis . . . we can serenely examine exegetical hypotheses that all too often make exaggerated claims to certainty.”24 As Benedict articulates the situation, concrete historical realities are of foundational importance for Christian faith, but modern historical research is limited in what it can know about those historical realities of the past. 18 Ibid., 2.103–4. 19 Ibid., 2.104. 20 Ibid., 1.xv; on the latter point, see 1.228. Cf. Wright, “New Synthesis,” 39, 53. 21 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.104. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. In fact, Benedict ( Jesus of Nazareth, 1.xvii–xviii) cites these methodological limits of modern historical study as reason for why the historical-critical method need be transcended through an integration with theological principles of interpretation (while the gains and learning produced by historical criticism are retained). See also Wright, “New Synthesis,” 41. 24 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.105. 1020 William M. Wright IV On these matters of history and historical knowing, it is striking to note the convergences between the positions of Benedict and John Meier. In volume 1 of A Marginal Jew, Meier devotes a chapter to the (limited) contributions which historical Jesus research can offer Christian faith and theology. One such contribution, according to Meier, is a renewed appreciation for the historical realities at the heart of Christian faith. Instead of making Jesus into “a mythic symbol, or a timeless archetype” and Christian faith into “a vague existential attitude or a way of being in the world,” Meier argues, historical Jesus study “underlines the fact that there is specific content to Christian faith, content connected with specific persons and events in past history.”25 While Christian beliefs involve certain realities of the past, Meier, like Benedict, is careful to define the limits of what modern historical study can know about them. The sparse, fragmentary nature of the evidence for much in ancient history is such that certain conclusions cannot be reached and judgments must often be qualified.26 Furthermore, Meier argues that “the Jesus of history [i.e. the scholarly reconstruction of Jesus according to the standards of modern historical research] is not and cannot be the object of Christian faith.”27 Reasons for this include the many different (and contradictory) scholarly reconstructions of the historical Jesus and the basic fact that the vast majority of Christians throughout history have lived lives of faith without such scholarly reconstructions.28 For Christians, Meier writes, “the object of Christian faith is a living person, Jesus Christ, who fully entered into a true human existence on earth in the 1st century A.D., but who now lives, risen and glorified, forever in the Father’s presence.”29 Both Meier and Benedict are in agreement about these basic matters, and each one proceeds to undertake a different kind of project with different goals. Meier’s project concerns what can be reconstructed about Jesus according to the criteria of modern historiography, whereas Benedict’s project concerns knowing the living reality of Jesus, not simply in light of historical study, but also in light of revealed faith. With respect to the institution of the Eucharist specifically, Benedict observes that it is given in two major lines of New Testament tradition: the Pauline-Lukan tradition (cf. 1 Cor 11:23–26; Lk 22:15–20); the Markan-Matthean tradition (cf. Mk 14:22–25; Mt 26:26–29). Ratzinger relies on the exegetical scholarship of Rudolf Pesch, who argues that the 25 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 4 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2010), 1.199. 26 Ibid., 1.22–24. 27 Ibid., 1.197. 28 Ibid., 1.197–98. Cf. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.xvi. 29 Meier, Marginal Jew, 1.198. Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation 1021 Markan tradition is the older of the two and originates in the 30s— Benedict also assigns the Pauline tradition to the same decade.30 Benedict appeals to 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 as evidence of this tradition’s antiquity. Paul cites early Christian tradition about the Last Supper as predating himself, which he had “received from the Lord” and then “handed on” to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:23). Benedict notes that some modern scholars dispute that the institution of the Eucharist goes back to Jesus, and the objection which he cites is the perceived incompatibility of Jesus’ Kingdom of God ministry with his interpretation of his impending death at the Last Supper as expiatory.31 Arguing that such a theological distinction is unwarranted and a temporal distinction between phases of Jesus’ ministry (e.g. early Kingdom preaching vs. later interpretation of his death) cannot be neatly drawn on the basis of the Gospels’ chronology, Benedict concludes that is it much more plausible to think that these traditions originate with Jesus’ words and deeds at the Last Supper rather than to think that the Eucharist was a wholesale invention of early Christian communities.32 The Ecclesial Reception and Interpretation of Biblical Realities Having located the origins of the Eucharist in the life of Jesus, Benedict turns to the two major lines of New Testament tradition that transmit this reality. As Benedict works theologically through the New Testament material pertaining to the institution of the Eucharist, he calls attention to the relation of this material to the liturgical life of early Christian communities.With regard to 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, Benedict observes that Paul cites the words and deeds of Jesus in relation to the liturgical practices of the Corinthian community and the problems therein. Paul appeals to Jesus’ words and deeds at the Last Supper as authoritative for the Corinthians’ liturgical practices because he regards them as genuinely coming from Jesus.33 Benedict also speaks of the Markan-Matthean tradition as embedded in early Christian liturgical use for which it was authoritative.34 30 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.116, citing Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevan- gelium: Zweiter Teil (Freiburg: Herder, 1977), 364–77. 31 Ibid., 2.117–25. For a survey of scholarly opinion on the origins and develop- ment of the Eucharist, see Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998 [1996]), 405–39, as noted and discussed in Joel Marcus, Mark 8–16, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 956–68, here 963. 32 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.125. 33 Ibid., 2.116–17. 34 Ibid., 2.117, 138–39. William M. Wright IV 1022 Table 1. The Four New Testament Accounts of the Institution of the Eucharist Actions over the Bread 1 Cor 11:23–26 Lk 22:15–20 Mk 14:22–25 Mt 26:26–29 took gave thanks broke took gave thanks broke gave saying took said the blessing broke gave said took said the blessing broke giving it said Take. This is my body Take. Eat. This is my body said Words over Bread This is my body, which is for you This is my body, which is given for you Command to Repeat Do this in remembrance of me Do this in remembrance of me Actions over the Cup In the same way, also the cup, after the supper, saying . . . And the cup in the same way, after the supper, saying . . . Taking the cup gave thanks gave all drank from it Taking the cup gave thanks gave all drank from it Words over Cup This cup is the new covenant in my blood This cup [is] the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins Command to Repeat Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. A comparison of the four New Testament accounts of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper (see Table 1) reveals significant, yet subtle, differences between them. Such differences include the actions over the bread (e.g. “gave thanks [eucharistesas]” (1 Cor 11:24; Lk 22:19) ˜ or “said the blessing [eulogesas]” (Mk 14:22; Mt 26:26), the presence or ˜ absence of the command to “do this in memory of me” and over what elements; the covenant language in connection with the cup; the object of the “pouring out” of blood. The co-existence across accounts of basic similarities, but also with differences in phrasing, emphasis, and allusion, are theologically significant for the role of ecclesial tradition and reception vis-à-vis Jesus’ words and actions at the Last Supper. In light of the similarities and differences between accounts, which are themselves closely allied to Christian liturgical practices, Benedict Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation 1023 argues, the New Testament Church “was conscious of a strict obligation to faithfulness in essentials, but also recognized that the enormous resonance of these words, with their subtle references to Scripture, permitted a degree of nuanced redaction.”35 The early Christian reception of Jesus’ words and actions at the Last Supper was such that some interpretation, explication, and editing was deemed appropriate and did not betray their historical reality. Consider, for instance, the covenant language given in Jesus’ words over the cup. The Pauline-Lukan tradition reads “new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor 11:25; Lk 22:20), whereas the Markan-Matthean tradition has “my blood of the covenant” (Mk 14:24; Mt 26:28). Benedict observes that each formulation alludes to a different biblical covenant text. The Markan-Matthean formulation, “My blood of the covenant,” more readily recalls the Sinai covenant, which was founded “on God’s Word and Israel’s promise of obedience” and sealed in blood (cf. Ex 24:3–8).36 The history of infidelity to the Sinai covenant contributed to Jeremiah’s prophecy of a “new covenant” ( Jer 31:31–34) to which the PaulineLukan tradition alludes. Benedict sees a connection between the perfect obedience, stemming from the prophecy of the new covenant written on human hearts (cf. Jer 31:32–33), and Christ, who “took all human disobedience upon himself in his obedience even unto death, suffered it right to the end, and conquered it.”37 These differences in the PaulineLukan and Markan-Matthean formulations indicate that both are bringing to light different dimensions or aspects of Jesus’ words and deeds at the Last Supper. The ecclesial reception of this reality is at the same time an interpretation or, to use a more phenomenological articulation, an occasion for the disclosure of its different aspects.38 The early Christian reception and interpretation of the realities of Jesus’ life cannot be separated from the Holy Spirit, who indwells the Church and its members. Throughout both volumes of Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict frequently appeals to the activity of the Holy Spirit, who, as the Fourth Gospel teaches (cf. Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13–15), reveals the spiritual meaning of Jesus to the disciples after his resurrection.39 Benedict explicitly associates 35 Ibid., 2.127. 36 Ibid., 2.132. 37 Ibid. 38 My thinking in the latter formulation is informed by the work of Robert Sokolowski. 39 See Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1.230–35; 2.21, 137, 144, 229. See also Wright, “New Synthesis,” 46–47; William M. Wright IV, “The Theology of Disclosure and Biblical Exegesis,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 404–11. 1024 William M. Wright IV this work of the Holy Spirit in the disciples with the early Christian interpretation of Jesus’ words and deeds at the Last Supper. He writes: “[T]he infant Church was slowly arriving at a deeper understanding of Jesus’ mission and . . . the disciples’ ‘remembering’, under the guidance of God’s Spirit (cf. Jn. 14:26), was gradually beginning to grasp the whole of the mystery behind Jesus’ words.”40 The creative fidelity, which the four New Testament accounts display with regard to the institution of the Eucharist, should be seen as proceeding from the insights into Jesus’ words and actions revealed by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Benedict likewise discerns the activity of the Holy Spirit in guiding the development of liturgical form in early Christianity. He observes that Jesus’ words and actions at the Last Supper provide “the essentials of the new ‘worship’ . . . but no definitive liturgical form had yet been established—this was still to evolve in the life of the Church.”41 As suggested in 1 Corinthians 11:17–33, a communal meal was held in connection with the Lord’s Supper, but over time, these two became separated. Similarly, the essential link of the Eucharist to Jesus’ death and resurrection (that is, his self-gift) contributed to Sunday becoming a fixed day for Christian liturgy.42 The conjoining to the Lord’s Supper of Scripture readings (i.e. the liturgy of the Word), which early Christians adopted from synagogue practice, rounded out the basic structure of Christian liturgical form by the second century.43 According to Benedict, the ecclesial reception and interpretation of realities in Jesus’ life, which the Holy Spirit guides, is “an intrinsic part of the institution of the Eucharist . . . [for] the institution of the Eucharist presupposes the Resurrection and hence also the living community that, under the guidance of God’s Spirit, gives form to the Lord’s gift in the life of the faithful.”44 The reception and interpretation of Jesus’ words and actions in the early Christian Church therefore plays an essential role in the unfolding of those realities as revelatory. This basic position is consistent with his early essay “Revelation and Tradition,” which, although written some four decades before Jesus of Nazareth, can shed light on it.45 Writing as Joseph 40 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.137. 41 Ibid., 2.139. 42 Ibid., 2.139–44. 43 Ibid., 2.143–44. 44 Ibid., 2.144. 45 Joseph Ratzinger, “Revelation and Tradition,” in Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition, Quaestiones Disputatae 17, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966), 26–49. For a more substantial discussion of this essay and its importance for biblical interpretation, see Martin, “Joseph Ratzinger on Biblical Interpretation,” esp. 285–93. Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation 1025 Ratzinger, he there argues that revelation can be present only when its content is received in faith: “Revelation is in fact fully present only when, in addition to the material statements which testify to it, its own inner reality is itself operative in the form of faith.”46 The reality of revelation is the Word of God and hence Christ himself. Accordingly, revelation cannot be reduced to or identified with Scripture, which bears witness to revelation.47 For Ratzinger, faith is the believer’s reception of the Word of God by which the Word comes to indwell the believer.48 Revelation, then, involves both the objective content of the Word of God and its subjective reception in believers. The interplay between objective content and subjective reception as ingredient to the whole reality of revelation sheds light on the importance of the ecclesial reception and interpretation of the realities of Jesus’ life, such as the institution of the Eucharist. In this case, the words and deeds of Jesus at the Last Supper (that is, the objective content) were received (subjectively) by the believing community in whom Christ dwells and works through the Holy Spirit. The ecclesial reception and interpretation of the realities of Jesus’ life can be regarded as essential to revelation because of the presence of the Word both in the life of Jesus and in the Church and believers by faith. The process of ecclesial reception and interpretation in faith of biblical realities, evident in the New Testament traditions of the institution of the Eucharist, can be extended analogously to the post-biblical Church.49 The non-identity of revelation and Scripture, the fact that the reality of revelation is more than Scripture, and the presence of the indwelling Word in the Church and believers by faith all create the space for the post-biblical articulation of revelation’s contents in the Church’s dogmatic formulae.50 For Ratzinger, the Church’s doctrinal tradition is its interpretation of the canonical Scripture, which presents the Word of God to its readers, in light of the same Word of God, who indwells her by faith.51 Framed in this way, normative expressions of the Church’s faith, for instance, dogmatic formulae, have 46 Ratzinger, “Revelation and Tradition,” 36. As Martin (“Joseph Ratzinger on Bibli- cal Interpretation,” 289 n.16) notes, Ratzinger develops this claim from his analysis of Bonaventure. See Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes, O.F.M. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971), 64–69. 47 Ratzinger, “Revelation and Tradition,” 35. 48 Ibid., 40. 49 I say analogous because the Tradition and Magisterium of the post-biblical Church is beholden to both the simple, plain sense of the canonical Scripture and the regula fidei in a way that the New Testament churches were not; see Ratzinger, “Revelation and Tradition,” 47–49. 50 Ratzinger, “Revelation and Tradition,” 35, 40, 44–45. 51 Ibid., 47. William M. Wright IV 1026 an intrinsic relationship to Scripture. The same Spirit-guided processes of ecclesial reception and interpretation of revealed realities in faith, which are ingredient to the biblical books themselves, are extended into the post-biblical Church and its interpretation of Scripture. Hence, a doctrine like transubstantiation, although historically and conceptually posterior to the New Testament, can be regarded as a bringing to light of an aspect of Jesus’ words and deeds at the Last Supper in a manner analogous to the Pauline-Lukan and Markan-Matthean traditions bringing to light the different covenantal allusions in Jesus’ words. To conclude this section on the ecclesial reception and interpretation of biblical realities, it is worth nothing that Benedict’s account is similar in many ways to a proposal set forth by Raymond Brown in his Introduction to the New Testament. As he nears the end of his discussion of revelation, Brown outlines a proposal in which “revelation involves both God’s action for human salvation and the interpretation of that action by those whom God has raised up and guided for that purpose.”52 The realities of salvation history by which God acts for the redemption of the world are given a theological interpretation by certain, inspired individuals. Brown then extends this Spirit-guided interpretation into the history of the Church: “[T]here is no reason to think that God has ceased to guide a developing interpretation of that action. Indeed, the subsequent role of the Spirit in human history, in the history of the church and its pronouncements, in the writings of the Fathers and theologians enters into a Tradition that embodies the post-scriptural interpretation of the salvific action of God described in Scripture.”53 For both Brown and Benedict, the divinely guided interpretation of revealed realities, which took place within the biblical writings themselves, continues within the same historically continuous community of faith. Conclusion Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth offers a healthy challenge and contribution to Catholic biblical interpretation. It is a challenge for Catholic biblical interpreters to give “no less attention” to the theological-ecclesial principles of interpretation in Dei Verbum §12c than to the historical-literary ones. It is also makes a contribution by virtue of its being a substantial effort to work out an integration of these interpretive principles in both theory and practice. 52 Raymond E. Brown, S.S., An Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible Refer- ence Library (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 33–34; italics Brown’s. 53 Ibid., 34; italics Brown’s. Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation 1027 Benedict’s treatment of the institution of the Eucharist provides an interesting case study for thinking about the integration of the two sets of interpretive principles. On the one hand, Benedict attends to the importance of historical reality and the reception and interpretation of those realities within New Testament Christianity. At the same time, those dynamics of ecclesial reception and interpretation, brought to light by historical and literary analysis, provide the basis and template for the incorporation of the theological principles of the Church’s tradition and faith. In this way, the kind of theological interpretation proposed by Benedict can be seen in broad terms as intrinsically related, and thus appropriate, to the nature of Scripture itself. With Benedict’s multivolume project nearing completion, it now remains for biblical scholars and theologians to continue this work of integration, so that exegesis can “see itself once again as a theological discipline, without abandoning its historical character.”54 N&V 54 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 2.xiv. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1029–30 1029 Editors’ Introduction to the Just War Symposium T HE J UST WAR T RADITION is a complex and developing doctrine of Catholic moral theology and social teaching. The specific contours of the Just War doctrine have been and continue to be intensely debated inside and outside the Catholic Church. In the second half of the twentieth century, in light of two World Wars and under the threat of a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers, a lively debate among moral theologians and theological ethicists in the United States and Europe unfolded over the ongoing relevance, applicability, and defensability of Just War teaching. Proponents of nuclear pacifism, of Christological pacifism, and of just peace doctrine entered the debate. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries witnessed unforeseen dramatic political changes on the world scale.While the nuclear confrontation became less urgent, the phenomenon of “holy war” reemerged, and new local and conventionally fought wars erupted and involved the interventions of NATO, the United Nations, or other multinational alliances. It suffices to name former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and, most recently, Libya. In light of these rapid and dramatic developments, an ecumenical and interreligious symposium on the Just War teaching is timely and relevant. This particular symposium developed out of a conference, “Just War in the Catholic Tradition: Continuity or Rupture?” that took place in Naples, Florida on 25–28 June 2009. Organized by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) with help from the Aquinas Center at Ave Maria University, the conference was funded by the Research Council of Norway. Spearheaded by the Catholic philosopher Gregory Reichberg, the 2009 PRIO symposium on “Just War in the Catholic Tradition” invited Catholic and non-Catholic scholars to reflect upon war in light of the traditional Catholic affirmation of the possibility of just war. Three of the participants in the symposium are Catholic: Joseph Koterski, S.J., Robert Araujo, S.J., 1030 Introduction to the Just War Symposium and Gregory Reichberg. They introduce the inner logic, the history, and the contemporary applicability of the Catholic teaching on just war. Four symposiants come from various Protestant traditions and offer a representative range of perspectives on just war, just peace, and pacifism: James Turner Johnson, Valerie Morkevicius, Martin Cook, and Charles Mathewes. Gedaliah and Adam Afterman offer a Jewish perspective on war. PRIO’s ecumenical and interreligious symposium is a welcome beginning to what we hope will be a fruitful conversation in our pages about just war in the Catholic tradition. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1031–48 1031 Just War and the Common Good J OSEPH W. KOTERSKI , S.J. Fordham University Bronx, New York WARS SOMETIMES begin from private quarrels, but under any sound framework of moral evaluation they must be properly recognized to be public matters and not just private conflicts. From this it follows that the proper criteria for the moral evaluation of any type of warfare must include (among many other considerations) the moral principles relevant for assessing the activity of authorities. The ethical analysis of the conduct of any authority must, in turn, include consideration of their governance vis-à-vis the common good, for the service of the common good is an essential part of their office.1 In a given case there may be strong efforts made to portray a particular war or its constituent acts as private matters that are of concern only to the parties engaged in this warfare. This is sometimes done in the hope of circumventing proper constraints against war on the basis of the moral considerations attendant on its public character. But, however strong such efforts may be, wars are never private matters. As any soldier knows, the difference between raw violence and the legitimate use of force comes precisely from the moral constraints that arise from considerations of justice and the common good that authorities are charged with protecting under both civil and international law. Thus, to the list of topics that are usually treated when considering questions that pertain to just war (for example, a just cause, proper authority, right intention, reasonable hope for success, proportionality), it is only right to add the common good. 1 I have tried to argue this point elsewhere, esp. in “Why Authority is Such a Trou- bling Idea” in A Moral Enterprise: Politics, Reason, and the Human Good: Essays in Honor of Francis Canavan, edited by Robert P. Hunt and Kenneth Grasso (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002), pp. 107–25. 1032 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. I believe that this point about considerations of the common good is of particular relevance nowadays for assessing, for instance, the actions of terrorist groups who have conducted their warfare under the protection of rogue states. The moral evaluation of the activities of such organizations must be conducted in a way that acknowledges the truly public nature of the warfare that they are carrying on, however surreptitiously. Reference to the public character of warfare and to the standard of the common good is equally necessary for assessing the rationalizations sometime employed in favor of pre-emptive and unilateral action against those terrorist groups. This consideration seems especially relevant for analyzing the justifications that are typically offered by pragmatists and “political realists” when they have been unable to generate cooperation from other states under international law and have decided to act alone.Warfare is a public matter, and not a private one. Although armed conflicts within a nation are not the focus of this essay, this sort of consideration would be equally relevant for assessing the arguments of factions in a civil war as well as those of vigilante groups within a nation, arguments that might be offered by those who have decided to take matters into their own hands when they have grown impatient with the failures of civil authority to bring about justice on some pressing issue or case. Warfare—domestic or international—is never a private matter. It is always a public matter, and thus it must be regarded as subject to the principles of morality that are operative when we deal with things that are public and that affect the various communities that are involved. My point here is simply to identify the rhetoric that tries to effect a moral re-assignment of some actual war to the sphere of a private quarrel sphere as only that—rhetoric. There is need to resist such rhetoric and to appreciate the public character of genuine warfare as truly public. Because war is a public matter that involves the decisions and conduct of authorities responsible for the communities they govern, moral deliberation about the justice of war should scrutinize the actions of the civil authorities precisely as those actions bear on the good of the community. As a general point in the background of the argument here, authority should not be confused with the power that is at the disposal of an authority for the proper execution of the duties of any such office. Rather, there are morally legitimate and morally illegitimate uses of power by an authority, and these differences of moral legitimacy allow us to distinguish both authoritarian abuse of power and wimpish cowardice in neglecting to use power from morally praiseworthy exercise of the powers entrusted to an authority.2 One crucial aspect of any effort to distinguish between power 2 See Yves Simon, A General Theory of Authority (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980). Just War and the Common Good 1033 and authority is that an authority’s use of its power must always be measured against the genuine good of the community affected by the actions of that authority. Precisely as responsible for the welfare of those affected by any deliberate public action or inaction, civil authorities have ethical obligations not only to their own immediate communities and jurisdictions but also to the community of peoples and nations that are also affected by their decisions. Admittedly, it may sometimes be difficult to identity the precise range of the relevant community beyond a nation’s borders. But there is something clearly amiss in any effort to circumscribe the responsibilities of an authority so narrowly as to avoid considering the common good of the community of nations, however fractious or dysfunctional that community may be at any given moment in history. It is actually this concern with the common good, adequately considered, that provides a crucial aspect of the relevant context for handling questions about just cause that is traditionally one of the criteria for assessing the morality of any war. In considering the relationship between some course of action that is being considered or undertaken by a given authority and the common good that such an authority is charged to promote, there is need to evaluate not only whether there is some grave wrong that needs to be rectified but also whether there is proportionality (e.g., how much suffering, damage, economic disruption, and so on) that will be brought about by the rectificatory efforts. We have to consider whether a given wrong that diplomacy and negotiation are proving insufficient to address ought to be tolerated or whether there ought to be some use of force to correct the injustice, despite the foreseeable damage and destruction that warfare will likely bring. It is, of course, morally indispensable for the authority to establish that there really has been some grave injustice that the proposed war will seek to remedy. Otherwise, the claim of a particular war to be a just war could not be sustained at all. But the consideration of just cause, narrowly considered, is not enough. Questions about the common good need also to be included.To say this is not to deny that there will be operative within a given situation many forms of self-interest and many elements of private desire that may be able to be detected within the intentions of those who urge war-making. As one of my theology professors used to say, “I never met a motive that wasn’t mixed.” My point here is, however, not to propose that only an unrealistic standard of purity of intention could ever possibly permit a war to be regarded as just. Rather, my contention is that, when dealing with the question of right intention, there is (in addition to considerations of a private or restricted range) an irreducibly important role for the notion of the common good in any review of the case being made for undertaking warfare. 1034 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. This essay assumes without further investigation the traditional criteria for just war. In order to advance our considerations of the importance of including the concept of the common good as part of a sound just war theory, I will examine the notion of the common good as it appears in prototypical attempts at the justification of warfare, for the term is less clear than it might seem. In preparation for this examination, I will offer a kind of typology of usages for the concept of the common good in order to promote greater clarity about the ways in which we should understand the place of the common good in just war theory. I. Plural Ways of Conceiving the Common Good Thus far I have simply noted the presence of various considerations about the common good in some of the types of argument that could be offered for the justice of warfare, and I have recommended that we resist a deformation of the standard theory, either by liberal politics or by amoral political realists. But it is not enough simply to invoke the notion of the common good, as if that were an unproblematic notion. It strikes me that part of the larger problem here is that there are great differences of opinion on how to understand the concept of the common good, and that constructing at least a kind of typology may be helpful. What makes the notion of a typology particular attractive is the fact that considerably different approaches have been taken toward the idea of the common good, even among thinkers who share in the same general tradition of respect for the common good as part of an integrated moral analysis of topics in the social order, such as thinkers in the tradition of scholastic philosophy and in the tradition of Catholic moral theology, with its great respect for the teaching authority of the Church. They may well agree in principle about the central role that the common good should play in social analysis and in the moral evaluation of political affairs, and yet they appear to have quite different notions of the common good. It seems to me that much of the scholarly literature on the common good has been devoted to the notion of the common good in social and economic matters. It is my hope that some of these considerations about the common good in that sphere of thought may well have some bearing on the idea of the common good in regard to war and peace. For some, the idea of the common good is the sum-total of individual goods. For others, the idea of the common good refers not primarily to goods that are capable of being possessed exclusively by this individual or that but to goods of the social order that exist only when they are available in common. The former position generally recognizes the need for certain common goods but tends to think of them as largely instru- Just War and the Common Good 1035 mental in character, whereas the latter tends to emphasize common goods as substantive in nature. In addition to the debate over whether the common good should be conceived in terms of substantive or instrumental goods, there has also been considerable debate over whether or the idea of the common good should involve religious reference. This question arises not only because of such political questions as the nonestablishment of religion and the relations of church and state but also because of deep-seated theoretical questions about the ultimate ground of moral claims about goodness and obligation. Interestingly, where explicit reference to religious questions in the articulation of the common good is avoided for political purposes in secular society, there is often still a reference to ideas that have their roots in religious insights. One sees this, for example, in references to values that transcend individual goods such as human dignity, an idea that arises from the religious claim that all human beings are made in the image of God but that has increasingly been treated as if it were something self-evident rather than as having a religious foundation. Let us survey some of these approaches, beginning with those who adopt the language of the common good and concluding with those who are more skeptical of the idea. Neoconservative thinkers like Michael Novak, for instance, often hold that the common good is generally well served by a system of free-enterprise capitalism, with as much freedom for individual agents as possible, particularly in the field of business and commerce. This sort of position tends to envision the common good as a sum-total of individual goods while stressing the need for certain conditions to be in place so as to make possible the pursuit of such goods by individuals. The free market and an efficient system for providing for the administration of justice are then regarded as common goods, but largely instrumental in character. By contrast, communitarian thinkers like David Hollenbach, S.J., tend to champion the preferability of central planning and political direction in economic processes.3 The stress here is on the common welfare of the individuals who make up a community, with special protection for those unable to compete as well as others can in the free market; proponents of this idea often tend to portray what had traditionally been called social charity for the underprivileged as a requirement of justice rather than of charity, presumably to convey a sense that society has a moral obligation 3 See David Hollenbach, S.J., The Common Good and Christian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1989). Hollenbach was personally involved in drafting the 1986 letter from the American Bishops’ Conference, entitled Economic Justice for All, and Novak commented on some of the early drafts of this document. 1036 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. to provide for this assistance as part of the common good. In partial disagreement with both of these figures is a thinker like Alasdair MacIntyre, who argues that (aside from the immediately local level) no such thing as a free market really exists and that the aridity of politics at the national level makes government intervention blind to considerations of what is really good and really bad for human beings.4 One of the fundamental points of division among theorists of the common good turns on the inclusion or exclusion of a religious reference in their ways of understanding the term. The utilitarian idea of the greatest good for the greatest number (in its original form or in any of its contemporary variants) is an example of a concept of the common good (admittedly, in a very broad sense of the term) that contains no particular reference to religion. Catholic theorists, often operating with the universal categories of natural law theory, regularly presume that the very notion of the common good is a notion ultimately rooted in the divine will and yet accessible to anyone, independently of one’s stance on the question of the truth claims of any particular religion. Hence, proponents of the traditional notion of the natural moral law tend to see versions of the idea of the common good in many other positions (for example, in ancient philosophy). Yet it is only fair to note that nonCatholic thinkers (even the group of secular Aristotelians whose thought is so popular today and whose philosophical realism is considerable) tend to hear the notion of “the common good” as having a Catholic accent. Although they are not as inclined to use the term “common good” (perhaps because of this “Catholic accent”), they seem to me to have various surrogate terms for the same thing (e.g., the “national interest,” the “common welfare” or the “interests of humanity”). Seen from the viewpoint of a relatively inclusivist conception of the common good, figures from ancient philosophy such as Aristotle and Cicero offer a view of this concept that is based on the intrinsically political and social nature of human existence, even when their views neither deny nor affirm the reality of a personal God or of divine revelation. The appropriation of ancient thought about the common good by such 4 For the purposes of articulating this typology, let me make use of some distinc- tions offered by Arthur Madigan in a recent address for the Jesuit Philosophical Association. His remarks are particularly astute in helping common good theories articulate some of the challenges to the very concept of the common good thrown up by philosophical individualism and political liberalism. Arthur Madigan, S.J., “Common Good and Common Goods: A Preliminary Study,” in Proceedings of the Jesuit Philosophical Association (Bronx, NY: Jesuit Philosophical Association, 2005), 21–40. Just War and the Common Good 1037 Christian thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas puts the idea of the common good into a highly specific theological context, replete with such factors as God’s self-manifestation, the Torah, the gift of grace, original sin, redemption by Christ, and eternal beatitude with God as the goal of human life.5 Without in any way undermining or disregarding the notion that earthly society and political communities have a common good, these thinkers regard the civil or earthly common good to be inferior and subject to the higher form of the common good that is associated with genuine morality, true religion, and life in union with God. This is true not only of Augustine’s remarks on the relation of the Two Cities in such works as De Civitate Dei and his letters on the Donatist question.6 It is also true of Aquinas’s reflections on law and politics in the treatise on natural law and virtue in the Summa and in his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics.7 One sees interesting contemporary adaptations of their insights in the recent encyclical letters of Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est and Caritas in Veritate, both of which invoke the notions of the common good, the Two Cities, and the relations of peace and justice. These encyclicals make a sustained effort to distinguish between what may be expected in the temporal realm from civil authorities, and what cannot rightfully be expected from that quarter but must be sought by the cultivation of charity and hence what must be regularly a subject of exhortation by spiritual authorities.8 The view of the common good that seems to be prevalent in pluralist Western democracies, however, is neither that of ancient philosophy nor that of explicitly Christian visions of the social order, but an interesting amalgam that adopts certain elements from each of them, rejects others, and adapts what it has borrowed, with a distinctive version of its own as the result. It is frequently the practice of such polities neither to affirm nor to deny any particular theological commitments but rather to pass over religious doctrines—even those pertaining to the social order— 5 Two recent studies that are very helpful are this point are the following: Mary Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and M. S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). 6 See esp. De Civitate Dei, XIX. Also helpful here is the article “Common Good” by Raymond Canning in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 219–22. 7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, qq. 90–97 and Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Richard J. Regan, S.J. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007), esp. Bk. III. 8 Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, “God is Love,” encyclical letter issued on 25 December 2005, esp. §25–30, and Caritas in Veritate, “Charity in Truth,” encyclical letter issued on 7 July 2009, esp. Ch. 5. 1038 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. as if they were merely private concerns and to prefer the promotion of procedural views of fair process to substantive visions of the good. The reason, of course, is that substantive commitments are divisive and risky for pluralist polities. And yet the resulting view of the common good is often presented as rooted in certain ideals about the dignity of the human person and the equality of all who are recognized as persons. This view generally presumes that the concepts of dignity and equality will appeal to reasonable people of good will. As a moral ideal, it tends to be presented in concert with certain expectations about the wrong of doing harm to others and of interfering with their liberty as well as certain presumptions about the duty to do well by one’s neighbors and one’s community, even where this view is silent about choices that involve selfharm and about policies that privilege the principle of autonomy over substantive visions of the human good. Despite its obvious parallels with the Christian vision of human dignity as rooted in seeing the human being as made in God’s image, this vision does not ground these expectations in any theological claim. If anything, it takes these standards as somehow self-evident, and it prefers to talk of natural rights and of human rights rather than of natural law or divine law. Whereas Christianity would insist that the highest common good of humanity is ultimately union with God, the ethic of pluralist democracies would allow individuals or groups to believe in that possibility (and hence would allow these individuals and groups to use it as their motivation for their participation in pluralist societies). But the pluralist ethic would not insist on the truth of this claim about union with God and would offer its own vision of the common good and the social order independently of any religious consideration of the matter. Interestingly, the ecclesial use of philosophical categories has regularly adjusted for this trend in secular thought on the social order by embracing personalism and a rhetoric of rights alongside (but never as a complete replacement for) natural law theory.9 One sees a rights-based approach taken increasingly in ecclesiastical documents issued by the Catholic Church. But whether or not a rightsbased approach by the Church to questions about the common good is a sound strategy remains to be seen. For centuries the typical reliance of Catholic argumentation on natural law had no recourse to rights talk; the advent of personalism has increased the tendency to use rights talk and to include the promotion of human rights within the obligation to 9 See my essay, “The Use of Philosophical Principles in Catholic Social Thought: The Case of Gaudium et Spes,” The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies (St. John’s University Law Review), 45/2 (2007): 277–92. Just War and the Common Good 1039 promote the common good.10 But on such crucial questions as the defense of the right to life, personalism invariably yields to questions about human nature, for personalists divide on the question of substantive or functional definitions of personhood, and the functionalist definitions do not provide adequate protection for the vulnerable. In the minds of some, the ecclesial decision to use personalist grounds of argumentation may risk giving undue privileges to the argument patterns preferred by those who actually deny God and who would forbid or restrict religion. Strictly speaking, however, the secular democracies of modern times that have been inspired by a vision of the intrinsic dignity of the human person as a reason for giving due consideration to the common good actually tend to be relatively resilient in resisting doctrinaire atheism and attempts to persecute religion. It may well be that they recognize that this sort of policy would sap the strength of the whole polity by disenfranchising a large portion of the society that the authority is trying to keep united and prosperous. Some forces within pluralist democracies might well prefer to restrain religious opinions from influencing public policy and to prevent people with strong religious commitments from running social institutions on the basis of those religious principles, but in pluralist democracies the possibility for resisting such trends is also present. What is required is that those with a religious viewpoint have to learn how to state the reasons for their case in the ways appropriate to the secular arena, even though they also have religious reasons for these positions that they think more important. It seems to me that these approaches to the idea of the common good are actually quite different from one another. Understanding their differences from one another helps one to grasp the point that the idea of appeal to the common good is not quite as simple and unproblematic as it is usually taken to be. In contrast to proponents of the common good, individualists deny the validity of the very notion of the common good and do so in a way that provides a challenge to what common good theorists take for granted. Some theorists argue on this basis that there is no obligation to do anything unless it is in one’s own best interests to do it. A classic statement of this sort of view can be found in Ayn Rand’s 1935 attack on the notion of the common good in her essay “What Is Capitalism?” Perhaps her main position (the defense of selfishness) could from a Christian point of view be rather easily dismissed, but there are interesting things to learn about how to think well about the common good from a consideration of her position: 10 See also Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Free Press, 1991). 1040 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. The “common good” (or “the public interest”) is an undefined and undefinable concept: there is no such entity as “the tribe” or “the public”; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such; “good” and “value” pertain only to a living organism—to an individual living organism—not to a disembodied aggregate of relationships. “The common good” is a meaningless concept, unless taken literally, in which case its only possible meaning is: the sum of the good of all the individual men involved. But in that case, the concept is meaningless as a moral criterion: it leaves open the question of what is the good of individual men and how does one determine it. It is not, however, in its literal meaning that that concept is generally used. It is accepted precisely for its elastic, undefinable, mystical character which serves, not as a moral guide, but as an escape from morality. Since the good is not applicable to the disembodied, it becomes a moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it. When “the common good”of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. It is tacitly assumed, in such cases, that “the common good” means “the good of the majority” as against the minority or the individual. Observe the significant fact that that assumption is tacit: even the most collectivized mentalities seem to sense the impossibility of justifying it morally. But “the good of the majority,” too, is only a pretense and a delusion: since, in fact, the violation of an individual’s rights means the abrogation of all rights, it delivers the helpless majority into the power of any gang that proclaims itself to be “the voice of society” and proceeds to rule by means of physical force, until deposed by another gang employing the same means.11 Among other things, her argument—that only the benefits that the agent receives justify a decision to perform a given action—does not preclude acting on behalf of common goods; it simply requires that one show that pursuing the common good is also in the interest of the individual agent. Coordinated with her position on the justification for action is her counsel that individuals should assume that their interests are more than likely to be in conflict with the interests of others. But to the extent that one becomes convinced that this assumption of likely conflict could actually imperil the pursuit of one’s own interests (for example, in the forms of international commerce that peace among nations is usually designed to promote), then even someone with Rand’s position would presumably need to be convinced that cooperative activity in the inter11 Ayn Rand,“What Is Capitalism?” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 20–21. Just War and the Common Good 1041 est of others and of the community (such as being an honest player in the economic marketplace, promoting the observance of international law, and the rectification of injustices) are in one’s own interests. These observations do not permit us to claim that the goods of self-interest and common goods have to overlap, and thus a proponent of the common good has to make the case and not simply to assume it. Yet another important aspect of Rand’s attack is the worry over the possibility of abusing the rights of individuals in the name of the common good. This is, of course, a fair question. One way in which to respond here would be to agree that natural rights do put certain limits on what can be done under the rubric of the common good, and thus a vibrant doctrine of natural rights can work to resist abuses in the name of the common good. Another approach, however, would be to urge that natural rights are themselves part of the common good properly considered and that any arguments alleged to rest on the common good that would infringe on genuine personal rights must actually have involved some error in understanding the common good. In the absence of a substantive theory of human nature and the human good, there seems to me to be a quite intractable philosophical problem here, however, in the lack of any clear and reliable way to ascertain which alleged rights are basic and natural, and which are not. Despite the obvious rhetorical advantages of rights-based ethical arguments in the contemporary moral situation, I remain inclined to think that a natural-law based ethics is better suited in general as well as better fitted for dealing with questions of the common good. Individualists sometimes make their case by insisting that every action is the action of an individual and that any talk of common good is just a way to sum up the total of individual goods. Arguing in this way, they reduce common action (what we might call cooperation or concerted action for the common good) to be merely a variation on individual action. For instance, Ludwig von Mises holds: “The We is always the result of a summing up which puts together two or more Egos.”12 In this scenario, it is not surprising that the common good is understood merely as the sum total of the goods of individuals: Society is concerted action, cooperation. Society is the outcome of conscious and purposeful behavior. This does not mean that individuals have concluded contracts by virtue of which they have founded human society. The actions which have brought about social cooperation and 12 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Chicago: Regnery, 1963), 44. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. 1042 daily bring it about anew do not aim at anything else than cooperation and coadjuvancy with others for the attainment of definite singular ends. The total complex of the mutual relations created by such concerted actions is called society. . . . Individual man is born into a socially organized environment. In this sense alone we may accept the saying that society is, logically or historically, antecedent to the individual. In every other sense this dictum is either empty or nonsensical. The individual lives and acts within society. But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else but in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak of a society’s autonomous and independent existence, of its life, its soul, and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass errors.13 When every authentic good is viewed as some good of some individuals, the term “common good” is thereby reduced to some sort of shorthand term for taking in aggregate or collectively the goods of individuals. Even though I do not think that this sort of reduction is the right approach, it is important to understand this position. While proponents of individualism might be willing to agree that there are various goods that belong commonly to groups of one sort or another (whether local communities, nations, social classes, etc.), it would be misleading to think that for them such terms mean anything other than that those goods are really the goods of the individual members of those groups. It is not that individualists reject talk of the common good, but they allow such talk only as a kind of abbreviation for the sum total of individual goods of some set of individuals. How might one respond to such a view? As Arthur Madigan suggests,14 one option here would be to affirm that every authentic good is a good for individuals and then to grant the point that alleged common goods are thus the goods of individuals taken in aggregate even while urging that this admission does not alter any essential about common good claims. If, however, some of the most important candidates for the term “common good” go beyond being mere sum-totals, then the objection has to be met more strongly. Many of the worthy candidates for the common good in just war theory seem to me to be precisely of this sort, including peace, justice in international relations, and the rectifications of injustice. Alasdair McIntyre employs this sort of strategy when he proposes various counterexamples as a way to respond quite directly to the individualist reduction of the common good to the sum-total of private goods. He 13 Ibid., 143. 14 Madigan, “Common Good and Common Goods,” 24. Just War and the Common Good 1043 begins by conceding the possibility of reduction of the common good to the sum-total of individual goods in some cases—a valuable reminder, I think, about the need for care in our use of the term “common good,” so that we do not use it carelessly to describe those goods that really are only the sum-total of individual goods that individualists like to cite: there are cases in which the common good of an association is no more than the summing of the goods pursued by individuals as members of that association, just because the association itself is no more than an instrument employed by those individuals to achieve their individual ends. So it is, for example, with an investment club, by means of which individuals are able to avail themselves of investment opportunities requiring capital sums larger than any one of them possesses.15 He then adduces a number of cases where this sort of reductionism does not work and argues that there are some goods that cannot be adequately described as the sum-totals of individual goods: There are also, however, kinds of association such that the good of the association cannot be constructed out of what were the goods of its individual members, antecedently to and independently of their membership in it. In these cases the good of the whole cannot be arrived at by summing the goods of the parts. Such are those goods not only achieved by means of cooperative activity and shared understanding of their significance, but in key part constituted by cooperative activity and shared understanding of their significance, goods such as the excellence in cooperative activity achieved by fishing crews and by string quartets, by farming households and by teams of research scientists. Excellence in activity is of course often a means to goods other than and beyond that excellence, goods of types as various as the production of food and the making of reputations. But it is central to our understanding of a wide range of practices that excellence in the relevant kinds of activity is recognized as among the goods internal to these practices.16 One might well associate with MacIntyre’s approach the views offered by Charles Taylor. In Taylor’s article “Irreducibly Social Goods” he argues that some goods are necessarily common, such as culture and society, in order to generate other goods that are otherwise not possible, such as friendship and honest communication, in that one needs mutual understanding for these personal and interpersonal goods to be possible: 15 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good,” in The MacIn- tyre Reader, ed. Kelvin Knight (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 239–40. 16 Ibid., 240. 1044 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. To say that a certain kind of self-giving heroism is good, or a certain quality of aesthetic experience, must be to judge the cultures in which this kind of heroism and that kind of experience are conceivable as good cultures. If such virtue and experience are worth cultivating, then the cultures have to be worth fostering, not as contingent instruments, but for themselves.17 What is evident from the way in which philosophers like MacIntyre and Taylor present their full case is that common goods (when the term is used in the proper sense) are goods that are genuinely advantageous to a specifiable community as a whole, in some way that can be articulated as a genuine contribution to that community. Presumably there are various types of common goods, including the morality of the community, the culture of the community, the political order of the community, the economic system of the community, and so on. In reviewing the approach taken by MacIntyre and Taylor, Madigan makes an astute comment that is highly relevant to the fact that there are plural common goods (and not just a single “common good”) that need to be considered in light of the pluralistic nature of modern secular democracies when he observes: [N]ot all common goods are necessarily obligatory. If we have successfully defended the reality of common goods against methodological individualism, it still requires a separate argument to show that someone is obliged to pursue this or that common good. Showing that a certain good is an irreducibly common or social good does not show that anyone is obliged to promote it. Even to show that a certain common good is essential to the existence or continuance of a certain community does not show that the members of that community are obliged to promote it. They may have no such obligation, or they may even be under conflicting obligations to promote other common goods in the context of other communities. This observation pertains in a special way to the set of theological versions of the common good mentioned above. Christian moralists, for instance, have good theological reason for holding that all human beings have a duty to promote various common goods. The secular accounts that are associated with modern pluralist democracies often assume this point in their talk about promoting human rights, but they are rarely articulate about the precise reasons. It would seem only fair, in my opinion, to push this point, for to do so might well disclose better the full 17 Charles Taylor, “Irreducibly Social Goods,” Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 137. Just War and the Common Good 1045 range of cases that human rights ought to cover. I have in mind here the modern disputes over personal identity and its implication for the right to life of the unborn, the defective, and the senile; indeed, clarity about the real basis of the right would make more clear that the basis is not functional rationality but membership in the human race, and thus would better secure protection for the more vulnerable among us.18 But some of the items that need to be included on one’s list of common goods, and particularly those relevant to just war theory, are not in this category, for they are said only about the whole community—I think here of peace among nations and just relations between nations, including the rectification of serious injustices. The obligation to pursue such a good is primarily an obligation incumbent upon the authority who has been entrusted with decisions about the use of military and other force and who has been charged with protecting the security of the community and with promoting peaceful and just relations with other communities. II. Considering the Common Good in Just War Claims For establishing the validity of any claim about the justice of a given war, it will be appropriate to include a consideration of the common good. But to do this requires having a sound way in which to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate senses of the common good. The mere fact that an attempted justification uses terminology like “common good” or “common welfare” is no more a guarantee of moral propriety than is the mere use of “just war theory,” and some visions of the common good are likely to be too thin for this purpose. In pluralist politics there may well be resistance to certain definitions of the common good that require substantive commitments about human nature, but these thicker visions of human nature and the common good often seem crucial for generating the sacrifices that just war entails. A reliable account of just war theory clearly needs to avoid the deformations of the tradition that some pacificist movements have tried to impose on the theory in recent decades, as well as to resist the efforts of some apologists for a kind of “political realism” that would treat just war theory as merely a sentimental anachronism. More rigorous thinking on these matters will try to escape falling into the mistakes of presumptive pacificism and of amoral political realism. Just war thinking will necessarily involve questions of proportionality. But it should never be confined to some casuistry based on a consequentialist moral methodology. In casuistry of this sort, one tends to try somehow to determine an 18 I have tried to argue this point elsewhere, e.g., in “The Status of Personalism in Catholic Moral Thinking Today,” The Dunwoodie Review 32 (2009): 241–59. 1046 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. “acceptable” amount of “violence” that one may tolerate in the service of national self-interest or some other envisioned common good, taken in the sense of a communal benefit of one nation over against other nations. But this sort of casuistry does not yet involve proper evaluation of the moral legitimacy of going to war for the sake of that benefit. A presumptively pacificist version of the just war criteria risks taking the wrong starting point for proper moral analysis of these questions by assuming that war is intrinsically wrong. But this is a faulty starting point, for it begs the very question at issue. Related to this position is the tendency to regard war as at best a shameful and embarrassing but nevertheless “necessary evil” that is extremely hard ever to justify except in rare cases and very limited circumstances, perhaps on the basis of some comparison of consequences. The moralizing character of this approach can even risk undermining the war effort by its hand-wringing and its exaggerated forms of guilt-feeling. Advocates of Realpolitik, on the other hand, often try to envision warfare as something that takes place outside the realm of moral reasoning, as if in some sphere where the only real factors are “necessity” and “national self-interest.” Moral reasoning is then treated either as a distraction from the real business of pragmatic governance or as a hopeless nicety from the past, as if statesmanship were independent of morals and as if morality were reducible to public approval. The classic view of just war does neither of these things. For reasons directly related to the concern of statesmanship with the common good, the classic view regards war as a legitimate element within the sphere of statesmanship. In some cases going to war may even be a moral duty despite the hardships that doing so will entail, while in others cases it is something permissible even when regretted, and in some cases it is entirely forbidden. The appropriate assessment of whether undertaking war is legitimate, or even morally required, comes primarily from the statesman’s concerns with the common good that is the particular responsibility of the authority. In this view of things, war as such is seen neither as intrinsically wrong nor as independent of the moral evaluations that we employ for personal virtue and for interpersonal relations. The decision to go to war is a political decision, and political decisions necessarily fall within the domain of morality precisely because they are examples of genuinely human actions. Anything that is the result of free and informed decisions by human beings is a legitimate subject for moral evaluation, and thus the conduct of politics, war-making, and statesmanship are all subject to moral evaluation, especially when the human agents responsible for them are the authorities in a given society who by virtue of their office have not only the duty of concern for the common good Just War and the Common Good 1047 but also the prerogative for making the decisions about going to war and about conducting a war. The traditional view of just war sees that there are situations in which first and foremost there is a pressing duty to resist and stop evil (in response to the events of 9/11, for instance).To grant this point is to grant that there are circumstances in which pursuing a choice to go to war is morally obligatory. Unless one were to determine that military response would have no or very little chance of success, deciding not to go to war in such a case would be wrong. To say this still leaves much to be decided about exactly how to pursue the required warfare. The situation of an unprovoked attack, for instance, requires a proportionate response—the authority is obliged to provide a defense of the innocent and to promote at the very least the restoration of that minimal sort of peace that is required for good order in international affairs. Terror (whether by groups hiding within rogue states or by the bullying of national powers) needs to be answered, or else the common good of one’s own nation will be threatened and possibly injured. With such duties recognized as possibly in play in any given case that one might need to consider, the traditional set of just war criteria offers a disciplined means by which to determine precisely what sort of military force is ethically legitimate and proportionate to the morally praiseworthy end of rectifying the injustice and defending the innocent. Restrained as a leader might want to be in having his country bear up nobly and without making any military response for as long as possible, even when facing certain kinds of provocations, the leader would fail in the duty incumbent on authority to look out for the common good of the nation that had been entrusted to his care if a reluctance to go to war meant accepting profound injustices, say, in the name of appeasement. One can readily think of various examples in recent world history in which there were failures of this sort by those in authority (e.g., the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Chamberlain with regard to Hitler). It is at least possible that checking Hitler earlier on might have resulted in a less bloody war. The question here, in many respects, is the question about the appropriate starting point for deliberation about whether a given war is just or not. Properly understood, a just war involves a decision by proper authority about the employment of military force for truly worthy public goals (such as making an appropriate response to unprovoked or unjustified attack). There is a duty to protect the common good that is incumbent on those who are charged by their office with protecting the security of their charges. It is not a justification of the use of any amount of force by that authority for simply any goals, or by private persons who happen to 1048 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. have power at their disposal.The morally proper use of armed force is not simply an act of violence; it is a disciplined use of force—force being considered as something that can be used morally or immorally, depending on who is commanding its use, why it is being used, for what goals, and in what manner. The pacificist presumption that invoking the just war doctrine somehow presumes that warfare is in principle or at least most of the time something morally wrong uses a starting point that begs the question and then tends to confuse all cases of force with violence. There tends to be great stress—sometimes unreasonable stress—on ensuring that all possible recourse to other means have been exhausted. Admittedly, just war theory does require that authorities must truly have tried recourse to the various means of conflict-resolution other than warfare that are at hand. But I think that this condition has to be taken to mean all realistic opportunities, not all logical possibilities, lest this condition be abused by parties with a calculated interest in paralyzing effective action so as to make it impossible for proper authority to do its duty. Again, examples come rather easily to hand, for example, in abuse of this condition by dishonest appeals to the United Nations that were covert forms of delaying tactics rather than genuine efforts at finding alternatives to war. Rather, the starting point for moral deliberation in this matter should be with assessing the situation relative to the duty of legitimate authority to labor for various sorts of common good, and especially to protect the security of those under its charge, even when doing so means some risk to the lives or the popularity or the fortunes of the persons holding office. The necessary effort here to understand the moral responsibilities of authority would need to ascertain in the practical order the proper range of common goods as well as of morally praiseworthy political goods.The examination of questions about the moral legitimacy of possible means that might be used within warfare would also require a separate examination of the sort that the just war theory can provide by proper use of its in bello principles and criteria. To consider questions of just war apart from serious treatment of the common good is to risk confusion. To presume the moral illegitimacy of all war, for instance, is to confuse force and violence and to treat questions about proportionality as if they were the only focus, rather than to respect the difference between these questions and questions about legitimate authority, authentically just cause, and right motivation, let alone the conditional factors such as reasonable likelihood of success, and the exhaustion of other forms of recourse. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1049–72 1049 Roman Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force: Assessing Rights and Wrongs from World War I to Iraq ROBERT J OHN A RAUJO, S.J. Loyola University Chicago School of Law Chicago, Illinois Introduction T HIS ESSAY addresses the magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church on the use of force in modern times. In particular, it concentrates on the teachings from Pope Benedict XV (World War I) forward. While a survey of the Church’s magisterial teachings on the use of force—the just war theory, if you will—extends beyond the scope of this essay, my hope here is to address the elements of these normative teachings that have responded to the use of modern weapons (including weapons of mass destruction) and the use of force, both of which have influenced just war theory and ideas about what is right and wrong about the use of force in particular historical contexts. We recall the words of Pope Benedict XV, who understood the classic “just war theory” but found it necessary to condemn many aspects of the use of military force expended in the First World War as “senseless slaughter.”1 Of course these words addressed the particular cruelties of a war that had evolved into the stalemate of a pointless conflict that consumed millions of civilian and military lives. As the twentieth century progressed, the early weapons of mass destruction—the poisonous and asphyxiating gases used in World War I—were succeeded by nuclear and biological weapons. The development and proliferation of these disproportionate and non-discriminating weapons have provided a catalyst for the Church to re-examine just war theory for recent times. 1 Benedict XV, Exhortation, Dès les Début (To the Belligerent Peoples and to Their Leaders), August 1, 1917. 1050 Robert John Araujo, S.J. Moreover, the development of international organizations dedicated to the use of peaceful means of resolving disputes has further contributed to the Church’s thinking regarding the rightness and wrongness of the use of force in most contexts.Thus, the Church’s contemporary teachings on the use of force in the age of modern weaponry emphasize, based on right reason, reliance on juridical means for relieving tensions and problems rather than the use of force. In order to examine the issues relating to the Church’s assessment of the modern developments in the use of force—the rights and wrongs associated with actual conflicts—I shall consider the following temporal groupings and thematic categories: 1. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI: the First World War and the Era of the League of Nations; 2. Pius XII: the Second World War and the Beginning of the Cold War; 3. John XXIII and Paul VI: the Deepening Cold War Era and the potential for nuclear conflict; 4. and, John Paul II and Benedict XVI: the Conflicts of Contemporary Terrorism and the 2003 Military Incursion into Iraq. The conclusion of this essay reiterates that the Church prefers the use of peaceful means of resolving disputes through the mechanisms of international organizations and their juridical means rather than the use of military force. However, the possibility must not be excluded that the use of force may be required in specific circumstances if exercised in accordance with specific conditions regulating its use. I. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI: The First World War and the Era of the League of Nations During the early years of the twentieth century, Church teachings began to present the view that military force must only be used in the name of legitimate self-defense or the defense of others and never employed to further the interests of aggression. Any use of force that constitutes a war of aggression (sometimes referred to as the crime against peace) is considered illegitimate, is intrinsically immoral, and would conflict with the first principles of the Church’s teachings. The history of aggressive warfare in the twentieth century demonstrates that it inevitably leads to tragedy for all concerned—it often depletes the resources of the aggressor nation and subjugates, by devastation and humiliation, the nation or region that is Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1051 the aggressor’s target. The thoughts of both Pius X and Benedict XV offered these perspectives as the events leading to the outbreak of the First World War developed. The growth in the destructive force of modern weapons was commented on by Pope Pius X (1903–14) in his brief but notable exhortation to the apostolic delegate in the United States in June of 1911.2 This pope noted that any labor for peace is a vital antidote to war in the modern age because “the advanced state of military science portend[s] wars which must be a source of fear even for the most powerful rulers.”3 The work of Pope Benedict XV (1914–22) presented a major exposition of the Church’s thoughts on the use of force in the modern world. Benedict XV was pope during most of the First World War—the war that was supposed to end all wars. His first encyclical letter, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, was issued on November 1, 1914—the first year of his pontificate, which coincided with the outbreak of war in Europe. In it, he referred to the European conflagration as a “the saddest and most mournful spectacle” that would bring about an “enormous slaughter.”4 He concluded this encyclical with an exhortation that he vigorously held until his death in 1922: “we implore with our most earnest prayers the end of this most disastrous war for the sake of human society and for the sake of the Church; for human society, so that when peace shall have been concluded, it may go forward in every form of true progress; for the Church of Jesus Christ, that freed at length from all impediments it may go forth and bring comfort and salvation even to the most remote parts of the earth.”5 Pope Benedict recognized that the ability to forgive one’s adversaries was crucial to maintaining stability and peace in a world filled with recurrent tensions between and among states, especially those most powerful in temporal matters. He saw that averting war was not the only challenge to civil leaders because the use of force might be necessary for legitimate self-defense. If the use of force were necessary, then it was incumbent on civil leaders to ensure that those who suffered as a result would be cared for upon the immediate cessation of hostilities. The exercise of charity in post-conflict theaters would promote reconciliation that 2 Pontifical Brief on International Peace, June 11, 1911, from Pope Pius X to the Apostolic Delegate in the United States of America, reprinted in The American Journal of International Law 5, no. 3, Supplement: Official Documents ( July 1911): 214–16. 3 Letter Libenter abs Te to Archbishop Falconio, Apostolic Delegate to the United States, June 11, 1911, reprinted in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1943), §266. 4 Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, §3. 5 Ibid., §30. 1052 Robert John Araujo, S.J. he considered essential to avoiding or minimizing the likelihood of war in the future. After the conclusion of hostilities in 1918, Benedict concentrated his efforts on promoting the peaceful means of resolving disputes among the sovereigns of the world. The brutality of the Great War had convinced him of this necessity. His outspokenness against reliance on military power was manifested in his 1920 encyclical Pacem, Dei Munus Pulcherrium. In this letter he emphasized the need to replace the enmity that promotes the violent means of addressing disputes with a forgiveness that inculcates the pardoning of offenses and the promotion of the means of bringing aid to those who have suffered from war.6 The “war” that the pope encouraged was that which targeted “enmity and hatred.”7 Benedict astutely understood that wars usually have some underlying causes; however, wars can be averted if nations concentrate on friendly relations that promote “the rights of justice” among peoples.8 The catalyst for war is often some injustice or lingering perception of injustice. Consequently, the temporal authorities have the responsibility to put aside mutual suspicion and “unite in one league, or rather a sort of family of peoples” that respects the independence of nations while at the same time safeguards order throughout the world.9 Crucial to achieving these goals was the need to use this league to either abolish or reduce the crippling expenditures that nations felt compelled to expend for armaments.10 If pursued in good faith, these steps would be a key means of assuring peace and the independence of states within just borders. Benedict XV’s immediate successor, Pope Pius XI (1922–39) found himself thrust into the renewed, emerging conflicts of Europe and the rest of the world that would culminate in the Second World War. In his 1930 Christmas Eve allocution to the College of Cardinals, Benedetto il Natale,11 Pius XI acknowledged that the growing tensions that were emerging would inevitably lead to another world conflict. In this address the pope acknowledged that the Peace of Christ must not be confused with “a sentimental, confused, unwise pacifism.”12 Pius XI saw that the root of conflict between or among states was not “a true and genuine love of country” but “selfish nationalism” where hatred and envy replace 6 Pope Benedict XV, Pacem, Dei Munus Pulcherrium, §13. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., §14. 9 Ibid., §17. 10 Ibid. 11 Reproduced in Principles for Peace, §§913–22. 12 Ibid., §916. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1053 the desire for the good of all.13 Cooperation is to be promoted, but hegemony is to be eschewed. The pope cautioned against reliance on a false sense of peace that failed to maintain “sufficient measures” for legitimate self-defense.14 But, as late as 1930, he thought it unbelievable that any state would precipitate another global conflagration, since the world was still reeling from the aftermath of the “Great War.” II. Pius XII: The Second World War and the Beginning of the Cold War With the death of Pius XI in 1939, the then Secretary of State Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli was elected to the papacy and became Pope Pius XII (1939–58). Within months of his election, he issued a major encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, addressing the impending world conflict and the legitimate and illegitimate uses of force.15 In this landmark document, the papal prose reflected the mind and pen of the skilled and discreet diplomat. Following the path charted by his twentieth-century predecessors, he conveyed the sturdy message that Catholic teachings favored diplomacy and peaceful means of resolving disputes. Like Benedict XV, he presented the case for an international organization that could serve as the guarantor of peace that would eliminate the need for—and, therefore, the legitimacy of—the use of force. Nonetheless, he perceived the sufferings of peaceful peoples at the hands of aggressors—for example, Poland at the hands of the Nazis. As he said in the 1939 encyclical, “The blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world.”16 While prepared to condemn the use of force by the aggressor, he did not criticize the self-defense which the Poles tried to muster against an unjust invasion. In fact, he praised the Poles and their resistance to Nazi aggression. His was in the position not of a pacifist but of the skilled diplomat reminding the world that the use of force can be justified if that is the only way to repel the aggressor. Pius XII always turned to God when war was threatened and exhorted prayers and penance when the world, but especially Europe in 1939, faced the aggression of National Socialism. In doing so, he did not forget the “courageous profession of the 13 Ibid., §920. 14 Ibid., §921. 15 Summi Pontificatus (Pius XII, October 20, 1939). 16 Ibid., §106. 1054 Robert John Araujo, S.J. Faith” and the “heroic sacrifices” made by the “suffering and agonizing members of the Church.”17 In gauging the position of Pius XII vis-à-vis the use of military force, one needs to take account of the fact that, while the pope favored peaceful means of resolving conflicts, he commended those who were willing to make the necessary and ultimate sacrifice in responding to the duty of defending, with force if necessary, the righteous position. He praised heroism in the trials of dangerous times; moreover, he admired the virtuous who conquered the evil-doer in the hope of converting him to more “amiable” ways. Nevertheless, the juridically minded pope reminded all that the principles of “international natural law” regulate the international relations and activities of all peoples.18 These principles demand respect for corresponding rights to independence, to life, and to the possibility of continuous development in the paths of civilization; furthermore, they necessitate fidelity to compacts agreed upon and sanctioned in conformity with the principles of the law of nations. In Nei Tesori, his April 20, 1941, allocution to Italian university students who were members of the movement Catholic Action, he acknowledged the existence of “a truly just war” in which honor and the commendable efforts to save one’s country from the aggressor-adversary combined in a noble enterprise.19 Nevertheless, he cautioned that the virtuous warrior was forbidden to employ means of “cruelty against innocent persons” or “punish the guilty beyond the limits of justice.”20 In this regard, he foreshadowed Pope Paul VI, who coined the expression “if you want peace, work for justice.”21 But Pius was pragmatic enough to understand that laboring for justice that ensures peace may come at great expense. As he noted in his Christmas Message of 1942: “Mankind owes that vow to the countless dead who lie buried on the field of battle:The sacrifice of their lives in the fulfill17 Ibid., §113. 18 Ibid., §74. 19 Allocution Nei Tesori to Italian University Students in Catholic Action (1941), in Principles for Peace, §1670. 20 Ibid. The pope’s words on these points needed to be seen more completely: “These virtues of humility and charity . . . are not enemies, nor are they out of keeping with human dignity. They do not lessen one’s love of country. They do not diminish courage or impede a citizen who, in a truly just war, struggles for the defense, honor and salvation of his country, fights with full fortitude against an adversary armed to overcome him. But beneficent charity finds no pleasure in iniquity, not even on the battlefield nor in the most difficult vicissitudes; it forbids those who fight with cruelty against innocent persons or who punish the guilty beyond the limits of justice.” 21 Pope Paul VI, Message for the Celebration of the Day of Peace, January 1, 1972. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1055 ment of their duty is a holocaust offered for a new and better social order.”22 It is clear that his abhorrence of war energized him to state that the Second World War was a “crumbling process” that was built upon the insecure foundation of a social order whose mortal weakness resided in “an unbridled lust for gain and power.”23 Foreseeing the need for humanitarian instruments such as the Geneva Conventions of 1948, he called for international agreements that would mandate that any war be between legitimate combatants, thereby avoiding occupations and imprisonments that place undue burdens on the innocent.24 Another notable element of this 1942 message was his pointed criticism of the use of aerial combat, which placed particular afflictions on innocent civilian populations.25 As a diplomat who understood well that the law of nations reviles any war of aggression, he recognized that aggression may require a “war on war,” as he explained in his Christmas Message of 1944.26 While war itself is an outmoded means of resolving international conflict, the prevention of aggressive war may well necessitate the use of force. As Papa Pacelli noted, the peace to be established at the end of the Second World War might entail mutual guarantees, economic sanctions, and “even armed intervention.”27 However, one thing was certain for this pope: it was essential for the survival of humanity that a durable international arrangement or organization be established for securing and maintaining international peace and for sanctioning acts of aggression or their threat. To emphasize this point, Pius XII stated, “No one could hail this development with greater joy than he who has long upheld the principle that the idea of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date.”28 In his view, the best response to the immorality of aggressive war would be “judicial intervention” by an organization that represents the will of civilized nations through the infliction of “chastisements” that would not only stigmatize but reform the aggressor.29 Such an institution would lead mankind “from the dark night in which it has been so long submerged.”30 22 Reproduced in Principles for Peace, §1861. 23 Ibid., §1859. 24 Ibid., §1860. 25 Ibid., §1861. 26 Available at www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12XMAS.HTM, §60. 27 Ibid., §61. 28 Ibid., §63. 29 Ibid., §66. 30 Ibid. 1056 Robert John Araujo, S.J. III. John XXIII and Paul VI: The Deepening Cold War and the Potential for Nuclear Conflict Pius XII’s immediate successor, Pope John XXIII (1958–63), another seasoned diplomat who had spent decades in the papal diplomatic service, penned and promulgated the famous encyclical Pacem in Terris, Peace on Earth, a few months before he died. In the time of his pontificate, mankind was imperiled by the escalation in the arms race between the superpowers (primarily the United States and the Soviet Union), which produced growing arsenals of thermonuclear weapons. The situation was made all the more urgent by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. For Blessed John XXIII, it was patent that “justice, right reason, and the recognition of man’s dignity cry out insistently for a cessation to the arms race.”31 Thus, nuclear arms had to be eliminated—if not immediately, then by piecemeal disarmament through juridical instruments. Moreover, the acquisition of arms for the purpose of deterrence was highly dubious. As Pope John argued, “even though the monstrous power of modern weapons does indeed act as a deterrent, there is reason to fear that the very testing of nuclear devices for war purposes can, if continued, lead to serious danger for various forms of life on earth.”32 Even if they were never used in combat, these weapons posed disproportional threats through their testing. As one considers the words of John XXIII, it becomes apparent that the pope was alarmed not so much about justifiable self-defense as about the profligate spending invested in the arms race, which had detrimental effects on the development not only of peoples in the countries that were participants in this race but across the globe as well.33 He astutely acknowledged the justification (the need for nuclear parity) given by those who pursued the development of nuclear weapons, but he noted that the arms race roused a “competitive spirit” that only accelerated the growth in numbers of these devastating weapons that destabilized the maintenance of international peace and authentic security.34 Ultimately, a three-part argument based on justice, right reason (a pillar of Catholic social thought), and the recognition of the dignity of the human person necessitated a cessation of the arms race and the banning of nuclear weapons.35 The pope became a stalwart advocate for the conclusion of a juridical instrument conducive to nuclear disarmament 31 Pacem in Terris, §112. 32 Ibid., §110. 33 Ibid., §109. 34 Ibid., §110. 35 Ibid., §112. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1057 based on “an effective system of mutual control.”36 In presenting this view, he may well have had in mind the fact that the Holy See was a charter member (1957–58) of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose primary objective is to provide for the peaceful development of nuclear energy and the elimination of its use as a weapon of mass destruction. In this context he relied on the wisdom of his immediate predecessor who said during the last great conflict of World War II, “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war.”37 Like his predecessors Benedict XV and Pius XII, John XXIII held great hope in the establishment and continuation of a universal international organization dedicated to the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security. While noting its limitations and inclination to be abused by internal and external forces, this pope saw that the United Nations and its family of organizations offered much promise, when he said: “It is therefore Our earnest wish that the United Nations Organization may be able progressively to adapt its structure and methods of operation to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks. May the day be not long delayed when every human being can find in this organization an effective safeguard of his personal rights; those rights, that is, which derive directly from his dignity as a human person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable.”38 It naturally followed that Blessed John XXIII’s immediate successor would travel to the United Nations a little more than two years later (1965), to make clear the appeal for this organization’s work and the pledge for its success, for he had been succeeded by another prelate who had spent a considerable number of years as a papal diplomat, Pope Paul VI (1963–78). During his pontificate, Pope Paul was confronted with the increasing tensions between the East and West that were manifested in the conflict in Vietnam. As another papal emissary trained in the art of diplomacy, Paul VI traveled to the United Nations headquarters in New York in October of 1965 to meet the nations of the world and to endorse the United Nations and its work. As the institution was preparing to enter its third decade of existence, the pope conveyed his profound respect for those who pursue diplomacy in resolving the conflicts that emerge in the world. During his address to the General Assembly, he proclaimed the essence of his robust message: “No more war, war never again. It is peace, peace which must guide the destinies of peoples and of all mankind.”39 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., §116. 38 Ibid., §145. 39 Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, October 4, 1965, §5. Robert John Araujo, S.J. 1058 During this historic address, the pope offered his “moral and solemn ratification of this lofty institution.”40 Knowing that the Holy See is not a temporal sovereign, he declared that it was as an “expert in humanity” that he recognized the United Nations as “the obligatory path of modern civilization and of world peace.”41 Echoing sentiments raised by John XXIII in the latter’s encyclical letter Pacem in Terris, Pope Paul offered that the United Nations provides and must continue to provide the forum in which the relations between the peoples of the world are regulated by reason, justice, law, and negotiation and not by brute force, the threat of violence, fear, or deceit.42 One must inevitably ask, however, if Paul VI would offer such an embracing endorsement of the United Nations in its present manifestation. In emphasizing the imperative of pursuing peace and eschewing military force, the pope relied on the words of a person then regarded as the leader of the free world and the political head of one of the superpowers, President John F. Kennedy, who had said, “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.”43 To put his own touch on these words of President Kennedy, Pope Paul reminded his distinguished audience that the objectives of the United Nations to secure peace and international security were marred by the tragic destruction of human life and its frequent companion, “unprecedented suffering.” Perhaps recalling the words of Benedict XV delivered during the First World War, he employed the phrase of his predecessor who almost a half century earlier referred to global conflict as a “useless slaughter.”44 He challenged his audience, which included many world leaders as well as their delegates, to put aside the “selfish and bellicose mentality” that had tragically characterized so much of human history, including modern times.45 But the pope was not satisfied with simply challenging his audience, because he also showed them that the way to the salvation of the planet and its peoples was through disarmament—another lofty goal but within reach because the problem at its source was of human manufacture. In the estimation of Paul VI, what man had made, he could just as easily unmake. His words in this regard must stand for themselves: If you wish to be brothers, let the weapons fall from your hands. One cannot love with offensive weapons in his hands. Those weapons, espe40 Ibid., §1. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., §2. 43 Ibid., §5. 44 Ibid. See note 1 above for the reference to Benedict XV. 45 Ibid. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1059 cially the terrible weapons that modern science has given you, long before they produce victims and ruins, cause bad dreams, foster bad feelings, create nightmares, distrust and somber resolves; they demand enormous expenditures; they obstruct projects of solidarity and useful work; they falsify the very psychology of peoples. As long as man remains that weak, changeable and even wicked being that he often shows himself to be, defensive arms will, unfortunately, be necessary.46 Here, it is essential for the reader to take stock of the concluding work of the Second Vatican Council. Two months after his U.N. address, the Council issued the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes ( Joy and Hope).47 In this comprehensive text, the Council noted that the cause of peace was not only the task of political and military leaders but also that of each person, who must be devoted “to the cause of peace with renewed vigor.”48 Peace is not the absence of war, nor is it a stalemate in the balance of power, but it is the “enterprise of justice” reflecting the order essential to human society ordained by its Maker.49 Of course, characteristic of this order is the free desire of peoples to share and provide from their talents in a genuine spirit of fraternity.50 The Council asserted that this is the true war, the authentic battle to which all are called.51 In expressing these sentiments, the Council—and Pope Paul— reached the conclusion that it was not only the tension between superpowers and their arsenals of weapons capable of destroying the world several times over, but it was also guerrilla warfare and “new methods of deceit and subversion”—including terrorism—that posed new and subtle threats to the peace that mankind must have in order to survive.52 But the Council further emphasized that, as long as there remained the danger of war and that there was “no competent and sufficiently powerful [international] authority” to prevent war and cultivate mandatory peaceful means for resolving all disputes, governments could not be deprived of the “right” to a legitimate self-defense if the means of peaceful settlement have been exhausted.53 In short, the Council did not abandon the longstanding doctrine of the right of legitimate self-defense; 46 Ibid. 47 Promulgated on December 7, 1965. 48 Gaudium et Spes, §77. 49 Ibid., §78. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., §79. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 1060 Robert John Araujo, S.J. however, this right and responsibility could not be confused with any nefarious plan for subjugating other peoples and their governments.54 In this regard, the Council asserted during an especially tense time of the Cold War that those who are called to provide legitimate self-defense in accord with the juridical principles that guide the use of force are themselves agents of peace, security, and freedom of peoples.55 However, in just three years’ time, Paul VI expressed sentiments different from the core of his U.N. address (and different from Gaudium et Spes) when he issued the first World Day of Peace message (an annual message continued by John Paul II and Benedict XVI). In the inaugural address, issued in 1968, he stated that the ideal of peace was not to be an excuse for cowardice in those who have the responsibility to defend their nations. As he put it, those called to this important duty are defenders of “justice and liberty.”56 He asserted with clarity that the pursuit of peace must not be confused with pacifism. Rather, peace is the quest for “truth, justice, freedom, and love,” and this search may require those who pursue it seriously and with honor to sacrifice themselves so that others may live. If he had been viewed as a pacifist when he spoke before the United Nations in October of 1965, Pope Paul clearly expressed the concern that he, who favored peace, could not favor the cowardice of those who would avoid the duty of self-sacrifice in the service to their fellow citizens and to their country when offered “in the defense of justice and liberty.”57 To remove any doubt of the tenor of his message, he argued:“Peace is not pacifism; it does not mask a base and slothful concept of life, but it proclaims the highest and most universal values of life”—that is, truth, justice, freedom, and love—the four pillars of social life identified by John XXIII in Pacem in Terris.58 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. In its concluding thoughts, the Council presented its plan for the states of the world to proceed on the use of force: “It is our clear duty, therefore, to strain every muscle in working for the time when all war can be completely outlawed by international consent.This goal undoubtedly requires the establishment of some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all and endowed with the power to safeguard on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights. But before this hoped for authority can be set up, the highest existing international centers must devote themselves vigorously to the pursuit of better means for obtaining common security. Since peace must be born of mutual trust between nations and not be imposed on them through a fear of the available weapons, everyone must labor to put an end at last to the arms race, and to make a true beginning of disarmament, not unilaterally indeed, but proceeding at an equal pace according to agreement, and backed up by true and workable safeguards . . .” ibid., §81. 56 World Day of Peace Message, 1968. 57 Ibid. 58 Pacem in Terris, §§35–36. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1061 IV. John Paul II and Benedict XVI: The Subsidence of the Cold War and the Emergence of Terrorism and the 2003 Military Incursion in Iraq The papacy of Pope John Paul I lasted a short thirty-three days. As a result, he was unable to issue any pertinent statement regarding just war and the use of force. His successor, by contrast, served in the Petrine Office for more than a quarter of a century.Thus John Paul II (1978–2005) contributed immensely to the discussion and debate on just war and the use of military force. As one who was familiar with the oppressive measures of Nazi Germany and Soviet-sponsored totalitarianism in his native Poland, he urged caution, knowing that armed force may be necessary to combat corrupt or evil political institutions and the states they control. He took the opportunity in his 1991 encyclical letter Centessimus Annus to express his evaluation of the post–World War II era, in which a type of shadow of peace was characterized by growing distrust among the great powers that led to the appropriation of scientific advances to generate new weapons of overwhelmingly destructive capacity. In his estimation, these advances, which could have been better used to bring peoples together and solidify peace, were being used to drive them apart. Legitimate self-defense must not be an excuse for intensifying mistrust and prolonging conflict as was the case with the Cold War. John Paul II would sometimes refer to the wisdom of Pius XII who stated: “The danger is imminent, but there is yet time. Nothing is lost with peace; all may be lost with war. Let men return to mutual understanding. Let them begin negotiations anew.”59 Early in his papacy (1983), he saw three important bishops’ conferences and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster address the climax of the Cold War, which would begin to disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union within the same decade. The first of these texts to be considered, The Challenge of Peace, is that of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued in May of 1983. In their letter The Challenge of Peace, the American bishops expressed their concern with several issues pertinent to the use of armed force: the arms race; the means of contemporary warfare; the development of modern weapons systems; and the negotiating positions and strategies of the civil and military authorities who were concerned with and oversaw the use of military force. They noted that not all their words carried the same moral authority; however, they further stated that their letter would address specific contexts where the use of military force may or may not 59 Radio Message of Pope Pius XII, August 24, 1939, in Principles for Peace, §1377. 1062 Robert John Araujo, S.J. be in accord with the moral principles that must regulate any use of military force.60 Their letter acknowledged the existence of “the range of strongly held opinion in the Catholic community on questions of war and peace.”61 They further recognized the validity of traditional moral principles that justify a nation’s use of military force in legitimate self-defense.62 But they identified what they then believed to be “the presumption against war which stands at the beginning of just-war teaching”; moreover, no state should ever conclude, when using or contemplating using force, that it has “absolute justice” on its side.63 This latter position necessitates careful study for the case of a nation which has exhausted all peaceful means in dealing with a belligerent power that threatens its integrity or existence. Once a military conflict begins, the traditional principles of proportionality and discrimination must guide the use of force. The American bishops were clear that, under no circumstances, could they perceive of “any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restricted a scale, can be morally justified.”64 Even if a nation were targeted by an adversary’s nuclear arsenal, the target nation would not be morally justified to reciprocate in the same way; therefore, it was incumbent upon all states, including those with nuclear capabilities, to resist the use or the threat of the use of nuclear weapons with a nonnuclear defense.65 But the bishops did not offer details about what such a non-nuclear defense would include. Several European bishops’ conferences also provided some substantive insights on these issues. The first to be examined is the German bishops’ text.66 Acknowledging the German state’s responsibilities for two world wars, the bishops recalled that the Church has “always adhered to the necessity of protecting the innocent against brutality and oppression, combating injustice and defending justice and righteousness.”67 To emphasize the continuing vitality of this doctrine for these bishops, at least in 1983, the renunciation of this principle could promote violence against peoples or political blackmail that would lead to violence.68 With this point in mind, they firmly held that civil society, the state, and even the 60 The Challenge of Peace, §9. 61 Ibid., §10. 62 Ibid., §§85–100. 63 Ibid., §93. 64 Ibid., §150. 65 Ibid., §150. 66 German Bishops’ Pastoral Letter, Gerechtigkeit schafft Frieden, April 18, 1983. 67 Ibid., §104. 68 Ibid. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1063 Church must rely on those in military service to perform their responsibilities “with expert skill and personal courage.”69 They also noted that military personnel have the calling to contribute to peace by constantly remembering that their service necessitates vigilant awareness of the incumbent moral responsibility of their office.70 The second episcopal conference document requiring attention in this study is that from a nuclear power, France.71 While non-violence and forgiveness remain important elements of Christian teaching, the French bishops recalled that states must retain the power to respond to violence by means of force, because states have the incumbent responsibility to defend peace, and meeting the duties of this charge may require the use of appropriate force.72 In considering nuclear deterrence, the French bishops observed that the “logic” associated with this defense scheme is one of distress and is flawed.73 The flaw exists in the notion that, even though a nation is not conducting war, it periodically demonstrates its capacity to rely on the use of force that includes unleashing its devastating nuclear arsenal. But the French bishops also acknowledged that peace may be served when the would-be aggressor is restrained by “an appropriate fear” of the nation that is the object of the attack, if the aggressor considers the target’s own nuclear arsenal: the threat of force is not itself the exercise of force.74 This component of the nuclear deterrent is shared with all other military deterrents, such as maintaining a standing military force. However, the proof of the pudding, so to speak, is that if the deterrence fails, the force that stands behind it needs to be used—and this is the inherent flaw of the nuclear deterrent. The French bishops candidly asserted that there is another great flaw, which is especially problematic in the context of Catholic teachings: the use of nuclear weapons typically violates the proportionality and discriminating norms that justify the use of force; consequently, their use would be a crime against God and man, as had been noted in Gaudium et Spes.75 But the French bishops conceded that threat is not use, and the threat by itself does not share in the immorality of the use.76 The concept of 69 Ibid., §203. 70 Ibid. 71 French Bishops’ Pastoral Letter, Gagner la paix, November 8, 1983. 72 Ibid., §12. 73 Ibid., §26. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., §27. 76 Ibid., §29. 1064 Robert John Araujo, S.J. nuclear deterrence, while a vice, is not an evil of the same magnitude as the use of nuclear weapons, which the Council condemned.77 Although the lesser evil is not synonymous with a moral good, it remains a lesser evil nevertheless; consequently, the practitioner of the nuclear deterrent has the unavoidable responsibility to “pursue a constructive policy in favor of peace.”78 Toward the end of the same year in which three national bishops’ conferences addressed the use of military force, the Archbishop of Westminster, Basil Cardinal Hume, issued a pastoral letter that presented his views on these substantial issues.79 One novel matter that he introduced into the debate on the use of force, including the nuclear deterrent, was the point that disarmament and its attending concerns cannot be a onesided enterprise. He identified the peril of pressuring only the democratic governments of the West while leaving undisturbed those of the Soviet bloc.80 He shared the views of the three bishops’ conferences that have been previously indicated regarding the moral questions that accompany any consideration of the use of force, but he joined the pragmatic assessment that the state has both the right and the duty to provide a legitimate self-defense for the peoples it exists to protect.81 As he said, “Although nothing could ever justify the use of nuclear arms as weapons of massive and indiscriminate slaughter, yet to abandon them without adequate safeguards may help to destabilize the existing situation and may dramatically increase the risk of nuclear blackmail.”82 In short he acknowledged, like the French bishops, that the threat of force is not synonymous with its use. In Cardinal Hume’s view, the acceptance of a strategy of nuclear deterrence must be on strict conditions, and it would be only a temporary component of a nation’s defense strategy, remaining in place only as long as it took for the states possessing nuclear weapons to abandon them.83 John Paul II saw that, regardless of the type of weapons being considered (including the plague of small arms and anti-personnel mines), problems are never solved by weapons, because, whatever their nature, they generate tensions between and among peoples. What is crucial to a durable and just peace is not the presence of and reliance on arms, even 77 Ibid., §30. 78 Ibid. 79 Towards Nuclear Morality—letter of Basil Cardinal Hume, November 17, 1983. 80 Ibid., §5. 81 Ibid., §6. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., §12. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1065 if they are intended for self-defense, but an understanding and acceptance of the reality that there can be no peace without justice, and that there can be no justice without forgiveness.84 This statement garnered additional significance in a world where nuclear deterrence as a mutual strategy between superpowers has, for the time being, become a relic of the past; however, new threats—especially terrorism—now threaten the stability of peace and order. While terrorism is without doubt an evil that plagues the world of the early twenty-first century, the solution, for John Paul II, became a clarion call: the pillars of true peace are justice and that form of love which is forgiveness.85 For him, true peace and justice cannot reign in resentment and revenge but only in forgiveness. Blessed John Paul astutely noted that the new weapon used by the modern terrorist is his own person; the terrorist is convinced that his own destruction and the destruction of those in whose company he finds himself will lead to “justice.”This is not justice but its corruption. The antidote, for Blessed John Paul II, is not hatred responding to hatred but forgiveness. But until such time as forgiveness becomes the foundation of a just world order, the innocent may respond with that necessary force that constitutes a legitimate selfdefense, which must include in its arsenal “respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means, including correct and precise identification of only those persons who are guilty.86 The force that is used in legitimate self-defense against terrorism and those who practice terrorism must not be the blind application of violence against the hatred that fuels terrorism. Though it appears to some to be a fatal weakness, forgiveness is the crucial weapon in combatting terrorism, because it reinforces those noble human qualities that are far more apt to eradicate the hatred that fuels terrorism without annihilating those who become repositories of this hatred.87 In this regard, John Paul II explained that the legitimate fight against terrorism cannot be restricted to repressive or punitive operations.88 Any use of military force to combat terrorism must always take stock of the reasons given to justify acts of terrorism. Thus, education and economic and social assistance can be more effective than guns, bullets, and explosives in dealing with terrorists. Once the root causes of unrest that often serve as the catalyst for terrorism are identified, addressing the needs of a 84 Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2002, §10. 85 Ibid., §2. 86 Ibid., §5. 87 Ibid., §10. 88 World Day of Peace Message, 2004, §8. 1066 Robert John Araujo, S.J. desperate or frustrated people who are surrounded or consumed by this unrest may be more effective in annihilating terrorism than the use of military force. Here one needs to take stock of the connection between terrorism and the recent exercise of military force in the Middle East, in particular, Iraq. Pope John Paul II had the occasion to address twice the emerging conflicts in Iraq. The 1991 war was short lived and largely guided by broad international consensus. That same consensus was not present in the second armed conflict, which took place in Iraq beginning in March of 2003. Just prior to the outbreak of that conflict, the pope addressed the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See on January 13, 2003, and asserted that war is not simply a means for resolving international disputes; rather, it is the means of last resort, “the very last option,” to be used “in accordance with very strict conditions.”89 For this force to be permissible, stock must be taken of its effect on the well-being of civilian populations that will be affected. The pope’s plea against renewed hostilities in Iraq was made by the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, before the Security Council on February 19, 2003. The Permanent Observer stressed that, because the “peaceful tools provided by the international law” were still viable, the “resort to force would not be a just one.”90 In many ways, his words reflected the sentiments expressed by Popes Benedict XV and Pius XII, which they had presented at the outsets of the First and Second World Wars respectively. The Permanent Observer of the Holy See expressed at the outset of his intervention that the Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, had met with Pope John Paul II in Rome the previous evening. The fundamental point presented by Archbishop Migliore was that the resort to the use of force at this stage would not be just, in that not all peaceful means for resolving the tensions in Iraq, as provided for under international law, had been exhausted. As Pope John Paul II pointed out in his 2004 World Day of Peace Message, “Peace and international law are closely linked to each another: law favors peace.”91 Of course the Holy 89 Address of Pope John Paul II to the Diplomatic Corps, January 13, 2003, §4. 90 Intervention of Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, before the Security Council, February 19, 2003. 91 World Day of Peace Message, 2004, §5. The pope continued his promotion of the authentic role of international law by calling attention to a fundamental precept, pacta sunt servanda—the agreement must be obeyed—when he stated, “It is appropriate to recall this fundamental rule, especially at times when there is a temptation to appeal to the law of force rather than to the force of law.” Ibid. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1067 See did not take a passive approach to its recommendation regarding the 2003 situation in Iraq: it had recently sent delegations to Washington, DC and to Baghdad to search for a means of concluding a durable peace to the attending problems between these two capitals. In the present day, there is much discussion about whether preventive war can be justified. This subject, the use of military force justified on the theory of “preventive war,” raises grave moral and serious juridical questions; however, it may be possible for the competent public authority to demonstrate that the use of force to prevent further bloodshed is justified for self-defense or the protection of others and preservation of the common good. Nonetheless, the burden of complying with this benchmark is stringent. Typically, preventive war would not comply with the traditional understanding of the first principle (i.e., legitimate self-defense) of Catholic thinking on the use of force. However, there could be a narrow justification for initiating the use of force where it is essential to effectuate the duty to protect or defend. John Paul II offered further thoughts on the matter. In his World Day of Peace Message for 2000, he identified and explained the case for humanitarian intervention. Here he noted that it is legitimate, perhaps even obligatory, to use necessary force to disarm an aggressor who threatens an innocent civilian population and who is not dissuaded by political and diplomatic efforts relying on non-violent methods.92 The caveat the pope added to this was that the force used must be precise and only that which is necessary; moreover, it must be done in accord with the approval of the authority of the international community.93 In this context, the pope clearly expressed that the international authority could be the U.N. organization. It is at this stage of the essay that one must now consider the address given by Pope Benedict XVI (2005–present) to the General Assembly of the United Nations on April 18, 2008, in which he dwelt at length on the “responsibility to protect”—the primary duty of every state to protect its own population.94 But, if a state is incapable or unwilling to respond in the affirmative to this duty, then the obligation is transferred to the international community via juridical means, as the pope further noted.95 But the question remains, what happens if the international community is also incapable of responding in a timely manner to some 92 World Day of Peace Message, 2000, §11 93 Ibid. 94 Address of Benedict XVI to the General Assembly of the United Nations, April 18, 2008. 95 Ibid. 1068 Robert John Araujo, S.J. humanitarian crisis? What then? These situations generate the need to pause and consider whether the use of force may be required to contend with a human agent that threatens the security and peace of innocents. As His Holiness suggested, it is indifference or failure to intervene that can compromise their safety, and this is where “real damage” follows.96 What is needed in these circumstances is a deeper search for ways of preempting and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation.97 But reason still necessitates consideration of the use of force, particularly in those instances where an aggressive agent uses the slowness of diplomacy and negotiation to accomplish an attack on innocents. Indeed, there are entities in the world for which diplomacy and juridical mechanisms mean little or nothing. Pope Benedict acknowledged that “natural reason [can be] abandoned” by those for whom peaceful resolution of disputes means little or nothing and, as a consequence, “freedom and human dignity [are] grossly violated.”98 In such cases, must sovereign states and the international community stand by and allow the aggressor who does not abide by the instruments of peace erase from the face of this earth the aggressors’ victims? I do not believe so, for that is why there has remained in Catholic teaching the duty to use that force which is necessary, carefully directed, and proportional to protect those who must be defended and protected. Conclusion From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day, Catholic teaching regarding the legitimate use of force recognizes the necessity for the existence of an armed force that is the servant of those who are to be protected by it. The sole justification for the existence of a standing military force is legitimate defense or protection; therefore, the fundamental mission of this force is to preserve the peace by affording protection from the aggressor without provoking or prolonging conflict. The authentic mission of the defensive armed force is to protect the innocent and to promote peace and justice, the counterpoints to conflict, by arresting the unlawful aims and actions of any aggressor who threatens innocents, peace, or security. Those who direct or serve in the armed forces are never permitted to perpetrate infractions of the laws of war recognized 96 Ibid. 97 Please see the Appendix at the end of this essay for two interventions by Arch- bishop Celestino Migliore. 98 Address of Benedict XVI to the General Assembly of the United Nations, April 18, 2008. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1069 by civilized peoples or to violate the humanitarian principles that must guide their every action. If they do, they must be held accountable, be accorded due process of law, and be given the opportunity to defend their actions in accordance with objectively reasoned legal principles. Ecclesiastical and public international law authorities have acknowledged that the predilection for peaceful means of dispute resolution does not always prevail, especially when some nations honor the prescription that favors peaceful means of resolving disputes but others do not. It is also necessary to recognize that in the present age, both ecclesiastical and civil authorities have found it imperative to address the activities of nongovernment agents, such as terrorist organizations, that rely on violence in the pursuit of their misguided objectives. In these circumstances, the use of force may be permissible, even necessary, under prescribed conditions when it becomes clear that peaceful means are not only ineffective but may further endanger innocents. It is pivotal to acknowledge the further point that in the age of weapons of mass destruction, “in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.”99 The modern means of massive devastation represent a particularly serious threat to humanity, and those entities that possess these weapons have an enormous responsibility before God and all of humanity.100 The Catholic Church recognizes, in accord with established legal principles accepted in the international order,101 that nations (peoples) reserve the right to use that force which is necessary to muster self-defense that is permissible and lawful. To suggest that there is a strong presumption against the use of force would be inaccurate in view of the fact that there is, in reality, a presumption that civil authorities must act justly because of their responsibility to protect those whom they are called to serve— another principle that the Church and the international order respect. The responsibility to protect has expanded as developments in recent years have demonstrated that some of the subjects of this protection, that 99 Pacem in Terris, §127. 100 Gaudium et Spes, §80. As a result of the saturation or obliteration bombing used by the Allies in World War II, the Rev. John Cuthbert Ford, S.J., published his famous 1944 article, “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing,” Theological Studies 5 (1944): 261–309. In his important article, Fr. Ford, a well-respected moral theologian, proffered the important distinction between precision bombing of definite, limited military targets and the bombing of a much larger area that could be an entire city or a very large section of a developed area that would include residential districts. 101 Charter of the United Nations, Article 51. 1070 Robert John Araujo, S.J. is, natural persons, may not have governments of their own to protect them. Their government may be incapable of rendering assistance, or it may be the very agent of their persecution and responsible for jeopardizing the welfare of these innocents. Nothing can ever justify acts against innocent civilians, such as were carried out in Rwanda and Dafur; therefore, it becomes the duty of the competent public authority (or associations of public authorities) to protect the innocent by using proportionate and discriminating force to repel or contain aggressive acts directed against innocents. It is becoming increasingly important to recognize that this duty to protect includes offering assistance to those who become refugees from their homeland in order to escape victimization by aggressor forces. The principle of national sovereignty cannot be relied upon to prevent a military intervention whose sole purpose is to defend innocent victims.102 What is increasingly alarming in the early twenty-first century is that weapons of mass destruction are beginning to proliferate once more, even though the competition between the superpowers has largely come to an end. While superpowers have agreed to reduce their stockpiles of such devastating weaponry, these weapons are now finding their way into the hands of smaller states and, quite possibly, non-state entities. It has become a perverse “badge of honor” for even the poorest of countries to possess such means of destruction. It is claimed that the possession of weapons of mass destruction makes smaller states the equal of larger, more powerful states. But this view of the world order is fallacious and filled with peril. The Church has been accustomed to assisting those who are or stand to be harmed by such perils. Mr. Stalin was correct when he implied that the pope has no military power. What he did not take into account was the moral force of the Church expressed in her voice, her teachings, and her arduous advocacy for alternatives to the unnecessary and avoidable use of military force. Appendix In his intervention during the General Debate of the General Assembly on September 29, 2008, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, had these further thoughts on the matter of the “responsibility to protect”: For his part, Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations last April, also recognized that from the very 102 Cf., Pope John Paul II, Address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, January 16, 1993, §13. Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force 1071 ancient philosophical discourses on governance to the more modern development of the nation-state, the responsibility to protect has served and must continue to serve as the principle shared by all nations to govern their populations and regulate relations between peoples. These statements highlight the historical and moral basis for States to govern. Likewise, they reassert that good governance should no longer be measured simply within the context of “state’s rights” or “sovereignty” but rather, by its ability to care for those who entrust leaders with the grave moral responsibility to lead. Despite the growing consensus behind the responsibility to protect as a means for greater cooperation, this principle is still being invoked as a pretext for the arbitrary use of military might. This distortion is a continuation of past failed methods and ideas. The use of violence to resolve disagreements is always a failure of vision and a failure of humanity. The responsibility to protect should not be viewed merely in terms of military intervention but primarily as the need for the international community to come together in the face of crises to find means for fair and open negotiations, support the moral force of law and search for the common good. Failure to collectively come together to protect populations at risk and to prevent arbitrary military interventions would undermine the moral and practical authority of this Organization. The “we the peoples” who formed the United Nations conceived the responsibility to protect to serve as the core basis for the United Nations. The founding leaders believed that the responsibility to protect would consist not primarily in the use of force to restore peace and human rights, but above all, in States coming together to detect and denounce the early symptoms of every kind of crises and mobilize the attention of governments, civil society and public opinion to find the causes and offer solutions. The various agencies and bodies of the United Nations also reaffirm the importance of the responsibility to protect in their ability to work in close proximity and solidarity with affected populations and to put into place mechanisms of detection, implementation and monitoring. In his October 14, 2008 intervention at the 63rd Session of the U.N. General Assembly on “The Rule of Law at the National and International Levels,” Archbishop Migliore further addressed the “responsibility to protect” in the context of the “rule of law” and had this to say: The rule of law is a vital component for assisting States in their responsibility to protect. While this responsibility entails the States’ primary and legal obligation to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, it also provides for the international community to intervene when a State is unable or unwilling to exercise this fundamental responsibility. This capacity to intervene should not be seen, however, only in the form of actions 1072 Robert John Araujo, S.J. taken by the Security Council or use of force. It is also the cooperation of the international community to help States with the necessary capacity and legal expertise in the field of protection. The building up of national legal structures will help States to avert atrocities by establishing mechanisms that promote justice and peace, ensure accountability and recourse under the law, provide for the foundation of a stable economy and protect the dignity of every person. . . . One area in which the United Nations serves as a forum for enhancing the rule of law is in the making of international treaties and conventions. Indeed, it has been the ability of the United Nations to bring people together and give greater attention to international norms. Hence, it is of great importance that when implementing and enforcing these norms, the United Nations’ agencies and monitoring bodies respect the intent and desire of States. A treaty body system which moves away from the original intent of the parties and expands its mandates beyond the power given by States, risks undermining its own credibility and legitimacy and can discourage States from joining conventions. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1073–97 1073 Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? From Aquinas to the Contemporary Popes G REGORY M. R EICHBERG Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Oslo, Norway I N 1996, James Turner Johnson published an article in The National Interest, “The Broken Tradition,” in which he argued that the contemporary version of the just war theory as developed by the Catholic Magisterium (Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI are cited in this connection, as are the American Catholic Bishops) “is radically at odds with the classical idea of just war.”1 The difference between the classical and contemporary versions of just war theory Johnson has summed up with his widely cited contrast between two incompatible starting points for moral reflection on war: “the presumption against injustice” (the classical theory), on the one hand, and the “presumption against war” (contemporary theory) on the other. The latter formulation does indeed figure in the influential pastoral letter by the U.S. Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (1983), which affirms that “Catholic teaching begins in every case with a presumption against war and for peaceful settlement of disputes.”2 For Johnson, the discrepancy between the two forms of just war theory is to the discredit of the contemporary version, which he pointedly calls an “intellectual deterioration . . . in influential quarters”3 which has 1 James Turner Johnson, “The Broken Tradition,” The National Interest (Fall 1996): 27–36, at 33. This was not the first time that Johnson had worked up this thesis, as he had articulated substantially the same view in “Toward Reconstructing the Jus ad Bellum,” The Monist 57 (1973): 461–88. 2 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, May 3, 1983 (Washington, DC: Office of Publishing Services, United States Catholic Conference, 1983), iii; accessible online at www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/TheChallengeofPeace.pdf. 3 Johnson, “The Broken Tradition,” 27. 1074 Gregory M. Reichberg “altered the very ground on which the theory itself has stood for more than a thousand years.”4 Significantly, Johnson is far from being alone in his assessment that the contemporary teaching of the Catholic Magisterium represents a departure from the “classic canons of just-war thinking.”5 An almost identical appraisal may be found in a 1962 monograph by Fr. René Coste,6 who argues that for Pope Pius XII (the pivotal figure in the articulation of contemporary Catholic just war doctrine) offensive war, in the juridical and moral sense of the term, must be entirely excluded. This represents, Coste affirms, “a key divergence with the traditional doctrine.”7 Unlike Johnson, however, Coste views this doctrinal shift as a positive development, one in keeping with the progress of humanity (as reflected notably in international law) toward a less sanguine view of the nobility of war. The same point is made in a 1988 historical study by Joseph Joblin, S.J., who explains how Pius XII’s repudiation of important aspects of the classical account of just war, particularly its endorsement of offensive war, reflected, in the eyes of the wartime pope, “the judgment rendered by ‘modern conscience’ against the ‘absurdity’ of obtaining satisfaction for violated rights by such means.”8 More recently, Peter L. P. Simpson9 has argued that Pope John Paul II, in affirming that “[w]ar is a defeat for humanity,”10 sought to subsume (and thereby relativize) just war principles under the higher dictates of peace and charity. On this reading, just war may be right but it will never be a sufficient response to the problems “that made the enemy an enemy.”11 In this essay, I examine the relation of classical to contemporary Catholic teaching on just war, to test the claims made above concerning their discontinuity. In examining the discontinuity thesis, I prescind from the normative question, whether this supposed discontinuity should be deemed good or bad, an advance or degeneration. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 René Coste, Le problème du droit de guerre dans la pensée de Pie XII (Paris: Aubier, 1962). 7 Ibid., 288 (my translation). 8 Joseph Joblin, L’Église et la guerre (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988), 279 (my translation). 9 Peter L. P. Simpson, “Transcending Justice: Pope John Paul II and Just War,” Jour- nal of Religious Ethics 39.2 (2011): 286–98. 10 Address of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Diplomatic Corps, January 13, 2003, accessible online at www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/ 2003/january/documents/hf_jp-.ii_spe_20030113_diplomatic-corps_en.html (cited by Simpson, “Transcending Justice,” 286–87). 11 Simpson, “Transcending Justice,” 291; also see 296. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1075 Parameters of Classical and Contemporary Just War It will be beneficial, before launching into this comparison, to explain how I delineate the two periods—classical and contemporary—in question. The classical period is framed, at one end by Gratian and Aquinas, at the other by Suarez, Molina, and Grotius. Augustine belongs to the prehistory of the classical doctrine, because his comments on the topic, however seminal, were purely ad hoc, whereas Grotius provided its most systematic formulation. The contemporary period begins roughly in 1870 at the First Vatican Council, with a proposal (the so-called “Postulata”), undertaken at the initiative of the Armenian Synod, and supported by a block of 40 bishops, to petition the pope for a revision of the Church’s teaching on just war.12 Lying dormant for some years (the “Postulata” was never addressed by the Council, which adjourned early due to the Franco-Prussian war), its main theses were taken up anew after the First World War by the French Jesuit lawyer Yves de la Brière and the Italian sociologist-politician-priest Luigi Sturzo; they were subsequently adopted by a multinational group of Catholic theologians (de Solanges, Delos,Valensin, etc.) who issued a theological declaration (the “Fribourg Conventus”) after their 1931 meeting in the Swiss city by that name.13 The idea that the classical just war doctrine must be reformulated to fit the new conditions of international order would, after a consensus had built up in subsequent high-level meetings of Catholic jurists and theologians (for instance the 1938 assembly of the Catholic Council of International Relations), found its way into the papal pronouncements of Pius XII and later popes. Sitting intermediate between these two phases, classical and contemporary, were the just war writings of the natural lawyer Luigo Taparelli d’Azeglio (1793–1862), who sought to update the classical theory in dialogue with Rousseau, Kant, and other moderns, and in light of newly discussed problems such as the justifiability of preventive war or armed humanitarian intervention. His strong endorsement of international society, arbitration, and arms control would contribute toward the papacy’s later embrace of these ideas. Both Benedict XV and 12 See the account in Joblin, L’Église et la guerre, 221–23. This was part of a broader initiative, led by a Protestant, the Scottish diplomat and writer David Urqhart, who in 1869 published a book petitioning Pius IX to work toward a restoration of the jus gentium (Appel d’un protestant au pape pour le rétablissement du droit public des nations. Cinq propositions sur l’oeuvre du future Concile). 13 “Conclusiones conventus theologici Friburgensis de bello,” Les documents de la vie intellectuelle 3 (1932): 199–213.Translation in John Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1935), 138–42. 1076 Gregory M. Reichberg Pius XII had been schooled in Taparelli’s voluminous Theoretical Essay on Natural Law Based on Facts (1840–43), which includes a section on the morality of war.14 Religious Rationales for Resort to Armed Force The early exponents of Catholic just war theory endorsed resort to armed force for religious ends. Later thinkers in the tradition progressively distanced themselves from this point of view. Religious rationales for just war were accepted in varying degrees by nearly all classical authors but have largely been rejected in the contemporary teaching of the popes. The seminal Christian treatments of just war were set within the context of “holy war,” namely an employment of armed force in relation to specifically religious ends. This surfaces for instance in Augustine’s polemical writings against the Donatists and in Gratian’s Decretum, whose treatment of armed force in causa 23 takes as its point of departure “a case of heresy into which certain bishops had lapsed, and its repression by their Catholic counterparts, acting upon orders from the pope.”15 Gratian likewise considers, in question VI of the same causa whether “the Church may compel the wicked to the good,” to which he answers in the affirmative, and then, by extension, argues in question VII, that heretics may rightly be despoiled of their goods.16 The above reasoning of Augustine and Gratian applied only to Christians who were deemed to have deviated from the authentic teaching of the faith—heretics, schismatics, and apostates. It did not apply to Jews, Muslims, and other unbelievers who had never been received, by baptism, into the Christian faith. The former, as baptized Christians, stood permanently under the Church’s spiritual jurisdiction. Hence, it was believed 14 Written in Italian, this work has not been translated into English, apart from selected extracts in Eppstein, The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations. A complete French translation exists (attributed to Frédéric Oznam): Essai théorique de droit naturel base sur les faits (Tournai: H. Casterman, 1875). 15 A translation of this and other relevant passages by Gratian on war are reproduced in The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings (henceforth cited as Ethics of War), ed. Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 109.This volume reproduces, with editors’ commentary, the most representative primary sources on war and ethics from ancient Greece to the contemporary period. Included is a wide selection of texts (some translated into English for the first time) by Christian theologians and canon lawyers such as Augustine, Hostiensis, Raymond of Peñafort, Pope Innocent IV, Thomas Aquinas, Cajetan, Vitoria, Suarez, and Molina. 16 Ibid., 121–22. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1077 that the Church had the legitimate power to administer penalties for their deviation from the acceptable line of belief. These penalties could include excommunication or removal from office. But under circumstances where the civil order was thought to be threatened by religious dissent, coercive sanctions such as confiscation of property, imprisonment, or even execution could result, as carried out by the relevant civil authorities.The application of temporal sanctions by the Church (acting through the mediation of civil authorities) was largely abandoned by the end of the eighteenth century, but in some isolated cases, such as in Spain, continued up until the nineteenth century. The practice depended on an understanding of Church-State relations whereby “the welfare of the Commonwealth came to be closely bound up with the cause of religious unity.”17 Such a view is no longer operative within Roman Catholic Christianity, as evidenced for instance by the current Code of Canon Law, which includes no provisions for the administration of coercive civil sanctions against persons deemed guilty of heresy and other grave “sins against the faith.”18 It is now recognized in the official Church teaching that no state, even one where there is a majority of Catholics, can require a profession of faith on the part of its citizens.19 Historically, and from the earliest times, “non-believers” (in this category would be placed Jews, Muslims, and pagans) were accorded a status different from that of dissident Christians. The mainstream view, from Augustine forward, was that, in the words (ca. 1250) of Pope Innocent IV, “infidels ought not to be forced to accept the faith, since everyone’s free will ought to be respected, and this conversion should [come about] only by the grace of God.”20 A similar, even more emphatic formulation may be found some twenty years later in a text by Thomas Aquinas, when he 17 Blötzer, Joseph. “Inquisition,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910), accessed online at www.newadvent.org/ cathen/08026a.htm. 18 See Canon Law Society of America, Code of Canon Law (1999), bk. VI, “Sanctions in the Church,” revised translation of Codex Iuris Canonici (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983); accessed at www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/ _INDEX.HTM#fonte. 19 See Pope Benedict XVI’s comments to this effect, in his Address to the Roman Curia, 22 December 2005. Referring to the the Second Vatican Council, the pope notes: “It was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies” (www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222 _roman-curia_en.html). 20 From his commentary “On Vows and the Fulfilling of Vows” on the decretal Quod super his; translation in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 154. Gregory M. Reichberg 1078 wrote (ca. 1270) that “unbelievers . . . who have never received the faith, such as . . . heathens and the Jews . . . are by no means (nullo modo) to be compelled to the faith . . . because to believe depends on [a free act of] the will.”21 Alternative views did, however, find voice within the Catholic tradition. The influential jurist Hostiensis (ca. 1200–1271) famously held that true dominium (ownership of land and self-rule) could be exercised only by Christians; hence force could be used against infidels, to seize their lands or even, under some circumstances, to compel them to the faith. Likewise, Duns Scotus argued that under certain conditions the children of unbelievers ( Jews and Muslims) might forcibly be baptized (for their own good) against the wishes of their parents, a view echoed by some later authors as well.22 Nevertheless, what was described above as the “mainstream view” finally won the day and has been enshrined in major Church documents, such as the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae), promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965. In this respect, there is an organic development from classical to contemporary just war theory. That this is the Church’s canonical teaching has been re-affirmed on numerous occasions, most recently by Pope Benedict XVI in his speech at the University of Regensburg, where he asserted (quoting from a medieval source) that “spreading the faith through violence . . . is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.”23 Given the historical background of theological vacillation on the permissibility of using force to promote religion, an unequivocal statement condemning any such practice, by the Church’s highest authority, is not without significance. The exclusion of offensive armed force to promote religion leaves open the question of whether force may be used defensively for the protection of religious interests. The mainstream position of Scholastic theologians was summed up by Thomas Aquinas when he wrote (immediately after the sentence cited above) that [unbelievers] should be compelled by the faithful, if it be possible to do so, in order that they do not hinder the faith by their blasphemies or their evil persuasions, or even by their open persecutions. It is for this reason 21 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 10, a. 8; in Reichberg, Syse and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 193. 22 For discussion and references, see Charles Journet, Church of the Word Incarnate, trans. A. H. C. Downes (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 228–31. 23 Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections” (12 September 2006), accessed online at www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_universityregensburg_en.html, 3rd paragraph. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1079 that Christ’s faithful often go to war against unbelievers (contra infideles bellum movent), not indeed for the purpose of forcing them to believe . . . but in order to prevent them from hindering the faith of Christ.24 As late at the middle of the twentieth century, this same teaching can be found reasserted in documents of the Magisterium. Thus in his “Radio Address to the Spanish Nation” (16 April 1939), delivered at the close of the Spanish Civil War, which had engulfed the country over the previous three years, the newly elected Pope Pius XII offered his paternal blessing for the “gift of peace and the victory by which God had deigned to crown the heroism of our faith.”25 Citing the words of his predecessor (Pius XI), he goes on to praise all those who had assumed “the difficult and dangerous task of defending and restoring the rights and honor of God and religion.”26 The same phrase is repeated later when he made clear that it was indeed on the battlefield that many Catholics offered themselves in heroic sacrifice “for the defense of the inalienable rights of God and religion.”27 Read in light of the telegram which Pius XII had sent Generalissimo Franco two weeks prior,28 in which the Pope congratulated him for the “much desired victory of Catholic Spain,” the two pronouncements constitute a strong reaffirmation of the traditional doctrine that temporal authorities may employ armed force in defense of the faith. One would be hard put, however, to find any later statements by Pius XII, or his successors, so clearly countenancing engagement in war for the defense of the Catholic religion. Do the Pope’s words at the close of the Spanish Civil War represent a last gasp of a dying doctrine? Or inversely, could the papal Magisterium appeal once again to this doctrine, should a relevant set of circumstances arise? It is difficult to decide the issue with any certitude, short of a definitive pronouncement by the Magisterium on the one side or the other. 24 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 10, a. 8; translation in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 193. 25 French text in, Les Enseignements Pontificaux: La Paix Internationale, ed. Monks of Solesmes, vol. 1, La guerre moderne (Tournai: Desclée & Cie, 1956), 203 (my translation). This volume offers a valuable resource by reproducing most papal comments on war, from 1743 (Benedict XIV, Quoniam inter on the defense of Christendom) to 1955 (Pius XII, Christmas message on nuclear weapons); it includes an analytic index. 26 Ibid., 204. 27 Ibid, 206. 28 1 April 1939, in Les Enseignements Pontificaux, 203. 1080 Gregory M. Reichberg The Church’s Peacemaking Role and Just War Much of the contemporary Catholic teaching about war and peace is framed in terms of the Magisterium’s self-understanding of its proper role in the world. This theme is discussed by Joblin, who explains how a notable mutation occurred under the pontificate of Pius IX.29 In the earlier period, from Constantine forward, alongside its spiritual mission the Church also functioned as a state, with territories to protect, an army, and so forth. Just war reasoning was applied by the Magisterium to support armed action in favor of the Church’s temporal interests.30 For instance, in a letter that Pius VI wrote in 1792 to the king of Hungary, the pope urged that an armed coalition be formed in order to seek redress against France for its annexation of the Church’s domain in Avignon.31 By contrast, in 1849, when an occasion arose (a war between Piedmont and Austria) that in earlier times would have drawn the papal army into war, Pope Pius IX in a famous speech to the College of Cardinals refused to follow this path, appealing to the pacific mission of the successor of Peter.32 The idea that the pope, as head of the Church, was called to exercise a special role on behalf of peace within the family of nations was increasingly amplified in the teaching of Pius’s successors. The loss of the papal territories in 1870 intensified this evolution. With a diminished sovereignty to protect, the Holy See could concentrate more fully on the spiritual aspects of its leadership within the temporal sphere. Thus twice, in 1889 and in 1899, Pope Leo XIII wrote that the proper function of the pope is “to promote peace between nations.”33 This idea, that the pope is invested with a special role as a minister of peace, was associated especially with Pope Benedict XV, who attempted unsuccessfully to mediate an end to the First World War. Recognition of the papacy’s special ministerial role on behalf of peace has led to a subtle alteration of the Church’s discourse about just war. Since many pontifical statements express the Church’s own engagements in international affairs, it is unsurprising that little appeal is made to the traditional notion of bellum justum. One would be hard put, for instance, 29 Joblin, L’Église et la guerre, 217–20. 30 For a historical examination of this earlier period, see D. S. Chambers, Popes, Cardinals, and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006). For a theological discussion, placing the pope’s use of force as “head of the States of the Church” in relation to other forms of religiously sanctioned warfare, see Journet, Church of the Word Incarnate, 308–11. 31 Post peractam, in Les Enseignements Pontificaux, 15–16. 32 20 April 1849, in Les Enseignements Pontificaux, 21–22. 33 Allocutions of 15 July 1889 and 14 December 1899, cited by Joblin, L’Église et la guerre, 223; these texts are not reproduced in Les Enseignements Pontificaux. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1081 to find any occasion when the current pope, Benedict XVI, or his immediate predecessors, have made use of the term “just war.” This could give the impression that official Church teaching has moved away from its earlier endorsement of this idea. One could argue, however, that the contemporary teaching has at times conflated two lines of discourse and of action that were previously kept separate. Just war was originally framed as a teaching about the duties of political leadership in the temporal sphere. As such, this doctrine did not apply to the Church within its own proper sphere of activity. Citing the example of Jesus Christ, who willingly suffered death at the hands of his persecutors, leading theologians viewed the Church, taken precisely as the “Body of Christ,” to be called to a nonviolent witness. “[T]he Kingdom of God never takes up arms and never assumes responsibility for spilling blood.”34 For Thomas Aquinas, certainly an eminent representative of the classical tradition, nonviolence and just war were viewed as distinct yet compatible doctrines. The first related especially to the mode of action proper to the Church, constituted by supernatural bonds of faith and charity, while the second expressed the natural principles of justice and sociability that were proper to the state. In this way he established a division of labor in our human response to injustice and evil.35 The contemporary outlook, by contrast, tends to blend these two spheres, so that discourse that the Church has about itself discreetly shapes its teaching regarding the duties of states, with the result that it can at times be difficult to disentangle the Church’s vision of its own role from its understanding of the role incumbent upon statesmen. Has the Church’s reaffirmation of its own role in peacemaking led to a reassessment of the obligations of political leadership? Or, inversely, does the Magisterium continue to judge its own activity in foreign affairs—especially as it relates to issues of war and peace—by a standard quite different from that incumbent upon statesmen? However one responds to these two questions, it seems clear that the issue of peace has become much more prominent in contemporary magisterial teaching than was the case in previous centuries. To put the 34 Journet, Church of the Word Incarnate, 330. These further words of Journet are worth quoting: “Jesus . . . , in whom the Kingdom of God found its highest and purest embodiment . . . offered Himself . . . to death without allowing himself to be defended by the sword; not to condemn the use of the sword by the temporal authorities, as St. Paul clearly saw, but to manifest to all eyes that his Kingdom was not of this world . . .” (ibid.); cf. ibid., §5 on 310 “The Church, as such, does not make war.” 35 See Gregory M. Reichberg, “Thomas Aquinas between Just War and Pacifism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 38.2 (2010): 219–41. 1082 Gregory M. Reichberg same point somewhat differently, in the pronouncements of the contemporary popes, discourse on peace has largely eclipsed the related discourse on the just war. Statements abound to the effect that peace results not from relations of force but from a spirit of truth, justice, and charity. From this one could easily deduce that the imposition of armed force is necessarily antipodal to peace. In the words of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, “peace and violence cannot dwell together, and where there is violence God cannot be present.”36 The contemporary papacy’s relative silence on “just war” would accordingly signal its perception that appeals to the idea of just war stand counter-productive to the pursuit of peace. Does this contemporary discourse on peace represent a departure from the just war theory of the Scholastics? Here again, I would argue that the difference resides more in style than in substance. Long ago Thomas Aquinas spoke of peace in positive terms as a condition of friendship within or between nations. This led him to affirm that “peace is the work of charity directly . . . for love is a unitive force.”37 This insight has been much developed in the writings of the contemporary Magisterium, in connection with the related issues of sustainable development, the reduction of poverty, human rights, intercultural dialogue, the construction of effective international institutions, and so forth.38 By the same token, however, the Magisterium has not abandoned the insight, equally stated by Aquinas, that “peace is the work of justice indirectly, insofar as justice removes obstacles to peace.”39 In the measure that just war is remedial action, carried out in pursuance of justice, it too has an important role in removing obstacles to peace. Thus we find the Second Vatican Council affirming that “[t]he requirements of legitimate defense justify the existence in States of armed forces, the activity of which should be at the service of peace. Those who defend the security and freedom of a country, in such a spirit, make an authentic contribution to peace.”40 “War”—Contrasting Usages The classical writings typically spoke of “war” from an agent-centered perspective, such that the noun bellum (war) functioned as an equivalent 36 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (London: Burns & Oates, 2004), §488, 245. 37 ST II–II, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 175. 38 See Robert John Araujo, S..J., and John A. Lucal, S.J., Papal Diplomacy and the Quest for Peace (Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2010). 39 ST II–II, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 175. 40 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, no. 79; cited in Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, §502, 252. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1083 for the infinitive bellare (to wage war). “War” thus signified the act of a belligerent using force against his opponent. In any particular armed conflict, there would accordingly be two wars: a just war waged by one side, and the unjust war waged by the other.41 In early modernity, a shift occurred. From the agent-centered meaning of the previous period, “war” came to designate the state or condition of two (or more) parties contending by force. It was a “distinctly marked out period of time in which a special legal regime [the “state of war”] was substituted for the ordinary one [the “state of peace”] that generally prevailed.”42 For the Scholastics, by contrast, there was “no state of war but only acts of war— either wrongful acts by the unjust side or lawful ones by the just party.”43 The classical theorists understood that the overall condition of war is indeed an evil, in the sense that it is both an affliction (malum poenae) and more acutely still, a expression of sinful choice (malum culpae), since in every war at least one of the parties must be in the wrong. But this negative judgment of war qua condition was nonetheless compatible with asserting that some wars were just, in the sense that one party to the conflict was justifiably using force against the other. The contemporary Magisterium most often employs the term “war” in the modern sense, as the state or condition of mutual conflict. By the same token, statements abound to the effect that this condition is sinful and an affront to reason. On a superficial reading, the two different usages— medieval and modern—can easily become entangled.Thus some, on hearing of “just war,” imagine that the classical doctrine was intended to glorify the overall condition as one in which a heroic humanity could attain the summit of its potentiality. This of course is a serious misunderstanding.44 Inversely, on reading the very negative appraisal of the condition in contemporary writings of the Magisterium, one could easily be misled into thinking that the intent was to repudiate the idea of just war. Before moving on, mention should be made of a related equivocation. The Catholic magisterial teaching on war, as it emerged in the early twentieth century, was framed as a reaction against the doctrine of raison d’état, 41 A single conflict could also encompass two unjust wars, if neither of the respec- tive belligerents was possessed of a just cause. 42 Stephen C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 58. 43 Ibid. 44 In this vein, Pope Pius XII wrote that showing “force of soul and courage, up to the very gift of one’s life should duty demand it, are great virtues; but a will to provoke war because it is a school of great virtues and an occasion to practice them, should be qualified as a crime and as sheer lunacy” (Allocution to Military Doctors, 19 October, 1953, in Les Enseignements Pontificaux, 545; my translation). Gregory M. Reichberg 1084 which had reached its apogee in European state practice during the nineteenth century, a practice that received doctrinal articulation in the legal positivism of the day. On this conception, “war was, above all else, an exercise of will on the part of the state—i.e., a determination made by a state, reached entirely on the basis of its own interest, that a certain foreign-policy goal will be more effectively pursued by force of arms than by alternative means such as negotiation or the exercise of the unheroic virtue of patience”45 The pursuit of policy by other means (to repeat the famous turn of phrase from Clausewitz), war was taken to be a recognized institution, codified in international law, to which states could appeal in order to adjudicate their disagreements. This procedure, in which two states mutually agreed to settle their quarrel “by rolling the dice of Mars”46 was fundamentally at odds with the traditional doctrine of just war.47 [A]ccording to just-war theory, there was never any pretense that a war actually resolved a legal dispute. A just war was purely a remedial or enforcement measure, which might be successful or not as the material fortunes of the struggle dictated. It did not create any legal rights for the winning side that the party had not possessed previously. Only the law itself could create or extinguish rights. The contractual theory of war parted company with just-war theory on this important point. The essence of the war contract was that the winner of the duel would acquire full legal title to the res that was being fought over, without regard to how strong or weak its legal claim might have been beforehand. . . . In the strictest sense of the word, then, might made right according to the contractual perspective . . . something that had never been accepted in traditional just-war doctrine.48 Even while rejecting the contractualist view described above, Church writers nonetheless adopted positivist semantics when speaking of “war.” As a consequence, the modern popes may frequently be found condemning resort to war.49 When the term “war” was thus understood after the fashion 45 Neff, War and the Law of Nations, 163. 46 Ibid. 47 Suarez expressly rejected this procedure as a violation of charity; he accordingly deemed it incompatible with the conditions of a just war; see Disputatio XIII de bello, section VII, §22, in Francisco Suárez, Selections from Three Works, The Classics of International Law, no. 20, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944), 851–52. For discussion, see Gregory M. Reichberg, “Suárez on Just War,” in Interpreting Suárez: Critical Essays, ed. Daniel Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 185–204. 48 Neff, War and the Law of Nations, 139–40. 49 See for instance the Compendium, which asserts that “War is a ‘scourge’ and is never an appropriate way to resolve problems between nations,” §497, 249. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1085 of raison d’état, the pontiffs had necessarily to declare war a sin; it was per se malum such that the expression “just war” would be an oxymoron. Yet in uttering this condemnation of war, the popes did not intend to target “jus ad bellum” as it had earlier been conceptualized by the Scholastics. It was rather “war” in the contractualist sense of the term that was the target of exclusion. This same rhetorical move is echoed in modern documents of international law, in which the term “war” (and accordingly “just war”) is studiously avoided. This is not to say that contemporary international law has adopted a positivist stance on these matters, any more than have the modern popes. Marking a return to the older just war perspective,50 documents such as the United Nations Charter allow for resort to force, yet substitute the “exercise of individual or collective self-defense,” “enforcement action,” “preventive action,” and related terms for the military measures that the Scholastics would earlier have placed under the jus ad bellum.51 Documents of the Magisterium, similarly, speak of “legitimate defense,” “the strong arm of force,”52 “the responsibility to protect,”53 “concrete measures to disarm the aggressor,”54 as well as “repressive and punitive operations”55 against terrorism. Despite this, in all but a few cases56 50 On the U.N. Charter and its relation to the just war theory, see Neff, War and the Law of Nations,” 316–34. 51 “Bellum” for the Scholastics, covered a much wider range of acts than the modern term “war.” In addition to large-scale confrontation between states, “bellum” could encompass very limited acts of self-defense, forcible humanitarian interventions, returning fire in cross-border incidents, armed reprisals, etc. The latter were the sort of acts that classical international law had placed under the heading of “measures short of war” (see Neff, War and the Law of Nations, 215–49. 52 Pius XII, Address to the Military Committee of the United States, 8 October 1947, in Les Enseignements Pontificaux, 458. 53 Benedict XVI, Address to the United Nations General Assembly, 18 April, 2008, with reference to Francisco de Vitoria (www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ speeches/2008/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080418_un-visit_en.html). 54 John Paul II, Message for the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2000, §11 (www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jpii_mes_08121999_xxxiii-world-day-for-peace_en.html). 55 John Paul II, Message for the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2004, §8: “the fight against terrorism cannot be limited solely to repressive and punitive operations. It is essential that the use of force, even when necessary, be accompanied by a courageous and lucid analysis of the reasons behind terrorist attacks” (www.vatican.va/holy_father/ john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20031216_xxxvii-worldday-for-peace_en.html). 56 For instance, in an Address to the International Congress of Penal Law (3 October 1953, text in Les Enseignements Pontificaux, 537–43, at 540), Pius XII notes how “even in a just and necessary war” determinate limits must be observed. Similarly in his Address to Military Doctors (19 October 1953), Pius XII notes that it is not 1086 Gregory M. Reichberg the Magisterium avoids any language that might imply anything other than unequivocal condemnation of “war.” A similar semantic turn has occurred with respect to the word “violence” (Latin vis). Originally neutral in its connotation (thus the medievals would speak approvingly of “repelling violence by violence” [licitu est vim vis repellere]),57 in the “legitimist” nomenclature of the contemporary Magisterium, “violence” invariably signifies, not the infliction of any personal injury whatsoever, but an illicit application of the same.58 Thus we read in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: “Violence is never a proper response.” Citing Pope John Paul II, it goes on to state that “violence is evil,” it is “unacceptable as a solution to problems,” and “is unworthy of man.”59 Here again, the point is not to deny the legitimacy of private self-defense or public enforcement measures. Instead, this condemnation encompasses the sort of actions that the Scholastics would have placed under the heading of rixa: a use of force to effect private vengeance or to secure other unjustifiable ends, in the absence of an authorization from legitimate authority, or in a manner disproportionate to the initial offense. Weighing Deontological and Prudential Considerations James Turner Johnson has argued that the Catholic Church, in its magisterial teaching about war, has largely set aside the moral standards of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. It has concentrated instead on the consequences of military action, as summed up by the categories of proportionality, last resort, side-effect harm, and so forth. The statement just any sort of injustice that would justify using “the violent method of war” in self-defense. Likewise John Paul II, in addressing the diplomatic corps (13 January 2003) said, “War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations. . . . [W]ar cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations“ (emphasis added), §4. (www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2003/january/ documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20030113_diplomatic-corps_en.html). 57 Raymond of Peñafort, Summa de casibus poenitentiae, II, §18; translation in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 138–44. 58 Unlike the term “force,” which is employed to signify good or bad, just or unjust, methods of physical coercion, a “legitimist” definition (such as is utilized by the Magisterium) “incorporates a reference to an illegal or illegitimate use of force within the very definition of violence” (C. A. J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 23). Coady provides a useful discussion of three different approaches to defining “violence” (wide, restricted, and legitimist). 59 Compendium, §496, 248–49. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1087 that perhaps best sums up this new approach appears in Pope John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris: “In this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.”60 One could not more succinctly express how considerations of proportionality effectively trump just cause. It should be noted, however, that the contrast here established with classical just war is a matter of degree, not of strict principle, since authors such as Aquinas are willing to admit that an agent’s rights may legitimately be waived in favor of prudential considerations. For instance, he writes approvingly of legislators who “have greater zeal for maintaining friendship among citizens than even justice itself which is sometimes omitted . . . in the infliction of punishment, lest dissention be stirred up.”61 This pragmatic reasoning would be applied by later just war theorists who emphasized that one should not go to war, even for a just cause, unless reasonably assured of victory.62 Moreover it was understood that conditions of charity should moderate, and sometimes even lead the prince to waive, the prosecution of his legitimate rights.63 Ad bellum proportionality calculations were likewise understood to be part of concrete decision making about war.64 All of this was summed up by the admonition which appears in the conclusion to Vitoria’s De jure belli: “The prince should only accede to the necessity of war when he is dragged reluctantly but inevitably into it.”65 60 John XXIII, 11 April 1963, §127 (www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html). 61 In VIII Ethic., chap. 1; translation in St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993), §1542, 477. Grotius applied this teaching specifically to war in a section of his De jure belli ac pacis (bk. II, chap. XXIV) entitled “Warnings not to undertake war rashly, even for just causes.” There he notes: “[A]t times the circumstances of the case are such that to refrain from the exercise of one’s right is not merely praiseworthy but even due, by reason of the love which we owe even to men who are our enemies, whether this be viewed in itself or as the most sacred law of the Gospel demands (in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby [eds.], Ethics of War, 414). 62 See for instance Francisco Suarez, Disputatio XIII de bello, section IV, §10; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 352. 63 “[A]lthough a Christian King may declare war on some particular just ground, it will nevertheless be possible for him to sin against the charity due to the Church, in pursuing his rights” (Suarez, Disputatio XIII de bello section IV, §8, in Francisco Suárez, Selections from Three Works, and in §§638.64, 821). 64 “[N]ot any cause whatsoever is sufficient to justify war, but only causes that are very serious and proportionate to the ravages of the war” (Suarez, Disputatio XIII de bello, section IV, §2; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby [eds.], Ethics of War, 348). 65 Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 327. 1088 Gregory M. Reichberg In the case of these classical theorists, prudential considerations were nevertheless applied ad hoc, whereas in the contemporary magisterial teaching, at least as exemplified in statements such as the one by Pope John XXIII, cited above, they take on a systematic character that effectively prioritizes prudential over deontological considerations. This prudential approach was adopted most radically by Luigo Sturzo, who maintained that under conditions of modernity resort to war can never be deemed necessary. His argument was based not on the destructiveness of modern weaponry but rather on the juridical and diplomatic resources of modern states. No matter how compelling the case may seem, and despite the de jure justifiability of military measures, he maintained that, de facto, alternatives to armed force will always be available.66 Appealing to evidence of historical progress in humanity’s approach to war, Sturzo sought to relativize arguments in favor of the just war doctrine. Whereas just war was an acceptable practice during the Middle Ages, especially between Christian and non-Christian states, due to the lack of any recognizable international system for adjudicating disputes, in the contemporary period, with the inception of legal mechanisms such as the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, any possible resort to war by states, even for defense, had, in his opinion, been rendered unnecessary and thus unjustifiable.67 Drawing a parallel to slavery, formerly a recognized juridical institution among even Christian states, he maintained that war, likewise, was fast losing its recognition as a legitimate practice under the new conditions of international order. Sturzo could admit, however, that as a provisional measure the use of armed force could sometimes be required to maintain order in the international sphere. But once resort to war had been fully outlawed by international law, armed force would henceforth have the character solely of police action. Despite his influence on later Catholic thought—the views propounded in the Fribourg Conventus were largely derived from his seminal work, The International Community and the Right of War—none of the popes followed Sturzo to the point of claiming that the criterion of necessity (last resort) could never be met in the contemporary setting. It is true that Pope 66 “The condition of civilized States, the systematization of existing relations, makes it almost morally impossible for a State to be obliged against its will to make war with another State, to be reduced to a state of necessity compelling it to war” (Luigi Sturzo, The International Community and the Right of War [London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929], 115). 67 Sturzo denies that a normative distinction may be made between offensive (“aggressive”) and defensive war; the distinction has applicability only in the factual or tactical sense (ibid., 114–15). Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1089 Paul VI came close to adopting this position in his 1965 address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, when he famously uttered “never again war, war never again!”68 Yet even here he quickly qualified the assertion when he commented several lines later that “[s]o long as man remains the weak, changeable and even wicked being that he often shows himself to be, defense arms will, alas! be necessary.”69 Balancing Empowerment and Restraint There are two prongs to classical just war theory. On the one hand, it is a teaching about the obligations of political leadership (and by extension citizens) to take effective action for the protection of civil society and its core goods. In this sense, just war is a doctrine of empowerment in the face of evil. An expression of this may be found, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas. Responding to the standard pacifist objection that Jesus’ precepts of patience require us to refrain from forcibly resisting evil, Aquinas retorts: non resistere malum [Matt. 5:39] may be understood in two ways. First in the sense of pardoning injury done to oneself, and thus it may pertain to perfection, when it is expedient to act thus for the welfare of others. Second, in the sense of tolerating patiently injury done to others: and this pertains to imperfection, or even to vice, if one be able to resist the assailant in a suitable manner. Hence Ambrose says in De offic. [Bk. I, Chap. 27]: “The courage whereby a man in battle defends his country against barbarians, or protects the weak at home, or his friends against robbers, is full of justice.”70 Alongside the doctrine of empowerment, just war also functions as a doctrine of restraint. This is the second of the two prongs mentioned above, and the one most often referred to in accounts of the tradition. I 68 Pope Paul VI, Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, 4 October 1965, §5, English translation in Never Again War! (New York: United Nations Office of Public Information, 1965), 37. A similar phrase was uttered by Pope John Paul II in an address to the Diplomatic Corps, 13 January 2003, §4: “ ‘NO TO WAR’! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between States, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences. I say this as I think of those who still place their trust in nuclear weapons and of the alltoo-numerous conflicts which continue to hold hostage our brothers and sisters in humanity.” (www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2003/january/ documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20030113_diplomatic-corps_en.html). 69 Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, 4 October 1965, §5, 39. 70 ST II–II, q. 188, a. 3, ad. 1; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 192. 1090 Gregory M. Reichberg would argue that classical just war strikes a balance between these two functions of the theory. By contrast, the discourse of restraint predominates in the contemporary magisterial teaching. This notwithstanding, empowerment also occasionally receives mention. For instance, three years after his famous 1965 Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, which is framed almost entirely in the language of restraint, Pope Paul VI gave a Message for the Observance of a Day of Peace in which he adopted the language of empowerment: [I]t is to be hoped that the exaltation of the ideal of Peace may not favour the cowardice of those who fear it may be their duty to give their life for the service of their own country and of their own brothers, when these are engaged in the defence of justice and liberty, and who seek only a flight from their responsibility, from the risks that are necessarily involved in the accomplishment of great duties and generous exploits. Peace is not pacifism. . . .71 A similar point was affirmed by Pope John Paul II: Clearly, when a civilian population risks being overcome by the attacks of an unjust aggressor and political efforts and non-violent defense prove to be of no avail, it is legitimate and even obligatory to take concrete measures to disarm the aggressor.72 Apart from these and a few other exceptions,73 the contemporary teaching is couched mainly in terms of restraint rather than empowerment. The doctrinal center of gravity has shifted away from the balancing of the two prongs that was characteristic of the classical theory. The Reduction of Just Cause to Defense On the accounts (Coste, Joblin, and Johnson) cited at the outset of this article, the main point of difference between classical and contemporary 71 Pope Paul VI, Message for the Observance of a Day of Peace, 1 January 1968 (www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/messages/peace/documents/hf_p-vi_mes_ 19671208_i-world-day-for-peace_en.html). 72 Pope John Paul II, Message for the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2000, §11 (www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jpii_mes_08121999_xxxiii-world-day-for-peace_en.html). The obligation in question is of a piece with the more general obligation, enunciated clearly by the revised English edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Corrigenda, 1997) that “[L]egitimate defense can not only be a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others” (§2265, p. 16). 73 See the passages from Pius XII (from his allocution to a U.S. Military Committee and from his Christmas address of 1948) that I cite below. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1091 just war arises from their differing assessments of just cause. Whereas the classical theorists allowed for three just causes of war—defense against unjustified attack, restitution of property wrongly taken, and punishment of injustice—the contemporary teaching restricts just cause solely to the first, namely defense. The contemporary account thereby excludes the two rationales (restitution and punishment) that the Scholastics typically placed under the heading of “offensive” war. Francisco de Vitoria was among the first to speak (ca. 1540) explicitly of defensive versus offensive force,74 although the distinction itself was clearly drawn in the thirteenth century by Pope Innocent IV (who contrasted “defense” to the “execution of jurisdiction”).75 On this understanding, defense consists in what is now termed “second use of force,” namely resistance against armed attack. By contrast, in offensive or “first use” of force, war is initiated (inferre bellum) as a response to some injury that has previously been received. In line with Augustine,Vitoria asserts quite emphatically that offensive war (strategic sense) will have moral warrant only when it is reactive to prior wrongdoing: “The sole and only just cause for waging war is when harm has been inflicted.”76 To this he adds that the injury in question must be of a particularly egregious sort, for “not every or any injury gives sufficient grounds for waging war.”77 Most definitely to be excluded are nonreactive wars, that is, wars undertaken simply for purposes of national aggrandizement (enlargement of empire or the glory of the prince), racist or ethnic dominance, or the propagation of religion. On the other hand, the very notion of a morally valid offensive war suggests that the injury received (the “just cause” warranting reactive force) need not take the form of prior (wrongful) armed attack. Seizure of territory, deposition of legitimate rulers, denial of the right of free passage to conduct trade, or refusal to hand over criminals who had done harm to one’s state were cited as possible grounds justifying resort to offensive force. This teaching on offensive war was well summed up by Suarez when he wrote: 74 On the Law of War, in Vitoria, Political Writings, 293–32. The terminology of offen- sive and defensive war is first introduced on page 297. Upon setting out to show, in the opening chapter, that neither the natural law nor the law of the Gospel forbids participation in war, Vitoria points out that the permissibility of bearing and using arms extends not only to defensive war (bellum defensivum) but to offensive war (bellum offensivum) as well. 75 Pope Innocent IV, Apparatus in quinque libros Decretalium, “On the Restitution of Spoils,” §8, in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 150–51. 76 Ibid., 303. 77 Ibid., 304. 1092 Gregory M. Reichberg [W]e have to consider whether the injustice is, morally speaking, in progress (in fieri ); or whether it has already occurred (facta iam sit ), such that satisfaction is sought through war. In this latter case, the war is offensive. In the former case, war has the character of self-defence.78 In sharp contrast to the position staked out by Vitoria, Suarez, and their fellow Scholastics, some comments by the contemporary Magisterium appear emphatically to exclude any possible resort to offensive war. This is particularly manifest in the 1983 Pastoral Letter of the U.S. Catholic Bishops (The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response), which states, in an opening summary of “principles, norms, and premises of Catholic teaching,” that “[o]ffensive war of any kind is not morally justifiable.”79 As was noted above, Johnson has been particularly critical of this new and more restrictive version of Catholic just war theory, while Joblin, Coste, and others take this to be a salutary development. All assume that the negation of offensive war is an established feature of the contemporary teaching. But is this really the case? Apart from The Challenge of Peace, there are to my knowledge no documents of the Magisterium that explicitly rule out offensive war, as it was defined by Suarez and his fellow Scholastics. That said, there are numerous texts, especially in the writings of Pope Pius XII, which condemn aggressive war. For instance, in his 1944 Christmas message he wrote: “It is a duty to do everything to ban once and for all wars of aggression as a legitimate solution of international disputes and as a means toward realizing national aspirations.”80 Moreover, in the writings of Pius and his successors, discussion of permissible resort to force is consistently couched in terms of legitimate defense, with a conspicuous silence regarding other, broader rationales. The issue is, however, more complex than it seems at first sight, for two reasons. First of all, the term “aggression,” as it is employed in the contemporary context,81 is by no means an equivalent for the bellum offensivum of the Scholastics. Akin to the legitimist usage of the term “violence,” for the last sixty years (at least) “aggression” has designated a resort to force rendered illicit by reason of a depraved intention. An “aggressor” is one 78 Francisco Suarez, Disputatio XIII de bello, section I, §6, in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby (eds.), Ethics of War, 342. 79 The Challenge of Peace, iii. This statement figures as the third point in the open- ing summary of principles (www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/TheChallengeofPeace.pdf). 80 Text in The Major Addresses of Pope Pius XII, ed. Vincent A. Yzermans, vol. II, Christmas Messages (St. Paul: The North Central Publishing Company, 1961), 85. 81 In contrast to the older usage, as for instance in Suarez, where aggressivum bellum functioned as an equivalent for what Vitoria had earlier termed offensivum bellum. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1093 who employs force to conquer territory not his own, or in the pursuit of otherwise base motives—for example, ethnic dominance. By the same token (yet with somewhat less severity), “aggression” has been employed by popes to signify non-moral motives for resorting to force—say, as a purely pragmatic approach to resolving intractable disputes among states, or to advance national interests. Yet these meanings implied by “aggression”—(a) war for gain or dominance, or (b) war as the dice of Mars, or (c) war to achieve national aspirations—would not been accepted by the Scholastic theorists within their category of just offensive war. Consequently, when the popes reject aggression, it is by no means clear that this rejection was intended to cover the sort of action that the Scholastics placed under the heading of “offensive war.” Imagine, for instance, a situation in which one nation, by threats or sudden invasion, managed to seize the land or resources vital to the well-being of another nation, yet without incurring armed opposition. Should the victim-nation resort to military force several years later to compel the aggressor to restore these goods, such action, for the Scholastics, would come under the heading of bellum offensivum, since it was about rectifying a wrong past and done.82 This, however, is not the sort of scenario which the contemporary popes have entertained when proscribing “aggressive war.” Secondly, although the contemporary popes frame their discourse about licit force exclusively in terms of legitimate defense, this too cannot automatically be taken to imply a deliberate narrowing of the jus ad bellum. In line with developments in contemporary international law, especially since 1945, we find the popes (Pius XII in particular) employing a more expansive concept of defense than did the Scholastics. Whereas for the latter “defense” always designated a second use of force, for the former, by contrast, “defense” could encompass a first use of force, if this were deemed the only way to oppose a grave injustice. In other words, modes of military action that the Scholastics would earlier have placed under the heading of offensive war, in the post-World War II era have gravitated into the category of “defense.”83 82 Thus, in describing the various kinds of injuries that are causes of just offensive war, Suarez mentioned “the seizure by a prince of another’s property, and his refusal to restore it” (Disputatio XIII de bello, section IV, §3, 348; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby [eds.], Ethics of War, 352. 83 Neff refers to this as the “self-defense revolution of the post-1945 era” (War and the Law of Nations, 327ff.). For a contrast between the contemporary and the Scholastic terminologies on defensive and offensive war, see Gregory M. Reichberg and Henrik Syse, “Humanitarian Intervention: A Case of Offensive Force?” Security Dialogue 33/3 (2002): 220–33. 1094 Gregory M. Reichberg In an allocution to a U.S. Armed Services Committee, Pius XII thus stated: Law and order may at times have need of the strong arm of force. Some enemies of justice can be brought to terms only by force. But force should be held always in check by law and order and exercised only in their defense. And then again, in his Christmas address of 1948, the Pope emphasized that the commandment of peace is a matter of Divine law. Its purpose is the protection of the goods of humanity, inasmuch as they are gifts of the Creator. Among these goods some are of such importance for society, that it is perfectly lawful to defend them against an unjust aggression. Their defense is even an obligation for the nations as a whole who have a duty not to abandon a nation that is attacked. In these two passages, “defense” is construed broadly as designating something more than repelling armed attack. By positing opposition to injustice (“aggression,” or “attack” construed broadly as an assault on fundamental human goods) as the chief motive underlying a just resort to armed force, the pope would seem to leave open the possibility of, for example, preventive measures,84—say, to protect a people against genocide, or of measures to enforce the law against egregious violations of human rights. This, quite strikingly, was how Charles Journet read Pius’s Christmas message of 1948.85 The Swiss theologian notes how this text speaks of unjust aggression. By inserting the qualifier, the pope thereby suggested, albeit indirectly, that aggression is not inherently wrongful.86 It will be 84 Such preventive measures are alluded to in the pope’s Christmas message of 1944, where he encouraged the formation of an “organ[ization] for the maintenance of peace, of an organ[ization] invested by common consent with supreme power to those whose office it would also pertain to smother in its germinal state any threat of isolated or collective aggression” (Christmas Messages, 85). The employment of this preventive military action, by an international organization dedicated to the maintenance of peace, he contrasted to the doctrine of raison d’état: “No one could hail this development with greater joy than he who has long upheld the principle that the idea of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date” (ibid., 85–86). 85 Charles Journet, “La guerre et la paix selon l’enseignement de S. S. Pie XII,” Nova et Vetera 27 (1952): 15–31. 86 “The unjust aggressor,” as Journet puts the point, “is no longer [on the pope’s understanding] the first to resort to arms. He is the first to resort to arms unjustly” (ibid., 24, Journet’s emphasis, my translation). Journet proceeds to argue that the pope’s teaching allowed for, and sometimes even rendered obligatory, a first use of force Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1095 right or wrong depending on the circumstances. In other words, under some conditions a first use of force may be justified. By the same token, however, some modes of first use would de jure be ruled out. In this connection, neither the classical theory, nor the contemporary magisterial teaching, would allow for a strategy of purely preventive military action: applying military force to counter an adversary who is either preparing to mount an attack at a still-undetermined point in the future, or, even more remotely, attempting to acquire a military capability that, if exercised, would have devastating consequences for the defender.87 It goes without saying that the contemporary teaching on just cause includes some novel perspectives that were more or less absent from the Scholastic accounts. Chief among them is the idea (given normative legal force in the United Nations Charter of 1945) that resort to armed force can be regulated by a supra-national authority that would have the authority to employ offensive force (“enforcement action”) to forestall or rectify grave violations of justice. Indeed, the contemporary Magisterium has emphasized how the authority of the international community (as embodied by the United Nations) is a prerequisite for military action in circumstances other than strict self-defense.88 But one could maintain that, far from being inconsistent with the classical just war, internationally mandated military action (as was exercised for instance to expel the Iraqi occupiers from Kuwait during the First Gulf War, or more recently to effect regime change in Libya) is, on the contrary, in large measure an extension of the older ideal. In other words, this is arguably a case of organic development, not rupture.89 (“une guerre d’exécution forcée), to prevent very grave forms of injustice (genocide is mentioned). Journet made clear that this sort of military action would be legitimate, in the pope’s eyes, only when the international community had developed organically into an effective regime for maintaining order and justice. This seems to be an allusion, although no mention is made of it explicitly, to the U.N. Charter, chap. 2(4), the enforcement powers of the Security Council. 87 On the rejection of these two modes of prevention within the classical tradition, see Gregory M. Reichberg, “Preventive War in Classical Just War Theory,” Journal of the History of International Law 9 (2007): 5–33.This conclusion seems implied by the following passage of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: “[E]ngaging in a preventive war without clear proof that an attack is imminent cannot fail to raise serious moral and juridical questions” (§501, 251). 88 See for instance the comments on humanitarian intervention by Pope John Paul II in his World Day of Peace Message for 2000, §11. 89 This is the argument advanced in Neff, War and the Law of Nations, “A neo-just war order,” 316–34. For similar discussion with more explicit reference to thinkers in the Catholic just war tradition, see Reichberg, “Suárez on Just War” (cited above, note 47), especially 203–4, and by the same author, “Just War or Perpetual Peace?” Journal of Military Ethics 1.1 (2002): 16–35. 1096 Gregory M. Reichberg If my reasoning is correct that Pius XII (and, by extension, his successors) did not entirely reject the traditional concept of jus ad bellum, it still must be said that some modalities of this jus have nonetheless been disallowed. Whereas the Scholastics sometimes cited the violation of a nation’s honor as a possible rationale for just war,90 Pope Pius made clear how on Christian principles this would have to be ruled out.91 Similarly, while Pope Pius and his successors have supported the institutionalization of procedures to penalize war crimes, including aggression, one would be hard put to find them adopting the idea, endorsed by some Scholastics,92 that the depredations of war may be deliberately inflicted so as to punish one’s unjust adversary. • • • Conclusion Based on the foregoing analysis of texts, classical (Scholastic) and contemporary, my conclusion is that the discontinuity on matters of just war is considerably less pronounced than has typically been alleged. Equivocation on the meaning of key terms, from one period to another, is largely responsible for the appearance of discontinuity. In other words, the discontinuity, where it exists, results more from differences in vocabulary and rhetorical style than from clear-cut differences in doctrine. However, secondarily, and more substantively, the balance of elements constituting the doctrine of just war have come to be arranged differently in the contemporary period than in the past, often in response to technological developments. The advent of nuclear weapons has, for instance, led to a more pronounced emphasis on ad bellum proportionality calculations than obtained previously. 90 For instance, in his list of the injuries that stand as causes of just offensive war, Suarez mentioned “grave injury to one’s reputation or honor” (Disputatio XIII de bello, section IV, §3, 348; in Reichberg, Syse, and Begby [eds.], Ethics of War, 348). 91 Thus in the Christmas message of 1948 the pope says: “The Christian will for peace is easily identified. Obedient to the Divine precept of peace, it will never turn a question of national prestige or honor into an argument for war or even a threat of war” (123). 92 Cajetan most notably, who spoke of “enforce[ing] vindicative justice with the sword of war” (see Ethics of War, 248). Other Scholastics (Vitoria and especially Molina) showed some reserve toward the idea of punitive war, preferring to reserve punishment, when due, to the period post bellum. For the relevant texts and discussion, see Gregory M. Reichberg, “Culpability and Punishment in Classical Theories of Just War,” in Just War: The State of the Art, ed. A. F. Lang, Jr., C. O’Driscoll, and J. Williams (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press), forthcoming 2013. Discontinuity in Catholic Just War Teaching? 1097 Finally it should be noted that my treatment of the contemporary magisterial teaching has focused chiefly on the papal writings of Pius XII and his successors. Whether the various pronouncements of the national bishops conferences are consistent with this papal teaching has not been considered here.93 Nor have I examined whether significant divergences exist among the authors compassed within each of the two periods in question (the various Scholastic writers on just war, and the different contemporary popes). If such a fine-grained comparison were implemented, the doctrinal diversity of the two periods would conceivably become more pronounced, depending on the cases studied. N&V 93 James Turner Johnson, in particular, has developed the classical/contemporary contrast based mainly on an examination of the positions adopted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (with only peripheral attention being directed to the teaching of the popes). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1099–113 1099 Holy War J AMES T URNER J OHNSON Rutgers University Newark, New Jersey I. Getting at the Meaning of a Difficult Concept I T IS HARD to get a firm grip on the idea of holy war. The meaning intended by the term “holy war” is enormously varied, depending on context, who is using it, the purpose of the use, what ideas are brought in to define it, and the way those constituent ideas are mixed together. In recent popular, journalistic, and even much scholarly usage the phrase “holy war” has often been employed as if it were synonymous, or nearly synonymous, with both “crusade” and jihad, though this distorts and obscures the historical meanings associated with both the latter concepts while adding its own flavors to them. Calling a conflict, or a kind of conflict, “holy war” has the power to put fire in the heart or to make the blood run cold, depending on whether one is on the side of the holy war in question or is threatened by it. James A. Aho provides a sympathetic scholarly description of how the first of these two senses of “holy war” works: Holy war is a teaching technique. It resubstantiates a person’s beliefs, “renomizing” human existence. It preserves the cosmic world from nothingness or it eradicates absurdity by bringing justice into historical reality. In either case, the holy war is an armed confrontation with Evil.1 But from a perspective within post-Enlightenment rationalism, for which the world does not need to be “re-nomized,” holy war threatens the rational ordering of the world itself by appealing to norms and powers outside the realm of reason. Similarly, from a perspective within the Westphalian system 1 James A. Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 128. James Turner Johnson 1100 of world order and its associated understanding of the right to make war and the rules for conduct in war, any invocation of holy war represents a fundamental challenge, setting out its own standards for going to war and for how to make war. From both of these perspectives, holy war can appear an atavistic throwback to primitive, uncivilized times and a call to unrestrained violence for its own sake. This critical, even pejorative, conception of holy war figures centrally in the well-known typology laid out by Roland Bainton in his Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace.2 Bainton describes three fundamental Christian attitudes toward war as spaced along a spectrum, with pacifism at one extreme, the crusade or holy war at the other extreme, and the just war idea between them, participating in certain ways in both but distinct from either. On his typology, the key is how the use of force is dealt with in each of these three positions: pacifism utterly rejects the use of force, while just war accepts but limits it, and the crusade or holy war admits unlimited force in the service of its transcendent cause. Here is Bainton’s language on this last “attitude”: The crusading idea requires that the cause be holy (and no cause is more holy than religion), that the war be fought under God and with his help, that the crusaders shall be godly and their enemies ungodly, and that the war shall be prosecuted unsparingly.3 There are problems with each of Bainton’s three ways of characterizing such war. Leroy B. Walters, taking specific aim at Bainton’s description of the crusade idea as antithetical to that of just war,4 argues that medieval doctrine on the crusades developed by analogy with the simultaneously developing doctrine on just war.5 He advances this argument in terms of the categories which came to provide the definitive terms of classic just war thought: right authority, just cause, and right intention.6 Bainton employs the first two in his typology, with his third category being that of the conduct allowed. A close reading of Frederick Russell’s fine-grained study of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century canonists7 yields similar 2 Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace (Nashville, TN: Abing- don Press, 1960). 3 Bainton, Christian Attitudes,148. 4 Ibid., 14. 5 LeRoy Walters, “The Just War and the Crusade: Antitheses or Analogies?” The Monist 57.4 (October 1973): 584–94. 6 Walters, “The Just War and the Crusade,” 590. 7 Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 86–212. Holy War 1101 results: when the canonists (and later, the theologians) were thinking morally about the question of war, these were the categories they used. They are in fact quite generally useful categories, even in comparative studies across cultures; I employ them in my own book comparing the holy war idea in Western Christianity and Islam.8 But everything depends, in context, on the content packed into the categories; by themselves, the empty categories do not lead far. Walters’s critique of Bainton, which amounts to a construction of Walters’s own conception of holy war, depends on unpacking the meanings of the categories as actually used by the medieval writers: war fought on the authority of a temporal ruler vs. war fought on the authority of the pope, not Bainton’s “war . . . fought under God and with his help”; war fought for the protection of the temporal order vs. war fought for the protection of Christian religion or the Church, not Bainton’s “holy” cause. As to the matter of the third category that Bainton cited, “that the war shall be prosecuted unsparingly,” Walters noted that he had not found any evidence of a distinction “in the theorists’ prescriptions for the conduct of justifiable political and religious wars” and went on to argue that therefore, the developing jus in bello rules, as they existed at that time, must have been understood to apply to both.9 In my own judgment on the matter of unsparing prosecution, two other factors are central: first, some holy war advocates from the Reformation era emphasized that the godliness of the cause imposed the obligation of godly conduct, that is, conduct closely restrained by both internal and external discipline; second, in both the medieval and Reformation-era contexts, there was general agreement that in responding to rebellion (including religious rebellion, that is, heresy or even serious nonconformity), extreme means were justified.10 In any case, the kinds of characterizations in play here do not exhaust the diverse meanings that have attached to the idea of holy war. There is a purely descriptive use of the term in Old Testament scholarship, prominently exemplified by Gerhard von Rad’s classic study, Der Heilige Krieg im alten Israel;11 the term is also used descriptively in Albrecht Noth’s later 8 James Turner Johnson, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions (Univer- sity Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). 9 Walters, “The Just War and the Crusade,” 591. 10 As to the former reason, see James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limi- tation of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 134–46; as to the latter, see further below. 11 Gerhard von Rad, Der Heilige Krieg im alten Israel (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1958), published in English as Holy War in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991). 1102 James Turner Johnson comparative study, Heiliger Krieg und heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum12 and in my own The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions.13 The earliest use of the term “holy war” I have encountered in print is Francis Bacon’s An Advertisement Touching an Holy Warre, begun in 1622 and left unfinished but published along with other works by Bacon on various topics seven years later.14 The Advertisement was in the form of a dialogue, with each of several characters presenting a perspective on the question of a possible war between England and Spain. Bacon himself did not make clear his own position on the matter of holy war in this work. He returned to this topic in 1624 in a finished study written by royal request, Considerations Touching a Warre with Spaine, where his own understanding of the idea of holy war is set out more clearly: it has to do with establishing the right of the English Monarch to defend Protestant religion in England against an offensive war by Spain to restore Catholicism by force of arms.15 He makes no claim that war justified in this way may be unlimited. Bacon’s way of using the term “holy war” signals that it was a familiar term in England already when he wrote. This is also clear in a book from the following decade, Thomas Fuller’s The Historie of the Holy Warre,16 which applies the term “holy war” to both the medieval Crusades and the Protestant-Catholic conflicts on the European continent during the century after the beginning of the Reformation, up through what we now call the Thirty Years War, which was ongoing when Fuller wrote.This last war, as well as the French religious wars of the previous century, was marked by unrestrained, even wanton cruelty and violence, but Fuller does not regard this as an inherent characteristic of war fought for religious purposes. Rather he connects this form of conduct in war to a specific criticism directed against Catholic prosecution of war in the name of religion, which he depicts as rooted in papal arrogance, greed, and ambition. He leaves open the possibility of legitimate warfare for religion in the future (perhaps by Protestants?), provided it is conducted properly.17 I have previously discussed the matter of holy war in some detail in two contexts already introduced: first, that of English discourse on war 12 Albrecht Noth, Heiliger Krieg und heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1966). 13 See n. 8 above. 14 Francis Bacon, Certaine miscellany works of the Right Honorable, Francis Lo[rd] Veru- lam, Viscount S. Alban (London: I. Haviland for Humphrey Robinson, 1629). 15 Bacon, Certaine miscellany works, 31–32. 16 Thomas Fuller, The Historie of the holy warre (Cambridge: Thomas Buck, Printer to the University, 1639). 17 Fuller, Historie, Book I, chaps. 9, 10; Book V, chap. 9. Holy War 1103 from the late sixteenth century through the mid-seventeenth;18 second, that of an extended comparison between the major Western Christian and Islamic traditions on war.19 My comments on Bacon and Fuller above, and my earlier comment on Bainton, draw from the former (Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War), but I also would refer readers to the full discussion there and in the 1997 book (The Holy War Idea). In the context of the comparative study of Western and Islamic thought on the idea of holy war I began, as I have begun here, with an examination of what I called there “the many faces of holy war,” identifying ten distinct if related meanings associated with holy war.20 Different ones of these meanings, and different combinations of meanings, appear in various contexts. So the term “holy war” has various meanings, and a major part of the problem of addressing the central question of this chapter is sorting out the component ideas and how they interact with each other in the context at hand. The just war categories of right authority, just cause, right intention, and right conduct, with various sorts of meanings attaching to them in different contexts, weave in and out of Western Christian discourse that can be described in some way as having to do with “holy war.” Some are more central in Catholic thinkers and Catholic teaching; others are more central in Protestant thought. But the historical ground shifts importantly at the beginning of the modern period, and it is reasonable to ask how the earlier debates bear on thinking about war and religion after that shift. I make no claim to comprehensiveness in this present discussion; the aim rather is to identify and explore the most important issues and how they came to bear on the idea of holy war. II. Posing the Question: Assessing Medieval and Early Modern Thinking Is there a Catholic doctrine of holy war? Certainly a major component of this question has to do with teaching on religious difference and whether religious conformity can and should be enforced by the power of arms. As far as current Catholic teaching is concerned, Gregory Reichberg is directly on target in this summary observation: It is now recognized in the official Church teaching that no state, even one where there is a majority of Catholics, can require a profession of 18 Johnson, Ideology, 87–149. 19 Johnson, The Holy War Idea. 20 Ibid., 37–42. 1104 James Turner Johnson faith on the part of its citizens. Religious plurality and religious freedom are now deemed fully acceptable conditions within the modern state.21 But what of earlier times? Catholic teaching has not always held the position Reichberg summarizes here, and indeed the contrary position has been the norm, both legally and socially, in most Western societies right up into the twentieth century. (The United States is the most notable exception, but even here, while the First Amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress to establish a national religion, the right of individual states to do so persisted after the adoption of the Bill of Rights.) In the era of the Reformation the formula cuius regio, eius religio did not establish religious freedom (except for rulers) but recognized the right of individual rulers to establish a single form of religious conformity within their domains. Protestant as well as Catholic rulers continued to guard this right jealously, and even after European societies finally stopped fighting one another over the right to impose religious conformity on one another, they continued to seek to impose such conformity in their own domains, often by use of arms. So if religious freedom, or to put it another way, tolerance of religious plurality, is central to the phenomenon of war in the name of religion— what has come to be called holy war—it is only part of the story: the larger issue is the conception of society and the role of religion in relation to it. A particular conception of the interlocked relationship between religion and society is central to the definition of the Islamic idea of jihad, which provides a ready comparative frame of reference for thinking about holy war. Some scholars of Islam, like Bruce Lawrence, have explicitly rendered the term jihad as “holy war.”22 Other commentators, like Robin Wright in her 1985 book on the Islamic revolution in Iran, have described jihad as a kind of “crusade.”23 Others before and since have used similar language.Yet “holy war” is not a term used in Islamic thought. In normative Islamic tradition the definition of the good society, the dar al-islam or abode of Islam, is intentionally one that joins religion to temporal life. The society itself is defined as the territory (“abode”) where God’s law, sharica, holds sway; its governance is lodged in a ruler recognized to have inherited both 21 Gregory M. Reichberg, “Norms of War in Roman Catholic Christianity,” in World Religions and Norms of War, ed. Vesselin Popovski, Gregory M. Reichberg, and Nicholas Turner (New York: United Nations University Press, 2009): 142–65, at 155. 22 Bruce Lawrence, “Holy War ( Jihad ) in Islamic Religion and Nation-state Ideologies,” in Just War and Jihad, ed. John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 141–60. 23 Robin Wright, Sacred Rage: The Crusade of Modern Islam (New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1985). Holy War 1105 the religious and the political authority of the Prophet Muhammad (in Sunni tradition, the caliph; in Shiite tradition, the Imam). While certain forms of non-Muslim religious belief and practice are tolerated, others are not, and even those tolerated must defer to Islamic law in cases of difference or be disciplined or punished if they do not. Religious conformity within the society, then, is understood not in terms of an enforced common faith—indeed, Islamic tradition explicitly repudiates the idea of enforced faith—but common behavior according to Islamic law, ideally flowing from the heart in the case of Muslim believers but subject to enforcement from outside in the case of non-Muslims. Similarly, relations with societies not part of the dar al-islam are understood in terms of conformity or non-conformity to Islamic law.These societies, as defined in the classical works of Islamic jurisprudence, collectively make up the dar alharb, the abode of war, so called because, without rule according to God’s law, human societies descend into conflict, both internally and in their relations with other societies. Jihad of the sword aims at bringing peace to them by causing them to submit to divinely given law. Is such jihad “holy war”? Muslims insist that it is not. Yet certainly religion is closely associated with warfare here. This normative Islamic conception clearly overlaps the way Western Christian thinking came, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in particular, to treat the relationship between religion and the use of armed force, though there are also telling differences.24 On the matter of the conception of society, Charles Cardinal Journet, who treats the subject of holy war extensively in his chapter on the relation between the canonical and political powers,25 argues that the central issue is that medieval western Europe was a “consecrational society.” This might at first blush appear to be the same sort of conception as that of the dar al-islam in Islamic thinking, but the actual organization of Western societies, their interrelationship, and the relation between the political and spiritual spheres was conceived differently. Journet summarizes what he means for the relation between religion and war in this way: “by reason of the spiritual values invested in the temporal common good in a consecrational regime, it was this temporal common good itself which the Church required to be defended, by temporal means used in accordance with their own laws.”26 Even in the “consecrational” society, and 24 For fuller discussion of the classical Islamic juristic idea of jihad see Johnson, The Holy War Idea, chapters 3–5, passim; see also John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 97–124. 25 Charles Cardinal Journet, The Church of the Incarnate Word (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), chapter VI. 26 Journet, Church, 37. James Turner Johnson 1106 in contrast to the case of Islamic religion and culture, a distinction is made between the spiritual and the temporal.This turns out to be the key to the difference between the Western way of thinking about the relation between religion and war and that found in normative Islam. This Western way of thinking, in which a difference is recognized to exist between the religious and temporal spheres, first explicitly appears in a letter of Pope Gelasius I to the Roman Emperor Anastasius in 494: There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy . . . .27 This distinction, which never developed in the eastern part of the Empire or in Orthodox Christian doctrine, became critical for Western culture. While Gelasius’s specific language asserts the primacy of the spiritual powers over the temporal, the idea that there are two distinct powers turned out to be more fundamental, and the question of the extent of these powers and their relation to each other continued to be argued all through the Middle Ages and into the modern period. But regarding the specific relation of religion to war, a particular interpretation of the spiritual-temporal distinction became central. In 1144, as part of his preaching of a new crusade after Muslim advances in the Holy Land, Bernard of Clairvaux developed this idea of two distinct powers into that of the “two swords,” posing this argument to the pope: Since the Saviour suffers anew where He once died for us, both the swords must be drawn which he allowed on the first occasion [Luke xxii.38]. And who should draw them but you? Both swords of Peter must be unsheathed as often as need be, the one at his command, the other at his hand.28 This concept was fundamental to subsequent medieval argument about the relation of religion to war. Journet regards the matter as closely tied to his conception of medieval society as “consecrational,” writing, “It will . . . appear that ‘holy wars’ are bound up with the existence or 27 Cited from www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Gelasius_I, accessed January 29, 2009. 28 Cited from Journet, Church, 81. Holy War 1107 survival of a consecrational type of Christendom.”29 With the end of this type of society, on this conception, comes the end of the possibility of “holy wars.” It would, I think, be better to say that the debate over the relation of religion to war shifts with the conception of society, but that the focus remains on the question of authority. Later, in the Reformation era, the “two swords” idea was opposed by the development in Protestant thought of a contrary idea, that of “one sword”—that only the civil power, and never the spiritual, has the right of the sword. This latter doctrine sat easily alongside the formula cuius regio, eius religio, which gave the power of decision regarding the practice of religion to rulers. Whether armed force may rightly be used for certain purposes defined by religion was not in play here, as both sides agreed that force could be used for such purpose; the “two-swords”–“one sword” debate was really about whether the pope, as the possessor of the spiritual power, possessed the right to authorize the use of armed force for these purposes, or whether that right belongs only to temporal rulers in their own domains—the position adopted normatively throughout the Reformation. Interestingly, as we have seen in both Bacon and Fuller, the term “holy war” first appears in the context of this debate. So identifying medieval society as “consecrational” does not, I think, get to the heart of the matter of the relation between religion and the use of armed force, whether the latter can usefully be described as “holy war” or not, since the idea that religious values are part of the societal common good persists well after the end of the specific society Journet has in mind, that of medieval Christendom. What changes is the answer to the question of who has the authority, and the responsibility, to authorize armed force for the protection of such values. Journet elsewhere, citing the doctrine of the two swords, notes where medieval Christian thinking came out on this: the pope, as head of the Church and possessor of the authority of St. Peter, has the right to authorize war for the defense of the faith (cf. the discussion of Walters above), but since the Church may not itself be directly involved in bloodshed, if the pope does “draw” the sword in this way, he immediately passes it to the temporal prince to use it; alternatively, “in certain grave circumstances,” even if the pope himself does not authorize the use of force, he has the power to command the prince to do so.30 Russell’s study of the medieval canonical debates leads readers through the details of the debates over papal authority regarding the sword, showing how the resolution, which Journet’s language well 29 Ibid., 70. 30 Ibid., 81. 1108 James Turner Johnson describes, was reached in canon law by the middle of the thirteenth century.31 This conception became settled doctrine in subsequent canon law and theology, and it was the basis for Catholic thinking about religious authorization and justification of war during the conflicts of the Reformation era. What happens in the Protestant doctrine of “one sword” directly rejects this way of thinking: the “one sword” doctrine denies both kinds of authority regarding use of armed force that was given to the pope in medieval doctrine. At the same time, the Protestant doctrine maintained the right to use the sword for the protection of religious values, and even the protection of specific religious institutions, but the doctrine passed that right to the temporal rulers. Recalling what I have said above about the usefulness of the categories of right authority, just cause, right intention, and right conduct for thinking about the relation of religion to war, I would stress that their specific content in each given context is what makes each form of such thinking distinctive. In the effort to make sense of the concept of holy war, examining each category means coming to terms with both what the developing thought allowed and what it prohibited. As I have been arguing, the “two swords”—“one sword” debate had to do with identifying who could rightly authorize resort to force: whether the pope could do so, or only temporal rulers. As to the justifying cause, there was no dispute that force could—indeed, should—be used to protect Christian religion, though not to seek to propagate it. In the Reformation era, of course, Catholics and Protestants disagreed fundamentally on which form of Christian religion deserved to be protected, as well as by whom. On the particular matter of conduct, a key factor is that, for both just war and holy war thinkers in the Middle Ages and well into the modern period, involvement in rebellion against established authority trumped any and all restrictions on the conduct of war. This idea, which is in effect the mirror image of the effort to restrain war by limiting the right to authorize it, crystallized in medieval thought during the same period—the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries—in which the idea of right authority became definitive for the right to resort to armed force. Within the frame of a “consecrational” society, where heresy was understood as a form of rebellion against order ( Journet, for example, calls heresy in a consecrational society a crime like theft or murder),32 it allowed the extreme means used, for example, in the punishment and suppression of the Albigensians. At the same time, though, other forms of rebellion could be put down equally harshly; use of extreme means was not reserved for 31 See n. 7 above. 32 Journet, Church, 72. Holy War 1109 responses to heresy and religious nonconformity. In the era of the Reformation, while this way of thinking justified the pope’s authorization of war by Catholic princes against Protestant ones, it also justified the use of armed force within Protestant as well as Catholic lands against those who professed the contrary religion. Nor was it only a matter of religious conformity: consider Luther’s exhortation to the German nobility to “smite and punish,” to “smite, slay, and stab” all who were involved in the peasants’ rebellion of 1524–25. Rebellion, Luther wrote, “is not just simple murder; it is like a great fire, which attacks and devastates a whole land.” It “brings with it a land filled with murder and bloodshed; it makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down.”33 In assessing whether holy war inherently permits unlimited uses of force, then, it is necessary to come to terms with the fact that it was generally accepted that unlimited means could rightly be used against rebels. In the Middle Ages this puts the focus on dissident religious groups and in particular on the rebellion of heresy. In the Reformation era both Protestants and Catholics continued to regard heresy as punishable by death and the use of coercive force as a proper response to all forms of religious nonconformity. The new element here was the more complicated face of rebellion. For a Protestant ruler who had installed a Protestant form of Christianity as the established religion in his or her domain, the effort to re-establish Catholicism, or even to carve out a place in society where Catholics might openly practice their faith, constituted rebellion. At the same time, from the standpoint of the Catholic authorities, the affirmation of Protestant faith by a ruler itself constituted rebellion against papal authority, justifying punishment by force of arms. We see this phenomenon clearly in the debate between the exiled English Catholic Primate, William Cardinal Allen, and the Anglican Bishop of Winchester, Thomas Bilson, during the 1580s, in the context of the pope’s support of the Irish Catholics in their rising in arms against the Protestant English Queen Elizabeth. Allen, writing first, puts the matter straightforwardly: “[N]o crime in the world deserveth more sharpe and zealous pursuite of extreme revenge, than revoulting from the faith to strange religions.” All the unfaithful are to be slain “without exception.”34 Temporal rulers who oppose the pope, Allen continued, are by definition rebels, as are all their subjects who follow their lead, since temporal power derives from the spiritual. By contrast, Catholics who 33 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 46 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 50; see further 49–55. 34 William Cardinal Allen, A True, sincere, and modest defence of English catholiques that suffer for their faith both at home and abrode (London: William Cecil, 1585), 103. 1110 James Turner Johnson rise up against their ruler in the cause of their faith are not rebels, for they are acting in obedience to a law higher than that of their earthly prince. Bilson, writing in direct response to Allen, insists the pope has no temporal authority whatever and thus cannot command in war, so that subjects who oppose their ruler, in matters of religion as in other matters, are in fact rebels, and extreme measures may be used against them.35 In this dispute the issue is clearly that of the right to rule, and of the authority to employ armed force that comes from this right. Unlimited means are understood as permitted in the punishment and suppression of rebellion against such authority. Both sides in the dispute accept that refusal to follow the ordained religion constitutes such rebellion; their difference is in defining who has the supreme authority. Allen and Bilson are but two voices from the larger debate, which continued till nearly the middle of the seventeenth century; yet their way of framing the issues remained characteristic of this larger debate all the way through. III. Holy War: A Shift in Thinking Contemporary thinking about religion in relation to war focuses much more centrally on the question of violence in itself than was the case for medieval and early modern writers treating this subject. We find this, as I have noted, in Bainton’s typology, which sorts “Christian attitudes toward war and peace” by ranging them along a spectrum from pacifism, which denies all resort to violence, through just war, which allows violence under some conditions but puts restraints on it, to the holy war or crusade, which Bainton understands as permitting unlimited violence. Recent Catholic thought provides the example of Jacques Maritain’s excoriation of the violence and destruction on both sides in the Spanish Civil War, during his discussion, written in 1937, rejecting the claim some were making that the Royalists were fighting a “holy war.”36 For Maritain the use of extreme means is directly opposed to the fundamental Christian message, which in one place he renders by citing Luke 9:56: “The Son of Man is not come to destroy the lives of men, but to save them.”37 Or consider the United States Catholic bishops’ rendering of the just war idea as defining limited exceptions to a general “presump35 Thomas Bilson, The True difference betweene Christian subjection and unchristian rebel- lion (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, Printer to the University, 1585), 379–81. 36 Jacques Maritain, Préface au livre d’Alfred Mendizabal, Aux origines d’une tragédie: La politique espagnole de 1923 à 1936, 1215–55, in Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. VI (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires/Paris: Éditions Saint-Paul, 1984), 1237–43. 37 Maritain, Préface, 1243, my translation. Holy War 1111 tion against war,” a conception first put forward in their 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace,38 and made the focus of various later statements on the use of armed force by the United States. Medieval and early modern theorists writing on the subject of just war and holy war simply did not think this way. They rather focused on the questions of authorization and justification, holding that the use of armed force could be authorized by either the ruler or the pope for the purpose of protecting Catholic religion and punishing deviation from it. The question of means arose, for them, because such deviation constituted rebellion against the established order, so that extreme means were justified, including death for all the guilty. Maritain’s discussion focuses on the questions of justification for war and conduct in war. The position Maritain rejects, that the Spanish Civil War is actually a holy war, had been argued by a Spanish Dominican, Ignacio G. Menendez-Reigada: “The Spanish national war is a holy war, and the holiest registered in history.” Maritain elaborates: “Father Menendez-Reigada justifies this assertion by saying that in the war as it exists what is in play is the very existence of all religion, natural or positive, and that of the natural foundations of society.”39 The issue here is posed as protection of religion. But for Maritain this does not mean the war should be thought of as a holy war. Rather, he argues, Menendez-Reigada’s reasoning “tends to show that the question is that of a just war.” So Maritain’s first response is to take the matter of holy war off the table as emphatically as the Spanish theologian had it put it there.40 He goes on to elaborate on this point, arguing that contemporary forms of civilization distinguish more fully between the temporal and the spiritual than was the case earlier, and that in such secular forms of civilization, “the notion of holy war loses all signification.”41 This is the same kind of argument seen in Journet above. But Maritain goes a step further: there is no longer a place for holy war, but the question of just war remains. The effort to defend sacred values in itself does not make a war holy; this is a matter of justice. Maritain’s argument here accepts the use of force as a possible means to protect religious values, but he depicts this as a just war issue, not one having to do with holy war. Then he shifts to the conduct of the war: the horrible means being used in fighting the Spanish Civil War themselves obviate the idea that 38 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1983). 39 Maritain, Préface, 1238, n. 18. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 1239–41. James Turner Johnson 1112 the war is in any way holy. In the face of the resulting human misery, calling the war a “holy war” can only multiply the sacrilege caused by the conduct that has caused such misery.42 To claim holiness in such a context is to risk blasphemy against that which is holy. Maritain’s discussion could be analyzed in much more depth. For the purposes of the present discussion, though, what is most interesting is the shift in the terms of argument exemplified in this discussion. Neither Menendez-Reigada nor Maritain is interested in arguing the right of the spiritual authority, the pope, to authorize war. As for justification, what is at stake, even for Menendez-Reigada, is not punishment of irreligion but protection of religion, and the religion to be protected is not just Catholicism but “all religion, natural or positive, and . . . the natural foundations of society.” For Maritain, though, this is simply a just war justification. And as for conduct, Maritain’s most impassioned language is directed to the indiscriminate and extreme destruction employed on both sides. Maritain clearly wants this to be the end of the line for the idea of holy war, and his language presages that of later Catholic thinking. I mentioned above the U.S. Catholic bishops’ The Challenge of Peace; consider this language on “religious violence” from their statement marking the tenth anniversary of that pastoral: Every child murdered, every woman raped, every town “cleansed,” every hatred uttered in the name of religion is a crime against God and a scandal for religious believers. Religious violence and nationalism deny what we profess in faith: We are all created in the image of the same God and destined for the same eternal salvation.43 This passage is followed by a supporting quotation from Pope John Paul II: “[N]o Christian can knowingly foster or support structures and attitudes that unjustly divide individuals or groups.” The teaching defined here by the bishops is a hundred and eighty degrees from medieval and early modern conceptions. Not only is religious difference not a justification for the use of armed force, but the use of force for religious purpose is described as manifested in forms of violence—murder of children, rape of women, intentional driving people from their homes—that are inherently immoral. This document also exemplifies another shift in Catholic thinking: that protection of religion remains a moral imperative, not because of the inher42 Ibid., 1244. 43 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace,” Origins 23.26 (December 9, 1993), 450–64, at 458. Holy War 1113 ent truth of any particular religion but as a matter of fundamental human rights. This position is developed most fully in the section on humanitarian intervention, where the U.S. bishops, quoting Pope John Paul II and summarizing the concerns he raised, write as follows: “[H]uman life, human rights, and the welfare of the human community are at the center of Catholic moral reflection on the social and political order.”44 Contemporary normative Catholic teaching has no place for holy war. It is not only that the institutional relationship between the Catholic Church and society has shifted; it is that the theological conception of the proper relationship between them has changed. It is not only that religious plurality and religious freedom are now accepted in Catholic thinking and teaching; it is that the rationale for that acceptance is understood within the frame of protecting a fundamental human right. When papal authority is cited in support of the need to protect religion, it is not to claim the right of the pope to command the secular authorities to protect Catholic religion but rather to use the pope’s moral authority to remind secular governments that they should protect the right of religious belief and practice as a fundamental human right, and while they may—if need be— employ force to do so, extreme forms of violence in the name of religion are rejected as intrinsically immoral. Some, like the U.S. bishops, would add that there is a general presumption against violence which requires grave reasons to be overturned. Contemporary normative Catholic teaching has no place for a doctrine of holy war. N&V 44 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The Harvest of Justice,” 461. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1115–40 1115 Changing the Rules of the Game: A Just Peace Critique of Just War Thought VALERIE O. M ORKEVICIUS Colgate University Hamilton, New York W HEN THINKING about the ethics of war, the menu generally includes just three items: pacifism, just war thought, and realism. Among mainline Protestants, a fourth path has been slowly developing over the past century. Just peace separates itself from both pacifism and just war thought, sometimes conceiving of itself as a third path or a bridge between the two. While just war thought has become, for these thinkers, too complicit in an international political system that legitimizes (rather than condemns) violence, pacifism is seen as calling for an equally counter-productive withdrawal from the political sphere. Just peace starts with the pacifist impulse—that violence is by nature immoral, and must be avoided—and ends with the just war drive for a peace that goes beyond the absence of war to the creation of actual justice. Justice is privileged over order.1 Just peace thinking thus demands that we recognize peace not only in its negative form (the absence of war) but also in its positive variant (the presence of justice). Indeed, just peace demands not only “non-violence or non-resistance,” but also “positive participation in peacemaking initiatives.”2 It is perhaps not surprising that the idea of just peace is being worked out within the Protestant tradition.3 While all Christian communities have 1 Duane Friesen, Christian Peacemaking and International Conflict (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1986), 22. 2 Glen H. Stassen, Just Peacemaking:Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace (Louis- ville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 42. 3 Although this essay focuses on just peace thought in the Protestant tradition, it should be acknowledged that there is a similarly vigorous discussion of just peace 1116 Valerie O. Morkevicius struggled with the ethics of war and peace, “Protestantism, especially, harbors within itself contradictory notions of what peace is and what can lead to peace.”4 Protestantism’s emphasis on individual conscience and relative lack of theological hierarchy has left its denominations debating the ethics of war not only with each other, but also internally. Nonetheless, the move to just peace represents a striking departure from most Protestant denominations’ traditional perspectives on war. Most of the major Protestant denominations—the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican traditions and their daughter churches—historically accepted just war thought, while allowing for individual conscientious objection. Theologically, this is perhaps unsurprising—their primary doctrinal concerns with Catholicism (and with each other) involved foundational beliefs. Politically, these mainstream denominations often enjoyed state support, not unlike the Roman Catholic Church before them. As such, they generally encouraged participation in the life of the state. Since the use of force has been seen as a necessary requirement of the state’s defense of order through its policing and military functions, these traditions have sought to reconcile limited violence with Christian principles, employing just war reasoning in their public judgments on the subject. By contrast, other Protestant denominations, most notably the Anabaptists and Quakers, are considered “peace churches.” Historically these denominations often stood aloof from politics. Although most of these denominations believed that Christians had an important role to play in society—aiding the poor, encouraging reconciliation, speaking out for justice—they also argued that participation in government was inherently tainted. If government requires force to uphold order, it would be definitionally impossible to participate in governance without engaging in acts of violence or coercion. The pacifism that these denominations uphold is in principle absolute; it claims that violence is taboo.5 Recently, however, these two positions have moved closer together. As Huber poetically puts it, “In an age when nuclear mass destruction is possible, many streams that earlier flowed side by side without touching in the Catholic tradition, dating back at least as far as Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris.The four elements of just peace outlined in the encyclical, namely human rights, economic development, solidarity and international order, bear much in common with Protestant just peace thought. It is a sign of the synchronicity of the mainstream Protestant and Catholic traditions that both traditions are moving in the same direction. 4 Wolfgang Huber, Violence: The Unrelenting Assault on Human Dignity, trans. Ruth C. K. Gritsch (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 85. 5 Ibid., 91. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1117 are now converging.”6 While the majority of Protestant denominations still remain more optimistic about governance (and more tolerant of the use of force), the increasing emphasis on just peace creates a new linkage between mainline Protestants and the traditional peace churches. I argue that the newly emerging doctrine of just peace is a reaction to certain changes in modern warfare that undermine the logics of the just war tradition, challenging its potential to usefully limit war. While just peace theory certainly serves as a fruitful critique of the just war tradition, its reactive nature may undermine it. My argument proceeds in four steps. First, I outline the doctrine of just peace as it exists today. Second, I sketch the theoretical relationship between the just peace and just war traditions, arguing that just peace is a reaction to specific assumptions within just war thought. Third, I trace the history of the just peace doctrine, claiming that fundamental changes in modern weaponry and tactics have driven former just war churches toward a more pacifist perspective. Lastly, I evaluate the prospects for just peace thought. Is this a tradition that is here to stay? Does it have the theoretical rigor to compete with just war thought and principled pacifism? Does it really represent a third path? What Does Just Peace Demand? Depending on the denomination, just peace thinkers offer between seven and ten concrete suggestions for peacemaking. These suggestions can be condensed into four general categories. First, we must admit our own guilt and seek to rebuild damaged relationships. Second, we must identify the specific causes for conflict.Third, we must attempt to rectify these problems, including being willing to take the initiative unilaterally. Fourth, we must proactively work to strengthen international institutions and uphold human rights. First, we must recognize our own responsibility for troubled relationships and seek reconciliation. By implication, both sides bear some responsibility for the conflict. Stassen argues that we must acknowledge “our complicity and bondage” lest we “spread the disease rather than participate in the cure.”7 This acknowledgment serves both a theological and a pragmatic purpose. Theologically, Christians called to participate in peacemaking must give up “self-righteous judging and controlling and begin to rely on the transforming initiatives of God’s grace.”8 An internal change is the basis for new external behaviors. Pragmatically, apology 6 Ibid., 93. 7 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 59. 8 Ibid., 60. 1118 Valerie O. Morkevicius may in itself be necessary for reconciliation to occur. Because “unacknowledged guilt is not merely a moral sin but also . . . a powerful barrier to reconciliation,” admitting one’s own guilt is a key step in just peacemaking.9 After all, the other may not be willing to engage constructively until we have admitted our own complicity. Stassen focuses on German admission of war guilt to make this point; another relevant example would be the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa. The United Church of Christ’s A Just Peace Church similarly links these two dimensions of acknowledgment: “in addition to structural change, a transformation of values must also occur.”10 Second, we must look for the underlying causes of violence and attempt to address them. Just peace assumes that there are identifiable causes for conflict. War is not an inevitable phenomenon; it is a social product. Conflict and war are the result of injustices, which must be remedied in order to construct peace. Unlike the dichotomous relationship between domestic and international order in the just war tradition, just peace claims that order and justice must be simultaneously pursued on both levels. We must seek to resolve injustice wherever we find it, at home and abroad. Human rights and justice must be sought for all, “especially the powerless, without double standards.”11 At times, our own domestic or foreign policies must be changed. Correcting injustices can take many forms. Sometimes it is a matter of opening up a dialogue and allowing the other to present its claims. Dialogue is one of the fundamental principles of just peacemaking. If there is no conversation, then issues cannot be aired and common solutions cannot be discovered. Stassen identifies the habit of brushing conflictual issues under the rug as one of the “irrational processes” that stand in the way of making peace.12 Nations must talk, and “in a manner designed to resolve conflict.”13 Part of this communication requires affirming our enemies’ “valid interests.”14 This means recognizing our common interdependence in terms of security. National borders must be recognized and respected, militaries must be arranged defensively (not offensively), and common institutions need to be developed.15 For example, just peace theorists 9 Ibid., 107. 10 A Just Peace Church, ed. Susan Thistlethwaite, 48. 11 Ibid., 103. 12 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 63. 13 Ibid., 102. 14 Ibid., 77. 15 Ibid., 95–96. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1119 affirm the United Nations as the centerpiece of a “new, global international system of security and cooperation.”16 The European Union also serves as a model for productive international cooperation. The key is creating a “politics of inclusion rather than exclusion.”17 Correcting injustice may also use certain forms of coercion. Within the just peace community, there is some dispute over the problem of coercion. Some thinkers classify almost anything as violence, and thus radically limit the sphere of persuasive action. The Peace Theology Development Team of the United Church of Christ argues that it is imperative to “assert that the state is based on consent rather than coercion.”18 The state’s primary role, then, is not to forcibly keep its citizens from harming each other, but to “create social justice and human welfare, rather than merely to restrain evil.”19 Most just peace thinkers, however, argue that there is a distinction between coercion and violence. Indeed, some mild forms of coercion— social pressure and fear of ostracism, for example—may be normal parts of the human experience, and perhaps necessary to our lives as social creatures. Lastly, we must be willing to take unilateral action. Change can be brought about by figuratively disarming the enemy—altering one’s stance to reflect a peaceful alternative may shame (or charm) the other into responding. As Stassen describes it, “we need a new strategy of independent initiatives, directed toward transforming the reaction of the adversary.”20 Such unilateral moves “build mutual credibility, decrease the sense of insecurity, and provide incentives so our adversary can begin to consider rational alternatives.”21 Why Just Peace? A Reaction to the Dominant Theory Just peace theory challenges three assumptions in the just war tradition, namely, that war is inevitable, limited, and state-centric.This section sketches out the critique of just war theory offered by just peace thinkers, highlighting the ways in which just peace thought is a reaction to the older tradition. Just war theory assumes that war is inevitable. While some wars should not be fought, because either the causes or the means are unjust, the logic of the tradition itself presumes that war is not in itself immoral. Put differently, just war theory asks when Christians (or more secularly, moral individuals) may participate in war, but does not ask the fundamental question: 16 Ibid., 97. 17 Ibid., 98. 18 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 63. 19 Ibid. 20 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 99. 21 Ibid., 101. 1120 Valerie O. Morkevicius should there be war in the first place? In specifically religious iterations of the tradition, the inevitability of war is tied to the fallen condition of mankind—because we live in the earthly city, and not the heavenly one, we cannot expect any better.22 Violence is a necessity of life in a fallen world, because force is necessary to maintain order.While this is admittedly an unideal politics, it is a realist one—to fail to maintain order is to permit sin to flourish. Just peace theorists contest this assumption, as they “do not believe that war is inevitable, that it comes and goes as by an inexorable and arbitrary decree of fate.”23 The basis of this hope is the claim that coercion is not necessarily the basis of human relations, either within or between states. As Friesen argues, “though violent force is present in political institutions, political institutions cannot be reduced to this definition as if violent force were necessary for political institutions to remain political.”24 Put differently, “humanity can overcome sin, create Just Peace.”25 As part of the process, the church must remind the polity that “the state is based on consent rather than coercion,” and that the state’s role is “to create social justice and human welfare rather than merely to restrain evil.”26 Just war theory also presumes that war can be limited. The existence of categories of causes and means deemed to be just presumes that both the ends and means can be restricted. Just war and just peace advocates would all most likely agree on the matter of cause—neither tradition stomachs far-reaching, idealistic ideologies that could lead to crusading. But just peace advocates have repeatedly made the argument across the last century that modern war makes the idea of limited means seem naïve. Weapons of mass destruction, the increasing use of guerrilla and terrorist tactics, and the militarization of societies raise questions about the practicability of civilian immunity. Furthermore, just war theory considers the state to be the most significant actor. While early just war thinkers naturally used different terminology, their concern with “legitimate authority” suggests that they imagined a world made up of like units in competition with each other.The assumption that human loyalties and sympathies are (and perhaps should be) bound 22 Friesen cites St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and Paul Ramsey in this respect: Chris- tian Peacemaking, 40. 23 Historic Peace Churches and International Fellowship of Reconciliation Commit- tee, “Peace Is the Will of God” (Geneva, Switzerland, October 1953), in A Declaration on Peace (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1991), 78. 24 Friesen, Christian Peacemaking, 105. 25 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 58. 26 Ibid., 63. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1121 primarily to the local political unit is seen by just peace thinkers as divisive. By contrast, just peace thinkers encourage approaches that consider the good of the entire international system, and ultimately, all of humanity. One of the clearest discussions of this alternate perspective can be found in Peace Is the Will of God, written in 1953 by a group of historic peace churches and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation Committee. The document argues that world society naturally comprises various social groupings, “yet this is the very structure whose distortions are an immediate cause of war,” because group consciousness leads to inter-group competition and conflict.27 The question is whether Christ wanted this order of society upheld, or whether the command to “love your enemies” calls for it to be overturned.The Committee responds that Christians have a distinctive “solidarity with all mankind,” and are called to a love that “overreaches the bounds which natural group solidarity sets to unselfishness.”28 If everyone is our neighbor, then war can never be justified, as it takes “the lives of some of God’s children in the hope of protecting the lives and liberties of others.”29 The just peace tradition shares this pacifist assumption. God’s relationship with mankind is described as friendship based on “mutuality, maturity, cooperation, responsibility and reciprocity”; our friendship with God makes it possible to imagine such a “friendship [as] possible on earth,” among all the earth’s peoples.30 In order to achieve just peace, humans must “[bind] together to participate in changing the world,” as “Christ’s power becomes tangible through our bonding with one another.”31 Christ’s willingness to enjoy communion with the unclean and other outcasts reveals that “the power to change the world comes through human bonding with the despised.”32 The church must thus resist any and all forces that “perpetuate human enmity, that divide and destroy human community.”33 Instead of focusing on the various organizations that divide us, we should recognize our “interdependence, understood as the covenantal relation of those abiding in friendship with God,” which “should lead us to a corporate identity capable of sustaining the difficult and divisive task of making peace, even vis-à-vis the state.”34 27 Historic Peace Churches, “Peace Is the Will of God,” 56. 28 Ibid., 59. 29 Ibid., 58. 30 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 54. 31 Ibid., 58. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 59. 34 Ibid., 61. 1122 Valerie O. Morkevicius Thus, the state itself must be constantly interrogated. The church is called upon to “witness to the fact that national sovereignty is not an end in itself, and it must advocate relaxation of rabid notions of national sovereignty in order to make possible the establishment of international institutions that promote effectively the mergence of justice and peace.”35 As mentioned earlier, this requires moving away from the assumption that the state must be coercive, since this view “strengthens notions of national sovereignty and prevents any international movement from emerging.”36 If coercion is sworn off as a tool of domestic sovereignty, it must logically also be abandoned as an international relations tactic. In addition to the claim that loving one’s neighbor means loving equally all of humanity, the Committee also points to Christ’s example as a reason why the state should not be assumed to be self-evidently worthy of protection.The authors of Peace Is the Will of God argue that Christ had a choice “when seemingly faced with the choice of imposing his leadership by violence or permitting the extinction of his nascent kingdom,” and that his choice to die on the cross indicates that he “did not justify violence as a lesser evil . . . or as a means to a good end.”37 This implies that a state’s right to self-defense may not be absolute; national security cannot trump the human security of the state’s people. When Just Peace? A Reaction to Political Shock Historically, most Protestant churches have traditionally accepted a just war perspective. So what has motivated the shift toward just peace by mainline denominations in the twentieth century? I argue that the just peace doctrine has emerged as a response to a series of external shocks— dramatic changes in warfare and the international system—that challenged just war theory’s core assumptions. Many Protestant theologians seem to agree with Friesen’s claim that “modern warfare is so destructive that the very pursuit of war as an instrument of national policy defeats the very self-interest of the nation which utilizes war.”38 If modern war cannot be limited, just peace thinkers argue, it must be eliminated. This section traces the evolution of the concept of just peace since World War I, highlighting the external shocks that have pushed the development of just peace theology. Each period has witnessed the development of a particular concept within just peace thought: the need for 35 Ibid., 64. 36 Ibid. 37 Historic Peace Churches, “Peace Is the Will of God,” 66. 38 Friesen, Christian Peacemaking, 40. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1123 vigorous international institutions and law, the need to ban indiscriminately destructive weapons, and the need for far-reaching changes in the economic, social, and political relations between states to create a just world order. In the Shadow of the World Wars: Hope in Internationalism, 1940–60 Although the term “just peace” was coined in the 1980s by the United Church of Christ, just peace’s roots reach back to the inter-war pacifism prevalent in many Protestant denominations. In the aftermath of World War I, many prominent theologians were morally disgusted by the unprecedented bloodiness of the war, and especially by the development of new technologies (in particular, machine guns and air forces) that were perceived as more indiscriminate and wasteful of human life than earlier ones. At this stage, the concern that evolving technologies had rendered the just war tradition inadequate did not yet lead to the creation of a new system of ethical thought. Instead, these theologians turned toward a type of pacifism. Yoder describes this as a “programmatic political pacifism,” which argues that war is wrong because it is counterproductive—it does not actually accomplish its stated goals.39 Unlike other pacifisms, which focus on violence itself as wrong, this type of pacifism was more pragmatic. Violence could only be justified if it could be effective; otherwise, it could not be justly used. This form of pacifism, which Yoder—a Mennonite pacifist theologian—saw as naïve, lost favor in the late 1930s with the rise of Nazism in Europe. The just peace tradition began to emerge in earnest in the years immediately after World War II. Protestant theologians were again shocked by a new form of total war, even more destructive, wanton, and widespread than the Great War. The horrors of genocide and the massive civilian destruction wreaked by firebombing (culminating in the nuclear attacks at the end of the war) made the just war tradition seem rather hollow. The just peace idea did not emerge as a condemnation of the recently ended war, which was judged to be a just war on the part of the Allies. Against the evil of Nazism, appeasement or surrender would clearly have been unconscionable. However, the scale of violence begged the question—could the war have been avoided without compromising the moral and humane principles that had legitimated it? Was the question really limited to evaluating the justness of a particular conflict, or should moral attention be paid to the underlying systemic causes of war? 39 John Howard Yoder. Nevertheless: The Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992), 29. 1124 Valerie O. Morkevicius In response, early just peace thinkers placed their hope in the creation of more robust international institutions that could mediate conflicts between states before they exploded into violence. The emergence of the United Nations, the successful prosecution of war criminals at Nuremberg and the subsequent rapid development of international law (especially human rights law) led many Protestant thinkers to optimistically consider the possibility of a new world order, characterized by law-governed relations between states, rather than by war. In 1946, for example, the World Peace Commission of the Methodist Church called for support for the “United Nations as the only organization which . . . offers an instrument for peace and order in the world,” pointing out that “world government must be the ultimate goal.”40 Likewise, the National Council of Churches of Christ General Assembly (representing 33 denominations) composed “A Letter to the Christian People of America” in 1953, declaring a Christian “responsibility” to support the work of the United Nations, despite mounting criticism of the organization in political circles.41 Thus, Protestant denominations in the 1950s focused on how they could contribute to the codification of international law, and encourage states to devote themselves to the new international institutions being created. Early just peace thinkers condemned the use and development of nuclear weapons, identifying the new technology as a symptom of the new dangers associated with modern war. For example, in a statement emphasizing the importance of the United Nations for the post-war order, the 1946 World Peace Commission of the Methodist Church demanded “that the manufacture of atomic bombs be stopped and that bombs now on hand be destroyed or turned over to the United Nations, and urged that the proposal for universal disarmament be enacted and enforced.”42 The Commission’s focus was on the potential of the new institution to address global concerns, rather than on the weapons themselves. Interestingly, the German theologian Wolfgang Huber seems to classify modern just peace thought in this vein, arguing that the destructiveness of modern war has led Christians to develop a position he terms “responsible pacifism,” which “insists on subduing violence through the law.”43 The subsequent iterations of just peace thought—in the 1980s and 2000s—have continued to call for strengthening international institutions. Later generations of just peace 40 “Peace Group Asks Support of U.N.,” The Christian Century (4 December 1946). 41 Gordon L. Anderson, “The Evolution of the Concept of Peace in the Work of the National Council of Churches,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 21 (Fall 1984): 730–54, at 741. 42 “Peace Group Asks Support of U.N.,” The Christian Century (4 December 1946). 43 Huber, Violence, 92. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1125 thinkers, however, have devoted more attention to the problem of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the just peace movement again dropped below the horizon. In the United States, the primary reason seems to be internal tensions due to the Vietnam War.With many of the largest denominations split between supporters and objectors, any effort to develop a theology of just peace or to invest in the development of just peace practices and institutions, came to be seen as inherently political and divisive. Furthermore, the relative stability of the Cold War (and the fact that only conventional weapons were used in the era’s numerous proxy wars) may also have allowed the motivating shock of World War II to wear off. Under the Nuclear Cloud: Internationalism and Disarmament in the 1980s By the early 1980s, however, the political environment had changed again.While just peace thinkers still supported the development of robust international organizations, nuclear proliferation seemed to make a mockery of such diplomatic forums. The intensification of the arms race led to “criticisms of nuclear deterrence, rejections of means of mass destruction of all kinds, declarations of readiness to renounce arms, or pleas to find means of preserving mutual security.”44 The nuclear shock led to a re-invigoration of the just peace project. The National Council of Churches of Christ, which had dropped its emphasis on peacemaking in the midst of the controversy over Vietnam, explicitly admits being spurred in the 1980s to reconsider the issue of a just peace because “with the breakdown in ‘détente,’ the threat of a nuclear holocaust has again loomed large.”45 Several Protestant denominations, including the American Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, along with the United Methodist Church and United Church of Christ, also declared positions along the lines of just peace thought in the 1980s. The movement even included churches in Eastern Europe, particularly in East Germany. Thus, in the 1980s just peace evolved from a theological trend to an increasingly well-articulated doctrine. A Security Environment Forever Changed Just peace scholars in the 1980s argued that nuclear weapons, and especially the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD), had radically changed the face of security by bringing the threat of indiscriminate 44 Ibid., 101. 45 Anderson, “Evolution of the Concept of Peace,” 751. 1126 Valerie O. Morkevicius destruction much closer to home. Just peace thinkers of the era point to the global nature of the threat, and emphasize the helplessness of ordinary civilians in the face of such weapons. For example, a sense of crisis led the United Presbyterian Church, USA to make peacemaking a priority, beginning in 1980. Using the term kairos, “the fullness of time,” the Presbyterians recognized the creative potential embedded within the crisis itself.46 In its background analysis, the Presbyterian Church made it clear that the changing political realities had driven the denomination to reconsider its stance on peace. While Americans had at one time felt safe behind their oceans, free to choose between involving themselves in foreign conflicts or luxuriously standing aloof, the new “global” reality undermined that sense of security. Pointing to increasing global interdependency, the report declared: These assumptions have been challenged drastically. This challenge has affected Americans’ self-confidence and sense of control over events, even their courage for coping with crises. America can no longer choose to be involved in selected aspects of world affairs as a means of escaping dilemmas. It is thrust into every interchange and entangling conflict that occurs in any portion of the globe with an increasing sense of the impotence of military might to cope with these challenges and the ineffectiveness of traditional diplomacy in the face of them.47 Thus, nuclear weapons had radically re-written the logics of international security and order. The old rules of foreign policy, “arguably adequate in other times—times of geographical separation between nations and boundary conditions that provided fore-warnings against surprise attack,” had become irrelevant.48 The development of delivery systems for unprecedentedly destructive nuclear weapons that could reach any corner of the globe led to a “radical transformation” of “the meaning of security.”49 Likewise, in 1988 the United Church of Christ declared itself to be a “just peace church” by a vote of the 15th General Synod, the result of a process begun seven years earlier. Responding to the collapse of détente and the rapidly escalating U.S.–Soviet arms race, the United Church of Christ initiated an internal discussion of the theological, ethical, and 46 “Peacemaking: The Believers’ Calling,” adopted by the 192nd General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Louisville, KY, 1980), 5. Available online at www.pcusa.org/peacemaking/believers.pdf. See also “Special Report: Peace and the Presbyterians,” The Christian Century (16–23 July 1980): 735–36. 47 “Peacemaking: The Believers’ Calling,” 11. 48 Ibid., 22. 49 Ibid. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1127 practical bases for a just peace. The denomination recognized that “our nation and our world—as well as our churches—stand at a crossroads.”50 The result was an affirmation declaring the denomination to be a “just peace church” standing “in opposition to the institution of war.”51 As with other Protestant denominations, the United Church of Christ’s theological change came in response to the changing political reality. Nuclear weapons were “qualitatively” different from other weapons systems, representing “a break with the past”; the creation of the atomic bomb meant that “the institution of war had changed forever.”52 The central claim was that “because war no longer means what it used to mean, just war and crusade no longer fit the new context.”53 The turn toward a just peace position was not limited to American Protestant churches. Arguably, the peaceful revolution that brought down the East German government in 1989 was closely tied to the development of just peace thinking (and organizations devoted to peacemaking) in response to the nuclear threat.54 The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) issued a memorandum in 1981 entitled “Protecting, Promoting and Renewing Peace.” The document declared that “the target of Christian ethics is only peace, never war”; by 1988 the East German churches had rejected the idea of a just war entirely and called for the development of a doctrine of just peace.55 In this case, nuclear weapons were again the motivation behind a turn to just peace thought. The claim that nuclear weapons had radically changed the global security environment, led just peace thinkers to conceptualize security itself in increasingly broad terms. Rather than referring only to the physical safety of discrete populations, the security rubric came to include psychological, environmental, and economic security. This focus on human, rather than national, security sharply differentiates just peace thought from the just war tradition. For just peace thinkers in the 1980s, the nuclear arms race itself threatened not only the prospect of peace but also the survival of humanity. The indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons led just peace thinkers to 50 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 25. 51 Pronouncement on Affirming the United Church of Christ as a Just Peace Church. General Synod 15 pronouncement. 85–GS–50 Voted. Available online at www.ucc.org/justice/peacemaking/pdfs/Just-Peace-Church-Pronouncement.pdf. 52 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 26. 53 Ibid., 27. 54 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 29. 55 “Steps on the Way to Peace. Points of Reference on Peace Ethics and Peace Policy. A Contribution of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany” (EKDTexte 48) (3rd edition, 2001). Available online at ekd.de/english/1723.html. Valerie O. Morkevicius 1128 deny the morality of a deterrent threat that held millions of civilians hostage.56 This argument reached beyond the just war critique of weapons of mass destruction as violating the principles of discrimination and civilian immunity. For just peace thinkers, the problem is also one of fundamental human rights, namely the right to live free from fear. Human beings ought not to be held hostage, even for the sake of peace. From a just peace perspective, what can security possibly mean if it involves threatening millions of human beings with sudden annihilation? The United Church of Christ thus associates the threat posed by nuclear arms with apocalyptic despair.57 The fear of a nuclear holocaust leads some to “experience hopeless oppression”; others “believe that God will use nuclear weapons to destroy a godless world.”58 This despair undermines the pursuit of justice and human rights, paralyzing Christians from effecting meaningful change. In addition to threatening humans’ psychological security, weapons of mass destruction threatened the planet itself.Thus, a concern with preservation of the environment emerged as a new prong of the just peace argument. The introduction to the United Methodist Bishops’ 1986 call to peace begins: We write in defense of creation. We do so because the creation itself is under attack. Air and water, trees and fruits and flowers, birds and fish and cattle, all children and youth, women and men live under the darkening shadows of a threatening nuclear winter. . . . It is a crisis that threatens to assault not only the whole human family but planet earth itself.59 Just peace, by identifying itself with the environmental movement, relies on a definition of security much broader than that assumed within just war theory. Quite naturally, this concern with the health of the planet quickly spread beyond the problem of nuclear weapons to other threats to the environment. Just peace thinkers of the 1980s also came to see security as requiring a just economic and social order premised on human rights. Nuclear weapons threatened this type of security, as the skyrocketing military budget drained funds that could have been spent on schools, health care, 56 “Peacemaking: The Believers’ Calling,” 13. 57 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 30. 58 Ibid., 31. 59 The United Methodist Council of Bishops (U.S.A.), “In Defense of Creation:The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace,” in Richard Brian Miller, War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics (Knoxville, KY: John Knox Press, 1992), 417. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1129 and environmental protection. The Presbyterians’ “Peacemaking” declaration, for example, calculates world military expenditure in 1980 to be upwards of $450 billion a year, with the U.S. expected to spend $2 trillion across the decade.60 Likewise, the United Methodist bishops’ pointed out that “military and related spending [amounted] to more than half of all discretionary spending by Congress.”61 The human costs of this buildup were disproportionately borne by the “most defenseless: the poor, the elderly, and the very young,” who ought to have been most cared for by the state.62 Ultimately, the bishops were “convinced that the enormous cost of developing such defenses is one more witness to the obvious fact that the arms race is a social justice issue, not only a war and peace issue.”63 Likewise, the United Church of Christ’s Peace Theology Development Team argued that “going heavily into debt to buy armaments to protect the disproportionate prosperity of a few is a . . . refusal of shalom.”64 A Global Problem, a Global Solution: International Institutions and Disarmament As in earlier iterations of the tradition, just peace thought of the 1980s called for a strengthening of international institutions to create conditions more favorable to global security. The central claim was that ideological conflict coupled with the arms race had generated a situation in which the “international structures of law and diplomacy [were] proving ever less capable of creating and preserving world order.”65 As the superpowers sought to maximize their power, particularly by relying on nationalism, the “concept of common security [was] devalued.”66 The United Methodist Bishops in their 1986 pastoral letter also urged “a renewed commitment to building the institutional foundations of common security, economic justice, human rights, and environmental conservation.”67 In addition to demanding a renewal of international institutions, just peace thinkers also specifically called for disarmament. While the various denominations disagreed slightly about the timetable for eliminating nuclear weapons from Western arsenals and the necessity of reciprocal action on the 60 “Peacemaking: The Believers’ Calling,” 13. 61 United Methodist Council, “In Defense of Creation,” 428. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 55. 65 Ibid., 30. 66 Ibid. 67 United Methodist Council, “In Defense of Creation.” 1130 Valerie O. Morkevicius part of the Soviet Union, they did agree that the United States should not wait to start the process. Acknowledging the security dilemma, they suggested that states had a moral obligation to think more creatively about how to ensure peace. Having discredited deterrence as immoral on many levels, they urged states to take unilateral measures to reduce the threat level. The United Church of Christ referred to these steps as “unexpected initiatives of friendship and reconciliation,” aimed at transforming relationships and restoring community.68 Such steps included rejecting deterrence based on weapons of mass destruction, freezing testing and deployment of nuclear weapons, and building support for international institutions.The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church decried to the “idolatry of deterrence,” arguing that “deterrence has too long been reverenced as the unquestioned idol of national security.”69 Arguing that “deterrence must no longer receive the churches’ blessing,” the bishops called on the United States to work together with other nuclear powers to disarm.70 In the Wake of September 11th: The Securitization of Social Justice The end of the Cold War and the subsequent de-emphasis on the nuclear weapons program again shifted just peace thought to the back burner, until the events of September 11th, 2001 reinvigorated the debate. Once again, just peace theorists argue that just war theory cannot meet the challenges of this new threat: “The tenets of just war theory no longer apply in terrorism. There is no recognized authority, there seem to be no definite combatants, and we, at least, seem blind to the distinction between combatants and noncombatants.”71 As in the case of the Cold War arms race, the current generation of just peace thought claims that the world has fundamentally changed, necessitating a radical reconsideration of the ethics of war and peace. In 2007, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), published a memorandum arguing that “new threats to peace” have emerged since the end of the Cold War.”72 As a “new order is emerging, states are collapsing. 68 United Church of Christ, “Pronouncement on Affirming the United Church of Christ as a Just Peace Church” (www.ucc.org/beliefs/theology/general-synodpronouncement.html). 69 United Methodist Council, “In Defense of Creation,” 427. 70 Ibid., 428. Specifically, the bishops called for a test ban (434), phased reductions (435), bans on space weapons (435), and a no-first-use agreement (435). 71 Susan Thistlethwaite, “New Wars, Old Wineskins,” in Strike Terror No More: Theology, Ethics and the New War, ed. Jon L. Berquist (Atlanta: Chalice Press, 2002), 279. 72 “Live from God’s Peace—Care for Just Peace,” Memorandum of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (2007), 5. Available online at www.ekd.de/ english/live_from_gods_peace.html. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1131 Global networks are being built; yet the vulnerability of people, states, and societies has increased.”73 The EKD Memorandum recognizes that although non-state actors “are becoming increasingly important,” many states are failing and thus cannot live up to their responsibilities.74 While the frequency of large-scale interstate wars has fallen since the 1990s, “irregular forces, ‘war fighters,’ warlords, and organized crime have undertaken the ‘privatization of force.’ ”75 This has made small weapons, mines, and even dirty bombs more broadly available than ever before.The risk of terrorism has thus increased. This threat highlights the “vulnerability of our modern society” because of the “asymmetric threat” posed by terrorism and other forms of organized crimes to technologically dependent countries.76 As in previous eras, for just peace thinkers the change in the threat environment demands a change in the ethical approach to conflict. In the United States, Mark Hanson, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, called in 2004 for the development of “principles for a just peace that become as defining of us as have been the principles of just war.”77 His position is clearly one of just peace: “We must reject violence in all its forms even as we work for peace and justice.”78 Similarly, Simpson asserts that “just peacemaking characterizes the Lutheran normative default conviction and commitment.”79 Intriguingly, the five factors identified by the United Church of Christ in the 1980s as radically changing the face of war and security aptly describe the “new” security situation after 2001:80 1. Qualitatively new weapons 2. North/South conflict 3. East/West conflict 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., 10. 75 Ibid., 11. 76 Ibid., 13. 77 Mark Hanson, “President’s Address,” Meeting of the Lutheran World Federation, Geneva, Switzerland, 1–7 September 2004. Available online at www.lutheran world.org/LWF_Documents/2004-Council/President_Address_EN.pdf. p. 7. 78 Ibid., 8. 79 Gary Simpson. “Our Pacific Mandate: Orienting Just Peacemaking as Lutherans,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics 5(6) ( June 2005). Available online at www.elca.org/ What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Issues/June2005/Our-Pacific-Mandate-Orienting-Just-Peacemaking-as-Lutherans.aspx 80 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 28–31. 1132 Valerie O. Morkevicius 4. Deteriorating national and world order 5. Apocalyptic despair Only a few semantic changes are necessary to bring these concerns up to date. Instead of new weapons, we could insert new threats or new tactics—in particular, terrorism. The East/West conflict of the 1980s focused on the ideology of communism; in the twenty-first century the conflict is portrayed as centering on religion and the “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the west. The heightened awareness of the massive wealth and welfare divide between the North and South, the unilateral impulses of the great powers, and even the public sense of panic and despair unite the two periods. Addressing the North/South Divide In this latest iteration of just peace thought, a new area of emphasis has emerged. In addition to the concern with international law and disarmament evidenced in previous periods of just peace debate, the concern with just development and the creation of just economic, social, and political ties between states has become the focus. While earlier discussions of just peace, especially in the 1980s, did refer to the growing North/South divide as ethically unjustifiable, such concerns were not expressly tied to security. In the 1980s, no clear causal line was drawn between alleviating the North/South divide and removing the “need” for nuclear proliferation. Instead, the 1980s version of just peace invoked the North/South divide as a social problem that could be addressed if the great powers ceased their arms race. If the great powers spent less money on proliferation, then they would be able to invest in sustainable development of the South. Uneven development, therefore, was understood as an additional benefit to be reaped from disarmament, but it was not in itself a security concern. The shock of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the ongoing war on terror put the spotlight on these development issues. Just peace thinkers identified the root causes of terrorism (and other forms of instability) in systematic injustices within the international system, calling for a radical overhaul of interstate relations, particularly across the global North/South divide. The EKD Memorandum explicitly ties terrorism to several conditions. While acknowledging that the reasons for terrorism are “multifaceted,” the memorandum highlights the problematic “relations between the Islamic and Western worlds,” as well as socio-economic problems, and unresolved regional political issues.81 Cultural and religious tensions 81 “Live from God’s Peace—Care for Just Peace,” 12. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1133 need to be addressed, and multilateral institutions need to be strengthened.82 As a result, “in such a closely interconnected world, cooperative action between states and societies has become indispensable.”83 The current iteration of just peace thought seeks to identify the “multiple and identifiable root causes fueling animosity and conflict.”84 Kimball identifies several factors contributing to terrorism, ranging from “resentment against the history of colonial domination,” to authoritarian governments with poor human rights records in the Middle East, to “economic disparity and perceptions of exploitation.”85 He finds a U.S. foreign policy that is inconsistent with stated American ideals, such as U.S. support for “the status quo in countries with authoritarian governments and deplorable human rights record” particularly damaging.86 If these are the problems, the solutions are relatively straightforward. We must commit ourselves to “the worldwide push for human rights and democracy.”87 In addition to encouraging these reforms politically, we should also support the new generation of Islamist thinkers who are developing an authentically Islamic approach to democracy, seeking theological justifications for the reforms.88 Furthermore, we should emphasize “sustainable economic development,” since relative deprivation is the “major cause of international violence.”89 Economic opportunity appeals “to the self-interest of everyone,” and provides “practical, tangible” results that can create a breeding ground for hope rather than extremism.90 Kimball suggests that these policies would be more cost-effective than the ongoing war on terror, not to mention more likely to succeed.91 Stassen also points out that “poverty with little hope for improvement and dictatorial governments with little hope for 82 Charles Kimball. “The Just Peacemaking Paradigm and Middle East Conflicts,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23.1 (2003): 227–40. 83 “Live from God’s Peace—Care for Just Peace,” 5. 84 Kimball, “The Just Peacemaking Paradigm,” 234. 85 Ibid., 229–30. 86 Ibid., 232. 87 Ibid., 234. 88 The idea of finding a uniquely Islamic approach to democracy is not new; during the early twentieth century several scholars sought to reconcile Islamic legal principles with democratic ideals, including the South Asian author Mohammed Iqbal and the Egyptian ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad. Modern scholars working in this vein include Khaled Abou El Fadl, Hamid Hadji Haidar, Abdulaziz Sacedina and Bassam Tibi. 89 Kimball, “The Just Peacemaking Paradigm,” 236. 90 Ibid., 237. 91 Ibid., 236. 1134 Valerie O. Morkevicius peaceful change, are major causes of resentment, anger, and successful terrorist recruitment.”92 Next, Kimball calls on the U.S. and other Western states (including Israel) to participate in “independent initiatives” to jump-start the Middle East peace process.The advantage of such initiatives, according to Kimball, is that “since they do not have to wait for long-delayed and complicated negotiations, they may be taken when the atmosphere is too hostile or distrustful to support successful negotiations. One side can help break the stalemate . . . through a series of visible and verifiable initiatives that decrease the threat to the other side.”93 Lastly, Kimball calls on the West— and particularly the United States—to “acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice” and to look carefully at its history in the region.94 The key to demonstrating that we recognize our past failures is to take positive actions to rectify current problems, thus linking these two steps. As in the 1980s, some denominations have raised concerns about the ethical use of government funds. Stassen begins his 2002 article in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics with the financial cost of the war on terror: Forty billion dollars has been shifted to military spending, not including special appropriations for the cost of the war on Afghanistan, special appropriations for Homeland Security, and appropriations to the Department of Energy to develop new, useable nuclear weapons and to prepare to resume nuclear bomb testing in violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Money has been shifted away from programs for education, colleges, the needy, health insurance for children, and other human needs. State budgets are in deficit, so states are making more severe cuts in education and healthcare. Likewise, in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, the United Methodist Church questioned the expense: “Estimated costs of a US war against Iraq range from $50-200 billion, none of which is included in current US military budget. The US currently spends more than $11,000/second on military expenditures.The US devotes more precious resources to military might than almost all the rest of the world combined.”95 As a result, the 92 Glen Stassen, “Turning Attention to Just Peacemaking Initiatives that Prevent Terrorism,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics, available online at www.elca.org/WhatWe-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Portfolios/Just-Peaceand-Just-Peacemaking/Turning-Attention-to-Just-Peacemaking-Initiatives-that -Prevent-Terrorism.aspx. 93 Kimball, “The Just Peacemaking Paradigm,” 238. 94 Ibid. 95 “What the United Methodist Church says on War and Peace with Iraq,” Global Ministries News Archives, Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, 5 A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1135 denomination supported those who conscientiously object to paying their taxes when their contributions are used for war. After all, “Billions could and should be redirected from war making to meeting basic human needs such as adequate food, housing, healthcare and education—especially for children, both in the US and in developing nations around the world.”96 A Global Problem, a Global Solution: International Institutions Reaffirmed Addressing the North/South divide almost inherently calls for an internationalist approach. Just peace theorists in the past decade have renewed the call to strengthen international institutions to serve as mediators and to reduce the risk of war. In particular, in 2003 the United Methodist Church reaffirmed “its support for the U.N. and calls upon all governments to fully support the U.N. in the fulfillment of its charter and in its highest calling to work for peace and justice for all the world’s people” (General Conference Resolution 307, “In Support of the United Nations”).97 Critical of post–September 11th American foreign policy, Lutheran theologian William Tuttle argues that the U.S. must lead by shifting its policies from unilateralism to mulilateralism: Disparaging remarks about “old Europe”, the U.N., foreign aid, and multilateral institutions coupled with outright rejection of other, albeit flawed, international treaties set a tone of arrogance and played into the hands of those who would characterize the U.S. not as a moral leader but as a hegemon determined to seek the advantages of its great-and now- unbalanced power. Our leaders initially wasted the opportunity which “9-11” presented to step back from this petulant behavior.98 Thus, as in previous decades, just peace calls on the world’s states, especially the great powers, to cooperate and to develop stronger international institutions. The hope is that such institutions can help mediate conflict today, and perhaps prevent tomorrow’s conflicts. February 2003, available online at gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm? articleid=1405. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 William Tuttle, “Just Peace and Just Peacemaking—A Perspective,” in Journal of Lutheran Ethics 5(6) ( June 2005). Available online at www.elca.org/What-WeBelieve/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Issues/June-2005/Just-Peaceand-Just-Peacemaking-A-Perspective.aspx. 1136 Valerie O. Morkevicius Whither Just Peace? A Few Last Words Having analyzed just peace thought both as a response to just war theory and to concrete historical circumstances—I turn in this section to the question of the theoretical and practical usefulness of just peace thought. One useful aspect of just peace thought is its explicit challenge to just war theory. One is reminded of the subtitle of one of John Howard Yoder’s books: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking.99 Just peace’s theoretical challenge can encourage further rigorous debate and more careful analysis within the just war tradition itself. Just peace thinkers are not unaware of this interrelationship. Some explicitly point out that, if anything, just war theory has become too successful. Because the doctrine has been of such interest to political leaders, many theologians writing about the ethics of war have directed their reflections to policymakers.100 Friesen argues that these “court theologians” are in many ways too close too power—their focus on policy makers as their audience “determines to a great extent what can and will be said about international relations.”101 In particular, just war thinkers must fit their thinking into the realistic assumptions of leaders, which at the very least means accepting states and the state system as they are. Just peace thought, however, challenges even these basic assumptions, making it possible to imagine new alternatives. For example, if states are seen as sharing common human security goals, rather than being locked in national security competition, productive cooperation becomes more plausible. In addition, just peace’s perspective can contribute to just war theory by giving it “time to work.”102 In particular, attempting to work through the pro-active peacemaking process of just peace can add strength to both the proportionality and the last resort clauses. Last resort is often criticized as being too loosely defined of a concept to actually serve as a brake on the rush to war. The heart of the problem is that just war theory “too seldom [spells] out concretely” the alternatives to war, making it hard to judge when last resort has been met; just peace can provide creative new perspectives on steps to be taken other than war.103 If concrete attempts have been made to resolve injustices, and yet the other continues to perpetuate conflict, last resort may have been definitively reached. Another productive facet of just peace thought is that, although it also speaks to power, it also places responsibility on “everyday” individuals. 99 John Howard Yoder, When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking (Mary- knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996). 100 Friesen, Christian Peacemaking, 31. 101 Ibid. 102 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 233. 103 Ibid., 234. A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1137 Just peace calls on ordinary people to think about their relationships with family, community and nation and to create open processes of mediation and dialogue on all of those levels. The United Church of Christ’s document A Just Peace Church suggests specific ways in which churches can incorporate the just peace mission into their religious services and communal life.104 It points out that “community issues such as job training and youth unemployment, fair housing, prison ministries, family violence and female athletic budgets are all Just Peace issues that need to be addressed,” along with “personal peace issues” such as “problems in family communication or broken relationships.”105 Likewise, the Presbyterian statement on just peace also demands the “continual re-examination of personal and national policies and actions.”106 It calls on the church to develop liturgical and educational materials dealing with just peace, and to provide support and inspiration for programs aimed at peacemaking, on both the international and local levels.107 The same steps that are suggested for creating peace on the international stage are suggested for this more intimate sphere, implying that world peace can be a grass-roots affair. Just peace also makes specific demands of individuals to engage on the international level. To some extent, just war theory does this as well. By providing a set of criteria for ordinary people to evaluate the justness of a particular conflict and the means used to address it, just war provides a common vocabulary that can be used in the civil and political spheres to debate the legitimacy of war. Just peace texts go one step further, offering suggestions of concrete ways individuals can affect international relations, ranging from participation in politics (campaigns, etc.) to direct intervention and “peacemaker teams.” There are programs in place in many Protestant denominations to train individuals in these skills. On the other hand, there are aspects of just peace thought that may limit its effectiveness both in theory (as an ongoing critique of just war) and in practice (in terms of creating the foundations for a peaceful world order). First, in comparison with much contemporary just war literature, just peace’s proponents use explicitly Christian language. This choice, while of course authentic to the denominations in which just peace has developed so far, threatens to make the conversation insular, isolating it from both other religious perspectives and from the secular international relations ethics scholarly community. 104 Thistlethwaite, A Just Peace Church, 91–101. 105 Ibid., 97. 106 “Peacemaking: The Believers’ Calling,” 23. 107 Ibid., 9. 1138 Valerie O. Morkevicius The use of specifically Christian terminology and theological assumptions is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, this specifically Christian approach increases the tradition’s legitimacy and purchase among mainline Protestants. Calling on Christians to follow ever closer to Christ’s example and to struggle to create His kingdom in their own lives, it has the power to mobilize the faithful. On the other hand, the assumption that there is something uniquely Christian about this approach complicates ecumenical dialogue. Certainly there has been a great deal of discussion amongst Christian denominations—both Protestant and Catholic—on the subject of just peace. But, as just peace scholars realize, the world is a diverse and interconnected place. In order for peace to be achieved, there must be an interfaith conversation about what sort of peace to aim for—what the content of justice is—and about how to apply the just peacemaking criteria in real world situations. Any tradition that is specifically Christian in its origins, language and assumptions may run into challenges in non-Christian contexts, whether due to difficulties in translating its principles into another religious context, or to politicized inter-communal hostility, which may dismiss any outside perspective out of hand. To encourage the development of just peace as a diverse and inclusive tradition, the Protestant just peace community has recently reached out to include non-Christian perspectives in the conversation.108 Stassen argues that openly acknowledging the religious roots of our assumptions enables a richer dialogue, and urges Christians, Jews, and Muslims not to abandon the specific roots of their concepts of human rights, but rather to become “trilingual”: “Each speaks the language of its own faith, as well as a language of human right shared by other faiths, and the experiential language of the struggle for peace and justice.”109 Stassen and Thistlethwaite have put this theory into practice, spearheading an effort to bring together scholars and leaders of the three Abrahamic faiths to share their views on just peacemaking.110 108 Similar interfaith efforts have been launched by contemporary just war scholars as well, including Vesselin Popovski, Gregory M. Reichberg, and Nicholas Turner, editors of World Religions and Norms of War (New York: United Nations University Press, 2009); Richard Sorabji and David Rodin, editors of The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); and Howard Hensel, editor of The Prism of Just War: Asian and Western Perspectives on the Legitimate Use of Military Force (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010). 109 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 159. 110 The result has been a series of publications, including “Abrahamic Alternatives to War: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on Just Peacemaking,” ed. Susan Thistlethwaite and Glen Stassen, United States Institute of Peace Special A Just Peace Critique of Just War 1139 Broader ecumenical dialogue will help increase the likelihood that just peace thought will play an active role in shaping the behaviors of states in the international system. Even so, another stumbling block remains—the language of international law and of international relations theory is secular, a fact that makes it possible for decision makers to discuss each other’s justice claims in a more value-neutral way. So far, however, there has not yet been a robust secular analysis of just peace. Both pacifism and just war theory have developed secular vocabularies, which are essential for ethical perspectives to be incorporated into international relations. Stassen acknowledges the importance of developing a secular lexicon, calling for just peace to develop a new language for public conversation.111 In a modern, pluralistic context Stassen argues that we need “both . . . an explicitly Christian ethic with a strong scriptural base and . . . a public ethic that appeals to reason, experience, and need.”112 We must “emphasize human rights,” and seek “to speak a similar language.”113 Lastly, and I am afraid rather cynically, I am not certain that just peace theory can stand on its own in terms of providing a practical alternative to the prevailing norms of international relations. It is not that just peace theory does not have its political sympathizers, in proponents of the English School or liberal institutionalism more broadly. But to be frank, I remain unconvinced that its suggestions for creating peace—through strengthened international institutions, ongoing dialogue and mediation, gradual disarmament, and alleviating social and economic injustices and so on—would necessarily create security. These are certainly admirable policies, and ought to be pursued for a variety of moral and practical reasons. They are certainly necessary for the pursuit of justice. But just peace theory goes one step further, suggesting that these steps would improve the world’s security situation. This to me seems problematic. First, the security dilemma suggests that even actions taken for defensive purposes can be interpreted by the other as threatening. Thus, the existence of militaries—or even states at all—inherently creates tensions that could potentially escalate. Just peace stops short of calling for a radical disarmament and the complete dissolution of all militaries; and despite its Report 214 (October 2008), and Interfaith Just Peacemaking: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War, ed. Susan Thistlethwaite (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Other texts reflective of the effort to generate and sustain an interfaith conversation on just peace include Peace-Building By, Between, and Beyond Muslims and Evangelical Christians, ed. Mohammed Abu-Nimer and David W. Augsberger (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). 111 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 93. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., 159. 1140 Valerie O. Morkevicius concerns about the ways in which the boundaries of states corrupt our sense of humanity and connectedness, it stops short of calling for world government. On a theoretical plane, I think these understandable concessions to the world as it is undermine just peace’s hopes for the world as it might be. Second, while I clearly see the logic of just peace’s 1980s perspective on narrowing the north/south gap, its reiteration in the 2000s seems less rigorous. In the 1980s, the argument was that money saved on military budgets could be more usefully employed in sponsoring economic and social development in the global south. Thus, the funds saved through planning for peace could be used to create more justice, in a general sense. However, the new perspective reverses this logic, claiming that reducing the gap between the north and south would in itself generate the conditions for peace. I am aware that there is a great deal of theoretical sympathy for this position, both from theological and political perspectives, but I remain unconvinced of its causal validity.Wealthy states have fought each other in the past, and not all poor states become terrorist havens. Nonetheless (to borrow another of Yoder’s favorite terms), I am not suggesting that we give up on just peace theory. In comparison with just war, it is a young tradition, and over time it seems likely to develop an increasingly rigorous approach. Indeed, its attempt to generate a robust interfaith dialogue may be the first step in that direction. And, even if just peace always remains on the idealistic fringe of political realities, it serves an essential function. At the very least, it reminds us that there are two questions—when may war be just? and what creates peace? In so doing, it encourages us to be serious in our just war thinking, and more importantly to work as diligently toward establishing the foundations for a lasting and just peace as we do toward establishing the conditions for military security. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1141–56 1141 Is Just War Spirituality Possible? M ARTIN L. C OOK United States Naval War College Newport, Rhode Island I N THIS essay, I wish to explore a topic that I find troubling and difficult—and about which I suffer a number of disadvantages in even attempting to address. But it is a fundamental question that lies at the heart of the cogency of the entire enterprise of Christian just war thinking. The question is this: is it possible, in the midst of combat, to maintain the kinds of attitudes and the psychological states that Christian just war writers hold out as the moral ideal for the Christian soldier? Following that discussion, I will take up a perhaps even more troubling issue: the rise, among some in the ranks of the US military, of a new “holy war” mentality, which frames much of the current US military engagement in the world in terms of “spiritual warfare.” The Classical Normative Christian View of Soldiering From the very beginning of an explicit embrace of the moral legitimacy of military service by Christians, there has been a strong normative view of the special moral attitudes appropriate to Christian soldiering. Even though that tradition is ancient and relatively consistent, there are reasons to be skeptical about it from the outset. The most obvious reason for skepticism is that neither I, nor most of the Christian writers who advocate this unique spirituality for the soldier, have themselves ever experienced the emotions and terror of an actual combat environment. So my exploration of this topic will be an attempt to frame a fundamental question, an attempt to which I hope others will contribute. The reasons The views expressed in this essay are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the government of the United States, the United States Navy, or the United States Naval War College. 1142 Martin L. Cook given for a unique Christian spirituality of soldiering are theological and normative. But the possibility of actually sustaining those attitudes in the midst of the reality of war is a question which invites comment from the social science perspective. Perhaps even more importantly, the question of the feasibility of those attitudes in combat requires observations from reflective and experienced combat veterans who often (and understandably) question whether those of us who haven’t “been there and done that” can possibly say anything useful about their moral world.1 So, with those fears and qualifications firmly before us, let us commence. From the very beginning of Christian just war thinking, the idea that what fundamentally distinguishes the Christian soldier from other kinds of warriors and that what makes his or her conduct in combat morally permissible, is a unique mental set of attitudes and beliefs. We find this, for example, in one of the most famous of all early Christian just war documents, Augustine’s famous Letter 189 to Count Boniface, the military commander of the Roman army in his area. Since the Letter is rich in many ideas, I wish to cite it at some length: Do not think that it is impossible for any one to please God while engaged in active military service. Among such persons was the holy David, to whom God gave so great a testimony. . . . Among them were also the soldiers who, when they had come to be baptized by John,— the sacred forerunner of the Lord, and the friend of the Bridegroom, of whom the Lord says: Among them that are born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist, Matthew 11:11—and had inquired of him what they should do, received the answer, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages. Luke 3:14 Certainly he did not prohibit them to serve as soldiers when he commanded them to be content with their pay for the service. They occupy indeed a higher place before God who, abandoning all these secular employments, serve Him with the strictest chastity; but 1 I’m grateful to my colleague Dr. Tim Demy of the Naval War College for point- ing out a possible misunderstanding of this point. I don’t wish to be misunderstood to suggest that ethical norms are context dependent to an extent that would undermine claims to their universally binding character. I do, in fact, believe that norms are of that sort. Nevertheless, one should approach these questions with humility in light of the reality that combat experience—especially at its most brutal and sustained—is a sphere of human experience fortunately not experienced by most human beings.This is true even of human beings who happen to serve in the armed forces. And it is a common source of exasperation from those who have undergone those experiences that they are reluctant to even attempt to communicate to the rest of us the full scope of that experience.We would be naïve not to acknowledge the gulf between their experience of the outer edges of the normal human moral world and our own. Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1143 every one, as the apostle says, has his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. 1 Corinthians 7:7 Some, then, in praying for you, fight against your invisible enemies; you, in fighting for them, contend against the barbarians, their visible enemies. Would that one faith existed in all, for then there would be less weary struggling, and the devil with his angels would be more easily conquered; but since it is necessary in this life that the citizens of the kingdom of heaven should be subjected to temptations among erring and impious men, that they may be exercised, and tried as gold in the furnace,Wisdom 3:6 we ought not before the appointed time to desire to live with those alone who are holy and righteous, so that, by patience, we may deserve to receive this blessedness in its proper time. Think, then, of this first of all, when you are arming for the battle, that even your bodily strength is a gift of God; for, considering this, you will not employ the gift of God against God. For, when faith is pledged, it is to be kept even with the enemy against whom the war is waged, how much more with the friend for whom the battle is fought! Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. Therefore, even in waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace; for our Lord says: Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9 If, however, peace among men be so sweet as procuring temporal safety, how much sweeter is that peace with God which procures for men the eternal felicity of the angels! Let necessity, therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you. As violence is used towards him who rebels and resists, so mercy is due to the vanquished or the captive, especially in the case in which future troubling of the peace is not to be feared.2 Among the major ideas represented in Augustine’s reflections here are the following. First (and most obvious) is Augustine’s endorsement of the life of military service as a legitimate calling for the Christian (albeit with the qualification that it is not the highest form of Christian life). But it is a calling from God. Second (and somewhat ominous) is the suggestion that if “one faith existed in all” there would be no occasion for military conflict. I call this “ominous” because it seems to invite militarized utopianism’s hope of imposing one faith on all as a means to earthly peace. Further, it seems significantly dissonant with the more somber estimate of the highest possibilities of the “earthly city” as we find them articulated in 2 From War and Christian Ethics, ed. Arthur F. Holmes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1975), 61–63. 1144 Martin L. Cook The City of God—a view that is, I think, Augustine’s more considered opinion. Third, Augustine applies Jesus’ saying “Blessed are the peacemakers” to the conscientious soldier, seeing him as being forced by “necessity” and not by his own will to do the fighting.This suggests the morally legitimate Christian soldier is always fighting on the defensive side—the disruption of the antecedent peace having come from the adversary. Hence, peace is the object of the soldier’s actions. Most provocatively, Augustine counsels the soldier, even in the midst of fighting, to “cherish the spirit of the peacemaker.” Needless to say, the psychological plausibility of that admonition is worthy of some serious critical reflection. And lastly, Augustine stresses the mercy due to the vanquished adversary, implicitly endorsing the idea of the fundamental moral equality of soldiers on both sides and planting the seeds that will flourish in the Geneva Convention many centuries later. A couple of points about the specific historical context in which Augustine writes are in order. The peace Augustine is concerned to protect is, of course, the Pax Romana. That is important to note for a couple of reasons. First, it is a “peace” built on the foundation of Roman conquest and occupation of the entire Mediterranean area. That fact deeply informs Augustine’s sober reflections on the kind of “peace” that is possibly for the Earthly City in City of God. Second, the disruption of that peace is not merely a local conflict. Augustine is writing after the city of Rome itself has already fallen and when what lies on the horizon is the collapse of the whole of Roman civilization itself, at least in the Latin Western part of the empire. Consequently, the military defense Augustine is endorsing is not a mere garden-variety interstate conflict (to speak anachronistically, since the nation-state lies far in the future). Rather, he is endorsing the use of force to maintain an entire interconnected web of culture, civilization, art, and tradition, which is being threatened at its very foundation (and which, indeed, does fall in the near future!). A number of facts about this context point to important questions about the transferability of Augustine’s moral permission for military service to the contemporary context. Although he assumes Boniface’s actions are legitimate because the latter is engaged in an attempt to restore a condition of peace which was the status quo ante, only a small minority of contemporary uses of military force conform to that pattern. On the other hand, the fact that the challenge to Rome was indeed an attack on the very foundations of Roman civilization itself points to suggestive parallels with the aspirations of groups like al Qaeda in the contemporary situation. At the very least, the nature of the contemporary conflict more closely resembles Augustine’s context than it does most of Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1145 the wars fought between nation-states since the creation of the Westphalian international system in the seventeenth century. But for the purposes of this essay, the most important and challenging aspect of the Augustinian permission for military service lies in his attitudinal requirements. Christian ethics generally has reserved pride of place for what the Germans call Gesinnungsethik, or ethic of intention. In other words, the emphasis in Christian ethics has always been placed on the intentional state of the actor as much as, if not more than, on the action performed. For example, Jesus says in Matthew 5:27: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Thomas Aquinas argues that one of the reasons that the natural and human law (moral requirements knowable by human reason) must be supplemented with a divine law directly from God is that “man is not competent to judge of interior movements, that are hidden, but only of exterior acts which appear: and yet for the perfection of virtue it is necessary for man to conduct himself aright in both kinds of acts. Consequently human law could not sufficiently curb and direct interior acts; and it was necessary for this purpose that a Divine law should supervene” (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 4). From these quotes (and many similar ones one could cite from other Christian authors) one can see clearly the core of the uniquely Christian view of legitimate soldiering. It lies in the attitude of the soldier (assuming the overall justice of the cause in the first place). The soldier kills, but not from personal animus. The soldier fights, but with a sense of “sad necessity” (as Augustine says regarding the judge who must condemn the criminal). The soldier sustains, even in the midst of battle, the “spirit of the peacemaker.” The soldier maintains awareness that the adversary he must slay is not evil, but merely a human being who at the moment poses a threat. Further, this awareness requires that surrendered, wounded, or captured adversaries deserve benevolent treatment the moment they no longer remain a threat. Of course there are behavioral constraints as well, but assuming the soldier’s conduct falls within the range of permissible behaviors, the distinctively Christian moral requirement is attitudinal. All of this carries over, of course, into much of the secular international legal framework for modern war. Soldiers in the Westphalian system are traditionally viewed as moral equals. They are normally not held responsible for the jus ad bellum aspects of the wars they fight. The POW conventions capture the idea of moral equality in their guarantees of benevolent quarantine in the case of capture. But to reiterate, these secular understandings deal only with the externals of behavior, and 1146 Martin L. Cook would not necessarily concern themselves (as a spiritual understanding of the question would) with the interior state of the agent. Despite these pretty clear in-principle guidelines, it is (of course) common knowledge that atrocities against the surrendered occur in every war. Few conflicts have even approximated the normative standards for treatment of prisoners on both sides. Many soldiers, especially in prolonged conflicts and in unconventional war, find their attitudes toward the enemy—even the enemy civilian population—devolve into contempt and even hatred. But the question of greatest interest from a normative perspective is not addressed by merely noting descriptively that such things happen. The normative question is whether the attitudinal expectations of the Christian tradition are realistic in the first place—these having been crafted, it must be noted, almost entirely by theologians and academics far removed from the realities of combat. Further, the author of this essay falls into the same class of writers far removed from the realities of the central question—and is therefore painfully aware of the limits of his own authority to opine on the question. Nevertheless, since it is the central question of the normative Christian tradition on this point, we must at least make the effort to clarify it. One place to start is J. Glenn Gray’s profound and important classic, The Warriors: Reflection on Men in Battle. A trained philosopher, Gray entered WWII with the intention of writing a philosophical reflection on his wartime experience, and the book that resulted is one of the most profound reflections on combat experience. He begins his chapter on “images of the enemy” with this reflection: “The basic aim of a nation at war in establishing an image of the enemy is to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of killing from the act of murder by making the former into one deserving of all honor and praise.”3 He then continues as follows: “Most soldiers are able to kill and be killed more easily in warfare if they possess an image of the enemy sufficiently evil to inspire hatred and repugnance” (133). Further, “The more cramped, painful, and unbearable his physical and psychological environment becomes, the more he is likely to be filled with a burning vengeance, which demands action for its alleviation” (139). If that is right, of course, Gray is implicitly suggesting that even the attempt to maintain the normative “Christian” attitude about the enemy would make the soldier’s job at a minimum psychologically extremely difficult—and, perhaps, impossible. 3 J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959), 132–33. In-text page references in the following several paragraphs are to Gray’s book. Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1147 Gray goes on to distinguish four common attitudes soldiers typically have toward the enemy. This is, of course, what social scientists would call an “ideal type” characterization. In the actual psychology of individuals, no doubt some or all blur. Nevertheless, the typology is useful for purposes of analysis. The first he calls “comrades in arms” (142). In this understanding, the soldier sees him/herself as a “technologist,” a possessor of specialized competencies and skills. Those skills are used in service of nonpolitical service of the state.The fact that the adversary is also a skilled professional is a cause for professional admiration, and defeating the adversary is a source of pride in proportion to those perceived skills. “The enemy was simply doing his duty, as you are expected to do yours. The more damage he has wreaked, the greater your pride in subduing him” (144). About this image, Gray says, “[T]his image of the enemy may be preservative of human integrity, as some other images are not” (145). It is also, in secular guise, perhaps the closest analogue to the classical normative Christian image of the enemy. But Gray notes it is increasingly hard to maintain—and indeed, inspires dislike. The sources of the dislike he suggests are many—the sense that it treats war as too much like a “game,” and fails to give due weight to its moral gravity, for one. But the deeper source he identifies as follows: “Increasingly, we cannot fight without an image of the enemy as totally evil” (146). Gray points to Eisenhower as an exemplar of this shift. It was Eisenhower who titled his autobiographical account of WWII Crusade, and who saw the struggle against the Nazis as a struggle for far more than national interest—indeed as a struggle against a completely evil conspiracy (as indeed it was). But, Gray points out, once one sees one’s conflict in crusading terms, one denies the humanity of the adversary. So, if Gray is right, and this attitude is to a large degree unavoidable—or even necessary—in modern conflict, it raises deep questions as to the psychological viability of the normative admonitions and expectations of the Christian traditions. The third image Gray exposits is one of the enemy as “a creature who is not human at all” (148). This image, he suggests, is the most fear filled of all. Killing in war is like hunting a beast possessed of “mysterious potencies.” Armed with this image, he suggests, soldiers “are freed from the possibility of remorse for their deeds” (149). This freedom, Gray suggests, comes at a price: “The lack of compunction in such taking of life deprives the destroyer of any emotional purgation. . . . Consequently, soldiers permeated with this image of their opponent are subject to rapid brutalization” (151). Indeed, this image can easily shift beyond “enemy as loathsome animal” to “being a devil, or at 1148 Martin L. Cook least demon-possessed and, as such, an enemy of God” (153). About this image, Gray says, “His image of the enemy is a logical consequence of his own dogmatic certainty about being in the right” (154). Needless to say, this image is totally at variance with the normative Christian notion articulated above—although it is hardly absent from the whole sweep of Christian history. Although we applied the term “crusade” to the previous image, in fact this image is the one that framed the literal Christian crusades of the Middle Ages. It is always a possibility in war—perhaps especially for the Monotheistic Western religions with their reliance on God’s revealed will that can always assert its right to trump all other considerations and rational reflection. The last image Gray considers is one that “appeals most to reasonable men after a war is past.” It sees the enemy as “an essentially decent man who is either temporarily misguided by false doctrines or forced to make war against his better will and desire” (158–59). Gray notes, however, that during conflict it is a view held “by the minority of combat soldiers who are at the same time reflective and relatively independent in their judgment” (158). About this view, Gray writes: It is nearly impossible for a combat soldier to prepare himself psychologically for bloody combat with a will to victory while holding such an image of his foe. How can he become enthusiastic about Operation Killer or look forward with eagerness to carrying out a superior’s orders to close with the enemy. The war itself is more likely to seem the greatest folly and criminality ever perpetrated. If he kills, he is troubled in conscience, and if he does not do his share in the communal life imposed by combat, he is also tormented. . . . . . . The combat soldier who refused to yield to abstract hatred in forming an image of the enemy is accordingly isolated and lonely on the modern battlefield. (160; 163) So where do we stand, if we rely on Gray’s typology, with respect to the central question of the practical applicability of the attitudinal prescriptions of the classic normative tradition? Among the attitudes in Gray’s classification, the two that come closest to that norm are the “comrades in arms” and the “essentially decent man” types. Unfortunately, both are among the most problematic, perhaps especially in the kinds of conflicts the US in particular is most engaged in today. The “comrades in arms” model made the most sense (if it ever did) in the post–Westphalian European context. There, you had uniformed militaries lead by professional officers all of whose training was essentially equivalent. In that context it was not wholly unreasonable for officers to Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1149 see themselves as members of a common profession who just happened to work for different sides. A bit humorously, this attitude is well captured in the classic film Patton (which, apparently captures a real historical event). After defeating Rommel’s forces in North Africa, Patton exclaims, “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!” And when (increasingly rarely!) modern conflicts resemble this pattern, it is not unusual to see some of the “comrades in arm” attitude reassert itself. It does, as Gray noted, have the advantage of being preservative of the integrity of both sides—they are honorable professionals, engaged in applying their body of professional knowledge to the tactical and operational challenge set before them. As such, it is not surprising that a degree of professional respect and even admiration can be shown to one side by the other. But when the adversaries see each other in starkly morally asymmetrical terms, this image is not sustainable. For Eisenhower, the fact that German officers worked for the Third Reich made such respect impossible—despite the fact that many were indeed superb military professionals in the traditional sense. Needless to say, when the conflict is with non-uniformed, non-state actors who are minimally (if at all) in any meaningful sense “professionals,” such an attitude is impossible. This is even more true, of course, when the sides see each other in Manichean terms of a struggle of good versus evil, as is the case in al Qaeda’s view of the West and, at least in some quarters, the West’s perception of al Qaeda–like groups (a point to which we will return). The other view, that the enemy is a fundamentally decent person in the grip of mistaken ideology or the victim of deception, seems psychologically untenable for all but a negligible number of combat-effective soldiers. If it is the case that “ought implies can,” then it is meaningless to suggest that this ought to be the attitude appropriate to Christian soldiers since it appears to be impossible to sustain while being an effective soldier. So we are led by this analysis to an uncomfortable conclusion. It appears that the normative Christian tradition’s central idea that Christian soldiering is acceptable only if accompanied by a continual “spirit of a peacemaker” who approaches his or her distasteful task mournfully is fundamentally at variance with psychological possibility. It must be reiterated, of course, that this is an analysis made by one inexperienced in the realities of the question of combat psychology, and dependent on Gray’s analysis of the possibilities. It invites, therefore, criticism, supplementation, and correction, both by empirical social science and by the testimony of experienced and reflective combat veterans. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this essay, we will treat the conclusion as established. The 1150 Martin L. Cook implications of this are profound, and we will return to some suggestions regarding reconciling this apparent reality with the hope for ethically responsible soldiering at the conclusion. Contemporary US Christian Soldiering as “Spiritual Warfare” In this section, we will explore a way of framing the role of the soldier in contemporary American Christianity. It differs significantly from what we have been calling the normative Christian pattern. Its influence in the contemporary US military, however, is pervasive to a degree often astonishing to outsiders. It is important, therefore, to put it clearly on the table for examination. Although this pattern has its natural “home” in Evangelical Protestant Christianity rather than Roman Catholic patterns of thought, it is so influential among US forces that its influence extends certainly to all selfconscious Christians serving in U.S. forces. Its impact is even strongly felt by the non-religious and those of other religious persuasions in a variety of ways. Superior officers who hold the attitudes I’m about to describe often feel quite free to articulate them freely in their official capacity. Language and ritual conveying the attitudes are a fairly routine part of official events in some military organizations. Well-organized groups (most notably, the Officer’s Christian Fellowship, or OCF) propagate these ideas and attempt to persuade others in the ranks to join them.4 Indeed, so pervasive are these practices that a very visible organization has arisen to attempt to suppress them by means of lawsuits arguing that many of the practices are unconstitutional breaches of the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (the Military Religious Freedom Foundation). 4 This point was made quite clear to me in a private conversation with a Ph.D.–educated Colonel (now a Major General). This officer was a Roman Catholic, but was attracted to many aspects of the OCF’s work with military families. He had just returned from an OCF retreat with his family and wanted to discuss a nagging sense of discomfort he had with the organization. Although on the surface he felt accepted by the group, he sensed a deeper strain of the perception that he, as a Roman Catholic, was not really a Christian in the sense in which the organization understood it. As I recall the conversation, I pointed out to him a number of aspects of the OCF that were, indeed, distinctively Evangelical Protestant. I further told him (to his great surprise, I might add) that indeed, in the eyes of many Evangelicals, a Catholic was marginally Christian at best, and in the minds of many Evangelicals, not really Christian at all. According to Jeff Sharlett (Harper’s Magazine, May 2009, 33), OCF has 15,000 members and is active at 80 percent of military bases, growing at a rate of 3 percent a year. Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1151 The simplest shorthand for the attitude of these military members is that their military conflict is best framed as “spiritual warfare” which transcends the aspects of the conflict visible to merely secular eyes. An example which perfectly captures this mindset is a speech given by Brigadier General Donald C. Wurster, USAF, at an OCF Appreciation Dinner for Chaplains and Pastors. General Wurster said the following: We face a formidable enemy, who is defeated in eternity, but who continues to plague the human race. For, as Paul says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”5 So, for Wurster and like-minded soldiers, the literal combat with temporal enemies is not the essence of the conflict. They, and they alone, perceive the real conflict, which is the one occurring on the supernatural plane: The struggle of demons and holiness is invisible to the unenlightened. The most caring of the unsaved have no realization of their unfortunate alliance with evil. All around us, though, we see the casualties of the battle. Many do not even perceive that the battle is joined or know that they are spiritual casualties in need of a Savior.6 According to this line of thought, the “unsaved” (including the unsaved in our own ranks) are in an “unfortunate alliance with evil.” One wonders, as a bit of an aside, how an officer who holds such attitudes would lead a diverse unit and make unit cohesion his or her priority if the underlying belief is that a goodly fraction of one’s comrades are in alliance with evil! The answer to that question is that, at least ideally, they will not have to lead a diverse unit. They will convert them. According to one OCF bible study, their mission will not be complete until they bring Jesus as “Lord of all” to the entire military.7 A clear example of this is found on the website of Rocky Mountain High, a retreat program for Air Force Academy and ROTC cadets and NCO’s sponsored by the OCF. One of the three central objectives of the retreat is listed as follows: “Impart a clear vision for serving as a missionary while in the military.”8 This effort is 5 www.ocfusa.org/articles/wurster_centurions.php. 6 Ibid. 7 Jeff Sharlett, Jesus Killed Mohammed (Harpers, May 2009, 34). 8 www.springcanyon.org/rmh/rmh.htm. 1152 Martin L. Cook aided by the growing belief in Evangelical quarters that, as one Evangelical quoted in Sharlett’s article put it, “The idea of separation of church and state. . . . There’s this whole idea in America that it’s in the Constitution, but it’s not.”9 That whole rejection of the idea that part of one’s loyalty to the Constitution (to which American military personnel swear their oath of ultimate allegiance) includes defense of rigorous support for separation of church and state receives powerful support in the Evangelical world by alternative “histories” of the American founding. Most notable of these is propagated by David Barton and his organization Wallbuilders, which wrongly claims that the Founders intended the US to be an overtly Christian country.10 Indeed, in July 2012, the History News Network voted Barton’s recent book, The Jefferson Lies, “the least credible history book in print.”11 His publisher, Thomas Nelson (an Evangelical publishing house) has elected to stop publishing and distributing it as a result of criticism from many quarters of its factual inaccuracy.12 Although there are obviously ways of squaring the idea of serving as a missionary while in military service that are consistent with the US Constitution, the emphasis on evangelism inevitably invites the kinds of abuses of authority that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and other groups routinely document. And indeed, if one’s core conviction is that one’s colleagues, no matter how otherwise professional and disciplined as military personnel, are (as General Wurster expressed it) in an alliance with evil, I suppose distrusting them and trying to change them is virtually inevitable. As Sharlett puts it, “Today, fundamentalism, based as it is on a vigorous assertion of narrow and exclusive claims to truth, can no longer justify common cause with secularism.”13 9 Sharlett, Jesus Killed Mohammed, 34. 10 See www.wallbuilders.org for a sampling of Barton’s books, videos, etc., which are distributed widely in Evangelical circles in support of this completely distorted view of US history. A useful factual critique of such claims can be found in Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternative Version of American History, vol. 1 (2006), available at www.amazon.com/Liars-Jesus-Religious-Alternate-American/dp/1419644386?SubscriptionId=0TBPMRS 0W3G0CB5F0902&tag=afncaie-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative= 165953&creativeASIN=1419644386#. 11 See “Hard Truth for Author: Publisher Pulls ‘The Jefferson Lies.’ artsbeat.blogs. nytimes.com/2012/08/14/hard-truth-for-author-publisher-pulls-the-jeffersonlies/ See also “Publisher Pulls Controversial Thomas Jefferson Book, Citing Loss of Confidence.” www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/09/158510648/ publisher-pulls-controversial-thomas-jefferson-book-citing-loss-of-confidence 12 artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/hard-truth-for-author-publisher-pullsthe-jefferson-lies/. 13 Sharlett, Jesus Killed Mohammed, 42. Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1153 Although the question of the spiritual struggle within our own ranks is a source of considerable tension and dissension in the contemporary US military, the deeper question brings us back to the question of the “image of the enemy.” For those deeply committed to this vision of American history, the kind of event Jeff Sharlett documented in Harper’s Magazine last May starts to seem plausible if not inevitable. According to Sharlett’s account, a unit of the 109th National Guard Infantry decided it would be a wonderful idea to spend part of their Easter painting “Jesus killed Mohammed” on the side of a Bradley Fighting vehicle and driving it through the Muslim sacred city of Samarra, while simultaneously having their Arabic translator repeat the taunt over the vehicle’s loudspeaker. Sergeant Jeffrey Humphrey (according to Sharlett) said “he’d never witnessed a maneuver so fundamentally stupid,” but the rest of the unit “thought the lieutenant (whose idea this was) was a hero, a kamikaze on a suicide mission to bring Iraqis the American news: Jesus killed Mohammed.”14 Sharlett’s article goes on to document the pervasiveness of such attitudes throughout sectors of the US military. It would certainly be wrong to think such beliefs and attitudes constitute a majority opinion. But it would equally be wrong not to note that expressions of such ideas in word and deed are pervasive in the US military, and very rarely if ever do commanders (when not themselves the perpetrators) take effective action to curb them. I will refrain from further documenting these attitudes and return to the central question of this essay: is a just war spirituality possible? We have already seen the difficulties of maintaining the attitudes advocated by the classic and normative just war tradition in the deep traditions of Christianity—and those which carry over into contemporary Roman Catholic tradition. When we consider the question from the perspective of the beliefs and attitudes I’ve just reviewed, however, the story is complex. It certainly seems as if it is indeed possible to approach the warrior’s task if one holds the beliefs and attitudes inspiried by the Barton-like view of American history. On the other hand, one might well hesitate to consider them truly “just war” views. In many respects, these attitudes sound much more like Crusader beliefs or worse—since one confidently knows one is on God’s side, and that the adversary is in alliance with evil, their defeat becomes an event of cosmic proportions. Conflict now appears to approximate (to cite the title of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls) “the war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness.” As Gray pointed out, this kind of attitude is perhaps psychologically rather helpful for maintaining the warrior spirit. On the other hand, it’s 14 Ibid., 32. 1154 Martin L. Cook hard for this author to see how it can seriously claim to be speaking for the Christian tradition—but perhaps that is as irrelevant as the true (but also irrelevant) point that al Qaeda’s particular understanding of jihad and martyrdom are not representative of the Islamic deep tradition either. In fact, the parallels between Christian spiritual war understandings and radical Islam’s jihad are striking. Insofar as both Christian “spiritual warfare” and al Qaeda’s understanding of jihad are accepted by significant numbers of their respective communities as legitimate beliefs of those communities, perhaps it is meaningless at some point to deny them status as at least one of the perspectives accepted by those communities. Both then are subject, at best, to the internal dialogues of their respective religious traditions to sort out their long-term acceptability as articulations of the views of those traditions. But since such attitudes typify a significant and vocal minority of self-described Christians in the modern US military, one must treat them seriously. Recovering the Mournful Soldier I wish to conclude this discussion by returning to the question of the sustainability of the normative Christian attitude of the mournful warrior in conflict, and by offering a modest suggestion for recovering an aspect of the Catholic tradition that might well serve the broader Christian community’s attempt to think seriously about individual moral and spiritual welfare in war. If the discussion of Gray’s typology earlier was broadly correct, it seems likely that most military personnel engaged in combat operations (at least those that directly place them in confrontation with the enemy) are unlikely to consistently maintain the attitudinal expectations of the tradition. To put it in traditional Christian language, they will sin. The Church, therefore, is both honest about the moral reality of war and faithful to its core mission of ministering to the spiritual welfare of its members if it honestly deals with that reality and takes pastoral steps to deal with it. This traditional spiritual concern is powerfully supplemented by our deepening understanding of the pervasiveness of post-traumatic stress syndrome among our personnel returning from current conflicts. Although this condition clearly has a psychological dimension that needs to be addressed by the methods of secular psychology and psychiatry, it also is a legitimate sphere of spiritual concern for the Church as well. Let me propose a modest suggestion: it may be time to reconsider what might be the modern equivalent of the medieval requirement that military personnel who have killed in war (even just war) are subject to Is Just War Spirituality Possible? 1155 a period of penance. Frederick H. Russell writes in The Just War in the Middle Ages: Clerical disenchantment with lay violence was also translated into systematic suspicion of warfare and killing expressed in the penitential literature. . . . The Poenitentiale Arundel, written at the end of the turbulent ninth century, imposed a penance of a full year for homicide committed in a royal battle and a penance of two years in a war of doubtful justice waged by a prince rather than by a king. Even if a war was clearly just, a one-year penance was still necessary.15 Obviously it would not make sense to attempt merely to revive this tradition as it might have been practiced or imagined in the Middle Ages. But it does seem there is wisdom at the core of the idea that might usefully inform our thinking about military spirituality in our own time. First, it clearly indicates that killing in war is morally grave and, to that extent, puts a brake on the ever-present danger of countenancing the most extreme excesses of a “spiritual warfare” model that utterly demonizes the enemy and neglects the human reality of killing. Second, something like the penitential tradition in a modern form might bring the moral ambivalence, guilt, and post-traumatic stress explicitly into the spiritual conversation. In other words, it opens the pastoral dimension of the moral ambiguity of what even conscientious military personnel have done and experienced in war in a way that uncritical “hero” talk does not.16 I suspect, although I 15 Frederick H. Russell, Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1975), 31. 16 I will add a note from personal experience here. When I was Professor of Ethics at the Army War College, I had numerous conversations with relatively senior officers (Lt. Colonel and Colonel in rank) which seemed to me upon reflection to be essentially confessional in the traditional religious sense—i.e., they were asking for a kind of absolution. The form of the conversation was always that an officer would come in the office, close the door, and tell a story of something he or she had done or witnessed in combat. What they wanted from me, as far as I could tell, was an explicit acknowledgment that what they had done seemed to be reasonable and maybe even necessary, given the details of the situation. In almost all cases, it was clear they had gone over the events they were recounting many, many times in their own minds, trying to reassure themselves that they had done the best they could under the circumstances. But why were they telling me? It was clear they wanted to hear from someone else (and, I suppose, as the “ethics professor,” someone they considered somewhat authoritative) that they were right in their thinking. This suggests to me there is a dimension of guilt, shame, and second-guessing for virtually all combat veterans that the Church would minister to effectively if it created the “safe space” for those conversations as a conscious part of its pastoral practice. 1156 Martin L. Cook don’t claim to know, that excessive adulation of returning combat veterans, which doesn’t acknowledge the “shades of gray” of their own experience, may actually not serve them well in their complete reintegration into the noncombat world.17 I think it prudent to leave the matter there. I defer to those more knowledgeable of and more responsible for the sacramental and pastoral dimensions of practice to imagine how this might be made a part of church practice. Further, although this is a conference on Roman Catholic just war where the tradition of confession and penance is already in place, it seems to me there is wisdom here that might find appropriate analogues in other Christian traditions. And opening the conversation itself would be helpful in restoring an appropriate sense of moral ambiguity to Christian thought about war—which threatens to be lost in the growing “spiritual warfare” mode of thinking increasingly permeating many self-described Christians in the US military. N&V 17 Interestingly, just as this essay was being written, the local newspaper in Colorado Springs, CO (home of Ft. Carson, where many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans return after deployment) ran a story indicating a greatly increased focus, among local pastors, on the problem of post–traumatic stress disorder. See www.gazette.com/articles/pastors-55332-ptsd-among.html. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1157–82 1157 Just War and the Theology of Evil C HARLES M ATHEWES University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia T HE BASIC question I am trying to help us answer—namely, “how does the tradition think about actual war?”—can benefit from a number of different approaches. My approach is relatively indirect. I want to look at some of the reflections on the nature of evil in Christian tradition, particularly in the thought of St. Augustine and those who followed after him. By doing this I hope to bring together the theology of war and the theology of evil, to see how they interpenetrate, and to see how that interpenetration illuminates the tradition’s thinking on war. It may be surprising to think that illumination on the fraught topic of war can come from the still-more fraught topic of the Christian theology of evil. Controversy about Christianity over the past several centuries, especially in the more enlightened precincts of the West, has returned time and again to this dark topic. From Gibbon forward (and perhaps before him), many modern thinkers have believed that monotheism is inherently jealous and hence intrinsically intolerant, or it is tacitly dualistic and hence inevitably demonizing. In either case, many think that faith in a monarchic God tends to produce a dangerously zealous moral extremism in its adherents.1 This purported extremism manifests itself, according to these thinkers, in a tendency to demonize its opponents— This essay was prepared for the “Just War in the Catholic Tradition” Conference in Naples, Florida, in June 2009. Many thanks to all the members of the workshop, in particular to our conveners Gregory Reichberg and Matthew Levering, and Henrik Syse for their incisive comments. 1 See, for example, John Grey, Black Mass: “Apocalyptic Religion” and the Death of Utopia (London: Allen Lane, 2007), against Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). 1158 Charles Mathewes to make them its enemies and then proceed to tar them with the most metaphysically profound opprobrium imaginable, namely, that they are evil. Thus the theology of evil seems to reinforce Christians’ purported tendencies toward demonization and violence. Christianity creates zealots, not peacemakers; and one if not the main force for creating such zealots is precisely Christianity’s fixation on evil. The historicity of this view is a topic for another essay (in truth, for many, many books); suffice it to say that, despite my dislike of this story and my conviction that it gets the facts wrong, there is enough evidence in support of the view to require those who would contest it (like myself) to make an argument. It is not obviously and on its face mistaken. It is its ideological force that I find myself compelled to contest here. For even today the association of thinking about evil and violence has meant that thinkers have shied away from working out the connections between the theology of evil and a certain structure of constraining violence. The theology of evil, to continue to use this somewhat awkward term, is in fact one of the main imaginative forces shaping Christian understandings of limited war. The story I want to tell has three large parts. In the first, I will discuss the development of a representation of evil that culminates (in a way, for my story) in the West in Augustine’s elaboration of the theology of evil. In the second, I will discuss Augustine’s subsidiary (logically, not chronologically) application of that theology of evil to thinking about human warfare. In the third, I will suggest that these two dimensions of his thought worked themselves out in one particular episode in Augustine’s own life—his confrontation with the Donatists. I. The Theology of Evil The first thing to say about this phrase, “the theology of evil,” is that it probably gets things the wrong way round. There is not a free-standing theology of evil at all, not in Christian thought. Rather, theological reflection on evil is a secondary activity, an after-effect, a consequence of the more primordial theology of goodness, love, and grace. There would not be a need for a theology of evil but for the deeper conviction that God is absolute goodness, and God’s creation is fundamentally good. The second thing to say is, what we today would think of—were we to think about a theology of evil—is the outcome of a very long process of intellectual and imaginative work stretching over many centuries.2 Through this process, a set of convictions has come to shape Christian, 2 When I say “we” here, I really mean me—though I invite you to judge if you would agree with me. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1159 and especially Western Christian, theological understandings of the nature and place of evil in the divine economy of creation, redemption, and salvation. These convictions include a metaphysical commitment to the fundamental unreality of evil; an anthropological commitment to the present power of evil as warping human beings; and a theological commitment that, though God sees evil, God is in no way responsible for evil and indeed the divine will is set against evil and will, in God’s good time, completely overcome it. This picture emerged out of a long history, and it will be helpful to have it in place here. And because these convictions are most powerfully formulated in the writings of St. Augustine, this part of the essay will conclude with a summary of his views. To get there, I want to make a three-part argument. First I will sketch something of the views of evil found in the New Testament. Second, I will sketch the background to those New Testament views that is found in the ancient Near Eastern accounts of evil, which are often collectively gathered under the title “the combat myth,” and delineate the resistance to this mythology put up by the thinkers of ancient Israel as that resistance is visible in the Old Testament. Third and finally I want to chart the course of this thinking, from the New Testament to Augustine, who I judge to have offered a very powerful and influential synthesis, to which may of us still, more or less and for better and for worse, subscribe. A. Early Christians and “the War in Heaven” Beginning with the theology of evil has immediate benefits for thinking about Christian views on war, for it dispels a too-simple picture of early Christian attitudes toward violence and war. Early Christians are often called pacifists, but it is better to think of them as they thought of themselves, as bystanders in a cosmic war. All too often the language of early Christian pacifism partakes of a terribly supersessionist theology, wherein the “politics of Jesus” is seen to replace the bloody politics of the Old Testament, whose worldly commitments mark it out as somehow deeply compromised. Jesus, such proposals strongly imply, was all about love— non-violent, self-sacrificial love, even unto death. For them, it is Jesus’s non-resistant love that led him to the Cross, which cross led to humanity’s redemption. Direct textual evidence to the contrary—driving the money-changers from the Temple with a whip, commanding his disciples to wear swords when they go out on the roads—is downplayed at best, and more typically ignored. Love and bloodshed are simply part of two separate orders of being. 1160 Charles Mathewes But such readings of Christian social ethics are too simplistic. After all, in Romans 12 Paul tells Christians to feed their enemies, and then in Romans 13 he authorizes Christians to kill their enemies for a just and legitimate cause—a juxtaposition that can produce exegetical whiplash in an attentive audience. The truth is that early Christian thinking about evil contextualizes the reports of Jesus’s refusal of the sword in a way that helps us understand such refusal as not about a general pacifism but about the right weapons for the war in which they are engaged. Attention to the full scope of the New Testament will show something of what I mean. Gospel Texts. The Gospel texts exhibit a great deal of variation, but in general, demonic powers are a vivid presence in them all, even if those powers are not all apparently represented as part of a Satan-centered conspiracy.3 Nonetheless, the individual figure of Satan (or the devil) is a repeated presence throughout, and demonic spirits are perpetually present. Satan tempts Jesus in the desert at the beginning of his mission (Mk 1:12–13, Lk 4). At different times Jesus seems alert to the presence of “the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41), and many of Jesus’ miracles (especially exorcisms) are reported to have come at the expense of bad spirits (for example, the Gadarene swine of Mk 5:2–13). In Luke 10:18, when his disciples return with their stories of their successful missions, Jesus says “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” A coming final battle with these evil spirits seems to lurk behind the “synoptic apocalypse” or “little apocalypse” of Mark 13 (and Mt 24 and Lk 21). And finally, John represents Jesus’s plans as climaxing in Gethsemane, in his triumph over the “prince of this world,” who will “be cast out” ( Jn 12:31). In all these ways, and more, the presence of demonic powers engaged in struggle with God and God’s angels, and with Jesus, his disciples, and all humanity, is a powerful theme in the Gospels. Paul’s Letters. Although the presence of evil is not the dominant theme in Paul’s letters, it is clear that Paul understood the churches to be caught in a struggle between God and Satan, with the outcome decided already (perhaps for Paul by the Cross and Resurrection); as Romans 16:20 says, “[t]he God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Nonetheless, Paul thinks that the struggle is one that is presently continuing (1 Thes 4–5). Because of this, the faithful must equip themselves spiritually for this struggle, and Paul uses a remarkable range of military metaphors for this process of equipping. Consider the central passage of this sort, Ephesians 6:10–18: 3 For a nice summary of some of the literature on this, see Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982). Just War and the Theology of Evil 1161 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness; and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep watch with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints; Verses 19–20 continue with Paul’s own mission as part of the larger movement of God: And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. This passage makes very explicit the fusion of military and agonistic understandings of faith and the theology of evil, and the way that both were part of Paul’s understanding of his larger evangelical mission. The Book of Revelation. Revelation is of course the most famous of the apocalyptic texts in early Christianity, though interpretive attention to it seems to have been by and large surrendered by the churches to marginal wing-nuts. (Thus the Left Behind series has been one of the most popular series of fictional books ever in American history, but few churches have attempted to engage its theology.)4 And yet it is unarguably a major text 4 See Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Boyer, “Biblical Prophecy and Foreign Policy,” in Quoting God: How Media Shape Ideas about Religion and Culture, ed. Claire Badaracco (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005), 107–22; Amy Johnson Frykholm, Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Martin Cook, “Christian Apocalypticism and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Sohail H. Hasmi and Steven P. Lee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 200–210. For a wonderfully rich theological engagement, see Oliver O’Donovan, “History and Politics in the Book of 1162 Charles Mathewes for Christians of that age, and succeeding ages, in thinking about the endtimes and thus also the meaning of history for today. It is a shame that many Christians today are by and large too embarrassed to think about it, for fear of being associated with apocalyptic cults hunkered down out somewhere in the American Badlands. (Here as elsewhere, bad theology drives out good.) The crucial fact here again for our purposes is the pervasiveness of the theme of combat in this text, and combat between an embodied force of evil and a good God. Examples are not hard to come by: consider the imperial beast of Revelation 13, and the war between Satan and the angels in Revelation 20:7–10. But the most dramatic example of this motif in Revelation is probably the war between the archangel Michael and his angels on the one side and “the dragon” and his angels on the other: Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Rv 12:7–9) None of this should be taken to suggest that the Book of Revelation expresses a fundamental escapism or animus at the world as a whole; it is the way that the cosmos is currently structured, not the fact of our existence in it, that is the problem. Revelation is fundamentally a pastoral text; as Christopher Rowland puts it, “[e]schatological teaching in the New Testament always serves to answer a particular pastoral problem.”5 The aim of Revelation seems to be to teach patience and endurance in a time of trial for the churches. Even in Revelation, then, the most vivid depiction of cosmic war and dualism available in the New Testament, there is a sense that the dualism is temporary and ultimately only provisional. Yet the sense of a cosmic struggle is palpable and inescapable. The upshot of all this is that, as I said, the early Christians imagined the cosmos to be a battlefield. Evil is real, and has declared war against God and the forces of goodness. Far from being pacifistic, early Christians saw themselves as bit players in a cosmic struggle that dwarfs our capacity to imagine it. Revelation,” in Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 25–47. 5 Rowland, The Open Heaven, 415. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1163 B. Before Christianity: A Brief Excursus about the “Combat Myth” To understand this vision of evil it will help to have a sense of the context in which it emerged. Central to this context is what scholars have come to call the “combat myth,” a narrative structure for cosmogony that was fairly common across the ancient Near East, in which the cosmos is the site, or perhaps the consequence, of a titanic struggle between the forces of a good god and the forces of an evil rival. To appreciate the radicalism of Christianity’s alternative, it will help to appreciate this myth. Early ancient Near East mythologies—Mesopotamian, Hittite, Canaanite, and Israelite—all contain similar efforts to tell the story of the cosmos as a site of combat or agonism between good and bad divine powers. In various traditions, the struggle pitted Ninurta against Anzu (in the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cosmologies) and Baal against Yamm and Mot (in the Ugaritic one); even the figure of Ahriman in Zoroastrianism (developing contemporaneously with Judaism) is marked by this combat myth. Most of these mythologies contain creation stories in which chaos-monsters (or early gods) are confronted, defeated, and destroyed by other, often younger (up and coming) gods. In some versions of these myths—as with the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian story of the new god Marduk against the evil sea-monster Tiamat—the defeat of the chaos-monster blends into the creation, by the hero-god, of the world humans know; by the act of destroying the evil chaos-monster and (in an obscurely overlapping way) creating our new world, the hero-god becomes the primary god in the pantheon.6 Two facts about this for the later elaboration of the Christian theology of evil are key. First of all, the chaos god or monster is not represented as the font of evil; rather, it represents a rival principle, with its own source of vitality, power, and intelligence. Indeed, because the hero-god is often represented as the young upstart, the combat myth tradition tacitly suggests that the chaos god is in fact prior, and perhaps more profoundly part of the universe, than the hero-god. (Tiamat, for example, is Marduk’s mother.) A major trace of this lurks still in all the Abrahamic traditions today, for the etymological roots of “Satan” lie in the early 6 See Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton: Prince- ton University Press, 1989); Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith, 2d ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); and Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2000). For a very interesting contemporary effort to think through the history of this tradition for evangelical Christians, see Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: the Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1997). 1164 Charles Mathewes proto-Semitic word shatan, which seems to have meant “rival.” Secondly, because the cosmos is created in a struggle, and out of the old cosmos, the cosmos so created may bear traces of, or be the ongoing site of, the struggle between the hero-god and the chaos-monster; the cosmos remains marked by this dualism, which explains the persistence of evil. Clearly, the Abrahamic traditions (as monotheisms) would all have problems with these myths. And in many ways they do reject those myths. (For example, the word for the “deep” over which the spirit moves in Genesis 1 is tehom, a word etymologically linked to Tiamat.) Nonetheless, it took a long time before they were fully rejected, and traces of this mythology permeate various texts common to Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. In those books Yahweh seems to struggle against similar creatures; we see this in Leviathan ( Job 40–41), Behemoth (Ps 74, 89), Rahab (Is 51). Even the prophets at times recur to this notion of God involved in a struggle with a rival power—such as the prince of Tyre, the Egyptian pharaoh (Ezek 28–9), or the ruler of Babylon (Is 14). Even the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest a combat among angels occurring in the cosmos as a main principle for understanding the course of history. Yet by the time of the New Testament’s composition, it is clear that the combat myth, while shadowing some of the texts, is not the story to which the faithful generally subscribe. Even in the most apocalyptic of Jewish and Christian texts of this era, Satan’s apparent dominance is only a temporary phenomenon.7 It is not even merely a matter only of goodness’s ultimate victory; all along the good God has been wholly in charge. Nonetheless, there is a real and vital sense of a cosmic combat still underway, even though it is no longer thought of as between equally powerful rivals. St. Ignatius of Antioch, in his Letter to the Romans: “All the way from Syria even unto Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and sea, night and day, chained as I am to ten leopards (I mean a detachment of soldiers), who only get worse the better you treat them.”8 Even, then, as Christians understood the theological inappropriateness of the combat myth for their faith, they yet retained the powerful sense of struggle and agonism as both phenomenologically powerful and theologically acceptable. What they lacked was a theological framework broad enough and deep enough to make this directly coherent and self-consciously cultivatable for creedal-confessing Christians. This is where Augustine comes in. 7 Rowland, The Open Heaven, 91–92, and see 156–60. 8 Ignatius, Letter to the Romans, chap. 5. Quotation from Early Christian Fathers, ed. Cyril C. Richardson (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 104. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1165 C. Augustine’s Final Transformation of the Combat Myth Augustine was not a heroic lone intellectual who on his own transformed the combat myth, and its attendant dualistic imagination of the cosmos, into a monarchical monotheism; traces of this transformation stretch far back into the ancient Israelite traditions and texts, and parallel with Augustine the rabbis were undertaking similar work themselves. But Augustine is uniquely important because he seems to have been the early Christian thinker who, for complicated reasons (some due to context, some due to his own interests) most thoroughly rethought the notions of judgment, divine sovereignty, and sin in a way that set the terms for later Western Christianity, and decisively rejected the combat myth and its attendant dualisms. To say that Augustine demythologized evil for Christians is not to say that Augustine did not believe in demons. On the contrary: his world swarmed with them. Demonic forces were a vital presence in his thinking, and they appear repeatedly in his writings. But he understood all of these as rebel angels—figments of God’s will let loose on the world for a season, but always standing under God’s sovereign judgment, however graciously deferred it may be. Furthermore, while Satan is definitely the leader of all these demons, for Augustine this leadership is only the lowest and most distant parody of God’s sovereignty. The truth is that the demons in general, and Satan in particular, are not the lords of sin and evil but the first victims of sin and evil. For Augustine, Satan’s fall is not a magnificent and noble rebellion but a pathetic collapse into a childish and self-centered pouting. The fall is not itself a sign of Satan’s rivalry with God but of God’s remarkable, though temporary, gracious forbearance in the face of Satan’s tantrum. Were God to wish it, Satan’s punishment would be swift and sure; indeed, ultimately it will be just that. But God, in the inscrutably mysterious wisdom of divinity, permits Satan to tempt humanity throughout history, postponing his ultimate entrapment in the infernal pit until the end of time.9 Augustine’s treatment of the fallen angels well represents his more general point about the nature of evil and its presence in history. Evil is fundamentally a metaphysical nothing, an attempted refusal to participate in God’s gracious creation. Because of the metaphysical identity of being with goodness for Augustine, evil is properly speaking only the privation of being, a sheer emptiness. Furthermore, and equally importantly for him, those categories’ transcendental identity with intelligibility itself as 9 For texts on Augustine’s demonology, see City of God 11.14–18, 33; 12.1–9, 22–28; Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.12–14, 16–17, 19–29. 1166 Charles Mathewes well, an evil act is an act which is marked by a refusal of goodness, being, and intelligibility, all at once. The fundamental absence of these three characteristics in the evil act qua evil makes it hard to speak about such acts as what they purport to be. This is why Augustine describes efforts to grasp the ratio of evil as efforts “to see darkness, or hear silence.”10 Yet this darkness, this silence, has a real power to warp our actions and pervert our best wills. Hence, along with evil’s ontological status as privative of being, Augustine recognized sin’s psychological status as perverting the self ’s loves, in ways that can have “positive” or actual effects in the world, causing us to do evil deeds out of a misplaced sense of their necessity or even their moral rectitude, because we have prioritized one lesser good—for example, the supreme value of our country above all others— over a good that is properly superior to it—for example, the fact that all humans possess the imago Dei and are not to be used as instruments for the advancement of our country’s aims. Furthermore, evil is not only powerful in how it perverts our wills; it is powerful because it is so pervasive. Augustine is not the first Christian to emphasize the universality of sin. But he is the first for whom that universality has become a central principle of their practical advice for the world. Against smug ecclesial optimists like Eusebius and snobbish elites like Pelagius, Augustine affirmed the moral and spiritual homogeneity of humanity across all time and space from Eden to Armageddon. And he worked this conviction into his practical thought in the most fundamental way imaginable. This may all seem fairly esoteric for a discussion of just war theory. But the point is quite fundamental. In offering this picture of evil, Augustine is proposing a way to think about our condition that is as thoroughly nondualist as possible. The good is primordial and cannot be wholly annihilated by evil; indeed, evil is ultimately nothing but a perversion and parody of the good. In fact, speaking practically, this way of thinking is properly anti-dualist; it diagnoses the temptation to think of “us” and “them”—to make our enmity a metaphysical and not just political fact— as just the sort of thought that Satan has in his mind as he rebels. It is an attempt to replace a metaphysics fundamentally built around a structure of opposition and rivalry with one built upon a structure of participation. The ironies of this account are deep. The theology of evil developed from the vision of cosmic war of the early mythologies. It then turned around and shaped Christian notions of just war. How it did that is the topic of Part II. 10 uelit uidere tenebras uel audire silentium. Augustine, City of God 12.7. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1167 II. “Be a Peace-Making Warrior:” Augustine’s Theology of War Augustine’s thought is often acknowledged to be important, but its bulk and complexity have discouraged most prudent scholars who are not Augustine specialists from engaging his thought in a substantial way.11 Those of us who are not so prudent engage him with fear and trembling, but engage him nevertheless, with the conviction that Augustine’s work can substantially illuminate our situation and the Christian tradition. This is especially so in his work on war. Augustine differs from later thinkers associated with the just war tradition in important ways, ways most readily summarized by saying that he was in no way an academic, let alone a scholastic.This is not a condemnation of Augustine, nor is it a patronizing apology for some perceived lack of clearheaded and systematic thinking on his part. Far from it; rather it is a recognition of the way in which his distinct situation must be considered in any attempt to understand his writings. Augustine’s writing is largely occasional, and more often than not prompted by events in his town or the wider world, or provoked by requests from correspondents, pagan and Christian, near and far. In a way more immediately pressing than is the case with some other thinkers, then, his texts must be read in light of their contexts. More significantly for our purposes, Augustine was not centrally or primarily interested in the legal and systematic questions that came to occupy later thinkers in the just war tradition. One imagines he would have found a too-exclusive focus on such a topic to be spiritually, practically, and even philosophically unsound. Instead, he is concerned primarily with theological and pastoral issues. As we will see, the key for him is that the just war form of thinking is part of a virtue-theory account of engagement in “worldly affairs.” Thus, Augustine can be used for a legal account, but he is not ultimately interested in that; his refusal to be conscripted for that cause is worth our reflection. After all, he worries that legality may be a bit too tidy. He thought that war is part of God’s providential governance and judgment, and so an Augustinian contribution to a discussion of the just war tradition must first and foremost bring to the consciousness of all the inescapably theological reverberations that such an account either overtly or tacitly entails. For Augustine, politically proper warfare, held to account by God and the neighbor, can authentically explain itself in terms of love—even unto 11 On the topics of this section I have been much illuminated by David S. Bachrach’s Religion and the Conduct of War, c. 300–1215 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2003). For a larger elaboration of these themes see my The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), esp. chap. 5. 1168 Charles Mathewes the use of force. As Augustine articulated this view, “it is the adversary’s iniquity that thrusts a just war upon the wise.”12 Put in another way, as Paul Ramsey suggested, “the justice of sometimes resorting to armed conflict originated in the interior of the ethics of Christian love.”13 And more recent figures in this tradition, such as Oliver O’Donovan, make similar claims. Here I will explain how love can underlie the use of force. How can slaying an aggressor be an act of love? Finally, the conclusion attempts to place this practice of political authority in light of our eschatological destiny as judged by God, as called to hear God’s judgment on us. A. Love and Compulsion The key question is whether we can imagine force used legitimately, even lovingly. That sounds paradoxical. As we said, ultimately power is inevitably attached, in this life, to compulsion. But how can love compel? We cannot imagine love leading to compulsion. Love seems to us not to compel, but to be passive, basically about adoration at a distance. (There is desire-love, but we do see this as oddly connected to adoration-love, I would submit.) We are tempted to set love against compulsion; we assume an “either/or” of power versus static bystander. We are tempted to believe that we must value each other or force one another, in an instrumental way, which merely makes the other an extension of my ego. In fact we are caught in a performative self-contradiction about whether love can compel and be invasive. This is visible even in our ordinary uses of compulsion. Thinking about the breadth of our everyday use of words like “compulsion” can help here. For it is ordinary use of the English language to say that a book, a piece of music, or a painting is compelling. We can be compelled by things—for example, works of art we find “compelling.”What does this mean? It means that we find ourselves judged by it, put in our place, commanded, made to sit up, found wanting. (Think of a poem such as Reiner Maria Rilke’s “Archaic torso of Apollo,” with its famous last line, “you must change your life.”) Authority need not be oppressive and destructive; it can be enabling and creative. The larger lesson here is simple: Love is not simply distanciated voyeurism and spectatorial respect. Power is not invasive; it can be enabling and creative. The lover’s gaze can change the beloved. We often disparage paternalism, but it is an inescapable part of our lives, for it speaks to this 12 Iniquitas enim partis aduersae iusta bella ingerit gerenda sapienti. Augustine, The City of God 19.7. Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 [1968]), 143. 13 Paul Just War and the Theology of Evil 1169 phenomenon, most frequently visible in parents, of genuinely seeing and being committed to the other’s good. With parents and children, often the parents’ love is as the sun, nourishing and bringing to maturation. In ordinary life we both practice paternalism and allow it to be practiced upon us. It is love, and not the power we exercise in light of love, that makes us intimate with one another. Love is ontologically a real force, not just a word used to mask our admiring manipulation of one another. So love can compel. But can it be the motivating energy of violence? Can it be true that, as we quoted Paul Ramsey arguing,“the justice of sometimes resorting to armed conflict originated in the interior of the ethics of Christian love”? Augustine’s thought lets us see how this could be so. B. The Mournful Warrior Put bluntly: how can slaying an aggressor be an act of charity, however alien? The tradition conceives of the use of force, and the nature of politics as a whole, through the idea of compelling necessity. In fact, the use of force is the ultimate example of our enmeshment in the necessities of the world. (One of Augustine’s favorite scriptural passages—appearing again and again when he thinks about politics—is Psalm 25:17, “From my necessities deliver me!”) The past constrains and orients our action in the present and for the future. Those who are authorized politically are those who have been put in a situation downstream from history, as it were. And sometimes they must accept the historical necessity of the legitimate and authorized use of force for righteous ends. The language of “necessity” stands at the basis of the well-known just war tradition of Christian reflection about war. I will not get into the technical details—the “grammar”—of that tradition here, such as the criteria that help the rightly formed agent determine when it is right to go to war, or what it is right to do in war. Instead here I want to focus on the deep theological background and worldview that motivates that tradition. To begin with, we should recognize that the language of necessity, which Augustine uses, is theologically problematic for him as well. After all, talk about necessity is complicated by God’s free providence. In Gethsemane, Jesus does not say that his death is necessary, but that the Father wills it. When Augustine uses the Latin necessitas, he does not mean inevitability or determinism, but the will of God.14 God’s will is not subject to any helpless compulsion; God is not forced to do anything. But 14 See City of God 5.9–11. What stands between Augustine’s use of necessitas and any such of our own is the modern understanding of determinism and messianism, whether Hegelian or Marxist or “Manifest Destiny.” Charles Mathewes 1170 this is not properly understood simply as a whim of God’s, that can be revoked, or as a sheerly arbitrary act of God’s will. The distinction between “being” and “will” is one that makes sense for humans, because of the conflicts and incoherencies in our fallen existence (the experience of which is quite clearly something we have); because God does not have those conflicts and incoherencies, that distinction makes no sense in God’s case. What God necessitates is neither arbitrary nor inevitable. But that does not make God’s will any less omnipotent, or any less the prime mover of history; it simply means that what God, in the unity of God’s “being” and God’s “will,” has proclaimed will be the course of history. Thus “necessity” must be understood not as an impersonal brute force pushing blindly from behind the scenes of human history, but instead as the unvexable and wholly free dynamic action of God leading history through judgment to the mercy seat. This judgment is what humans endure, and they endure it as a mode of accepting responsibility for their history. In the political sphere Hannah Arendt ably summarized this: When Napoleon, seizing power in France after the Revolution, said: I shall assume the responsibility for everything France ever did from Saint Louis to the Committee of Public Safety, he was only stating somewhat emphatically one of the basic facts of political life. It means hardly more, generally speaking, than that every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors.15 Possibly the only great modern political actor who has understood the course of history in this way is Abraham Lincoln. This “necessity” is properly understood only within a vibrant faith in God’s providential ordering of the world.The reality of compulsion is not merely a fact about the political sphere; it reveals God’s providential governance of the whole world, including human agency, as the world makes its way through the great drama of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Sanctification, and we will be made to answer for this drama. So Augustine’s insistence that we are politically responsible, not just for the current structures of order, but for the past as well—that we have inherited guilt—is insistence on a fact about the human condition. Humans in this world are not able to choose with total impunity; we always come to consciousness of our situation in medias res, with lines of filiation and obli15 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin, 1964), 298. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1171 gation (and opposition and enmity) drawn before we have a chance to say yes or no. We are always constrained by the course of history, global and local. The picture of agency we hold is crucial for the full reach and significance of this account. All our actions are prompted by other actions upon us, and each act is part of this larger interchange, our “dialogue” with God, and through God with the world and our neighbor—a story stretching far back behind our birth, and far forward into the future. The implications of this picture for a proper understanding of the use of force are substantial. Those authorities legitimated to use force do not act on behalf of their own private vengeance, but always are compelled by a proper apprehension of the particular situation in which they—as the particular political agents they are—find themselves, including their own particular obligations and commitments in that situation. A useful analogy is with an individual’s right to self-defense. “Right” here is almost too contingent for this reality; if someone attacks you, it is almost automatic that you will defend yourself—it is simply a reflex, not something you voluntarily or deliberately do. The ideal of political authority would be similarly automatic, reflexive, in terms of defending those with whose care the authority is charged. It does not permit our intervention, or give us license to indulge in what we already want to do. Rather, it insists that we acknowledge our prior implication in the situation and our responsibility to confront it as well as is possible. As Augustine says in his famous letter 189 to Boniface, “it ought to be necessity, and not your will, that destroys an enemy who is fighting you.” The focus on necessity may sound troubling at first, but consider carefully the alternative.The idea that one needs only permission to go to war may be morally more troubling than the thought that one needs a command to do so. One suspects that, for Augustine, a “war of choice,” so understood, is an avoidable war; and a war that can be reasonably and morally avoided, should be.16 (So Augustine critiqued Moses for killing the Egyptian overseer, and Peter for cutting off the right ear of the High Priest’s servant, because both exhibited “hasty zeal.”17) When war is not understood as a freestanding ex nihilo act, we are better able to recognize our prior relations and present responsibilities, our implication in the violence of the world, and accentuates an agent’s sensitivity to the fraught character of their actions. Obligation is a more realistic, and ironically also 16 As James Turner Johnson has made clear in oral presentation, the language of a sovereign’s “free right to make war,” the liberum jus ad bellum, is an early modern innovation. 17 Augustine, Against Faustus the Manichee 22.70. 1172 Charles Mathewes more gentle, merciful, and humane, way to think about a war’s rationale, than any language of “permission.” Furthermore, this account understands the just war mode of deliberation to be not essentially an exculpatory moral algorithm, applicable by just anybody. Rather, just war thinking is a narratively enframed interpretive matrix that both offers a picture of the world and proposes how to live within it, and requires properly formed—morally and religiously—agents to enact it. The tradition situates particular moral actions within a rich theological narrative frame in order to understand properly where you stand—what necessities are forcing your hand, and what judgment you stand under. The just war tradition is best understood not as a distinct and selfsustaining tradition but as part of a Christian political theology of justice and judgment. As Frederick Russell puts it, Augustine’s own account is not so much a systematic theory as it is really “clusters of ideas grouped around the central theme of sin and punishment.”18 Just war theory, that is, is part of a larger theological worldview which begins from a vision of human life as tragically, irremediably corrupted, and it describes one facet of how humans should participate properly, or least improperly, in life so conceived. God’s justice and judgment are beginning to be worked out in history, the tradition insists, and we are to inhabit history as the site where and medium whereby that judgment and justice are deployed.The just war tradition depicts us as necessarily part of the world, and as such part of the awesome and horrendous unspooling of God’s providential judgment on the world. Here as elsewhere, the just war tradition is part of a larger theology of history as providential. This affirmation of providence is paired with a realistic assessment of human sin. So just war theory is not only based on the “Christian universalism” of egalitarianism and universal concern that lies at the basis of international law, as many point out; it is also based on that other, less palatable, Christian universalism, unacknowledged in international law but even more basic in international relations: the universalism of sin. Just war theory emerges out of an account of human fallenness; without it, just warriors may delude themselves into assuming that they are ever other 18 Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 25. See also Gregory Reichberg, “Just War and Regular War: Competing Paradigms,” in Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers, ed. David Rodin and Henry Shue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 193–213; see 198–99 on the disappearance, after Aquinas, of discussion of intention as a concern in the tradition, and see 212 for the idea of the warrior as executor of justice as a “normative ideal” that disappears after Suarez. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1173 than significantly morally compromised. The “justice” in just war theory should never be claimed to be more than relative justice. Hence it harbors no pretense of offering a tidy resolution to the problems that it is designed to address, and to suggest otherwise is to court a dangerous hypocrisy. On the Christian understanding, just war reasoning is not undertaken by people who see themselves primordially as rulers or other political actors; it is undertaken by people whose primordial view of themselves is as sinners—creatures who suffer from the same basic maladies as their opponents, and who are therefore susceptible to the same basic temptations. For these reasons, Augustinian-informed just war thinking will insist that the decision to go to war can never be a light one. That force must be used, that it is obligatory, is always and for everyone (for everyone who is morally sane, anyway) an occasion for moral regret, for the recognition that such evils that a war will inevitably bring are to be regretted. But regret seems a pallid term with which to capture the full range of torment that the properly formed agent will experience. The frequent recognition of the import of “regret” does not go far enough, I think, in recognizing the moral state of near-despair which “just warriors” ought to cultivate. Many thinkers in the just war tradition acknowledge the inadequacy of regret, and appeal beyond regret to remorse: Not only is the idea of a perfectly immaculate policy not to be had in our world, but our sense of the flaws in our policy should help us to cultivate a recognition of our own sinfulness, and likely complicity, in the evils we intend to stop. Yet this need not entail, as it seems to entail for some proponents of remorse, that we are hereby authorized actively to acquiesce in any “necessary evils.” Rather, it is simply an acknowledgment, tragic as it may be, that a language of “regret” does not fully capture the psychic trauma and longstanding sense of guilt that attach to war-making, but instead attempts to draw our attention away from such murky realities and toward an all-tootidy moralized fantasy that we might wage war in a way that keeps us fundamentally in charge of it, that allows us the illusion that direct and conscious human agency is always in steady command of the monster of war. Our moral remorse and regret should be gripped by the very disquieting idea that we will be made to answer for our complicity in these events; that we will be held to account, if not here on earth then in some final court of justice; that the blood of the innocent cries from the ground; that justice is not forever deferred; that God will not forever be mocked.This is what looms behind Augustine’s repeated brooding on the text of Psalm 25:17, “from my necessities deliver me!”19 19 De necessitatibus meis erue me! See, for example, City of God 19.6. 1174 Charles Mathewes On this account just war reasoning is part of a larger worldview, not most fundamentally an algorithmic system or check-list aimed at exculpating those who act; it must also discourage any moralistic evasions of responsibility and so, positively, encourage our recognition of our sinfulness. It must not merely make warriors, it must make mournful warriors, who recognize that their decisions have been made at real moral cost. This is not about imposing on soldiers a framework alien to their experience—as if they would not have these disturbing thoughts unless some troublesome priest inserts them into their minds—but rather giving them a way to talk about what they experience already. This is why Augustine dwells on the inescapably eschatological overtones of just war reasoning.While many of its original convictions predate Christianity, and today parts of it are embedded in wholly secular international law and the laws of war, just war thinking in its true richness is far more organically related to the Christian theological tradition than many allow. Of course, in any human’s hands, believer and unbeliever alike, just war reasoning can easily be a lie we tell ourselves about the intelligibility, transparency, and rationality of the world, and typically our uses of it amount to just that. This is not to deny that we should seek whatever clarity we can find, as diligently as possible; but the pursuit of that genuine clarity is also and simultaneously the rejection of any and every temptation of spurious sanitation that is proffered for our purchase. Furthermore, any appropriation of the just war tradition that lets its adherents assume that we are in charge of the world is deeply flawed.The fixation on enabling human agency via a language of options or choices is not a permanent feature of the just war tradition, but a development of it—I think a modern development—that we should resist. The idea that authority bestows power, understood as something like unconstrained freedom to act as we will, is one of the great delusions about political life, and typically one of the first surrendered by even moderately intelligent authorities when they gain office. The exercise of political power—an exercise sometimes entailing the use of force, and always relying tacitly on the threat of force—is something that should affect our souls; it should trouble, humble, even perhaps break our wills, make us wish we were other than who we are. Happy is the land that is ruled by someone who does not enjoy ruling too much; best is the war that is waged by someone who wishes earnestly that it did not have to be waged, and who fears for their soul because of the “necessities” involved. Some would call this vision of the political world “pessimistic,” but it is better described as soberly realistic. It is saved from becoming a disabling pessimism because it is paired with the very powerful idealism of Augustine’s understanding of peace. In a real way, Augustine thinks that just war Just War and the Theology of Evil 1175 is pacification, and has as its end peace, true peace, the tranquility of order. This end is not merely extrinsic to combatants’ behavior in war; it will shape the means that are suitable as well. The war must be waged with justice throughout, for the more just it is, the closer the approximation of peace it will realize in the end. “Be a peace-making warrior,” wrote Augustine to Count Boniface, and the just war tradition sees no overwhelming paradox in that phrase, much to its benefit.20 Yet for Augustine, to say “peace” is to say far too little. Peace is the end of war—even the wicked, Augustine insists, seek peace. But what sort of peace? Of triumph and subjugation, or of right order? A peace in which outright evil is directly perpetuated by the state is no peace. True peace is not simply the absence of overt war. We must beware, Augustine seems to say, of seeking the peace of mere indifference, the peace of the dead. The peace Christians seek is eschatological, the peace of those who have been resurrected. For Augustine, we participate in Jesus’s peace, which is Jesus Christ’s union with the Father in the Holy Spirit. But we are at war with ourselves, so we do not have this peace fully; and we cannot see each other’s hearts, so we do not have this union with one another.21 In this way, Augustine’s understanding of war is not a cry of despair, but a sober consequence of the height of its “ideals” (what an inadequate word that is). Just as the Christian sense of sin and evil is based on hope and graceful holiness, so that the former is unintelligible without the latter, so this Christian understanding of war relies on a more fundamental if partial apprehension of peace. We must hope for and fear God’s judgment at one and the same time, and cling not to our own righteousness—which we know to be an illusion—but to the righteousness that we have as an alien gift. In this way the theology of evil and the doctrine of just war echo one another. III. An Augustinian War on Terror Providentially enough, Augustine’s theology of evil and his reflections on the use of force come together in an episode from his life—namely, his engagement with the Donatists. This is in many ways ironic, particularly for our day. In recent years there have been many attempts to enroll Augustine in the discussions of the war on terror. But few who attempt this recognize that he was involved in a “war on terror” of his own: the theological, cultural, and ultimately political struggle with a group called the Donatists. This conflict has many of the marks of our war on terror: 20 Esto ergo etiam bellando pacificus. Augustine, Epist. 189.6; see also 93.8. 21 I have found Rowan Williams’s small book The Truce of God (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005 [1983]) very useful on these matters. 1176 Charles Mathewes a clash of cultures (Imperial Roman colonialists vs. North African native culture), an insurgency, acts of terror (assassinations, church burnings, etc), and finally government reprisals culminating in a grand council—the Council of Carthage, in 411—where the full weight of Roman power was finally brought to bear on the Donatist “schismatics.” While the received story of this episode is fairly bleak for Augustine, more careful recent work has done a good deal to complicate the story—not precisely in ways that exonerate Augustine, but rather in ways that recast the tale as one effort to see how this vision of evil and the just war can work in complimentary ways. For Augustine did try to engage in that conflict in a properly Christian way. His struggle to do so shaped Western Christian understandings of the legitimacy of intolerance of dangerous sects, and profoundly influenced the deep roots of all later Western political thinking about legitimacy and violence. But in some important ways those lessons have been ill-learned; and in how he taught his congregants, and in how he urged the authorities to behave, he still has much to teach us. A. Coercing the Donatists The Donatists were those Christians in North Africa who, in the fourth and fifth centuries, held to the more traditional and local ways of the faith, against what they saw as the corrupt and outsider Imperial Latin churches, which they saw as interloping carpet-baggers. Originally Donatism began as a complaint, a century before Augustine’s time, by some of the faithful against certain high church officials who had betrayed the church by handing over church bibles and perhaps other information to pagan Roman authorities out of fear of persecution and who, after the persecutions ended, wanted to return to the church and to their ecclesial offices. Once the persecution was over, these authorities were permitted by the larger church to return to the fold. But many among the local churches of North Africa—which had a reputation for parochial nativism, toughness, and for enduring bloody persecutions with great resilience—wanted nothing to do with priests seen as cowardly, duplicitous, and in the service of Romans (no matter that they were catholic Romans; “a Roman’s a Roman,” one can almost hear Donatists say). So they refused to accept them, and set up parallel ecclesial bodies, which took most of the people (in many cities, all of the people and the buildings) with them. At its most basic, the theological issue was a matter of moral and religious propriety and rectitude: Donatists demanded, as they saw it, a certain integrity among their priests, and they saw the Latin catholic priests as irremediably corrupted by their descent from traitorous bishops. And they simply wanted nothing to do with them. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1177 Augustine’s North African church, then, was split between two warring factions, with his faction visibly the smaller and weaker. Augustine’s first response to this challenge was debate. As he said in a letter to Vincentius (bishop of a faction of Donatists called Rogatists), “[m]y opinion at first was that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ: that we must act only by words, fight only by arguments, and overcome by reason alone, lest we should have those whom we knew to be true heretics becoming false catholics.” Furthermore, this debate was expected to be mutual, with force being used by neither side. Early on, in a letter to a then-Donatist bishop Maximinus, he said, “let there be no terror produced by gangs of circumcelliones,” that is, groups of hard-line Donatist vagabonds who roamed the countryside like outlaw gangs, using violence and assassination against the Catholic clergy and their allies in the North Africa of Augustine’s day.22 Augustine never jettisoned debate as a default option. Until the end of his life he always tried argumentative means of persuasion toward the Donatists, and urged others in his congregation and through letters to do the same. This strategy was rhetorically powerful. He sought accommodation, always insisting that it was the other side that was not accommodating. Furthermore, he worked to undercut the Donatists’ cultural ethnonationalism by insisting that the catholic church could be authentically “native.” But over time, his wish to manage matters by nonviolent debate foundered on the rocks of (what he described as) Donatist intransigence. As he wrote to the Donatist bishop Januarius, various Donatist radicals attacked priests, ransacked churches and monasteries, and ambushed catholic religious processions, “disturbing our peace and devastating us by their most appalling crimes and mad acts of violence.” This “compelled us” 22 On Augustine and the Donatists, see W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Move- ment of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952; repr. 1985), T. D. Barnes, “The Beginning of Donatism,” Journal of Theological Studies 26 (1975): 13–22, and, famously, P. L. R. Brown, “Saint Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion,” Journal of Roman Studies 54 (1964): 107–16. More recent, and influential for me, are Frederick H. Russell, “Persuading the Donatists: Augustine’s Coercion by Words,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thougth and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 115–38, and two essays by Neal Wood: “African Peasant Terrorism and Augustine’s Political Thought,” in History from Below: Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in Honour of George Rudé, ed. Frederick Kranz (Montreal: Concordia University Press, 1985), 279–99, and “Populares and circumcelliones:The Vocabulary of ‘Fallen Man’ in Cicero and St. Augustine,” History of Political Thought 7 (1986): 33–51. 1178 Charles Mathewes (note the use of “compulsion” here) to ask imperial authorities to combat the worst of the Donatists with the threat and at times the use of force to throw them out of their churches, to force them to enter in communion with Catholics upon pain of death, to employ physical violence to foster inner belief.23 In no way did Augustine think that urging such compulsion was a theologically or morally inconsequential matter. He recognized that there was a theological problem with the idea of coercion, which is why he tried to offer reasons for it. More surprisingly still, he urged the turn to coercion for profoundly “civic” reasons. He framed his argument to the imperial authorities not first of all as a theological matter of saving souls, but as a civic matter of protecting people, presenting the extremist Donatist radicals, the circumcelliones, as threats above all to the civic order. So he wrote to Emeritus, a Donatist bishop: “when our people seek help from the powers which are ordained, they do so not to persecute you, but to protect themselves from the lawless acts of violence perpetrated by your people.”24 Yet his civic-mindedness was not the whole story. Augustine was convinced that fear could shape souls in good ways, that it could be a vehicle for positive formation, which is what he understood by discipline. As he wrote to the aforementioned Vincentius, “[m]y opinion at first was that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ. . . . But this opinion of mine was overcome not by the words of those who opposed it, but by the examples to which they could point by way of demonstration. For, in the first place, my own city stood in opposition to my view. Once wholly on the side of Donatus, it was converted to catholic unity by fear of the imperial laws.”25 Fear, he thought, is a useful force for shaping souls, and no realistic political psychology can do without it. But Augustine thinks of “fear” and “compulsion” far more broadly than we typically do.The word he uses most commonly in his letters, especially in Letters 93 and 185 (to Boniface, count of Africa), is cogo (to collect), not compello (to compel). Cogo, “to collect,” is not a matter of simple compulsion; furthermore, Augustine seems to think of it as etymologically related to thinking (cogitando), as the prerequisite for it—because we must have collected things for us to think over. Outward cogo can lead to inward 23 See especially Epist. 88, esp. § 6. A translation is in Augustine: Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 147–48. 24 Epist. 87.8. 25 Augustine, Epist. 93.17. This translation is from R.W. Dyson, The Pilgrim City: Social and Political Ideas in the Writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (New York: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), 203. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1179 cogito. On his understanding, compulsion is the use of external power in the hope of enabling (not straightforwardly causing) an inner change. Think about teaching and learning: teachers “compel” their students, and put them in a situation to learn. Doctors compel their patients’ bodies with medicine, and hope that the bodies use the medicine rightly to heal themselves; God, the supreme doctor, uses suffering’s “harsh medicine” along with pleasant lessons to educate and reclaim sinners. The same is true for civic authorities; rebuke and reform, correptio and correctio, are intimately related. For Augustine, coercion was not punitive but therapeutic, a matter of using what Frederick Russell calls “constricting circumstances” to coerce. God can use fear as well as hope—indeed, the two may be far more intimately related than we imagine. Rulers should lovingly chastise their subjects; magistrates can make some behaviors unpalatable, by taxation or punishment, in the hope of effecting changes in behavior. Heretics’ “blasphemous folly, like some tumor, is healed by deterrence, rather than punishment by surgical removal.”26 The external threat of punishment may induce people to avoid overt behavior, and over time the hope is that the law enters into their souls to shape it—and so they eventually become not only grudgingly non-rapists, for example, but people for whom doing sexual violence to another person’s body is strictly speaking unthinkable. Augustine regularly intervened for leniency and insisted that disciplinary correction must be moderate. As he put it, in a letter to one Donatus, proconsul of Africa (not a Donatist, despite his name): “We desire that the terror of judges and laws shall be an opportunity not to slay them but to correct them, lest they fall under the penalty of eternal judgment.”27 But nonetheless, state coercion was for him an opportunity —not a necessary evil, but possibly, in this setting, useful and commendable. This had seriously damaging consequences. His account, with nuances forgotten and ambivalences effaced, underwrote in part a millennium and more of political thought about the use of political force to coerce. B. Resisting Demonization Yet, disappointment with Augustine should not be the only thing we take from this episode. His ultimate civic rationale for forcing the Donatists’ conversion was not directly to gain them for the Church, but rather to subvert their greatest pretension to religious purity, thereby indirectly rendering them more susceptible to accepting the merciful grace of God. He was no Grand Inquisitor. His fundamental purpose in this matter was 26 This translation is from Augustine: Political Writings, 134. 27 Augustine, Epist. 100.1. Translation is from The Pilgrim City, 198. 1180 Charles Mathewes not the use of the sword to gain bodies for his One True Church; it was more fundamentally defensive, an attempt to let witness peaceably play its worldly role, in a situation where some were willing to use violence to resist that action. There is another insight here, easily overlooked. Augustine’s response to the Donatists has often been summarized as an exemplary case of “Constantinianism,” collaboration with the kingdoms of this world. But in fact his most important words were not to the authorities of the imperium Romanum, but to his parishioners in the “catholic” churches of his diocese, and believers in North Africa in general. This is visible especially in his preaching to his congregants. Sermon after sermon grapples with the problems of manifesting rightly ordered love, and in a setting in which rivals such as the Donatist churches violently contested the “catholic” churches. Here we find Augustine’s most direct response to the challenge of the Donatists. In them he asks: how should his parishioners face the dualism of the Donatists, and the violence of their most fanatical adherents? It would be all too easy, Augustine suspects, to react to them by returning the compliment, mirroring the Donatists’ own behavior, and demonizing them just as they demonized the catholics. He recognizes the power of such polarization, but he knows it is based on a reactionary fear that refuses to recognize the many connections we have with each other—the many complicated strands of attachment and affiliation that run across boundaries of faction and party. Furthermore, it would simply reproduce the Donatists’ mis-vision of the world.Their problem, after all, is that they assume a dualism between World and God and seek to abandon the world; against this temptation Augustine reminds his parishioners to ask,“Were there no saints in the world at large? Was it right for you to condemn them unheard?” Rather than leaving the world and the neighbor, we should more fully engage it and recognize its radical ambivalence for faith. For Augustine, congregants do this by manifesting with their lips and in their lives a willingness to see others as their neighbors, deserving their love and esteem. And we do that, Augustine insists, through hope, hope for the possibility of love between the two sides, between “us” and “them”—a sense that we are, at least potentially, more united than divided, that we are better together than apart, that no one is ultimately a stranger or enemy. There is no security in attempting to inhabit such hope, Augustine warns. But none should be anticipated, or even hoped for, in this life. As Augustine says, “Let us not expect security while we are on pilgrimage: when we find ourselves wanting it, it will be the birdlime of the body, not the security of the human.”28 28 Ennarationes in Psalmos 85.16: Securitatem non exspectetis in peregrinatione: quando illam hic voluerimus, viscum erit corporis, non securitas hominis. Just War and the Theology of Evil 1181 Our hopes must seek only a transcendental satisfaction. This condition of suspension, of waiting, is hard to take; but it is our condition, and any attempt to end it by telling a story that excludes our ultimate end—or, as in the Donatists’ case, suggests that we know with too much certitude which side our neighbors will be on when at last that end arrives—is dangerously premature. Instead, we should seek to be “trained by longing” for the eschaton. But this training takes place here, and we cannot escape it, or the conditions of this journey, before our completion.29 Augustine’s strategy is simple. In situations where “religion” and “politics” are already mixed together, we should not necessarily seek to disentangle them directly—for all such efforts may backfire. Instead, we might accept what may look like the instrumentalization of the church for civic ends, in order to achieve certain finite civic goals by resisting the bad theological pretentions of the spiritually self-righteous. The civic peace this strategy secured lets us pursue our fundamental spiritual project of confronting the challenge of living hopefully in such a situation. The danger of the civic instrumentalization of religion is that it can defeat one threat to the hope of faith by collaborating with another. So even as we respond to those who would terrorize us, we must stay alert to how the defense may turn out to be just as hazardous as the danger. But it is a risk, Augustine says, we are well advised to run. Conclusion Though this essay has been concerned largely with description, I would like here at the end to articulate some of the lessons I draw from the story I have been telling. The crucial point is simple: keeping the theology of evil and just war theory connected will strengthen each; conversely, disconnecting them will weaken both. This is so because the various questions we ask about the moral situation of war are divided between putatively “ethical” and “legal” and self-professedly “theological” and “spiritual” registers, and to focus on one register to the neglect of the other will invariably result in a partial and imbalanced view on the full range of the challenge. This should come of no surprise. In the end, the question of “just war” is not separable from the larger questions of the meaning and purpose of authority. And this understanding of authority is really a working out of what it means to love someone. Furthermore, if we say this, we can 29 See Augustine’s Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.12, 10.10; and his Ennara- tiones in Psalmos 49.2.2. The phrase “love and do what you will” (dilige, et quod vis fac) is found in Homilies 7.8; the idea of being “trained by longings” comes from Homilies 4.6. 1182 Charles Mathewes understand better what it means to say that “God is love.” For God is love in the same way that God is authority, just as all political sovereignty is simply a surrogate for God; we are simply God’s agents, acting in God’s name. And God’s “authority” is better understood as God’s judgment. In this way, we always also stand under God’s judgment. So love, authority, politics, and judgment are all internally related. For this tradition, the task of politics in general is quintessentially one of judgment—of policing the community in order to secure the closest approximation of peace, the tranquility of order, in anticipation of the Last Judgment. This vision reminds us, again, that the goals of politics transcend political realization.To associate love and politics is not to denigrate the former but to realize the true depth of the latter. Politics is not simply a mundane thing; among its many motivations—getting along in the world, organizing social energies, protecting ourselves against bad people, whether they are others or ourselves—is a curiously non-instrumental one: we long for genuine encounter with others, an encounter that is best described in terms of communion. Civic action also moves toward communion, genuine engagement.We want genuinely to see each other and to be seen. Yet this hope, this longing, is not finally realizable in the world as we have it; it is an eschatological hope. Furthermore, this hope is complicated and shadowed for us by our sense that we stand under judgment, that we will surely be condemned if anyone truly knows us. And we know this, so that all our efforts at attaining the communion of love are always fraught by an ambivalence we would be well advised to acknowledge. This vision of politics, and of the human condition in general, is the context for the understanding of war and the use of force in general, out of which the medieval just war tradition emerges and within which it makes perhaps the most sense. And this vision of politics is itself enframed and given its particular intelligibility by the tradition’s theology of evil— its vision of the nature of evil and how God triumphs over evil as well. When we undertake to interpret or employ the just war tradition, we ignore this larger vision at our peril. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1183–213 1183 “Rise Up and Kill Him First”: On Modern Attempts to Create a Jewish Ethics of War * A DAM A FTERMAN & G EDALIAH A FTERMAN Tel Aviv University/The Jewish People Policy Institute Jerusalem, Israel T HE DEBATE within Judaism regarding the ethics and conduct of war has always been a marginal one. The Jewish people, certainly since the second-century rebellion of Bar Kochba, were victims of war rather than agents of war. Without a state and an army, Jews, with a Diaspora mentality, did not have the privilege or the need to create articulated theories of ethics of war. Indeed, discussions of this issue throughout the centuries were almost purely academic, usually introduced as part of rabbinical interpretation of biblical law. While issues of justification and conduct of war have been debated in Judaism, these were, in light of the state of the exiled Jewish People, theoretical and hermeneutical debates rather than prescriptive debates.1 Indeed, up until modern times, one can hardly find an attempt to articulate a category of banned or forbidden war within the framework of Judaism.2 The * From the Talmudic saying “if someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 72:a), which became the main principle of the war of self-defense, regarded by many as the only obligatory war today according to Jewish law. 1 Some would argue that as a general rule the rabbinical debates did not create any structured or systemized discussion on any matter; the issue of ethics of war was no exception in that regard. Regardless of whether this approach is correct, it is clear that the amount of halachic effort put into this subject is marginal in comparison with other legal matters debated. 2 See, M. Walzer, “War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition,” in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. T. Nardin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 1184 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman omission of a forbidden war category, however, should not lead one to conclude that the Rabbis denied such a category (that is, that they were permissive of all forms of warfare) but rather that, because of the limited relevance of the subject to their reality, their discussions were only partial and nonsystematic.3 Even the more theoretical discussions of these matters were not systematic but centered on one or two chapters from the Book of Deuteronomy. The Rabbis, with the exception of the medieval rabbinical authority Maimonides (1138?–1204), did not attempt to reflect systematically on the subject in order to create an articulated system of norms, but rather touched on this topic as part of their interest in the biblical laws. Discussions within Judaism regarding the conduct of war can be broadly divided into two categories. The first aspect of the debate focused on the reasons or justifications for going to war, that is, the circumstances which allow, indeed at times compel, one to launch war ( jus ad bellum). The second aspect of the debate outlines proper conduct of a war once it had commenced ( jus in bello). Discussions regarding the more practical questions of jus in bello were first introduced in one section of the Book of Deuteronomy and revisited much later in modern times in response to new circumstances demanding a more practical approach to the questions of conduct of war. The rabbinical discussions, meanwhile, focused primarily on the jus ad bellum, differentiating between a religious or holy war commanded directly by God, and a “regular” political war. Discussions among rabbinical authorities from the Middle Ages such as Maimonides (1135–1204) and Nachmanides (1194–1270), and their varying perceptions of norms of war, introduce yet another layer of interpretation. Early discussions of the issue of war and its conduct in Judaism all refer to wars that either have occurred in the past (or mythical past) or will occur in some theoretical future.4 These debates, therefore, as Michael University Press, 1996), 95–114. M. Walzer, “The Idea of Holy War in Ancient Israel,” Journal of Religious Ethics 20.2 (1992): 215–28. For an important response to this claim, see A. Ravitzky, “Prohibited Wars in the Jewish Tradition,” in The Ethics of War and Peace, 115–27. 3 An interesting but not normative discussion of this issue can be found in a debate about fighting on Shabbat. The Jews fighting the Greeks, and later the Romans, faced complicated dilemmas as to whether fighting is forbidden on Shabbat. Fighting on Shabbat was permitted after the Greeks took advantage of the Shabbat to launch an attack, but even then only in self-defense. This, in turn, allowed the Romans, much later, to take advantage of the Shabbat not for direct combat with the Jews but rather for other warfare maneuvers that were not considered direct fighting (and thus the Jews were forbidden to react). See: 1 Maccabees 2:29–41; Josephus, Antiquities, 12:272–77; 14:63–65. 4 The Deuteronomy chapters (20, 23) were written centuries after the actual or imagined wars described; the same pertains to the rabbinical discussions and A Jewish Ethics of War 1185 Walzer has argued,5 should not be seen as prescriptive or as outlining actual policy for conducting warfare, nor, indeed, as an accurate description of the historical events in question, but rather as having an academic or hermeneutical role. Likewise, the discussions regarding the legal procedures of conducting war can be considered part of an imagined and perhaps utopian world. Biblical and Rabbinical Discussions The Hebrew Bible includes a few short sections in which codes of war are discussed. These discussions, in turn, are divided into two categories:6 the first is a code regarding a special type of war, commanded directly by God, targeting specific enemies; the second code concerns wars commanded not by God but rather by a human authority engaged in a political war aimed at serving his own interests.The Bible refrains from providing a special code for wars of defense, and from introducing the category of forbidden war. The first code of war, regarding war commanded directly by God, concerns the conquering of the Promised Land as a religious duty. The People of Israel are commanded to launch a war of total extermination against the Seven Nations who occupied the Land of Israel.7 It should be noted that the Bible itself casts doubt on whether this kind of total war actually took place.8 To be sure, the Rabbis were subsequently quick to categories referring to national institutions such as the king, the Sanhedrin, etc.: these institutions had all disappeared long before the time of the rabbinical discussions. The attempt of the Rabbis was first to analyze the biblical text in a way similar to their attempt to analyze many other theoretical issues. Later attempts should be seen as the analysis of both the biblical and the rabbinical commentaries, done in an academic fashion. An interesting exception to this is found in the Palestinian Talmud, where the Rabbis are critical of the Bar Kochba rebellion against the Roman empire, indicating explicitly that he was acting against God’s will (see Palestinian Talmud [PT ], Tractate Ta’anit, 60b–d, The Academy of Hebrew Language edition [ Jerusalem, 2001], 733–34). One may therefore conclude that it is very rare to find a debate or discussion in Jewish sources regarding the actual concrete and real conduct of war up until modern Israel. See Waltzer, “War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition,” 95–96. 5 Ibid. 6 For a general survey of the topic of war in the Hebrew Bible, see S. Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); P. R. Davies, “The Biblical and Qumranic Concepts of War,” in The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. J. H. Charlesworth (N. Richland Hills, TX: BIBAL Press, 2000 ), 275–306. 7 Deuteronomy 20:17. 8 This is indicated in 1 Kings 9:20–21 and 2 Chronicles 8:7–8. See also R. Kimelman, “The Laws of War and Their Limits,” 233. 1186 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman rule that the historic Seven Nations could no longer be identified,9 thus eliminating any practical role for this decree in the future.10 A similar type of war is commanded by God against the nation of Amalek, regardless of its geographic whereabouts.11 The war to obliterate the Amalekites is another war of annihilation commanded by God.12 This extreme decree, we are told, is punishment for Amalek’s terrible attacks against the People of Israel while they were fleeing from Egypt.13 Like in the case of the Seven Nations, the fact that Amalekites are no longer traceable has emptied this category of any practical relevance in modern times.14 The second biblical code of war applies to wars initiated against all enemies other than the Seven Nations and Amalek. For this type of war, initiated by a political rather than a divine authority, a different code of behavior is stipulated. This code, found in Deuteronomy 20, is the most detailed biblical discussion of norms of warfare.The text contains a detailed list of principles relating to behavior in times of war. The first section of chapter 20 presents a list of those who should be exempt from being conscripted and taking part in war, including the cowardly, those lacking faith in God, and those who have other commitments to keep, such as a new wife, a new house, or the maintenance of a newly planted vineyard.15 The text then focuses on the conduct of war itself: Any besieged city should be made an offer of peace. If the offer of peace is rejected, the city’s men are to be killed, and the women and children are to be captured. The city is to be looted. The fighters are forbidden to destroy the fruit trees, as they are defenseless in the face of the attacking force.16 9 See Mishna Yadayim 4:4. 10 Although this position is without doubt the prevailing opinion in Judaism, there have been, as we have shown elsewhere, recent attempts by religious extremists such as Meir Kahane to revive the concept of the war against the Seven Nations and apply it to the contemporary political reality by equating the “Seven Nations” to current-day Palestinians. For more on this issue see Gedaliah Afterman, Understanding the Theology of Israel’s Extreme Religious Right: “The Chosen People” and “The Land Of Israel” from the Bible to the “Expulsion from Gush Katif” (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2007), 134–61; E. Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 107–46. 11 See: Exodus 17:8–16; Deuteronomy 25:17–19; 1 Samuel 30:1–16. 12 See: Deuteronomy 25:17–19 13 See Exodus 20. There has been much discussion of the term Zinev. 14 1 Samuel 15. Avi Sagi, “The Punishment of Amalek in Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem,” Harvard Theological Review 87.3 (1994): 323–46. 15 Deuteronomy 20:1–10. See also N. Solomon, “Judaism and the Ethics of War,” International Review of the Red Cross 87 (2005): 296. 16 Deuteronomy 20:19–20. A Jewish Ethics of War 1187 The text distinguishes between cases of normal war, to which the above principles apply, and the war commanded by God against the Seven Nations, which is to be conducted under much harsher terms.17 The harsh treatment of the Seven Nations, however, is not justified solely by the fact it was commanded directly by God; rather God justifies this unforgiving treatment by arguing that if not annihilated, they will defile the People of Israel through their practice of idolatry.18 Mishnaic and Talmudic debates later distinguished between three categories of war: 1. Obligatory war —a slightly expanded interpretation of the divinely commanded wars of the Bible. 2. Optional war —political wars initiated by the king that are nevertheless to be authorized by the Sanhedrin, the authoritative religious council which existed presumably in the time of the Temple. In addition, this authorization requires the stamp of the “Urim ve Tumim,” an oracular device in the Temple that transmitted God’s will and approval. If the Bible does not put much faith in the king, the Rabbis make sure that under no circumstances can the king independently wage his own wars without the approval of the Rabbis and the priest. Participation in such a war is not a religious duty, and the Rabbis provide plenty of pretexts for those who do not care to participate. 3. Preventive war —war of self-defense. The Rabbis accepted the biblical category of obligatory war, while arguing that the main target of such a war, the Seven Nations, was no longer traceable. In addition, the Rabbis slightly expand the category of Joshua’s biblical conquest to include future defense of the Land of Israel. In other words, it seems that the Rabbis understood the concept of “obligatory war” as being closely related to the commandment of the conquest of the Land of Israel, rather than being focused on the nolonger-existent biblical Seven Nations. The Rabbis also add a category of “defensive war” omitted from the biblical discussions. Such a war is classified under the category of obligatory war based on the principle of self-defense as a religious obligation. The Rabbis crystallize this religious principle in the famous saying “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”19 17 Deuteronomy 20:15–18. For the original commitment to the People of Israel see Genesis 18–21. 18 Deuteronomy 20:18. 19 Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 72:a. 1188 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman As in the cases of the wars against the Seven Nations and against Amalek, the rabbinical category of optional, “permitted” war or political war, was, already at the time of development, without any practical relevance. While conceding that a political leader may be permitted to launch war under some circumstances, the Rabbis conditioned the launch of such war on the approval of the Sanhedrin.The fact that both the Jewish monarchy and the Sanhedrin were no longer in existence at the time of writing and that, in addition, the procedure required seeking the oracle’s approval using a device long lost, in a temple long destroyed, leads one to conclude that this too was no more than a theoretical category. The lack of practical relevance of Jewish debates on the issue of war is even more striking when it comes to the debates of the twelfth-century rabbinical halachic authority, Maimonides.20 Maimonides as a child fled Andalusia with his family, seeking refuge in the Middle East and North Africa; he finally settled in Egypt, where he became a community leader.21 He experienced not only the destruction of Jewish communities in Spain but also the vulnerability and helplessness of the Jewish communities in the Middle East, especially in Yemen.22 Maimonides wrote extensively on the laws of war as part of his magisterial halachic codification.23 This state of affairs changed, however, with the emergence of Jewish nationalism and the establishment of the modern State of Israel.The emergence of Zionism—and with it Jewish nationhood becoming first likely and then a reality—saw individual scholars draw upon the sporadic, theoretical and hermeneutical debates of the previous two millennia of Jewish thought, in an attempt to establish more practical guidelines regarding war and its conduct. Others, meanwhile, have attempted to provide practical answers to concrete and specific dilemmas as they arose. Such efforts inten- 20 The term Halacha usually refers to the literary corpus of rabbinic legal texts, or to the overall system of Jewish religious law. A halachic authority is a rabbi who published his own commentary on the Jewish codex of laws. 21 Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2009). 22 Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides, texts translated and notes by A. Halkin, discussions by D. Hartman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985). 23 Interestingly, as we will see, some of these intellectual debates, despite their completely non-practical nature at the time of writing, would under very different circumstances come to be seen as authoritative and prescriptive texts; see Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Amalek, Self-corrective Mechanisms, and the War against Idolatry,” in Judaism and Modernity: The Religious Philosophy of David Hartman, ed. Jonathan W. Malino (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004), 359–92. A Jewish Ethics of War 1189 sified following the establishment of the State of Israel and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).24 As we will see, contemporary attempts by some to create a “Jewish” code, and attempts by others to offer halachic solutions to specific challenges which emerge in the context of warfare and ethics of war, are neither homogenous nor complete. Indeed, contemporary debates often present opposing conclusions and advocate differing paths of action. Furthermore, the growing volume of religious debates on the ethics of war, and their attempts to provide an halachic basis for the conduct of war and for other modern phenomena such as the fight against terrorism, asymmetrical warfare, and combat operations amongst civilian populations, should be seen as part of the traditional halachic discourse, but not necessarily as authoritative. It should also be remembered that the current halachic debates on warfare and ethics of war are largely confined to circles of religious Zionists (members of the ultra-orthodox community are generally exempt from military service in Israel), and those represent only a relatively small portion of the overall religiously observant community.25 These halachic discussions should be generally seen as separate from other contemporary attempts undertaken by secular institutions, such as the IDF’s creation of its own code of ethics. With the exception of the more institutionalized efforts by Rabbi Shlomo Goren26 as the Chief Rabbi of the IDF to incorporate some halachic elements in the military policies, the contemporary debates do not directly influence military policy or conduct. Although it is true that a complex relationship exists in modern Israel between religion and state, the state is not religious, nor is its army.27 24 For a more detailed survey of the ethics of war in the history of Jewish thought, and a collection of relevant texts, see our “The Ethics of War in Judaism,” in The Ethics of War in Religion: A Sourcebook (New York: Cambridge University Press [forthcoming]). 25 See Stuart Cohen, “Between the Book and the Sword: The Formation of Law of Military and War in Israel 1948–2004,” Iyunim Be’tekumat Israel 15 (2005): 239–74. See also Stuart A. Cohen, The Scroll or the Sword? Dilemmas of Religion and Military Service in Israel (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997); idem, “Dilemmas of Military Service in Israel: The Religious Dimension,” Torah u-Madda Journal 12 (2004): 1–23; idem, “ ‘Unlicensed’ War in Jewish Tradition: Sources, Consequences and Implications,” Journal of Military Ethics 4.3 (2005): 198–213. It should be further remembered that such discussions are seen as irrelevant by the majority of Israelis, who define themselves as non-observant. 26 See further details and discussion next to the callout for note 40 below. 27 This link between religion and state has to do mainly with issues such as marriage, divorce, and funerals. A separate question is the status of the rabbis who serve in the army providing religious services. See further: Cohen, The Scroll or the Sword? 1190 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman Discussions prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel The shift that came about in modern times in Jewish attitudes toward ethics of war should be viewed as part of a broader reaction within the Orthodox camp to the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel. These dramatic developments provided a formidable theological challenge to religious scholars, who attempted to analyze the new reality with halachic concepts. The new reality also brought with it more practical halachic debates as well as calls for—and some attempts to—develop a code of ethics for the conduct of war. These discussions, it should be noted, were conducted by individual rabbis, internally amongst religious scholars with varying levels of authority, both within their respective communities and more broadly. Broadly speaking, attitudes amongst Orthodox Jews toward the essentially anti-religious Zionist ideology and the establishment of a secular state can be divided into two views. The majority view, led by the ultra-orthodox community, was vehemently opposed to Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state. According to this conservative, “passive” view, Jewish sovereignty can be established only as part of an all-encompassing messianic process of redemption. This view holds that redemption is exclusively in the realm of the divine, and humans should not interfere or “hasten” that process by re-establishing a Jewish sovereign state in the Holy Land. Such acts are seen as a blatant interference in the messianic process.28 Thus, Jews should not use active power or build institutions of organized power, even for self-defense—they should instead rely on God’s providence. Other Orthodox Jews held a more pragmatic view, believing that the process of redemption was a gradual process that advanced slowly toward the end goal of salvation. According to this view, the process of redemption would commence with the establishment of the State of Israel, despite its secular nature. Serving and advancing of the State is therefore a religious duty that directly influences the process of redemption. All modern attempts to create a new halachic code of ethics of war share one basic assumption: that halachic debates throughout the centuries regarding the norms of war, while insightful, do not provide adequate guidance for practical implementation.29 Parties differ, however, in the conclusions they each derive from this assumption. 28 For a detailed survey of the arguments of those in the ultra-orthodox commu- nity fiercely opposed to Zionism, see A. Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996): 40–78. 29 For a detailed outline of this matter, see Arye Edrei, “Law, Interpretation, and Ideology: The Renewal of the Jewish Laws of War in the State of Israel,” Cardozo A Jewish Ethics of War 1191 According to the conservative ultra-orthodox position, the fact that adequate norms of war do not exist in the halachic debate in Judaism signifies that Jews should not be involved in or initiate war until the time of redemption, when Jewish sovereignty is reinstalled by God. Given the lack of halachic guidance on this matter, proponents of this view argue that the Jewish people should not initiate any acts of war, and by extension, not establish institutions capable of waging war (such as an army or a state) until the time of redemption. Other scholars within the ultra-orthodox establishment of the time, such as Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz30 and Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn,31 however, worked to find allowances for the practical needs that came with establishing a Jewish presence in Palestine. Responding to the challenges faced by the Jewish settlements in Palestine at the time, Karelitz, in his book Orach Hayim (1911), argues that the category of selfdefense, the only category of war which could be viewed as a “commanded” or obligatory war in modern times, should be expanded to include pre-emptive actions against groups that plan to carry out attacks against Jewish towns and villages: Maimonides, Ch. 5 of The Laws of Kings, art. 1, writes that included in [the category of] a “divinely commanded war,” is helping Israel from the hand of an enemy that has come upon them, that is, that has already come upon them, omitted the rule of war regarding [preventive war against] Samaritans that have not yet come [upon them]. And he interpreted [the Law Review 28.1 (2006): 198–208. Noam Zohar, “Morality and War: A Critique of Bleich’s Oracular Halakha,” in Commandment and Community; New Essays in Jewish Legal and Political Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 245–58; Noam Zohar, “Can a War Be Morally ‘Optional’?” Journal of Political Philosophy 4.3 (1996): 229–41; Aviad Hacohen, ‘Law and Morality in Wartime,” Justice 44 (2007): 4–9. 30 Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz (1878–1953), popularly known by his literary name Chazon Ish, was a Belarusian-born rabbi who later became a leader of the ultraorthodox community in Palestine (later Israel), where his final twenty years, from 1933 to 1953, were spent. Although Karelitz never held an official position, he became recognized as a worldwide authority on matters relating to Jewish law. 31 Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn (1857–1935) was born in the city of Sefad in Galilee. After a period in Jerusalem where he worked with Eliezer Ben Yehudah to revive the Hebrew language, Hirschensohn was appointed in 1904 as the chief Rabbi of Hoboken, New Jersey, where he remained until his death. Though Hirschensohn wrote on many subjects, including the relationship between Judaism and democracy, the status of women, and conflicts between traditional Judaism and modern scholarship and science, he is best known for Malki BaKodesh, a six-volume work he published between 1919 and 1928, in which he attempted to create a halachic corpus for a future Jewish state. 1192 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman concept of] “optional war” as David’s war to expand the borders of Israel, and in Ch. 7, art. 5, he wrote about those exempted [from conscription], that is, during an “optional war.” In a “divinely commanded war,” even a groom from his chamber and a bride from her canopy [are required to assist]. And he did not expound on the nature of a “divinely commanded war”, and on the nature of an “optional [war]”, and he relied on what he wrote here [in 5:1]. And even though one may conclude from the wording:“helping Israel from the hand of an enemy that has come upon them [our emphasis]” that the precise meaning is “that has already come upon them,” in any case from the wording ‘that David’s war to expand [borders] is an “optional war,” ’ you could conclude that preventive war against the Samaritans that have not come yet is a “divinely commanded war.”32 In reference to the custom among the ultra-orthodox community of avoiding engaging in wars (in the Diaspora) based on their categorization as political and therefore non-religiously binding, Karelitz argues that any war, even if originally initiated as an optional political war, that results in danger to the People of Israel becomes a commanded war and that, in any event, the exemptions cited in Deuteronomy in the case of an “optional war” do not apply when the exempted are needed to win the war or to save the lives of others: It seems that the Mishna’s teaching that in a “divinely commanded war,” even a groom [is taken] from his chamber does not refer to a time when their help is needed for victory in the war, since it is obvious that for the sake of saving a life and saving the people, all are obligated. But rather to a case when, though only a certain number [of soldiers] are needed (and most of their wars were such that there was only capacity for a particular number of soldiers), it was permissible to take a groom from his chamber, since those meriting exemption have no such rights in a “divinely commanded war,” while in an “optional war,” they are not exempt except when victory for Israel is not dependent on them when the number needed by the army is reached without them. But if they are needed, they must come to the succor of their brothers, and then the war becomes a “divinely commanded war.” But that is [only] if the “optional war” is already underway . . . after an “optional war” has commenced with a particular number of forces, if they see that additional soldiers are necessary, then those that we are commanded to exempt are not drafted as long as the requisite number is fulfilled without them. . . . But if they are needed for victory in the war, even a groom sets out from his chamber, even though it was originally an “optional war.” 33 32 Karetlitz, Orach Chayim, ed. Rabbi Shmuel Grinman (Bnei Brak, Israel: 1994), 332. 33 Karetlitz, Orach Chayim, 333. A Jewish Ethics of War 1193 In his book Malki Bakodesh, Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn puts forward a different argument. According to Hirschensohn, although a preemptive attack does not fall under the category of self-defense and is not therefore religiously compulsory, it is permitted in Jewish law: We see from this that Rava’s [a leading Tanaitic scholar] opinion is that it is inconceivable that the Sages believed that it is imperative that Israel embark on a war in the case of “non-Jews who have not [‘yet’] come upon them,” and that even a groom from his chamber and bride from her canopy would be obligated to join on its behalf. . . . Such a matter could not possibly be conceived of as an obligatory war for which a groom must leave his chamber and a bride her canopy. And yet, it is not prohibited, and the King is authorized to call [persons] up for a war when such a fear is aroused in him. Here the intention of the word “optional” is to make a distinction from [a] prohibited [war], lest one reason that since war itself is murder of others and danger to oneself that it not be an option at all. For this reason the Sages took care to inform us that it is optional, i.e. that it is permissible since such is the way of the world, and it is the nature of the individual and the nation to fear and to entertain political thoughts against the increasing power of a neighbouring nation, and as long as the nations have not beaten their swords into plowshare and their spears into pruning hooks, Israel has the option, when it sees a nation in its midst taking, and it fears that the nation will rise up against it, it has the option of taking the first step and declaring war against them.34 Following from the general halachic discussion above, Hirschensohn seeks to halachically legitimize the Jewish Legion (five battalions of Jewish volunteers established by the British Army in 1914–15 as part of their war against the Ottoman Empire, which Zionists saw as an opportunity to promote the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine) and their participation in the war as part of the British Army: Indeed, everything that we have written until now relating to the Jewish Legion is according to their preliminary concept, i.e. those members of our people in America who classified it as an optional war. We discussed its halachic foundation in the law of optional war, and due to this conceptualization, they sought rabbinic approval to remove it from the category of a prohibited war, which some mistakenly thought it to be, as we explained. However, if we consider its true foundation, it is in fact an “obligatory war,” but in any case, it still does not require a groom to leave his chamber and a bride her canopy. However, those of the nation who volunteer are upholding the commandment of an obligatory war.35 34 From C. Hirschensohn’s Malki Ba-Kodesh ( Jerusalem: Bar Ilan University, Shecter Institute for Jewish Studies and the Shalom Hartman Institute, 2007), 143–44. 35 Ibid., 156. 1194 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman The writings of Karelitz and of Hirschensohn should be considered in the context of the debate raging within the Orthodox community at the time about the validity of Zionism. As supporters of the Zionist enterprise, they were very much a minority within their own communities, and their rulings were aimed not only at addressing the halachic issues at hand but also at providing justification for their more general ideological framework. In this regard, Hirschensohn offers an interesting argument about the validity of the commandment of conquering the Land of Israel in this time and not only in the time of redemption: The basis of the matter is what Nachmanides wrote regarding the fourth of the positive commandments that he believed Maimonides of blessed memory to have forgotten to enumerate. . . . To paraphrase his words, the commandment of conquering Eretz Israel is a commandment that is effective for all generations, and every commandment that applies to all generations must be counted among the commandments, and this is why he believed that Maimonides of blessed memory forgot to enumerate it based on error and oversight, which every mortal creature is likely to commit. And the Gaon [R. Isaac de Leon] of blessed memory, author of the Scroll of Esther [commentary on Nachmanides’ critique of Sefer haMitzvot], who took upon himself to substantiate all of Nachmanides’ reservations regarding Maimonides, said, “I believe that the reason he did not include it was that the commandment of inheriting and settling the land was only practiced in the days of Moses and Joshua and David, as long as they were not exiled. But after they were exiled from their land, this commandment ceased to be in practice for all generations until the time that the Messiah comes. . . . “And [de Leon claims that] what Nachmanides said in the name of the Sages, that conquest of the land is a ‘divinely commanded war’—applies to when we are no longer subordinated by the nations. . . . And my master this brilliant rabbi [de Leon] should forgive me: [but it is] because of his own shortcoming regarding respect for settling in Eretz Israel [he did not live there!] that he erred in an obvious case . . . in his desire to explain why Maimonides of blessed memory did not include this commandment in thinking that it is not a commandment applicable to all generations and thus not numbered among the commandments as explained in the Book of Commandments, under “principle [root] 3.”36 Discussions since the Establishment of the State of Israel Whereas these early debates prior to the establishment of the State of Israel focused on the general issue of whether or not war was halachically permissible in modern times, the focus following the establishment of the state was more pragmatic. Religious scholars attempted to use halachic 36 Malki Ba-Kodesh, chap. 7, 157–58. A Jewish Ethics of War 1195 categories in order to provide solutions to the substantial challenges which faced the young state. The two main approaches found amongst modern religious Zionist thinkers can be defined as “exclusive” and “inclusive.” Those advocating an exclusive approach argue that the establishment of the State of Israel calls for the development of new halachic categories, including those relating to the norms of war, in order to provide answers to the emerging reality of Jewish sovereignty. Scholars such as Rabbi Shlomo Goren and Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz37 argue that this process of development and interpretation should be done from within, and on the basis of, the existent halachic debates. This ethical construct, they argue, should be distinctly and exclusively “Jewish.”This approach led Rabbi Goren, the chief Military Rabbi of the IDF for twenty years and subsequently Israel’s chief Rabbi, to attempt to establish a halachic code for the operation of the IDF, including issues of norms of war. The “inclusive” approach, led by Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, a leading rabbi in the religious Zionist movement, understood the lack of a developed doctrine of ethics and conduct of war within Judaism to suggest that this issue should be dealt with in accordance with dina de malchutah dina internationally accepted norms. Using the halachic concept “the law of the king is your law,” Rabbi Yisraeli argued that this widely accepted principle, usually applied to Jewish communities in the Diaspora, did not apply only to the individual Jew but, on the matter of the conduct of war, should apply to the Jewish state as well. As we will see, both theoretical approaches have been used by rabbis when analyzing military events and issues related to norms of war and proper ethical conduct. Both in the 1950s and more recently, with less ambitious attempts to provide halachic solutions to dilemmas arising from events such as the first Palestinian intifada, the second Lebanon war and the second intifada, such discussions have often led to contradictory advice and conclusions. One prominent example of the diverging approaches and opinions can be found in the way both Leibowitz and Rabbi Yisraeli approached the Kibiyeh incident (1953) in the early years of the State. Israel Defence 37 Yeshayahu Leibowitz (?1903–94) was a leading Israeli philosopher and scientist known for his outspoken, often controversial opinions on Judaism, ethics, religion, and politics. Leibowitz, an ultra-orthodox Jew, also held controversial views on the subject of halacha. He argued that the sole purpose of religious commandments was to obey God, and not to receive any kind of reward in this world or that to come. He maintained that the reasons for religious commandments were beyond human understanding, as well as irrelevant, and any attempt to attribute emotional significance to the performance of commandments was misguided and akin to idolatry. 1196 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman Force soldiers, acting in response to several deadly attacks against Israeli civilians, carried out a reprisal operation against the village from which the perpetrators of the attacks originated, leaving more than fifty inhabitants of the village dead. In an article titled “After Kibiyeh” (1953–54), Leibowitz argues that, even if the events could be justified halachically, they were clearly unjustifiable morally. Leibowitz argues that war (such as the 1948 war of independence) in itself was a natural and at times necessary measure, despite the carnage which is inevitably caused on both sides; the problem was the way war was conducted. More generally, he highlights the moral implications of the restored Jewish sovereignty, and the implications that such atrocities could have for its future. Kibiyeh, its causes, implications, and the action itself are part of the great test to which we as a nation are put as a result of national liberation, political independence, and our military power—for we were bearers of a culture which, for many generations, derived certain spiritual benefits from conditions of exile, foreign rule, and political impotence. . . . In our own eyes, and, to some extent in those of others as well, we appeared to have gained control over one of the terrible drives to which human nature is subject, and to abhor the atrocities to which it impels all human societies—impulse to communal murder. While congratulating ourselves upon this, we ignored, or attempted to ignore, that in our historical situation such mass-murder was not one of the means at our disposal for self-defence or for the attainment of collective aspirations. From the standpoint of both moral vocation and religious action, exilic existence enabled us to evade the decisive test. . . . In declaring our will to live as a real historic nation—not a metahistorical and metaphysical one—we took upon ourselves the functions of national life we had shunned when we were not bound by the tasks and concerts of normal national existence. By the logic of history and of moral evaluation, our war of independence was a necessary consequence of our two-thousand year exile. Only one prepared to justify historically, religiously, or morally the continuation of the exilic existence could refuse to take upon himself the moral responsibility for using the sword to restore freedom. Therefore, in our religious-moral stocktaking, we neither justify the bloodshed of the war (in which our blood was spilled no less than that of our enemies) nor do we apologize for it. The problematic issues concern the manner of conducting that war, which goes on to this very day, and what is to be done after this war will be over . . . We can, indeed, justify the action of Kibiyeh before “the world” . . . but let us not try to do so. Let us rather recognize its distressing nature.38 38 Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “After Kibiyeh (1953–54),” in Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State, ed. Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 185–86. A Jewish Ethics of War 1197 Leibowitz finds a biblical parallel to the Kibiyeh incident with the story of Shekhem and Dinah (Genesis 34), in which the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, avenged the rape of their sister by killing the town’s males: The sons of Jacob did not act as they did out of pure wickedness and malice. They had a decisive justification: “should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?!” The Torah, which narrates the actions of Simeon and Levi in Shekhem, adds to the description of the atrocity only three words (in the Hebrew text) in which apparently it conveyed the moral judgment of their behavior: “and came upon the city unawares, and slew all the males”. “The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister” (Gen. 34:25, 27). Nevertheless, because of this action, two tribes in Israel were cursed for generations by their father Jacob.39 Although there are good reasons and ethical justifications for the Shekhem-Kibiyeh action, there is also an ethical postulate which is not itself a matter of rationalization and which calls forth a curse upon all these justified and valid considerations.The Shekhem operation and the curse of Jacob when he told his children what would befall them in the “end of days” is an example of the frightening problematic ethical reality: there may well be actions which can be vindicated and even justified—and are nevertheless accursed. Citation of this example from the Torah does not reflect belief in the uniqueness of the “morality of Judaism”. It does not imply that the action is forbidden for us as Jews. It is intended to indicate that the action is forbidden per se.40 With impressive insight, Leibowitz who would become a prominent critic of Israeli Government policies following the 1967 Six-Day War and in particular of the Settlement enterprise, concludes the essay by arguing further that what had led to the mindset which allowed Jewish youths to carry out such atrocities was the application of “the religious category of holiness to social, national, and political values and interests. . . . Country, state, and nation impose pressing obligations and tasks which are sometimes very difficult. They do not, on that account, acquire sanctity.”41 In contrast to Leibowitz, Rabbi Yisraeli, in a lengthy and detailed article titled “The Kibiyeh Incident in Light of Jewish Law,” presented a different approach and indeed reached very different conclusions.Yisraeli argues that the events at Kibiyeh ought to be evaluated in accordance with the international laws of war rather than criminal law.Yisraeli argues 39 See Gn 49:5–7—Ed. 40 Leibowitz, “After Kibiyeh,” 187–90. 41 See ibid. 1198 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman that, in accordance with Jewish law, the newly established State of Israel should use international law as the basis for its norms regarding war.Wars, he argues, are based on an agreement and norms in society which allow for killing without trial and that a warring side would expect the other side to respond in kind. Indeed, the use of force is an accepted instrument for solving disputes. According to Yisraeli, the establishment of the sovereign State of Israel and its position as a member of the international community dictated that it act in accord with the international norms of war. The current international convention permitted war and as a consequence the State of Israel was to operate within the accepted convention.42 As noted earlier, Yisraeli used the halachic principle of dina de malchuta dina (the law of the king is your law) to argue that, like the individual Jews in the Diaspora, who were obliged to comply with the laws of the state in which they were living, the State of Israel had an obligation to comply with international laws and conventions in general and on the issue of war in particular. Yisraeli notes that, should there be an international agreement in the future banning war, the State of Israel would be bound by this, but given current international conventions permitting acts of war, the modern wars of the State of Israel are “permitted wars”: In this way, war is permitted as long as it is conducted in accordance with the standards accepted by the nations of the world. With regard to Kibiyeh as well, we must examine whether such operations are carried out and accepted among the nations of the world. If so, we can view it as an agreement among the relevant parties that effectively eliminates the issue of murder.43 Yisraeli continues to argue that the Kibiyeh incident not only falls under the “permitted war” category but in fact is a “commanded war.” We learn from the above that there is a place for acts of retribution and vengeance against the enemies of Israel, and this operation falls under the category of Commanded War. Any harm afflicted upon such attackers, their sympathizers and children, is deserved punishment for their sins. There is no obligation to refrain from reprisal operations for fear 42 See Shaul Yisraeli, “The Kibiyeh Incedent in Light of Jewish Law,” Hatorah vhamedinah 5–6 (1953): 106. 43 Yisraeli, “Takrit Kibiyeh Leor Hahalacha,” 110. Translation from Edrei, “Law, Interpretation, and Ideology,” 214; Robert Eisen, “War, Revenge, and Jewish Ethics: Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli’s essay on Kibiyeh revisited,” AJS Review 36.1 (2012): 141–63. A Jewish Ethics of War 1199 that innocents may be harmed, as we are not responsible. They are the cause and we bear no responsibility.44 The most systematic effort to formulate a halachic platform to provide answers to issues related to the military and the conduct of war to date was undertaken by Rabbi Shlomo Goren (1917–94) in his three-volume book Meshiv Milchama (1983). Goren, a leading Religious Zionist rabbi, founded and served as the first head of the Military Rabbinate of the IDF and later served as Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983. As mentioned previously, while acknowledging that the previous debates in Jewish history were insufficient for confronting the challenges raised by modern nationhood, Goren, like Leibowitz, believed the new ethical code of war should be derived from Judaism.45 Nevertheless, as we will see, Goren took care to ensure that some of the biblical decrees are perceived as irrelevant for modern times. Goren begins his debate on the laws of war in his Meshiv Milchama by highlighting the importance of the perseveration of human life: There is no doubt that the preservation of human life is the highest principle in the Torah, the Halacha and the ethical teachings of the Prophets, this is not limited to the preservation of Jewish lives but rather to all humans created in the image of God . . .46 Goren goes on to apply the general principle of the sanctity of life to actual situations encountered during combat. Importantly, Goren emphasizes that one should not learn from nor emulate the behavior of Israel in the biblical wars in conducting wars today: It is forbidden to harm the civilian population, we should not learn from the wars of ancient days. Despite the unequivocal commandment of fighting in the Torah, we are commanded to have mercy even on our enemies and refrain from killing them even during times of war, unless in acts of self defence or if this necessary to secure a conquest and victory. It is forbidden to harm the non-combatant population and is, of course, forbidden to harm women and children that are not participating in the fighting. 44 Yisraeli, “Takrit Kibiyeh Leor Hahalacha,” 113; compare to the translation which appears in Edrei, “Law, Interpretation, and Ideology,” 215. 45 For a detailed analysis of Goren’s background and thought see: Arye Edrei, “Divine Spirit and Physical Power: Rabbi Shlomo Goren and the Military Ethic of the Israel Defence Forces,” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 7.1 (2006): 255–97. 46 Shlomo Goren, “The Ethics of War in Light of the Halacha,” in Meshiv Milchama ( Jerusalem: Idra Raba, 1983), I:14, 38. 1200 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman This applies for all wars with the exception of the ‘commanded wars’ of ancient times on which we were specifically commanded “you should not spare any soul”. The Torah commanded such harsh treatment of these enemies due to their harsh treatment of others. But we should not deduce, God forbid, from these wars on other wars or on the wars of modern times, as we have seen God has mercy also on idol worshipers and does not rejoice in their demise and is pained by their loss. We are commanded to follow His ways and pity his creatures . . . Goren confronts a mishnaic saying “[even] the best amongst the idol worshippers should be killed in times of war” which appears to condone the killing of innocents at times of war: . . . It is clear this applies only in times of war and only when the people in question pose a direct threat to us . . . the intention of the saying was not, heaven forbid, to imply that it is permitted to kill them when they are not participating in the fighting and do not pose a threat to us . . . There is neither justification nor permission [in this saying] to kill even in times of war, those who are not actively engaged in war against us and even our enemies when they do not constitute a direct threat to us. Goren finds the Talmudic and Mishnaic sources more relevant to modern times in their debates regarding issues such as the treatment of prisoners of war and of enemy fatalities: The ethics of war of any military in the world is demonstrated primarily by two categories: (a) the treatment of war prisoners; (b) the treatment of enemy fatalities. The contrast between the behaviour of the People of Israel’s army and the other armies at the time, regarding both these issues, are outlined in the Bible and the Talmud . . . there is clear evidence in the scriptures that the People of Israel treated prisoners of war, including those of foreign armies, mercifully . . . This behaviour was well known among the nations of the world which were neighbours of the People of Israel . . . As for our treatment of enemy fatalities, we have clear evidence for the high level of humanity and righteousness that was prevalent among the Army of Israel in ancient times. As it says in Samuel 2 (8;13) And David made himself a name when he returned from killing eighteen thousand Syrians in the Valley of Salt. And Rashi explained there: And David made himself a name—this was because David buried the enemy soldiers he killed at Adom and created a good name for the People of Israel, who are known to bury their enemies. . . . As we are loyal to the sanctified heritage and righteousness of the army of Israel in ancient times, we have established during my service in the IDF special burial units whose role it is to identify and bury the remains of enemy fatalities in times of A Jewish Ethics of War 1201 war. This is also in line with our earlier comment that the verse For in the image of God He made man (Genesis 9:6) applies to all humans without difference between nations or races.47 As in the case of Leibowitz over the Kibiyeh incident, Goren’s approach toward the ethics of war led him to a public disagreement with Rabbi Yisraeli over the IDF’s siege of Beirut (1982). In an article published in the Hatzofe newspaper targeting the religious Zionist community in Israel, Rabbi Goren, at the time the Chief Rabbi of Israel, argued that the siege was prohibited in accordance with the Halacha, as the IDF was required to leave an escape route to allow the terrorists of the city to seek refuge (both Goren and Yisraeli agreed on the need to allow the civilian population to flee). Rabbi Goren’s article drew an angry response from Rabbi Yisraeli.48 The halachic injunction about the need to allow for an escape route when placing a city under siege is based on interpretations of a verse in Numbers (31:7) describing the People of Israel’s war against the Midianites: “they warred against Midian as God had commanded.” The Rabbinic interpretation of this verse understood “as God had commanded” to mean that they left them an escape route in order to escape.49 This was later codified by Maimonides in his Laws of Kings: When besieging a city in order to capture it, you should not surround it on all four sides, but only on three sides, allowing an escape path for anyone who wishes to save his life . . . 50 Rabbi Goren argued that this injunction was not only of relevance to modern-day wars but that it was to be implemented literally. Rabbi Goren had categorized the wars of Israel generally, and the Lebanon war specifically, as falling under the category of commanded or obligatory wars; further, he argued that Maimonides had intended for this to cover commanded wars as well, and thus it was applicable to the wars of the State of Israel and the IDF. Goren bases his understanding that this principle is applicable to obligatory wars on two arguments: first, that this law derived 47 Goren, Meshiv Milchama, II: 38. 48 Goren’s article was originally published in Hatzofe on August 6, 1982. Rabbi Yisraeli’s response was published in the same newspaper on September 17, 1982. Both were republished in Goren’s Meshiv Milchama. We have used an expanded version of Yisraeli’s response published in Havat Binyamin by Rabbi S. Yisraeli, (Cfar Darom: Machon Hatorah vehaaretz, 1992); also see Edrei, “Divine Spirit and Physical Power.” 49 See Sifre Debei Rav, Numbers, Sec 157. 210. 50 Maimonides, Laws of Kings, Chapter 5, 6:7. 1202 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman from the biblical war with Midian, which was an obligatory war; second, from the fact that Maimonides had placed this ruling in proximity to his ruling, based on Deuteronomy,51 on the need for the side laying siege to call for peace, which applies to both obligatory and permissible wars.52 Goren also cites and strongly rejects an argument put forward by Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (1843–1926) in his Meshech Hochma Commentary on the Torah, which attempted to explain an apparent disagreement between Maimonides and Nachmanides on this issue, arguing that Maimonides’ omission of the need to leave an escape route for fighters during a siege as a separate commandment in his halachic code led one to conclude that his comments on the issue were more of a recommendation, having to do with military tactics, than a commandment related to ethics of war. Goren argues that it would be unacceptable even to consider that the commandments of the Torah could be focused on military tactics. Rabbi Yisraeli argued in a subsequent article of response that the view of Nachmanides, who argued based on the phrase “When besieging a city in order to capture it,” that Maimonides only meant for this commandment to be applicable to offensive, that is, permissible and not defensive wars, was the correct one. According to Yisraeli, since the two biblical categories of commanded war, war against Amalek and the wars against the Seven Nations, were wars of annihilation and therefore would by definition not allow for fighters to escape, it could be concluded that this was the case also for the third category of obligatory war, a war of selfdefense aimed at saving the People of Israel from an oppressor. Given that the Lebanon war was a defensive war and that the siege specifically targeted terrorists who attacked Israel, Yisraeli argued that they should not be allowed a path of escape. In contrast to Goren,Yisraeli adopts the interpretation of Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk relating to the apparent disagreement between Maimonides and Nachmanides on this issue. Rabbi Yisraeli concludes: 1. The terrorists who are actively focused on harming Jews in the Land of Israel and elsewhere without discrimination at any time are pursuers (Rodef ) under the halacha and should therefore be killed . . . 2. The war against such terrorists in order to amputate their murderous hands which are bloodied with the blood of the innocent, is a commanded obligatory war, codified by Maimonides under the cate51 Deuteronomy 20:10. 52 Maimonides, Laws of Kings, Chapter 5, 6:1. A Jewish Ethics of War 1203 gory of saving the People of Israel from an oppressor, and does not require the permission of the Sanhedrin. 3. Maimonides’ halachic ruling on this issue was agreed upon by all the rabbinical authorities in the Middle Ages. 4. In an obligatory war, the decision on whether to allow the besieged an escape path is to be determined by the military commanders and the government of the day [as this is a matter of military tactics]. 5. All this is relevant only to terrorists. The civilian population which is not involved in the fighting does not fall under these rules and should be allowed to escape the siege unimpeded.53 Though the teaching of Rabbi Goren and to a lesser extent Rabbi Yisraeli played some role in the formation of military doctrine, the tendency in later years was for a growing number of rabbis (usually not military rabbis) to express opinion and make halachic rulings about military issues and conduct. This phenomenon has been compounded by the tendency of serving soldiers to consult the rabbis of their community or hesder (a program which combines Judaism study with military service) rather than the official military rabbis. These opinions and rulings tend to be more specific in nature and may be followed by a small group of students of the specific rabbi in question, if at all. In many cases, other rabbis issue contradicting opinions and halachic rulings on similar issues.54 An example of a relatively comprehensive attempt to deal with the challenges of modern asymmetric warfare and terrorism can be found in Questions and Answers from the First Intifada by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in Jerusalem and rabbi of the settlement of Beit El.The book collected answers Rabbi Aviner had written in response to questions received from soldiers and civilians at the height of the first Palestinian uprising and is meant to provide guidance for similar situations in the future. The book deals not only with the actions of the military as a whole but with treatment of militants and civilian rioters and behavior of civilians under attack; also with whether or not the military is allowed 53 Havat Binyamin Yisraeli, The Beirut Siege in Light of the Halacha, Chapter 15, section 17, pp. 119. See also the detailed and interesting study of the debate between Goren and Yisraeli on this issue in Arye Edrei, “Divine Spirit and Physical Power,” 287–92. 54 Indeed, the problem of contradictory advice on military-related issues has led the Chief Rabbi of the IDF to issue a public call to non-military rabbis to refrain from issuing halachic advice on military issues to students who are serving soldiers; see Stuart Cohen, The Book and the Sword, 250, note 26. Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman 1204 to act against a civilian population in the name of deterrence or collective punishment. Does the Torah Teach Us How to Act against Rioters? Maimonides points out that Joshua, in his day, sent three epistles to the inhabitants of Eretz Israel: “Joshua, before entering Eretz Israel, sent three epistles. The first stated: “Anyone who wishes to take flight [from the oncoming army] should take flight.” He sent another: “Anyone who wishes to make peace should make peace.” He sent another: “Anyone who wishes to make war should do so.”55 What is told of Joshua in the Bible still has value as divine [word]. Initially, Joshua announced: If you are intending to flee, we will not pursue you. This is what the Gergashites did: “The Gergashite cleared out, trusting in the Holy One.”56 In his second epistle he wrote: “We need to enter this land and to set it up under our governance. If you desire to live with us in peace, you may remain therein. This land is ours, it is under our rule. If you decide to remain in it, you may, but the one condition for this is that you accept our governance.”57 Therefore, even today, if the Ishmaelites are not busy murdering us and acting as our foes, they may remain under our governance. But if they act as our foes through all kinds of violent disturbances, we will be unable to leave them among us, as it is written: “And if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land from before you, it will come about that those of them you leave will become stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will be foes to you on the land in which you dwell” (Num. 33:55).58 Aviner goes on to explore the way in which civilians should respond when being attacked by stone throwers, based on the Talmudic verse when someone tries to kill you, rise up and kill him first.59 When must I arise? After he threw a stone or a Molotov cocktail at me, or before—am I permitted to pursue and kill him? The Shulhan Arukh ruled thus: “One who pursues a fellow to kill him, and the pursuer has been warned and continues to pursue him, even if he is a minor, all of Israel is commanded to save him [the potential victim], by injuring one of the pursuer’s limbs; and if they cannot aim and save [the potential victim] without killing the pursuer, they should 55 Maimonides, Laws of Kings, 6:5. 56 JT Shevi’it 6a. 57 See Maimonides, Laws of Kings, 6:1. 58 Aviner, Questions and Answers, 9. 59 BT tract San. 72a. A Jewish Ethics of War 1205 kill him even though he has not yet killed.”60 From this we conclude that it is forbidden to kill an attacker who tries to kill you unless there is no other way to save oneself or your fellow. If he already threw the stone, it is not permissible to kill him, but of course he must be caught and brought to trial. However, in most cases, one who threw one will continue to throw additional times and therefore—ostensibly—there is cause for killing him after he threw once, in order to save others from future occasions. . . .Yet, of course, this is not a matter that can be carried out by an individual, since at the present he himself is not in danger. In all likelihood, there is indeed a future danger to others, and still, it is a matter that the army and police need to address and decide what should be done.61 On the issue of carrying out acts of deterrence in the midst of enemy population, Aviner argues that the army is not only allowed to do so but is indeed obligated to do so as part of its role as a defender of the People of Israel.62 Of course: If it is possible to arrange the matter with subtlety and pleasantness—that is surely fine; but if not, it is obligatory to employ punishment and deterrence, as in the words of Maimonides: “[It is] unsustainable without punishments and laws, and thus unsustainable without stationing judges dispersed in each and every city . . . and unsustainable without a king, who should inspire fear and take varied preventative measures, and strengthen the hand of the judges and vest them with authority.”63 Based on Maimonides, Aviner goes on to argue that the following four criteria should be considered when determining the extent of deterrence activities: 1. Greatness of the crime. The greater the crime, the heavier the penalty. 2. Frequency of the occurrence of the crime. The more often the crime is committed, the heavier the penalty necessary. And if it is rare, a slight penalty is sufficient. 3. Strength of incitement. The more that the crime incites the person because he has a great desire to commit it, or because great pressure is enacted upon him to commit it, the heavier the penalty must be, in order to serve as a deterrent. 60 Shulhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, 425a. 61 Aviner, Questions and Answers, 13. 62 Aviner, Questions and Answers, 17. 63 Aviner quotes here from Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 3:41. Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman 1206 4. Ease with which the action can be committed [in secret]. If it is easy to carry out the crime without being caught, only a harsh and threatening punishment can prevent it from recurring.64 Asked whether such treatment does not contradict the halachic notion of compassion, Aviner again draws on Maimonides to argue that when punishment in necessary, avoiding it is tantamount to punishing the undeserving innocent population.65 Another interesting attempt to re-examine the ethics of war in Judaism in light of emerging challenges came in an article titled Questions on the Ethics of War by Rabbi Yuval Sherlo,66 the head of the Petah Tikva yeshiva and a pragmatist religious Zionist Rabbi. The article was written in the aftermath of Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale military operation conducted by the IDF in 2002, at the height of the second intifada. The operation, the largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War, was aimed at stopping the increasing civilian deaths in Israel from Palestinian terrorist attacks, especially suicide bombings, and it resulted in the death and injury of many Palestinians as well as considerable damage to property. Concerned by voices within the religious community at the time (which argued that when fighting occurs in the midst of civilians the focus should be entirely on ensuring the safety of the soldiers, even at the price of harming innocent civilians), Sherlo tried to present a more balanced approach to the issue. Like many before him, Sherlo conceded that the debates on this issue throughout the history of Judaism were insufficient for dealing with the challenges at hand: Operation “Defensive Shield” led to the resurfacing of a discussion on the Jewish laws of war . . . questions pertaining to the Jewish collective in terms of the way war itself is conducted. For many generations, we were denied the privilege of clarifying these questions, and therefore, the Torah offers little guidance. . . . One of the main topics that arose for discussion during this war was the question of war ethics. . . . The question of whether war against those who seek our demise is at all ethical is entirely not negotiable. It is a matter of simple justice, divine morality, and in effect, the Torah precept of delivering Israel from the hand of the enemy. 64 Aviner, Questions and Answers, 18; Aviner refers the reader to Maimonides, Guide, 3:41. 65 Aviner, Questions and Answers, 18 referring to Maimonides, Guide, 3:39. 66 Yuval Sherlo, “Questions on the Ethics of War,” Tzohar 11 (2003): 97–104. A Jewish Ethics of War 1207 The question on which the discussion focuses is whether we are obligated to fulfil additional [ethical] foundations, beyond our will and obligation to achieve victory in war. . . . Sherlo seems to combine both the exclusive and the inclusive attitude, arguing that, despite the apparent widespread hypocrisy within the international law system and the lack of objectivity within the international community, in particular with regard to Israel, international conventions do maintain some validity from an halachic perspective: The source of the obligations of conduct today is in the legal agreements that the nations of the world formally took upon themselves. . . . The international judicial institutions are also unfair and politically tainted, and serve as a tool for the achievement of political aims rather than as an arm of justice. However, our vision of repairing the world— tikkun olam—in the Kingdom of G-d obligates us to ask the question at the theoretical level, and not to abdicate responsibility for fear of being condemned by the nations of the world. It is imperative that we ask these questions internally and consider: Is it the Torah’s intent that our message to the nations be a recognition of the ethical boundaries during war, and that not everything is permissible; or is the thrust of our message to the world that if indeed you come in the name of truth and justice, you must not enact limitations during war against wickedness and evil, and the army waging combat is not required to restrain itself from doing anything in order to achieve victory—mainly it must not refrain from actions that would prevent it from endangering itself. Sherlo raises a number of relevant scenarios which present themselves in modern asymmetrical warfare, such as combatants operating within, and hiding behind, civilian populations, and asks: The common aspect to all of the questions is that on one side of the balance is certainly the endangerment of soldiers’ lives, and the question we are asking is whether there is another side to the balance that must be considered, and if sometimes soldiers lives must even be endangered in order to avoid killing, or is it that the other side of the balance contains nothing, and we must fight G-d’s war, no holds barred? While noting that the biblical and rabbinical texts are generally in line with the harsher approach, Sherlo puts forward four halachic sources as a basis for advocating a more balanced approach: 1. The status of natural morality. Sherlo rejects arguments by some that the so-called natural morality is not relevant either to modern times 1208 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman or to Judaism. He argues, rather that the Torah itself in fact recognized natural morality. 2. Prohibition against killing a person. Sherlo argues that the categorical prohibition against the shedding of blood, commanded by God when Noah disembarked from the ark, as well as the Ten Commandments’ categorical prohibition on murder, are absolute commands that do not distinguish between men and women, Jew and non-Jew. These prohibitions against killing mandate caution in war, not to kill too much. 3. Prohibition on sealing a sieged city from all sides. Like Goren before him, Sherlo uses the argument between Maimonides and Nachmanides above to conclude that this commandment’s purpose is at the very least to teach us that even during war we should treat our enemies with mercy. 4. The desecration of the name of God. Based on a Talmudic discussion (Tract Yebamot 79:1) about the story in the second book of Samuel (21) in which King David handed over seven of King Saul’s sons to the Gibeonites—as punishment for the harsh treatment the Gibeonites had suffered at the hands of King Saul—despite the forfeit of their lives, in order to avoid the desecration of the name of God. Sherlo argues that this story could lead one to question whether or not the need to protect one’s own life trumps the need to avoid the desecration of the name of God. Indeed, one should be careful in the treatment of others, as the desecration of God’s name is a consequence of the actions of the People of Israel.67 5. The issue of saving oneself by use of others’ property. Sherlo alludes to some commentators who argue that one is not allowed to save himself if this means damaging the property of another.68 Sherlo argues that this could be expanded to situation of combat to mean that innocent civilians cannot be harmed even if terrorist are hiding amongst them. Sherlo concludes that, contrary to “the feeling among the public that the Halachic position uniformly does not allow for the endangerment of 67 See Sherlo, Questions on the Ethics of War, 102–3. 68 The majority view is that damaging another’s property is prohibited unless this is needed in order to save one’s life. In such a case, compensation should be paid for the damage. The minority view cited by Sherlo argues that the prohibition on damaging another’s property stands even in case of danger to one’s life. A Jewish Ethics of War 1209 soldiers at all, not even a scratch, to avoid harming innocents who are not involved in combat,” this issue was not clear cut and required serious consideration and debate.69 Similar issues are discussed in a more recent essay published in the Military Rabbinate Journal by a serving military rabbi, Major Rabbi Samuel Dov Rosenberg, titled “Ethics, battle and dealing with the enemy and his civil environment from the view of halachic law.” Following a survey of biblical and rabbinical views on the different categories of war, Rabbi Rosenberg proceeds to present the halachic reasoning for defining the contemporary wars of Israel as commanded or obligatory wars: Rabbi Herzog, who was the First Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, determined with certainty at the time of the outbreak of the War of Independence, that the war coming upon us is a “divinely commanded war” (Rabbi Yitzhak Ha-Levy Herzog in his article about the establishment of the State and its wars, Tehumin 4:19), obligatory beyond any doubt, both in the opinion of Maimonides who states that “helping Israel from the hand of an enemy that has come upon them” is a “divinely commanded war,” since the goal of our Arab neighbours is to leave no memory or remnant of the Jews in Israel, and to remove us by force and destroy us. Also, of course, in the opinion of Nachmanides, who emphasizes that the commandment to conquer Eretz Israel applies to every generation, since it is a commandment from the Torah. . . .70 After the War of Independence as well, when Israel’s boundaries had already been determined, the eternal struggle against the enemies who attack and harm us continued, and therefore, every war based on the conquest of the Land is a “divinely commanded war.”71 Likewise, an offensive—and not just a defensive—war, is included in the category “divinely commanded war,” when the enemy intends to attack in the future.72 69 Sherlo was subsequently attacked by Rabbi Yisrael Rosen for being too apolo- getic in his approach and for forcing an interpretation on the text that does not exist there, in order to “beautify” the halacha and Jewish tradition by trying to adjust it to modern ethical conventions. See Yisrael Rosen, “Unhalachic Apologetics (a response to Rabbi Yuval Sherlo),” Tzohar 12 (2003): 135–39. 70 See Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, “Ha-Milhamah,” in Le-or Ha-halakha, 65. 71 Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, “Peulot Tagmul Le-Or Ha-halakha,” in Tzomet Ha-Torah veHa-Medinah, Part 3, 253. R. Rabbi Katriel Fishel Tchorsh wrote the same in his article “Milhemet Reshut Mitzvah o Hova?” in ibid., 243. 72 Samuel Dov Rosenberg,“Ethics, Battle and Dealing with the Enemy and His Civil Environment from the View of Halachic Law,” Machniech 2 (2008): 303, referring to Responsa Heikhal Yitzhak, “Orekh Hayyim,” 37, as well as Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, in Tzomet Ha-Torah ve-Ha-Medinah, Part 3, 253. 1210 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman Rosenberg also discussed the issue of harming the civilian population during combat. According to guidelines set by the Torah, one cannot apply the rule “When someone tries to kill you, rise up and kill him first” to a population of tens of thousands, even if situated in an environment hostile to us, and even if they view us as an occupier, since it is a small minority that is harming us and seeks to kill us.73 Even in a “divinely commanded war,” with the exception of those places where the Torah instructed us “You shall let no breathing creature live” (Deut. 20:16), we are commanded to have mercy and not to kill a civilian population, and certainly one must not harm women and children, except when, for self-defense, it is necessary, and for purposes of conquest and victory.74 On the other hand, when there is actual and apparent danger in the eyes of the combatant, there is a strong and sound basis for war requiring that every action must be carried out such that no soldier or civilian on the combatants’ side be harmed, and in this situation one must not compare the number of our soldiers likely to be harmed with civilians of the Israel-hating enemy who are likely to pay the price of this war with their lives.75 Nevertheless, as Rabbi Yisraeli argued in the case of Kibiyeh, Rabbi Rosenberg argues here that civilians who provide cover for fighters are “taking their lives in their own hands” and that if they are harmed in the course of battle, the hands of the soldiers are “clean.”76 Rosenberg ends his lengthy article by listing a number of conclusions (see the list below) regarding the halachic status of the wars of Israel today, and the way they should be conducted. Starting with the determination that the the wars of Israel today fall under the category of “commanded wars,” Rosenberg proceeds to rule on more specific issues, such as whether or not it is permitted to destroy the house of a suspected terrorist in battle, and the treatment of civilians during combat situations in populated areas. While the readership of this publication among IDF soldiers would likely be limited, given that it was published by the IDF itself, this article was written as a guide to be drawn upon in actual combat situations: 73 Rabbi Hayyim David HaLevi, “Ha-ba le-horgekha, hashkem le-horgo be-hayyenu ha-tziboriyyim,” Tehumin, 1: 343. 74 Rabbi Shlomo Goren, Meshiv Milhama, I:14. 75 Samuel Dov Rosenberg,“Ethics, Battle and Dealing with the Enemy,” 306–7, referring to Rabbi Abraham Shapira, “Milhama ve-Musar,” Tehumin 4:182. 76 R. Shlomo Aviner, Responsa on the Intifada, 24. A Jewish Ethics of War 1211 1. In the opinion of Maimonides, coming to the aid of Israel against a pursuer is defined as a “divinely commanded war.” It seems also that Nachmanides maintains that every war for the conquest of Eretz Israel in every generation is a “divinely commanded war.” 2. The halachic authority of the government to declare and launch a “divinely commanded war” is identical to that of a king. 3. It is not relevant to consider killing during war at the level of the individual, since the obligation to preserve life from any danger is waived during wartime for the needs of the nation. 4. The rabbis of Eretz Israel determined during the War of Independence, with total certainty, that our war was a “divinely commanded war.” 5. Ongoing war as well, which is more complex than a circumscribed war, as well as offensive operations, are included in the rubric of a “divinely commanded war.” 6. The prohibition against holding an enemy city under siege from all directions does not apply in a “divinely commanded war,” in the opinion of most of the medieval sages (Rishonim). 7. The prohibition against destroying fruit trees during a siege against the enemy applies to destruction that would serve no purpose or destruction as an end in itself. 8. It is fitting and proper that, while deliberating over a decision as to whether to go to war, the component of emotional harm and the devaluation of human life be considered. 9. Despite this, it can be reckoned that during a “divinely commanded war,” when the combatants are convinced of the righteousness and the religious obligation that they are upholding, their emotional health and ethical standing will not be compromised. 10. The Laws of the Pursuer (dinei rodef ) cannot be applied to a hostile population numbering in the tens of thousands. 11. There is nothing preventing harming the house of a terrorist, even if his neighbor will be harmed by destruction of the building. 12. When a terrorist’s neighbor helps him or even ignores his neighbour’s activity, he is not considered innocent and he is taking his life into his own hands. 1212 Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman 13. Civilians situated near terrorists and who do not move away from them are endangering their lives, and our forces have no responsibility to avoid harming them due to their proximity to civilians. 14. A soldier who senses actual life danger during his operational activity will do all that is necessary to protect himself from harm, and will not be deterred by fear of harming civilians on the enemy side. 15. During combat against terrorists in a populated area, it is proper to warn unagitated civilians in the area to distance themselves from the place of combat activity.77 As we have seen, contemporary attempts to establish a halachic platform for issues of ethics or conduct of war have produced a variety of opinions, not only, in regard to the respective roles of the halacha and international conventions in establishing a contemporary Jewish ethics of war, but also in the differing conclusions they derive at times from identical Jewish sources. Following the more encompassing efforts by Rabbi Goren and Yisraeli and others to create a wide-ranging halachic platform through which the issues of military and war could be formed and addressed, more recent efforts have been more focused and tend to come in response to a certain incident or event. The ongoing challenge of applying a Judaism-based ethics of war to practical circumstances is evidenced by the fact that Rabbi Yisraeli had used the “inclusive” approach of drawing on international conventions of war to expand what he saw as Judaism’s too restrictive approach to war, inadequate for the reality faced by the modern state of Israel, and by the fact that Rabbi Goren, a proponent of the “exclusive” approach, used hermeneutic flexibility to dismiss the more extreme decrees of the Bible while applying others literally. The Jewish hermeneutic tradition, which allows for differing and often conflicting interpretations for the same sources, and the lack of a contemporary halachic authority on these issues, mean that the issue of norms of war in Judaism remains unsettled. It could be argued that some of the scholars under discussion, whether proponents of the “inclusive” or of the “exclusive” approach, had approached Jewish texts or international norms selectively, with a preestablished ethical or political view. It is important to stress that these debates represent the private opinions of these particular rabbis, and, with the exception of the writings of Rabbi Goren, the views expressed are aimed at creating a certain intellectual atmosphere for their students rather than directly shape the orders and procedures of the IDF. Indeed, 77 Samuel Dov Rosenberg,“Ethics, Battle and Dealing with the Enemy,” 307–8. A Jewish Ethics of War 1213 the IDF ethical code was authored not by rabbis but by internationally acclaimed ethicists. With the growing weight of the religious soldiers in the IDF, however, the potential influence of such debates and commentaries on individual soldiers on the ground should not be discounted.78 Another challenge which has emerged in recent years is the potential for a clash between some rabbis and the military and state authorities. This was particularly evident in the buildup to the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the Northern West Bank in 2005, when some leading religious Zionist rabbis issued halachic decrees calling on soldiers to refuse to carry out military orders to evacuate Jewish settlements. Nevertheless, experience from those events has shown that the soldiers, almost without exception, followed the orders of the military rather than those of the rabbis.79 N&V 78 See on this Stuart Cohen, “The Scroll or the Sword? Tensions between Judaism and Military Service in Israel,” in Democratic Societies and Their Armed Forces; Israel in Comparative Context, ed. Stuart A. Cohen (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 272–73. 79 See Gedaliah Afterman, Understanding the Theology of Israel’s Extreme Religious Right, 248–52. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1215–36 1215 Book Reviews Resting on the Heart of Christ: The Vocation and Spirituality of the Seminary Theologian by Deacon James Keating, Ph.D (Omaha: IPF Publications, 2009 ), 208 pp.; and Seminary Theology: Teaching in a Contemplative Way, edited by Deacon James Keating, Ph.D (Omaha: IPF Publications, 2010 ), xiv + 165 pp. D EACON James Keating and the Institute for Priestly Formation, through these two books, Resting on the Heart of Christ and Seminary Theology: Teaching in a Contemplative Way, have endeavored to give spiritual formation its rightful place in the seminary, beginning with the seminary theologian, who teaches and models wisdom to seminarians. These volumes are addressed principally to seminary theologians (professors), though they would be profitable to seminarians, helping them to take a more contemplative approach to their studies and to modify expectations for their professors and themselves. Resting on the Heart of Christ addresses the vocation and spirituality of the seminary theologian.The book is divided into six chapters. In the first chapter, Keating describes the real state of the separation in theological methodology between universities and seminaries, providing a snapshot of the state of theology and of the attitudes of theologians today. The seminary theologian, unlike the pure academic, eagerly thinks “out of love for God in the ecclesial service of intellectually forming seminarians, whose desires are being purified by contemplative study within a sacramental communal life” (56). In the second chapter, Keating expresses his desire for contemplative theology in the classroom.The seminary theologian is one who facilitates a deep encounter with Christ in the classroom. Lectures can be conceived as an extension of the Liturgy of the Word. Theology done with a deep sense of faith, rather than from a hermeneutic of suspicion, can lead to the necessary integration between knowing and believing. 1216 Book Reviews This leads Keating, in chapter three, to lament the fact that seminary professors are not usually trained to so orient their lectures and study in this way. Recognizing that the study and teaching habits of seminary theologians will have a profound impact, not only on future priests but also on the laity, Keating proposes that the seminary theologian give greater attention to his own meditation and selection of books; interestingly, he advocates taking an “iconic stance” toward theological studies. The critical factor in making this possible will be the horarium. Keating admits (114): “The whole argument of this book will go nowhere unless and until seminary theologians are given time, guidance, and material assistance to move their teaching method and preparation in a direction that welcomes contemplation.” Chapter four gives the seminary theologian some sense of how spirituality, integrated with academic theology, might concretely affect classroom teaching. Keating describes this integration as “a surrendered searching, a discerning abandonment, or a listening trust. The terms listening, discerning, and searching imply a cognitive aspect in welcoming truth, whereas surrender, abandonment, and trust express the faith response of welcoming a Person” (124). Teaching in a contemplative way requires periods of silence in class to meditate and to allow oneself to behold the beauty of truth. The goal is not just to know about God but to know God in an affective way. These moments of silence will initially seem awkward, but Keating believes that the pastoral effects of this practice will build up the contemplative habitus, which will have pastoral effects through the handing on of the fruits of contemplation in parish life. Ultimately, this is directed toward Eucharistic worship, a subject addressed in chapter five. Keating stresses the importance of praying together as a seminary faculty, especially at Mass; it is important not only for the theologian and for community life, but also for the seminarian, who will see that his professors are striving for holiness. In chapter six, Keating revisits the idea that the interpenetration of spirituality and academics has a pastoral aim. Since it is the task of the seminary to form future priests whose ministry flows from a pastoral charity rooted in deep communion with Christ, pure academic theology will never be enough. After a short conclusion, Keating provides a tool for seminarians to use in receiving this contemplative teaching, modeling student learning after the practice of lectio divina. Seminary Teaching:Teaching in a Contemplative Way develops these themes more fully. The work is the fruit of a seminar in which seven seminary theologians, including Keating, studied the possibility of actually implementing this contemplative approach to teaching. The volume is divided Book Reviews 1217 into three sections, each with two essays, and concludes with a synthesis by Dennis Billy, C.Ss.R. In the first section (“Vision for Renewal”) Keating and Thomas McDermott give the general overview of the approach. Keating’s essay is a synthesis of Resting but provides the essential elements of the approach. McDermott’s promotes the cultivation of the habit of lifelong learning in the diocesan priesthood. Ongoing formation is a neglected aspect of priestly formation. Given competing interests and time constraints, only the priest who is formed to love learning will continue his studies in a serious, contemplative way after ordination. In the second section (“Sources of Wisdom”), Thomas Lane and Perry Cahal apply the contemplative approach to the teaching of Scripture and the Fathers. Lane, in an approach similar to that of Benedict XVI in Jesus of Nazareth, discusses the usefulness and limitations of the historical-critical method, which must be complemented by the life of prayer. The study of Scripture aims at deepening intimacy with Christ. Likewise, Cahal notes how deeply in love the Fathers were with the Word of God and the Person of Christ. It is the love of Christ that ultimately transformed the intellect of the Fathers and shaped the moral life and action of the early Church. The third section (“Models of Writing and Teaching”) is written by Margaret Turek and John Gresham. Turek’s essay, “Balthasar’s approach to a Theology of God the Father,” allows one to contemplate the Fatherhood of God and gives a glimpse of what the contemplative approach might look like in the classroom. Her essay also allows one to contemplate the Paternal-Filial relationship and the Divine-human relationship, which have important implications for future priests in understanding spiritual fatherhood and their relationship to their flocks. Gresham focuses on applying a contemplative theological approach to Christology and attempts to draw seminarians into deeper intimacy with Christ through history, the Scriptures, the Fathers, and through the experience of and encounter with the Risen One. Dennis Billy concludes the work with a short synthesis of each essay and with a list of emerging challenges. One of the challenges presented by Dennis Billy at the conclusion of Seminary Theology is the need for refinement of terminology. The terms “meditation” and “contemplation” are often used interchangeably, though this is not the case in the spiritual masters. The term “contemplative theology” needs further refinement. A second challenge that must be faced honestly is whether academic rigor can be maintained in the pursuit of quasi-monastic wisdom.There is some content ( fides quae) that must be appropriated by seminarians and must be taught by seminary 1218 Book Reviews theologians. What will the standard be? The proof will be seen in the works of new priests formed at those seminaries in which this model is being consistently applied. A third challenge lies in the horarium of the seminary. If the institution and faculty are not committed to an horarium that fosters contemplation, as Keating admits, the project will likely fail. A fourth challenge is that, with seemingly endless increases in the mandates of the Program of Priestly Formation, faculty may be resistant to changing their own habits in teaching style method and may be reluctant to thoroughly revise course notes and content to foster contemplation. Finally, some would argue that it simply naïve and idealistic to think that “monks” can be formed who will, at the same time, also be effective pastoral ministers in an ever-busy world. On the other hand, it is by aspiring to holiness of life and contemplating the Lord that spiritual communion with Christ is reached. It is often the task of the Church to propose the ideal of excellence to her children. Despite these challenges, the Institute for Priestly Formation and Deacon Keating purposefully have undertaken the task of rediscovering an approach to theology which cultivates a genuine love for learning and for the acquisition of holy wisdom. A truly positive assessment should be given to the contribution made by these works. First, the books recover and integrate into priestly formation the wisdom flowing from the monastic and Ignatian spiritual traditions. Second, the works capture the state of seminary theology and priestly formation in recent decades, accurately portraying the existing tension between the academic and formational models of seminary education. Through the proposed contemplative model, they challenge the idea of “pure” scholarship with the idea that faith, with its hermeneutic of trust rather than suspicion, is an essential, purifying element in seminary intellectual formation. Third, the books revisit the “content” of seminary education, reminding seminary theologians that the essential content of theology is God, the Word, written and handed down. While maintaining academic rigor, professors can be more judicious in their choices of course material, selecting readings which foster contemplation and intellectual conversion. Fourth, the volumes demonstrate a healthy affirmation of the vocation of the seminarian of today, acknowledging the cultural challenges, fears and hopes, and authentic desire for holiness that exists in many. These volumes are an important resource for anyone serving as a seminary theologian. The Institute for Priestly Formation was founded to assist bishops in the spiritual formation of seminarians. If seminaries were fulfilling their mission, why was or is such an institute necessary? Romanus Cessario has pointed out that there has been a separation between scholarship and Book Reviews 1219 sanctity, between the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of wisdom, exemplified in the differences between “university theology” and “monastic wisdom” (“Scholarship and Sanctity,” Nova et Vetera 8 [Spring 2010]: 233–49). These separations are not the only ones. Indeed, Pastores dabo vobis and the Program of Priestly Formation speak of four dimensions or pillars of formation: human, intellectual, pastoral, and spiritual. While it is hoped that these dimensions would be integrated, often one pillar dominates. Seminaries have attempted to keep pace with their secular peers and their Protestant counterparts through accreditation processes. This has brought about greater academic standardization and may have improved academic rigor at Catholic seminaries. Occasionally, this has come at the expense of the pursuit of wisdom or one of the other dimensions of priestly formation. At other seminaries, it is not the intellectual dimension that is emphasized but the pastoral dimension that is given priority, usually at the expense of academic rigor. Pastoral activity uprooted from the Church’s intellectual tradition and spirituality seldom, if ever, bears good fruit. It is true that in Pastores dabo vobis (25 March 1992), Blessed John Paul II wrote: “The whole formation imparted to candidates for the priesthood aims at preparing them to enter into communion with the charity of Christ the Good Shepherd. Hence, their formation in its different aspects must have a fundamentally pastoral character” (57). Nevertheless, the dimensions of formation can become isolated from one another. By entering deeply into communion with Christ, by knowing Him, through prayer, study, and human formation, the seminarian is formed pastorally. The process begins with prayer.To be a shepherd of souls, one must know the Good Shepherd intimately. Hence, the Program of Priestly Formation (115) gives priority to spiritual formation: “Since spiritual formation is the core that unifies the life of a priest, it stands at the heart of seminary life and is the center around which all other aspects are integrated.”1 This is what these two volumes represent: the initial movement toward re-establishing the rightful place of spirituality as the core of priestly formation. They are a reminder of a famous maxim of St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori: “If God is lost, all is lost.” N&V Earl Fernandes Athenaeum of Ohio/Mount St. Mary’s Seminary Cincinnati, Ohio 1 Program for Priestly Formation, 5th edition (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2006), 115. 1220 Book Reviews The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig S. Keener (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 869 pp. C RAIG K EENER has already made significant contributions to New Testament scholarship with his impressive and extremely thorough biblical commentaries. His more than one-thousand-page commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1999) and his more than sixteen-hundred-page commentary on the Gospel of John (2003) are exhaustively researched and masterfully written. With his The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, Keener has made yet another significant mark in New Testament scholarship, this time in historical Jesus studies. As a Gospel commentator, Keener has a unique vantage point from which to engage historical Jesus scholarship, and this gives him certain advantages over other historical Jesus scholars who have not had to do the kind of painstaking work with the careful attention to the Gospels that Keener has done. Added to this experience is the fact that he has established himself as a world-class scholar not only of the synoptic tradition or of the Johannine tradition, but rather of both. Like his earlier commentaries, this volume is mammoth in size, containing more than two hundred pages of endnotes, which number more than four thousand, as well as a bibliography of works cited spanning more than one hundred pages.This book belongs on the shelf of every university library, and on the library of every scholar interested in historical Jesus research. Keener’s tome is divided into three major parts. In the first part, Keener spends four chapters discussing the history of historical Jesus scholarship and the various portraits of Jesus painted by contemporary scholars; he then concludes with a very careful and nuanced discussion of the various other “gospels” outside of the biblical canon. In the book’s second part, composed of six chapters, Keener examines the historical nature of the synoptic Gospels and discusses their genre, very carefully arguing that they represent ancient biographies. In the volume’s final section, Keener elucidates in twelve chapters what we learn about Jesus from what Keener believes to be the “best” sources, that is, the Gospels. Keener’s first chapter, “The Development of Jesus Scholarship” (3–13), provides a valuable overview of the history of historical Jesus scholarship, which would make for a useful handout in university classes introducing students to the study of the Bible, the New Testament, or Jesus. His initial comments linking such research with early trends within the Renaissance period and then with Deists in the sixteenth century are insightful but could have benefited from greater depth. In particular, Keener fails to mention key seventeenth-century precursors like Baruch Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670), John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christi- Book Reviews 1221 anity (1695), and John Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious (1696), despite the central role each played in laying the groundwork for later biblical studies, including the foundations of what would become known as the First Quest for the Historical Jesus. In chapter 2, “Jesus the Cynic Sage?” (14–32), Keener deftly shows the problems with such modern reconstructions prevalent in television programs and in the Jesus Seminar, which too often ignore Jesus’ authentic Jewish milieu (17–18). Chapter 3, “Jesus and Judaism” (33–46), highlights the most important emphasis of the so-called Third Quest of the Historical Jesus, namely that Jesus was Jewish. He surveys the works of scholars like Geza Vermes and E. P. Sanders, critically evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. The final chapter in this initial section, “Other Gospels?” (47–69), involves a nuanced discussion of other noncanonical “gospels,” especially those found in Gnostic literature. Here his endnotes become especially illuminating, particularly regarding the debate about a Syriac original for the Gospel of Thomas, and Gnostic literature’s reliance upon material in the canonical Gospels (419–24). For such a short chapter on such a complex topic, Keener’s discussion is impressive. Arguably the most trenchant section of his book is the second part, “The Character of the Gospels” (71–161), which includes a significant and thorough methodological discussion regarding ancient genre. This is where Keener’s command of classical sources is especially impressive. He had already dazzled scholars with his use of more than ten thousand ancient extrabiblical sources in his commentary on Matthew, and his even more impressive use of not quite twenty thousand ancient extrabiblical sources in his commentary on John. His mastery and command of ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish literature shows throughout this present volume but is especially keen in his discussion of ancient genre. He argues very persuasively that the synoptic Gospels are best categorized in the genre of ancient biography, which he argues as well for John in his John commentary. Since the publication of Keener’s book, any scholar who disputes this claim must wrestle with his arguments over these ninety pages of main text, and in the slightly more than fifty pages of discussion contained in his endnotes (428–82). Keener explains, “Whereas the apocryphal gospels and apocryphal acts betray characteristics of novels . . . the four canonical Gospels much more closely resemble ancient biography” (77). He explains why this is the case on the same page: one would . . . be hard-pressed to find a novel so clearly tied to its source as Matthew or Luke is. Works with a historical prologue like 1222 Book Reviews Luke’s (Lk 1:1–4; Acts 1:1–2) were historical works; novels lacked such fixtures, although occasionally they could include a proem telling why the author made up the story. . . . [T]he extant first-century Gospels reflect too much authentic Palestinian Jewish background, sometime including even obscure cultural details, to be ancient novels. (77) Keener then spends the next eighty-three pages defending this case. His fifth chapter, “The Gospels as Biographies” (73–84), introduce the case for reading the Gospels as ancient biographies. Chapter 6, “Luke-Acts as History” (85–94), shows how, “[w]hile taken by itself the Gospel [of Luke] is biography, as part of Luke’s two-volume work the Gospel becomes a biographic component in a larger history” (86). He enumerates many of the details within Luke and Acts that point to ancient historiography, including his selective use of the first-person plural, public monologues, and historical prefaces (86–87). As just one example, Keener explains, “As one might expect for eyewitness material, the ‘we’ sections tend to be among Luke’s most detailed material” (90). In chapters 7, “Ancient Historiography as History” (95–108), and 8, “Ancient Historiography as Rhetoric” (109–25), Keener underscores how important it was to ancient historians to get their facts correct and to communicate them in rhetorically sophisticated ways; he emphasizes the manner in which ancient history was both similar to and different from the modern historical enterprise. Chapters 9, “The Gospels’ Written Sources” (126–38), and 10, “The Gospels’ Oral Sources” (139–61), examine the types of sources the synoptic Gospels likely used. He follows a form of the two-source hypothesis that most New Testament scholars use, although, to his credit, he acknowledges the criticisms of such an approach, criticism which he believes “merits fair consideration” (131). Relying upon the groundbreaking work of Birger Gerhardsson (for example, Memory and Manuscript, 1961), Samuel Byrskog (for example, Story as History—History as Story, 2000), Alan Millard (for example, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus, 2000), and Richard Bauckham ( Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006), Keener demonstrates how Jesus’ disciples would probably have been able to preserve the core of Jesus’ teaching, possibly through note taking and also especially well-trained memory: “Our starting assumption should be that disciples of Jesus would have learned and transmitted his teachings no less carefully than most ancient disciples transmitted the wisdom of their mentors” (150). The final and lengthiest portion of the book incorporates a careful look at the historical information contained in the Gospels on several matters. Chapter 11, “John the Baptist” (165–77), shows how reliable the Book Reviews 1223 Gospel’s basic portrayal of John the Baptist is. Chapter 12, “Jesus the Galilean Jew” (178–85), shows how well the Gospels’ portrayals of Jesus fit his Galilean context. Chapter 13, “Jesus the Teacher” (186–95), relying especially upon the 1977 Hartford Seminary Foundation doctoral dissertation of Robert Johnston, entitled, “Parabolic Interpretations Attributed to Tannaim,” emphasizes how Jesus’ parables fit their Palestinian Jewish context. Chapter 14, “Kingdom Discipleship” (196–213), rightly emphasizes Daniel 7 and the figure of the Son of Man as an essential background to Jesus’ discussion of the Kingdom. The chapter also discusses many of Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom within their Second Temple Jewish context. Chapter 15, “Jesus’ Jewish Ethics” (214–22), links his ethical teachings on such things as love, divorce, halakhic issues of purity, et cetera, with his demands for discipleship. Chapter 16, “Conflicts with Other Teachers” (223–37), shows the likelihood of Jesus’ conflicts with other Jewish teachers of the day, as found in every strand of the tradition. In chapter 17, “Jesus the Prophet” (238–55), Keener discusses Jesus’ ministry in the Second Temple Jewish context, where there was an expectation of a Moses-like and Elijah-like prophet. His discussion here of the community Jesus creates is very illuminating. Keener understands Jesus’ selection of 12 disciples in light of parallels in the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran. I think an even stronger connection can be made with the early Israelite community in Exodus 24, where there are: twelve pillars representing the 12 tribes (like Jesus’ 12 apostles); Moses leading (like Jesus); Aaron as Moses’ high priest (like Peter); Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu set apart as the three (like Peter, James, and John); and the 70 elders functioning as priests (like Jesus’ 70 disciples, and like the Sanhedrin which was contemporary with Jesus and which the rabbis understood as grounded in the early Israelite community after the exodus). As Brant Pitre explains: Should there be any doubt about this, these parallels go a long way toward providing a historical explanation for the opposition Jesus met with from one particular ruling body within Second Temple Judaism: the Great Sanhedrin. For while modern scholars often miss the significance of Jesus’ gathering and commissioning seventy disciples, the seventy members of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin would certainly have gotten the point. [“Jesus, the New Temple, and the New Priesthood,” Letter & Spirit 4 (2008): 81 n. 94] Keener understands Peter ranking first among the disciples as the “rock” on whom Jesus builds his community (Mt 16:17–19). But even more is going on in this passage; Jesus is appointing Peter as royal steward to the kingdom and high priest, which are signified by the keys of the kingdom (Mt 16:19), 1224 Book Reviews which hearken back to the temple keys and to the key of the house of David, itself a kingdom, and Eliakim the Davidic royal steward, who is also depicted (especially in the Targumic tradition) as high priest (Is 22:20–23). The rock imagery meanwhile harkens back to the temple, an allusion strengthened by the previous discussion of the wise and foolish builders (Mt 7:24–27).The wise builder (Solomon and Jesus) built his house (temple and church) on the rock (temple’s foundation stone and Peter). Chapter 18, “Jesus as Messiah?” (256–67), provides strong evidence that Jesus in fact saw himself as messianic king. Chapter 19, “More Than an Earthly Messiah?” (268–82), underscores that Jesus’ kingship was not simply envisioned as earthly, but that it represented the kingdom of God. Chapter 20, “Confronting and Provoking the Elite” (283–302), shows the many ways in which Jesus’ actions themselves bore the messages he was sending. Keener gives some credit to the idea that Jesus envisioned a new temple. He explains, “The expected restoration of the [temple] vessels, the ark and perhaps the manna [within the Judaism of the time] also implies a renewed, eschatological temple of some sort” (294). A few pages later, Keener includes his discussion of the Last Supper (296–301). Although Keener correctly points out that “Mention of ‘memory’ in a Passover context involved not mere recollection but more of a participatory commemoration” (296), he eschews a sacramental interpretation of Jesus’ words. Keener notes the connection between the synoptic Last Supper accounts and Exodus 24 in the mutual use of the phrase “blood of the covenant” (300). Keener also acknowledges that “many of Jesus’ words (such as ‘flesh,’ ‘blood,’ ‘poured out’) [probably] suggest sacrificial terminology, especially since crucifixion itself technically required no blood” (300), but he rejects the notion of the Last Supper itself as sacrificial. As he clarifies, “Presumably he means that the bread ‘represents’ or stands for his body in some sense” (300). Keener does not mention that the phrase “memory” here is used of the memorial offerings in the Old Testament, most notably of the Bread of the Presence, which was understood as an unbloody sacrifice consumed by the priests every Sabbath (e.g., Lv 24:7). In chapter 21, “Jesus’ Arrest and Execution” (303–29), Keener carefully examines the passion narratives in the synoptic Gospels and demonstrates how historically probable most of their details are. His chapter reviews the relevant historical evidence showing the certainty of Jesus’ death and burial. The final chapter, “The Resurrection” (330–48), reviews the classic arguments in favor of Jesus’ resurrection, based upon the tradition. He shows how historically likely the empty tomb tradition actually is, as well as the accounts of the eyewitness appearances. He also follows N.T.Wright and others emphasizing the distinctiveness of Jesus’ resurrection from other Book Reviews 1225 alleged dying-rising gods of the ancient world. He saves his conclusion on Jesus’ resurrection for his eighth appendix, in which he states,“I believe that divine activity best explains the resurrection appearances” (384). Keener’s one-page conclusion (349) is followed immediately by nine very useful appendices. The first, “Zealots and Revolutionaries” (350–51), explains the historical information on the Jewish revolutionary movements of Jesus’ day. The second, “Mack’s Case for a Wisdom Q” (352–53), is a brief critique of Burton Mack’s rejection of eschatology from Q. The third appendix, “Jewish Biographical Conventions” (356–60), is a very helpful summary of Jewish biographical techniques, showing that, “the canonical Gospels reflect Greco-Roman rather than strictly Palestinian Jewish literary conventions” (356). The fourth appendix, “Jesus’ Sayings about the End” (361–71), reviews Jesus’ eschatological sayings in light of Jewish eschatological expectations from the time, and includes a useful six-page chart (366–71) highlighting Jewish eschatological themes found in the New Testament, Jewish literature, and “pagan prodigies.” The fifth appendix, “John and the Synoptics on Passover Chronology” (372–74), addresses the thorny issue of the apparent chronological discrepancies between the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John, assessing Annie Jaubert’s now-famous attempt at reconciling the two based on the different calendars (lunar and solar) in use within the Jewish world of Jesus’ day. In the end, Keener concludes that “most likely, John has simply provided a theological interpretation of Jesus’ death” (374), not a strictly chronological one. The sixth appendix, “Roman Participation in Jesus’ Arrest?” (375–76), is one of the rare engagements with John’s Gospel found in this volume; it concludes that Roman participation in the actual arrest of Jesus was unlikely (376). The seventh appendix, “Capital Authority” (377–78), maintains that, despite the evidence that the Romans might have overlooked local executions, the Sanhedrin probably did lack the legal authority necessary to execute Jesus and thus would have needed Roman intervention (378).The eighth appendix, “What Really Happened at the Tomb?” (379–88), is Keener’s moving account of his belief in Jesus’ resurrection. He begins by defending the inclusion of the possibility of divine activity. He concludes with the testimonial of his own spiritual journey. The final appendix, “Some Postresurrection Teachings” (389–93), discusses such matters as the mission to the gentiles and the gift of the Holy Spirit. To his credit, Keener is well aware of the limitations of his book, and he covers them in a subsection under that very heading. Of course, the book’s largest weakness, which Keener realizes and to which he alerts the reader in his subsection on the volume’s objective, is that he fails significantly to 1226 Book Reviews engage the Gospel of John (xxxiv). I find this especially regrettable because Keener’s two-volume commentary on John’s Gospel is one of the finest commentaries available and, indeed, may very well be surpassed in thoroughness only by Rudolf Schnackenburg’s three-volume commentary, Das Johannesevangelium (1965, 1971, and 1975). Although Keener’s book is already very lengthy, and although he is able to “make the book’s point” without much recourse to John (both arguments being the substance of his rationale for John’s exclusion, xxxiv), the omission is unfortunate precisely because Keener is especially well placed to bring John’s Gospel into dialogue with historical work on the synoptic Gospels. Indeed, in the first volume of his commentary, The Gospel of John, he argues very persuasively that John’s Gospel, like the synoptics, fits the genre of ancient biography best and is useful for the study of the historical Jesus (3–52). This criticism notwithstanding, Keener’s The Historical Jesus and the Gospels is one of the most significant forays into historical Jesus scholarship since the field’s inception, which began, according to Albert Schweitzer (Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1906), with Gotthold Lessing’s 1778 posthumous publication of Hermann Reimarus’s essay “Vom dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger.” Thankfully, Keener’s masterful treatment is not hampered by the same acidic skepticism that tainted the pioneers of historical Jesus research like Reimarus, David Friedrich Strauss, Ernest Renan and others, and by the more recent work of the Jesus Seminar. Keener’s book is one of the most thorough and fruitful of a host of newer studies on the historical Jesus and promises to take the field of historical Jesus research forward. These important studies include Michael Bird’s Are You the One Who Is to Come? (2009), Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006), and Brant Pitre’s Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (2005). Keener joins this growing group of scholars who are unwilling to be shackled by the bankrupt scholarly assumptions of the past, but yet continue to learn from and build upon the best of what has come before in historical Jesus research. This book will certainly rank with the classics of historical Jesus research like N. T. Wright’s 3 volumes, Christian Origins and the Question of God, John Meier’s multivolume A Marginal Jew, Raymond Brown’s Birth of the Messiah and two-volume Death of the Messiah, and Ben Meyer’s The Aims of Jesus and Christus Faber. I happily await the publication of Keener’s multivolume commentary on the Book of Acts, which he mentions (xxvi and 436 n. 4). N&V Jeffrey L. Morrow Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey Book Reviews 1227 Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham by Russell L. Friedman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), v + 198 pp. “W HAT all of this material reveals,” concludes Russell Friedman at the end of his Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham, “is the incredible richness of later-medieval trinitarian theology and latermedieval scholasticism as a whole.” Friedman’s book is an extended argument on behalf of this “richness,” and the Trinitarian story that unfolds accomplishes two primary goals. First, Friedman provides us a rigorous yet readable entrance (an impressive feat in and of itself) into the developments in Trinitarian theology that occurred from c. 1250 to 1350. As a “big picture” account of later-medieval Trinitarian theology, the book is a wonderful read, elucidating complex distinctions in a clear manner while providing access to scholastic material that would likely otherwise remain hidden. The trajectory of Friedman’s account is founded on the distinct Trinitarian theologies of Aquinas and Bonaventure, who form ground zero for the distinct “Dominican” and “Franciscan” traditions of articulating the “major issue” of Trinitarian theology: identity in essence and distinction in persons. Aquinas articulates the “relation account” of the personal properties, which distinguishes Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by their opposition of relations (paternity, filiation, and passive spiration). Bonaventure, on the other hand, emphasizes the “emanation account” of the personal properties, in which the way each person emanates or originates (unemanated, generation, spiration) takes precedence in distinguishing the three divine persons. Friedman contrasts the order of concepts attributed to God the Father in Aquinas’s and Bonaventure’s thought as follows: for Aquinas, the order is paternity, then Father, then generation; relation, then person, then emanation. For Bonaventure, the order is generation, then Father, then paternity; emanation, then person, then relation. Given that Bonaventure seems to hold that the Father gives himself being through the act of generation, an important feature of Bonaventure’s account is what Friedman describes as the existence of the “proto-Father,” who before acting has the “complete disposition” for emanating, that is, “primity.” Because of primity, explains Friedman, “it is not necessary for God the Father to be the Father in order to bring about generation and the resulting actual distinction of the persons.” These concepts become important within the Franciscan trajectory of Trinitarian thought. Friedman concentrates his story mostly on the Franciscan trajectory, since, according to Friedman, scholarship has well addressed the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Dominican Trinitarian tradition. The heart of Friedman’s argument is that, although the views of Aquinas and 1228 Book Reviews Bonaventure are genuinely distinct, they were not yet mutually exclusive until later developments in Franciscan theology rendered the accounts “rivals.” Bonaventure posited the emanation account and the notion of primity in order to explain how we conceive the Trinitarian properties, “frequently adding caveats,” notes Friedman, “about how primity established the proto-Father ‘according to the way we understand things.’ ” But those who follow Bonaventure, such as John Pecham, “reify” Bonaventure’s conceptual ordering, so that primity is no longer a conceptual explanation but a real personal property. Friedman explains, “The Father is the Father because he generates and he generates on the basis of innascibility as primity.” The Franciscans continued to keep the relational distinction alongside the emanation distinction,“nesting” the former inside the later; yet, according to Friedman, the relational distinction became “hypothetically dispensable” (e.g., hypothetically the Spirit could be said to proceed only from the Father and still be distinctly the Spirit), which leaves the emanation properties doing the real work of distinguishing the divine persons. The Franciscans also began drawing a distinction between hypostasis and person, correlating the “hypostatic distinction” with emanation and the “personal distinction” with opposed relation. With Henry of Ghent, however, we see the complete rejection of the relation account of personal distinction. Whereas Aquinas and Bonaventure had agreed that the divine relations—whether according to the opposed relation or to the emanation distinction—were real but nevertheless non-essential (the relation “vanished” when compared to the divine essence), Henry of Ghent claims that no relation can exist apart from its foundation, so that such “vanishing” is nonsense. Henry therefore brings the properties of emanation to the center of his account while adding a new element into the Franciscan trajectory: the emanation of the Son is the emanation of a mental word or concept from the paternal intellect, and the emanation of the Holy Spirit is the emanation of zeal or enthusiasm from the will of the Father and Son. “In this way,” states Friedman, “Henry moves a psychological model of the Trinity into the heart of his trinitarian theology.” The psychological model of the Trinity brings us to the second topic of “richness” in Friedman’s account (and the second chapter of the book). The Franciscan tradition, claims Friedman, employed the psychological model in the “strong way,” in that “the Franciscans thought that the Son quite literally is a Concept produced by the Father’s intellect, and that the Holy Spirit is Love produced by the will shared by the Father and the Son.” The Dominican tradition—John of Naples and Durand of St. Pourçian in particular—departed from Henry of Ghent’s “strong” use of the psychological trinity, emphasizing instead that “the power produc- Book Reviews 1229 tive of the persons in God is the divine essence or nature, and not the intellect and the will as such.” As Aquinas argues, will and nature in the divine are distinct “by reason alone [solum ratione distinguuntur].” Friedman spends considerable time engaging John Duns Scotus—Friedman locates Scotus as a part of the thirteenth-century Franciscan tradition— as representative of the strong use of the psychological model and shows how theology and psychological theory intertwined.The main difference between Aquinas and Scotus centered on how the mental word was begotten: either from the intellectual act (Aquinas’s “object-act” theory) or directly from memory (Scotus’s “mental-act” theory). Scotus agrees with Aquinas, however, that merely rationally distinct attributes cannot be the source of a real distinction between emanations. Thus Scotus requires a “formal” distinction between God’s intellect and God’s will. In fact, claims Friedman, Scotus introduces a second formal distinction between these attributes and the divine essence. Later Franciscans of the fourteenth century, however, such as Walter Chatton, Robert Holcot, and Gregory of Rimini, find these formal distinctions in God problematic and reject them as part of what Friedman calls their “search for simplicity.” A “strict” adherence to simplicity, as Friedman illustrates in chapter three and the beginning of chapter four, left theologians unable to explain rationally the divine personal distinctions and resulted in a theology that is commonly characterized as fideism. What interests Friedman is why they arrived at their fideistic stance: it was not because of a lack of employing reason to think through Trinitiarian questions; rather, the reasoning they applied to the Trinitarian questions led them to assert our inability to explain the distinctions of the divine persons. For Friedman, fourteenth-century theologians emphasized divine simplicity to such an extent that distinction in God was “ruled out,” and, as a result, analysis and genuine explanation of the personal distinctions in God became “impossible.” All that remained was to believe the Church when it declares there to be three persons in the one divine essence. It is when we reach the later half of the fourth and final chapter of the book that we discover the second goal of Friedman’s argument for theological “richness” in late-medieval scholasticism: a critique of Étienne Gilson. According to the “Gilsonian paradigm,” as Friedman calls it, the fourteenth century can be characterized by the increased skepticism of the abilities of reason to explore the truths of the faith and the corresponding increased promotion of a fideistic approach to theology. The harmony of philosophy and theology and reason and revelation once held by Thomas Aquinas crumbled under the weight of such fideism, as is clearly witnessed in the thought of William of Ockham. Friedman does 1230 Book Reviews not wholesale disagree with Gilson. Clearly the fourteenth-century popularity of “Praepositinianism”—the teaching that the divine persons are the personal properties (distinct in and of themselves [se ipsis]), which undermines any mechanism (relational or emanation) for explaining their distinction—reflects an increased fideistic approach to Trinitarian theology. But Friedman believes, on the one hand, that Gilson’s portrait is too generalized—Friedman claims that there were “a large number of important thinkers in the fourteenth century who were no more fideistic than John Duns Scotus or Thomas Aquinas.” More importantly, however, Friedman claims that Gilson failed to get at the heart of the supposed fideistic tendencies that surrounded fourteenth-century Trinitarian theology, namely the “search for simplicity.” For Friedman, as noted above, fourteenth-century theologians were not skeptical of the use of reason per se (contra Gilson); they employed reason to a great extent in order to arrive at their conclusions regarding God’s simplicity and their inability to account for divine distinctions.The fideistic accounts of Chatton, Holcot, and Rimini are therefore seen by Friedman not as an indication of the bankruptcy of late-medieval scholasticism but rather as an element alongside other Trinitarian accounts, all of which reflect the “immense vitality and creativity of later-medieval theologians.” This brings us back to where we began (yet now in contrast to Gilson): “what all this material reveals is the incredible richness of later-medieval trinitarian theology and later-medieval scholasticism as a whole.” While Friedman’s story of the Trinitarian developments between c. 1250 to 1350 is solid and a delight to read, his criticisms of Gilson raise questions in this reviewer’s mind surrounding Friedman’s evaluation of the Trinitarian story. Friedman’s story could also be interpreted, it seems, as a demonstration of the perils encountered in the Franciscan slide into a univocal concept of being—witness, for instance, the Franciscan willingness to speak of the Son as literally a Concept of the Father’s intellect, and their willingness, especially Scotus’s, to posit “formal distinctions” between God’s intellect, God’s will, and God’s essence. Later reactions to these formal distinctions in the search for simplicity (Chatton, Holcot, and Rimini, for example) still work within the univocal pattern of thinking. All that is new is that they apply univocal thinking to simplicity, and this leads them to arrive at fideistic accounts of the divine distinctions. When compared to the Franciscan trajectory, the Dominicans certainly seem to have insufficiently appreciated the Augustinian psychological model—and Friedman demonstrates clearly that this happened in some cases—but their deep qualifications of the psychological model when applied to the divine being (“resemblances”) is in some sense justi- Book Reviews 1231 fied when God’s being is taken not univocally but analogically. The question I pose is this: should we say with Friedman that the “reasoned fideism” (my words) of certain fourteenth-century thinkers is a sign of “vitality and creativity” or perhaps rather a sign of misdirection leading to a theological dead end? If by “vitality and creativity” Friedman simply means that later theologians were not merely replicating the thought of earlier theologians but proposing new answers to old Trinitarian questions, Friedman’s account confirms such “vitality and creativity.” But if by “vitality and creativity” Friedman means the flourishing of the use reason in theological speculation, this is not as clear. Whether or not Friedman’s account brings any major qualification to the “Gilsonian paradigm,” it does bring tremendous clarification. There is no doubt that Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham is an indispensible book for understanding the Church’s history of reflecting on the Trinity. Anyone interested in Trinitarian theology, not just historically but also constructively, would do well to read this work. N&V Charles Raith II John Brown University Siloam Springs, Arkansas The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion by Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011 ), xiii + 319. FATHER N ICHOLAS L OMBARDO won the 2011 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise for his The Logic of Desire. In it, he argues that desire is the center of Aquinas’s account of emotion, and both desire and emotion are central not only to the structure of the Summa but also to Aquinas’s project as a whole (and his ethics). Desires are ordered toward human flourishing, and for Aquinas, ethics is “nothing other than the study of human psychology insofar as it flourishes or fails to flourish” (xi). His study does not equate “emotions” with any particular aspect of Aquinas’s thought, since Aquinas would not have been familiar with the category, but instead it seeks to “focus on Aquinas’s discussion of those psychological phenomena that we typically identify as emotions” (18).The book falls into two parts: first it follows Aquinas over a wide range of topics that can correspond to the ordinary use of “emotion” (the first seven chapters), and then it provides a discussion that connects Aquinas’s account to contemporary philosophy and theology (the two final chapters). Lombardo’s first chapter deals with the passions of the soul. A passion is “a physiological and psychological response to the apprehension of a 1232 Book Reviews sensible good or a sensible evil, that is, an object that is known through the senses, and judged to be either good or evil” (20). There are two important moments in this response: the apprehension of an object and the passion itself. Apprehension involves not only the material object, but also the intentional object; that is, apprehension combines the sense perception of an object with cognitive evaluation. It is not the object itself that elicits passion but the object grasped under a certain aspect (25). Appetite is an inclination toward something that is perceived as perfective of the being; it is teleologically oriented. Passions are indispensable for obtaining the telos, serving as “psychic motors” driving us toward it (40). Passion requires the guidance of reason, because of the fallen condition of humans: “The passions require the guidance of reason in order to become virtuous . . . but virtue also requires the passions. Without the passions, we would not respond to sensible objects, and without this first step toward engaging the world, human flourishing would not be possible” (41). Next, Lombardo provides an explanation of the structure of the passions. He explains the two appetitive powers: concupiscible and irascible. Each of the eleven passions that Aquinas mentions receives a treatment, and Lombardo includes his own observations about their relationships. Lombardo also criticizes Aquinas’s taxonomy at a few points, proposing alternate formulations that would still be consistent with Aquinas’s overall system. For example, he states that love and hatred are not necessary to the system because love “can be interpreted as a combination of apprehension, desire, and pleasure” and hatred “might be dissolved into apprehension and the passions of aversion and sadness” (62). He again highlights the importance of intentional objects being both the cause of passions and the teleological ordering of the process toward human flourishing. In chapter three Lombardo moves to the affections of the will. For Aquinas, affection is connected to both the sense appetite and the intellectual appetite, the will. All passions are affections, but not all affections are passions (76). Love is the first of all affections, and the rest are ordered to it. The will’s most basic inclination is to goodness. However, each object can be attractive or repulsive in different degrees and under different aspects, so the will is forced to make a choice about what will lead to human flourishing (80). Both the passions and the intellectual affections influence one another, often being experienced together (84). The fulfillment of desire brings joy, which is the will’s equivalent of sensible pleasure. The will’s loves, desires, joys, hates, aversions, and sorrows can overflow into the bodily passions (89). Book Reviews 1233 Next Lombardo considers the relationships among passions, reason, and virtue. He argues that in Aquinas’s system, passions naturally tend toward reason. While not entirely subject, they do obey reason to some extent, and so “over time reason’s guidance becomes embedded in the sense appetite, manifesting itself in either virtuous or vicious passions” (94). Aquinas followed Aristotle’s political metaphor of reason governing the concupiscible and irascible powers with political rather than despotic rule (99). Reason can influence the formation of an intentional object, because it plays a role in connecting the material object to human flourishing. (Reason connects the passion to the telos by portraying the object in a certain way.) In this connection with reason, passions can be virtuous if they are rightly ordered to human flourishing. Also, they are vital to morality, because the more powerfully the will is directed toward an object, the more powerfully it overflows into the passions. Thus, someone passionate for a good manifests the intensity of their willing toward it. Lombardo provides a helpful explanation of the difference between consequent passion (passion as natural consequence of the will) and antecedent passion (passion preceding and opposing acts of the will) (109–11). No one can be moral without rightly ordered passions flowing from the will’s inclinations. Chapter five deals with the relationship between original sin, grace, and human affectivity. Original sin means a loss of grace and a loss of cooperation among the passions (they compete; 123). It has weakened humans but not fundamentally altered human nature. Redemption therefore is more than legal acquittal from sin; it is also restoration and renewal (125). Virtues can be infused or acquired. God, by his grace, infuses people with virtues, and the infused virtue works together with its acquired counterpart to produce the growth of that virtue in the person. Lombardo argues that the Holy Spirit plays an important but neglected role in Aquinas’s ethics, for the Spirit constantly guides and sustains the moral agent (141). In chapter six, Lombardo works systematically through the virtues and the vices, showing their connection to affectivity in order to argue for the centrality of perfecting affectivity as a central component of Aquinas’s theological ethics. The virtues cannot be rightly understood or cultivated apart from a proper understanding of affectivity. Charity plays a central role, for it “makes our affections accord with God’s. It unites all other virtues, gathering them together and ordering them to the love of God” (163). In his treatment of the moral virtues, he emphasizes that each perfects a power of the soul, and thus virtues are “convenient ways to talk about the perfection of particular aspects of the human person” (170). 1234 Book Reviews Lombardo demonstrates that these connections affirm Aquinas’s view that the passions are good and that virtue helps guide them to humanity’s ultimate telos (186), which is also connected to Aquinas’s conviction that human appetites are created by God and are therefore good. He insists that “the theme of human affectivity and its perfection by virtue is one of the major organizing principles of the Summa—that it is not just one of many themes, but a theme of central structural importance to his project” (198). The first section of the book concludes by interacting with the passions in Christ’s life, especially as they relate to Christ’s knowledge. This treatment helps shape a proper understanding of Christology as well as of the human passions. Lombardo primarily relies upon Paul Gondreau’s The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (University of Scranton Press, 2009). Lombardo argues that for Thomas, “Christ’s affectivity is a fully human affectivity, and in fact the exemplar of human affectivity” (201). He develops both similarities and differences between Christ’s experience and the typical human experience. The most difficult element to take into account is Christ’s knowledge, for his immediate beatific knowledge of God constantly interacted with his passions. His theory of Christ’s affectivity is in dialogue with his account of human affectivity (223). In the final two chapters, Lombardo shows the usefulness of Aquinas’s treatment of affection for contemporary thought. He argues that Aquinas’s category of affection corresponds to the category of emotion: “Aquinas should be seen as advocating a theory of emotion that equates emotion with intentional feeling, views emotion as intrinsically dependent on cognition (including perception) and usually but not necessarily involving the body, and limits emotion’s extension to discrete psychological events, thus excluding long-term affective dispositions from being considered emotions” (229). Aquinas’s concept of appetite provides a metaphysical foundation for the psychology of human emotion. Desire and other forms of emotion manifest the appetite, so emotion is essential to human flourishing. Lombardo expounds Aquinas’s understanding of desire, of passion’s obedience to reason, of ethics, and of freedom. Before concluding chapter eight with some omissions and lacunae, he argues that desire could serve as a new foundation for ethical discourse between different ethical perspectives (245–47). For Lombardo, passions contribute to ethics in three important ways. First, since the intellect’s orientation to objects reflects a vision of human flourishing and overflows into the passions, the operation of passion or emotion can be a sign of intense orientation to the good. Thus emotion can fuel the pursuit of the telos. Second, “as individuals respond to partic- Book Reviews 1235 ular events and establish patterns of interaction between passion and reason, character traits emerge” (101). Third, the emotions can serve as a guide. Because Aquinas believes that God has given the affections, their desires can be trusted to a certain extent (especially when in proper relation to reason) to indicate what one should choose to do. Lombardo concludes the book with a few applications of Aquinas’s thought to a contemporary theology of emotions. Aquinas’s thought helps to situate asceticism, for giving up pleasure is proper only in the service of some greater good (251). Forgiveness can be seen as important for dispersing anger after it has ceased to be useful (252). Aquinas’s understanding of emotion can also positively influence Christian preaching, which should deal with the passions in the right fashion (neither ignoring nor abusing them). Finally, he provides an extended treatment of the phenomenon of boredom, which he views as “the non-space between desire and joy: the will stuck in neutral, or spinning its wheels” (265). Secularization, which divorces things from their sacramental role of pointing us to God, also contributes to boredom by making the world less interesting (269–70). Boredom results from insufficient engagement with loving God and neighbor (friendship and love are most able to satisfy our infinite desires). Although Aquinas’s approach is not perfect, “once integrated with modern science and post-Freudian psychology, its inclusive methodology, systematic depth, and holistic approach might provide the basis for a new vision of the human person, culled from millennia of anthropological reflection and yet thoroughly accessible today” (274). Lombardo’s work is strongest at his critical and creative points. He helpfully questions aspects of Aquinas’s system, such as the place of love: “the absence of love from his system would not cause it to crumble” (62). He does a good job of fairly summarizing Aquinas’s positions while also looking for problems of coherence. The end of the book focuses on bringing Aquinas into conversation with contemporary thinking and challenges, and Lombardo is adept at making connections. I found his most creative move to be in his treatment of boredom, in which he constructed a plausible explanation of how Aquinas’s system would address this contemporary issue. Lombardo routinely mentions (for example, at the start of his chapter on Christ [201]) that, in order to assess Aquinas’s novel contribution, one must pay attention to his sources. Disconcerting, then, is Lombardo’s occasional failure to provide the depth of interaction with these sources that his exhortation leads one to expect. For example, he interacts with Hilary of Poitiers and Peter Lombard, but he merely mentions the importance of Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Bonaventure, 1236 Book Reviews without developing them as sources (202–3). In a book that so clearly rests upon a wealth of research, these omissions must be intentional; discussion of all of Aquinas’s sources, however, would have strengthened the book. This book cannot be ignored in future work on Aquinas’s view of the passions, ethics, anthropology, and Christology. Because Lombardo connects so many aspects of Aquinas’s thought together, the book is relevant beyond questions of the passions. This remarkably well-researched book contains more than nine hundred footnotes, which provide many avenues for further engagement with both Aquinas and secondary sources. An excellent index of primary citations makes the book useful for scholars pursuing specific questions from the Summa or other writings. This work would make a worthy addition to required secondary reading in upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses on Aquinas or theological ethics. N&V Jacob Shatzer Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2012): 1237–41 1237 General Index to Nova et Vetera Volume 10 (2012) Adam Afterman & Gedaliah Afterman, “Rise Up and Kill Him First” On Modern Attempts to Create a Jewish Ethics of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1183 Robert John Araujo, S.J., Roman Catholic Teachings on the Use of Force: Assessing Rights and Wrongs from World War I to Iraq . . . . . . . . . 1049 Corey L. Barnes, Necessary, Fitting, or Possible: The Shape of Scholastic Christology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657 Elliott Louis Bedford, Catholic Social Teaching and the Health Insurance Mandate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909 Guy Bedouelle, O.P., Mass Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Death of Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, O.P., Homily Preached on 2 October 2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 Enrico Berti, The Finality of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover in the Metaphysics Book 12, Chapters 7 and 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863 Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., Aquinas as Interpreter of Augustinian Illumination in Light of Albertus Magnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689 Christopher Blum, On the Recovery of Experience and the Search for a Christian Environmentalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Hans Boersma, History and Faith in Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth . . . . . 985 Stephen L. Brock, The Diagonal and the Cross: Faith as a Source of Wonder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715 Stephen L. Brock, The Causality of the Unmoved Mover in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Metaphysics XII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805 David B. Burrell, C.S.C., On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 Stratford Caldecott, At Home in the Cosmos: The Revealing of the Sons of God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 1238 General Index Romanus Cessario, O.P., After Virtue, Thirty Years After: Laudatio for Alasdair MacIntyre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 895 Martin L. Cook, Is Just War Spirituality Possible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1141 John A. Cuddeback, Renewing Husbandry: Wendell Berry, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas on “Economics” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. & Romanus Cessario, O.P., Witness to Faith: George Weigel, Blessed John Paul II, and the Theological Life . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 David Paul Deavel, The Gift of Wonder: Chestertonian Resources for Creation Stewardship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Lawrence Dewan, O.P., The Existence of God: Can It Be Demonstrated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731 Kevin L. Flannery, S.J., On Professor Berti’s Interpretation of the Causality of the First Unmoved Mover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 833 Paul Gondreau, The Redemption and Divinization of Human Sexuality through the Sacrament of Marriage: A Thomistic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 John Haldane, Same-Sex Marriage? A View from across the Atlantic. . . . . . . 649 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., Natural Theology and the Christian Contribution to Metaphysics: On Thomas Joseph White’s Wisdom in the Face of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 Stephen A. Hipp, Nature’s Finality and the Stewardship of Creation According to Saint Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Reinhard Hütter, Pornography and Acedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 901 James Turner Johnson, Holy War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099 James Keating, Seminary Formation and Interior Silence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Just War and the Common Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1031 Peter Kwasniewski, St. Thomas on the Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Steven A. Long, Thomistic Reflections on the Cosmos, Man, and Stewardship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Fiona Lynch, A Philosopher for Our Time: Aquinas and Critical Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757 Charles Mathewes, Just War and the Theology of Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1157 John M. McDermott, S.J., Elizabeth Johnson on Revelation, Faith, Theology, Analogy, and God’s Fatherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 923 General Index 1239 Charles Morerod, O.P., A World of Natures and the Presence of God. . . . . . 215 Valerie O. Morkevicius, Changing the Rules of the Game: A Just Peace Critique of Just War Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1115 Thomas Petri, O.P., and Michael A. Wahl, Live Action and Planned Parenthood: A New Test Case for Lying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Gregory M. Reichberg, Discontinuity in Catholic Just War? From Aquinas to the Contemporary Popes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1073 Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B., Anaphoras without Institution Narrative: Historical and Dogmatic Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Deborah Savage, Metaphysical Realism as the Foundation of Environmental Stewardship and Economic Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 D. C. Schindler, Discovering the Given: On Reason and God . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563 Kenneth Schmitz, Towards the Reciprocity of Man and Nature: Receptivity, Normativity, and Procreativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Michele M. Schumacher, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body on Trial: Responding to the Accusation of the Biological Reduction of Women . . . . . . 463 Mary Shivanandan, Conjugal Spirituality and the Gift of Reverence. . . . . . . . . 485 Janet E. Smith, The Kraków Document. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Randall B. Smith, How to Read a Sermon by Thomas Aquinas . . . . . . . . . . . 775 Christopher Thompson, Aquinas and the Environment Symposium Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Christopher Thompson, Perennial Wisdom: Notes Toward a Green Thomism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Geoffrey Wainwright, The “New Worship” in Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993 Matthew Philipp Whelan, Land, Economy, and the Measure of Christ: The Catholic Agrarianism of Vincent McNabb, O.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Why Should Christians Study Philosophy? . . . 15 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Toward a Post-Secular, Post-Conciliar Thomistic Philosophy: Wisdom in the Face of Modernity and the Challenge of Contemporary Natural Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Engaging the Thomistic Tradition and Contemporary Culture Simultaneously: A Response to Burrell, Healy, and Schindler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605 / a, et al, The Foundations of the Church’s Doctrine Karol Cardinal Wojtyl Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life: A memorandum 1240 General Index composed by a group of moral theologians from Kraków . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 William M. Wright IV, Pre-Gospel Traditions and Post-Critical Interpretation in Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth: Volume 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1015 Jerome Zeiler, O.P., Craniotomy: A Response to Martin Rhonheimer. . . . . 507 B OOK R EVIEWS John F. Boyle, 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625 Holly Taylor Coolman, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering edited by James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 879 Nathan Eubank, The Temple in the Gospel of Mark: A Study in Its Narrative Role by Timothy C. Gray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632 Earl Fernandes, Resting on the Heart of Christ: The Vocation and Spirituality of the Seminary Theologian by Deacon James Keating, Ph.D., and Seminary Theology: Teaching in a Contemplative Way, edited by Deacon James Keating, Ph.D.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215 Pablo Gadenz, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology by Michael J. Gorman . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P. and Romanus Cessario, O.P., Perfecting Human Actions: St. Thomas Aquinas on Human Participation in Eternal Law by John Rziha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877 Daniel A. Keating, The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary on the Three Holy Mantras of the Śri ṽaisn· ava · Hindus by Francis X. Clooney, S.J.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Daniel Keating, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria by Hans Van Loon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 Joel N. Lohr, Jewish-Christian Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom: Engagements with the Theology of David Novak by Matthew Levering. . . . . . . . 287 Jeffrey L. Morrow, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig S. Keener . . . 1220 Bernard Mulcahy, O.P., The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 Ryan S. Peterson, God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation by Nonna Verna Harrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638 Trent Pomplun, A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe edited by Ulrich Lehner and Michael Printy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 882 General Index 1241 Charles Raith II, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham by Russell L. Friedman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1227 Matthew J. Ramage, What Is Dogma? by Charles Cardinal Journet . . . . . . . . 886 Charles Sammons, O.F.M. Cap., Light & Glory: The Transfiguration of Christ in Early Franciscan and Dominican Theology by Aaron Canty . . . . . . . . 642 Jacob Shatzer, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion by Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1231 Mary Shivanandan, “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body by Eduardo J. Echeverria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Craig Steven Titus, A Cosmopolitan Hermit: Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper edited by Bernard N. Schumacher . . . . . . . . . . 890 Lawrence J. Welch, Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology edited by Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 THE AQUINAS INSTITUTE for the Study of Sacred Doctrine announces the publication of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Letters of Paul • Latin and English in parallel columns • five volumes with durable hardcover binding • designed for ease of reference to chapter and verse See www.theaquinasinstitute.org for more details on this and other forthcoming projects! The C Catholic atholic University University of America America Press Press READING ROMANS WITH ST. THOMAS AQUINAS EDITED BY MATTHEW LEVERING AND MICHAEL DAUPHINAIS A masterly work setting forth Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans and St. Paul’s lasting influence on Aquinas. 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